Wizards At War

Ronan looked completely stricken, but for the moment all he did was point the Spear of Light at the spot on the floor where, slowly, with a noise like a series of muffled gunshots, a thin crack had begun stitching its way across the cavern floor, and the stone to either side of it was humping up in fragmenting slabs.

Dairine looked at Roshaun. Roshaun nodded. “How many?” she said to Kit.

Kit glanced down at the manual. “Nine,” he said, “no, ten that I can see.”

“Someone’s started paying attention,” Dairine said, frowning. She reached into the air beside her and came out with what Kit could only think of as a lightning bolt, writhing and jumping in her hand and looking positively eager to be flung at something. “What do you think?”

Roshaun looked over at her, then at Kit. “Once we have stopped this incursion,” he said, “I can make sure that no more are able to use that route.”

Underfoot, that rumbling got louder. “Okay,” Kit said. “Try not to mess up the mochteroofs!”

“Leave that with me,” Filif said.

And then everything started happening at once.

The crack burst open, scattering shattered stone and rock dust in all directions, and Yaldiv warriors started clambering up out of it. The first two vanished in a burst of fire from Ronan’s spear, but within a second two more had come up. Dairine came up behind Ronan and threw the blinding bolt she was holding. The second pair of Yaldiv vanished. Then came three more, only one from the spot where the first two had appeared, for the crack kept on stretching and widening across the cavern, making room for more and more of the Yaldiv to enter. A secondary crack split away from the main, still-forming crevasse, toward the mochteroofs, and first one, then a second mochteroof started to pitch down into it. But Filif was already reaching out fronds to them, and in a glow of dark green light, all the mochteroofs together floated up and away from the widening crevasse in the floor. Kit leveled his own weapon and took out one of the next pair of Yaldiv warriors; Ronan destroyed its companion. Only a few more, Kit thought. Only a few—

But it wasn’t only a few. Easily another five or six came clambering up along the length of the crevasse. They were waiting out of range, Kit thought, and glanced around the cavern in the beginnings of a panic. Now what? How are we going to get all this stuff out of here, and Memeki—

And that was another problem, for the next few Yaldiv to come up from under immediately charged at Memeki with claws open. Ponch leaped out from beside her, snarling. Oh no! Kit thought, and dashed over toward the two of them with his personal force shield turned up higher than he’d ever had it before, saying the words necessary to fling it well out to either side of him, far enough to cover Ponch and Memeki until he could get to them. He could feel the power flowing out of him and into the shield in tremendous amounts. But as he got close enough to Ponch and the terrified Memeki to seal the shield completely around them, and the Yaldiv warriors began throwing themselves up against the shield, Kit started to wonder whether, even with the augmented energy, he and the others were going to be able to hold their own. The Yaldiv have been augmented too, Kit thought. That’s how they were able to tunnel up through the stone— He concentrated on keeping the warriors away from the crouching handmaiden. “Ronan!” Kit yelled.

Blast after blast from the Spear of Light picked off Yaldiv after Yaldiv, but there always seemed to be more. Any time Ronan flagged, Dairine was there with her pocket thunderbolt. But the Yaldiv kept coming, and more and more of them were piling themselves against Kit’s shield, scrabbling at it like mad things, apparently willing to sacrifice themselves for the chance that one of their number might be able to get through. The Great One’s decided it doesn’t have to do anything but use these things to wear us down, Kit thought. But something’s made it wake up all of a sudden. What? We have to find out.

“Roshaun?” Kit shouted, watching Dairine blast several more Yaldiv to nothing. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Might be smart not to wait!”

“I hear you,” Roshaun said. He was standing there, as often, with a little light in his hand, his implementation of the manual. Now he gazed into it and began to speak, and it began to glow more brightly. “This is an argasth-type implementation,” he said in the Speech, “requiring a median-level transposition of—”