Risala and I might escape notice but the wizards' pale skins and Velindre's yellow hair will show up like candles in the night.
He looked around to urge the mages to hide behind the tree. They weren't there.
Risala looked at him, white rimming her eyes. 'They just disappeared.'
The running feet reached the open expanse of the trees. Kheda crouched still lower, Risala on hands and knees beside him.
The fugitive was a girl on the brink of womanhood, long-legged and slender, wearing a scanty hide wrap. She dodged between the barrel trees, jumping over the treacherous hummocks. Threatening shouts pursued her. Men appeared and one flung a wooden spear. Narrowly missing the girl, it went skidding across the unyielding earth, Coming perilously close to Kheda and Risala.
The girl fell headlong as if she had been poleaxed, not even putting out a hand to save herself. But she wasn't insensible. Kheda could see her struggling against invisible bonds.
Struck down by magic.
Whatever bound her was tightening. Her struggles grew more frantic and at the same time weaker. He could see her mouth opening, the cords of her throat taut as she screamed. No sound escaped whatever foul wizardry entangled her.
Her pursuers came clpser and no such spell muted their jeering. Some carried stone-studded clubs and Kheda braced himself to see the unfortunate girl's brains dashed out. He felt Risala pressing close to his side.
To Kheda's surprise, the pursuers didn't touch the girl. After venting their scorn iwith unintelligible insults, they withdrew. The wizard With the cloak of blue feathers walked slowly through the mob of them, his women in faithful attendance two paces behind. The skull that formed the mage's mask shone red in the light of the handfuls of flame that his feather-crowned women held aloft, making black pits of the empty eye sockets. Turning, the wild mage said something, and Kheda saw that more people were being brought to witness whatever was planned for the girl.
Bold and arrogant, the wild warriors of the wizard's retinue forced the reluctant onlookers forward with clubs and their spears of fire-hardened wood. They sneered as their shoves provoked whimpers of distress from the hapless savages clad in scraps of animal hide. Women cowered, bare shoulders hunched, some seeking to protect their children in a vain embrace. One man pressed his hands to his face, trying to stifle his weeping. Tears spilled through his fingers, shining like blood in the unnatural red light of the magefire.
The girl had given up her helpless struggles. Dust swirled around her as she was lifted up by invisible strings, the skull-faced mage extending his hand to guide his spell. She hung in the air, her arms and legs limp and dangling, her head twisting this way and that in anguish. The wild mage flicked his hand and a waft of blue radiance tore her hide wrap away, revealing her undernourished nakedness. Two of the burly spearmen closest to the wizard let their weapons fall to the ground, eager anticipation on their faces. Now the skull-faced mage let the girl's hysterical sobbing be heard, stirring answering anguish among the onlookers. One of the warriors who was already unknotting his loincloth gave the nearest savage a back-handed slap to the face, chuckling as he did so.
The brute's laughter broke off as he looked down. A tree root had twisted up out of the bare earth and knotted itself around his ankle. As he looked up, mouth open in a surprised shout, a second wiry root snaked around his other leg, reaching up to his muscular thigh. With a snapping sound, more roots sprang up to tie all the girl's would-be assailants solidly to the ground. Blood dripped dark onto the pale sandy soil as merciless tendrils gouged into bare skin.
The skull-faced mage shouted angrily, the dead creature's horns lowered as his head whipped from side to side. A quivering hedge of roots surrounded him, barely held at bay by the sapphire fire flowing from his outstretched hand. The women with their crowns of feathers huddled behind him, holding their balls of scarlet magelight close to their chests.
The unarmed savages melted rapidly away with wails of distress and confusion. The skull-faced mage bellowed with outrage and flung one hand above his head. A spiteful wind flung sharp grit in the eyes of those trying to flee.
Here and there, a discarded spear sprang up of its own volition to belabour their unprotected backs.
The cordon of wriggling roots immediately drew tighter around the wild mage. Grit and weapons alike fell to the ground. This time he had to thrust out both hands to hold the squirming tendrils just beyond arm's reach.
The girl fell to the ground, landing hard, a last moan jolted out of her. Two men ran to snatch her up. Flinging her arms over their shoulders, they hauled her away. Cringing as the skull-masked mage screamed his fury, nevertheless they didn't stop and vanished into the night.
The wild wizard snatched a ball of fire from one of the leather-crowned women. As he threw it at the roots hemming them in, the magelight turned from scarlet to cold blue-white. Magic crackled between the roots like lightning, instantly crisping the tendrils to black ash. Shooting outwards, claws of sapphire magelight flashed across the ground to rip away the roots holding his spearmen immobilised. Vicious burns in their tender flesh glistened in the moonlight but few dared cry out.
The unpleasant smell of singed skin and hair caught in Kheda's throat. He fought a desperate urge to cough, gripping his sword in one hand and his hacking blade in the other.
I've never needed a third hand so badly, so I could take light hold of Risala. We'll have to make a run for it and let the wizards make shift for themselves. Let's just hope we can hide in the grasses without being eaten by a lizard.
Risala's fingers tightened on his shoulder. Her face was determined in the pitiless moonlight and he felt the tension quivering in every fibre of her. He braced himself, ready to spring up as he saw the wild mage turning this way and that, all his attention on the ground.
The wild mage's blue-black magic was burning newly emerging roots to carve dark lines in the pale ground. Kheda
watched intently as the ominous blackness converged on one of the giant barrel trees, which burst into purplish flames, the leathery bark spitting and splitting. The wild mage yelled at his warriors, gesturing, and they converged on the burning tree.
One yelped as he skirted a sandy hummock and stumbled. He tried to stand up but the ground betrayed him. The sandy earth flowed away beneath his feet and new fissures opened up elsewhere in the dry expanse. Shouting their alarm, the spearmen dodged and sidestepped. Relentless, the crevices pursued them, gaping ever wider. The wild men were soon struggling in a slough of smothering sand, the solid ground retreating, always a step ahead of their plunging feet, out of reach of their flailing arms. The wild wizard screamed furiously, penned with his cowering women on a shrinking pedestal as the earth around them crumbled.
'Head for the river.' Velindre's dry voice whispered in Kheda's ear.
Slowly, carefully, Kheda retreated, Risala close by his side, their steps matching. Once the bulbous barrel tree was directly between them and the skull-faced mage, Kheda sheathed his sword and grabbed Risala's hand. They ran for the edge of the magic-racked plateau and slid down the scoured slope towards the dubious shelter of the rustling grasses. The tall blades were as vicious as they had been before. Kheda ignored the sting of new slices on his hands and face as he slashed a path through the vegetation, Risala pressed close behind him. He didn't stop until they reached the river.
'What now?' Risala gasped breathlessly.
'Shall we swim for it?' Kheda looked over the lip of the bank down to the mudflats below. A menacing shape broached the water and for an instant the moonlight glistened on rugged scales.