Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [26]
She opened her mouth. The sound that came out of it was like nothing Katya had ever heard before. The word scream did not even begin to describe the mind-breaking, ear-shattering howl that emerged from this lovely white-haired woman’s throat.
The sound was enough to send Katya to her knees with her hands clamped over her ears, her sword dropping to the floor. But its fall somehow shattered the howl.
The woman’s mouth snapped shut, leaving an echoing silence as Katya and the woman in red both shook their heads, trying to clear their minds. Then, in the next moment, the woman in blue made that same “throwing” gesture, and a thousand spears flew toward Katya and her charge.
With a cry of horror, the woman in red flung herself between both of them and the spears, spreading her arms wide and making a shield of her own body.
“Nyet!” Katya cried, and slashed her hand down. Water burst up out of the floor just in front of the woman in red, in a geyser that deflected most of the spears up and to either side. Only one got through, pinning one of the woman’s long sleeves to a pillar.
Well, now she knew which of the two women the witch was. The witch would not have interposed herself, but would have taken the attack on the warlord as an unexpected opening for an attack of her own.
As the woman in red yanked the spear from her sleeve and cast it aside with a snarl, Katya made a fist and jerked down, and water poured straight down on the witch from the ceiling, exactly as if she were standing under a powerful waterfall.
It knocked the witch off her feet, giving the woman in red time to make a slashing movement with her fan. A line of force split the air between them, sending the witch tumbling. Katya closed off the torrent as her ally made a second slashing motion, this time upward, which sent the witch against the wall.
But the witch recovered faster than Katya would have thought possible. She whirled, her face contorted with rage, and made a clawing gesture with one hand. It looked as if she was seizing something with that hand, and with the other, she snatched open the neck of her robes. A strange, blue-black gem, oblong, and strung roughly on a cord, gleamed for a moment at her neck before she clutched it and hid it. And now she summoned her demons, with a single screeched word.
They were like no demons Katya had ever seen before.
They were nothing but heads. Horrible heads that flew through the air, laughing and howling and spitting curses.
They had horns, as many as three, curling horns like a ram, nubbins like a young goat, long spikes, ridged, ringed, and spiraling. Some of them had worms for tongues, or snakes, or no tongue at all. Their eyes bulged, red eyes or yellow. Some were fanged, others had the teeth of wolves or sharks. The heads dove at them, and Katya was the first to react.
She swung at the first head to dive at them, with the flat of her sword, for she was not at all certain she could cut them, but she knew she could certainly hit them. She connected with a solid thud, and with a wail, the head careened into the wall, where it smashed, and vanished.
And now the woman in red unwrapped her sash. Her robes slid from her shoulders and dropped to the ground, leaving her wearing the same sort of thin, white silk trews and wrapped shirt that Katya had found underneath all the robes she’d been in. She kept the sash though,