Pool of Twilight - James M. Ward [68]
Only once, for a single, terrifying moment, did she falter. The strange, meaningless words seemed to fly from her mind as she lost her place. Panicking, she could feel her concentration slipping. She couldn't remember the spell!
Suddenly she felt a reassuring pressure against her right hand and a calming presence invade her mind. It spoke no words, but instead filled her with a feeling of confidence. She drew in a shuddering breath, feeling her panic recede. The words of magic tumbled from her lips once again. She sent a mental message of gratitude to Gamaliel.
She spoke the last word of the spell. Suddenly the whole world went black.
The clearing was gone, as well as the sky above. The only sensation was a blast of cruel, bone-numbing cold. It felt as if all her flesh were being stripped away, leaving only her bones, bare and exposed to the malevolent chill. And yet, faintly, almost imperceptibly, she sensed a warmth in her hand and held on tightly.
Forms rushed out of the darkness.
Had Evaine's tongue not been frozen solid, she would have screamed. They were monstrous: leprous, malformed bodies glowing with putrescent yellow light, with rotting, wart-covered flesh dripping off spindly limbs in quivering chunks, and bulbous, fly-covered eyes staring at her mindlessly. The abominable creatures grinned, teeth gnashing like shards of broken glass, the expressions devoid of any emotion save ravenous hunger. Evaine shuddered in revulsion.
She felt the grip on her right hand loosening. Gamaliel! He was going to reach for his sword. But he dare not!
She clamped her fingers down hard.
No, Gamaliel! she shouted in her mind. You promised you would not let go of my hand!
She felt the hesitation, the indecision. The swarm of misshapen monsters came closer, long purple tongues dripping foul yellow spittle. For a terrifying moment she felt no response from Gamaliel. Then the grip on her hand tightened once again.
The tide of abominations streaked by. The din of their jabbering was deafening, the festering stench they exuded stupefying. They writhed as they passed, their many-jointed arms undulating, their shard-teeth flashing.
But they did not so much as brush up against Evaine and Gamaliel. Who the denizens of this nameless dimension were, Evaine did not know. But the success of the spell meant that as long as she and Gamaliel raised no hand against them, the beasts would leave the two interlopers alone.
The last lurching stragglers hobbled by, their limbs more stunted than the others, their flesh even more soft and bubbling. Then the hideous things were gone, and Evaine and Gamaliel were alone in the frigid darkness.
A heartbeat later that darkness shattered.
A new, bitter cold blasted Evaine. Tiny, stinging particles of snow bit into her cheeks. Before her, half-buried in snow, was another standing stone of roughly hewn black porphyry.
"Where are we?" Gamaliel shouted above the roar of the wind.
Evaine gazed at the land around her. They stood on a jagged needle of granite. Snow-covered slopes angled down in all directions into a sea of blinding white, surrounded by a rocky wall that seemed to reach all the way up to the hard blue sky.
Despite the cold, Evaine felt a surge of elation.
"The Dragonspine Mountains!" she shouted triumphantly.
* * * * *
Evaine wearily dusted the powdery remnants of crystal from her coat and tunic.
"It's no use, Gam. The mountains seem to be interfering with my locating spell. The peaks are too rich in iron ore. They're affecting my spell like a magnet affects a compass."
She warmed her hands above the small flame dancing inside the copper brazier she had used to work her magic. The cold was not so unbearable here in the shelter of the pine forest. She and Gamaliel had quickly descended from the sharp, windswept peak where the standing stone had transported them, moving