Black wizards - Douglas Niles [161]
Robyn stepped carefully backward across the churned ground, moving up the slope. A panorama slowly appeared. Right before her eyes, the Prince of Corwell wielded his sword in a glittering pattern of swirling steel. He danced this way and ducked back, all the while turning to keep the enemy from his back. And one after another, mighty ogres fell, slain by a single lightning thrust.
She reached the top of the knoll, moving as if in a daze. All around her, the madness of the battle swirled. Humans of the Scarlet Guard fought to gain the crest on the east. Dark dwarves and the horrible dead creatures of the sea were slowly pushed back to the south. And the ogres and sahuagin pressed against men and dwarves to the north. She saw the fish-creatures pushing through the line. One slipped toward her, its jaws gaping, its dull eyes somehow looking both passionless and consumed by bloodlust. And then a man of Doncastle stabbed the thing and it fell, twitching and gasping like a fish on a hook.
She saw a lone figure atop the rise on the promontory – Alexei! The wizard fell suddenly, disappearing behind the crest, and she felt sudden fear. Her numbness vanished, and she raced across the neck of land, up the gentle slope to the top of the peninsula.
She froze in shock as she reached the crest of the rise. She saw Alexei, sprawled flat on his back. She instantly realized that the black robed figure leaning over him must be Cyndre. Gasping for breath, she called upon her druid magic.
She stopped and spread her arms, speaking to the grass and the air. "Thesallest yu, rotherca – to me!"
The droning and buzzing of tiny wings instantly surrounded her. Robyn swung her arms together, pointing to the sorcerers, and the swarm of wasps, mosquitoes, bees, and biting flies snarled as a single entity in the direction of her command.
Cyndre, locked into the meditation of a casting, did not sense the approaching swarm until hot stingers pierced his skin in a dozen places. With a scream, the black wizard recoiled, flailing about himself and staggering back.
Robyn ran forward, pointing the insects away from Alexei as Cyndre tried to break free of the cloud. She had to keep him from casting his spell!
She stopped suddenly again to kneel on the grass. "Mother, your children are born. Give them growth!"
Instantly, snakelike weeds and stout saplings erupted from the ground around the wizard. He screamed again, struggling to break free of the entwining vegetation, but the plants held him fast. The spell had done what she commanded – it had immobilized the wizard momentarily while she searched for an idea.
Suddenly, she felt a tremor beneath her feet. The hilltop shook slightly, and she stumbled. The ground moved again, and she fell to her hands and knees. It seemed as if the earth was stretching.
A shock wave lifted her off the ground and she thumped onto her back. She saw only sky, but she heard a ripping sound, like a sheet being torn in two. Quickly she rolled, remaining on all fours.
A jagged fissure raced across the hilltop, tearing open the sod to reveal a chasm of unfathomable depth. Cyndre saw the fissure too, and the wizard screamed with a shriek of unnatural horror.
For the fissure was racing directly toward him.
Like the gaping maw of an unimaginably huge monster, the earth split across the entire hilltop. The last spot in the tear was the center, where the clump of vegetation held Cyndre firmly. Alexei lay pale and paralyzed beside it. Finally, the thicket ripped in half as the ground tore open. Cyndre, still bound, kicked and struggled as the bushes and saplings slowly leaned into the crevice. Clumps of dirt broke and fell, and slowly the roots of the weeds broke free. For a breathtaking moment the plants hung by a few, frail tendrils – and then those broke free as well.
The wizard reached desperately, grabbing a corner of Alexei's robe. The paralyzed wizard's