Pointing with his saber, hoping someone would take notice and understand, Anton bellowed, “The boy!” Then he gave chase.
He saw immediately that he had little hope of overtaking the giant lion. The bounding strides of its long legs were too great. He forced himself to sprint even faster. Still, the beast lengthened its lead.
Then luminous scarlet netting glimmered into existence on the beast’s hind legs, entangling them and apparently sticking them to the ground. The lion pitched off balance and fell.
Anton realized who must have cast the hindering spell. He’d lost track of Umara when the common lions attacked, but thank Lady Luck, she was still alive, had discerned his need, and had followed him to help.
Eager to catch the gigantic lion, he dashed onward. Zigzagging through the trees and leaping over fallen branches, he passed close to a blue flame glowing at the bottom of a pool of rainwater. Aches throbbed down his body from his left temple and the left hinge of his jaw down to his right ankle and the joints of his right toes.
He looked down at his arms. Bumps were swelling there. The plagueland had infected him.
He lurched around and spied Umara some distance behind him. She wasn’t much more than a shadow in the dark, and he doubted she could make him out any better, but even so, her eyes widened at what she could see of his ongoing transformation.
“No farther!” he shouted, or tried to. His voice had changed, too. It sounded more like one of the lions coughing than the voice of a man.
But whether Umara had understood or not, there wasn’t time to call again. He needed to reach the beast with the fiery mane while it was still immobilized. He ran onward.
For a few strides, he thought he was going to make it. Then, flopping on its side and twisting its enormous body, the lion brought the claws on its front paws to the mesh. It tore its bonds apart, leaped up, and bounded onward.
Once again, it started to extend its lead. Then, all but imperceptible in the darkness, a length of shadow burst up from the ground beneath it, whipped around its midsection, and jerked it to another halt.
It could only mean Umara had kept following despite Anton’s warning. Otherwise, she wouldn’t still have the beast in sight to target it. Hoping she wouldn’t suffer for her tenacity, he sprinted onward and finally caught up with his quarry.
Unfortunately, by now, his steadily swelling tumors hurt even worse. Blocking out the pain as best he could, he cut at the lion’s hind legs.
The creature lowered its head and spat Stedd onto the ground. Then it roared. The thunderous sound staggered Anton and shredded the shadow tentacle into nothingness.
But Stedd was now free and even unharmed by the look of him. As the boy clambered to his feet, Anton rasped, “Run to Umara!”
Stedd stumbled farther from the lion. Anton scrambled to position himself between the child and his monstrous abductor.
A huge paw with claws like cutlasses slashed down at him. He retreated and cut with the saber. The blade sent a fan of blood flying to mix with the rain. The lion snatched its foreleg back.
With a snarl, the beast pivoted to veer around Anton and chase after Stedd. The reaver hurled himself forward, straight at the enormous talons, fangs, and sheer crushing mass of the creature, and cut at its chest.
The saber sliced deep. Too deep, evidently, for the lion to ignore. It snapped around biting and clawing, and Anton recoiled. It wouldn’t have been fast enough to carry him to even momentary safety, except that five luminous spheres, each a different color, flew at the cat’s flank and discharged their power when they hit it, one vanishing in a blast of yellow flame and another bursting like a bubble into a cascade of steaming vitriol. The barrage made the lion falter for a precious instant.
Thank you, Umara, Anton thought. But now take Stedd and run. I’ll hold back the lion somehow.
Slashing and dodging, he succeeded in doing precisely that for several breaths. But the knots in his limbs weren’t just painful anymore. They were binding and grinding his agility away, and he thought fleetingly how strange it was to fight his last fight so far away from the sea.
Then he wrenched himself out of the way of another raking attack, and in so doing, spun toward the spot where he’d last seen Stedd. The lad was still there, give or take, hovering just a few paces away with a scowl of concentration on his face. Umara was there, too, reciting and whirling her hands in spirals. Anton inferred that when the boy hadn’t fled to her, she’d run to him, and when he still refused to accompany her to safety, she’d resumed attacking the lion.
Idiots, both of them, but especially Stedd! Didn’t he understand the blue fire would kill Anton even if the monstrous lion didn’t? What in the name of the Abyss had happened to carrying out Lathander’s mission?
But then again, why was Anton surprised that everything that had happened since he’d first met the allegedly holy child was coming to naught in the end? That simply made it of a piece with the rest of life. Grinning a grin that hurt his newly crooked jaw, determined to score at least one more attack on his towering opponent, he took fresh grips on the hilts of his blades.
Then Stedd raised his hands and called the name of his deity.
Red-gold light washed through the trees. Anton cried out as pain fell away from him in an instant, the sudden relief as shocking as an unexpected blow. He glanced at his arms and found that the lumps and knots were gone.
Meanwhile, the lion faltered and shuddered as the sapphire flame wreathing its mane guttered out to reveal the shaggy gold beneath. When the last tongue of fire disappeared, it wheeled away from Anton to peer back in the direction of the camp.
Stedd dropped to his knees and then flopped onto the ground. Umara kneeled beside him.
Anton watched the lion for another breath-it had, after all, just been doing its level best to kill him-and then, still keeping a wary eye on it, he made his way to his companions. As he did, he noticed no blue flames were burning anywhere.
Stedd looked up at him with a certain smugness. “Told you … I needed to figure out the fire,” he wheezed.
CHAPTER NINE
It reassured Umara to hear Stedd speak, especially because the child had tried to be funny. He likely hadn’t strained himself beyond endurance. Still, she asked, “Are you all right?”
“Just tired,” Stedd replied. “That was … hard.”
“Be ready,” Anton said. “The lion’s taking an interest in us again.”
Umara looked around. Cleansed of the deformities that had been gnarling him into grotesquerie, Anton stood with his bloody swords ready to threaten the gigantic cat turning back in the humans’ direction.
“It’s all right now,” said Stedd.
Umara’s intuition told her the child was correct. The danger was over. But she’d be a dismal excuse for a Red Wizard if she dropped her guard before she was certain. She rose and slid her rustwood wand from her sleeve.
Moving slowly, perhaps to make peaceful intentions evident, the lion padded toward them, and as it did, it shrank. When it halted several paces away, it still stood as high at the shoulder as the largest draught horse, but was no longer the colossus that they had battled with steel and magic.
Despite the absence of blue fire shrouding its mane and its smaller stature, the creature seemed equally impressive, although now in a majestic rather than menacing fashion. Umara almost felt like bowing to it, and when it spoke, she wasn’t surprised.
“I apologize,” the lion rumbled. “I wasn’t in control of my actions. Until the Chosen put it out, the pain of the Blue Fire maddened and diminished me. But I am sorry and shamed nonetheless, for the harm to humans and my own children, too. I can only seek to make amends. I’ve already commanded the other lions to stop fighting and run away. Now, I’m willing to use my powers to heal or fortify any in need of it, starting with you, Lathander’s cub.”