• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

With no further explanation, she sprang forward into the marsh, running like a black streak through the knee-deep water.

* * * * *

Vell's mind cried out as he abandoned perspective after perspective. The behemoths were not dying, he knew, but were being sent somewhere far away where his mind could not follow. He watched the strange girl run through the swamp. He knew her well by now; she had abducted Sungar, astride the hippogriff he had chased through Rauvin Vale. She was also the enemy he had seen in the Fountains of Memory.

He bade one of the behemoths to break away from the others and cut her off before she could reach the menhir. To his surprise, the behemoth willingly, almost deferentially, turned its form over to him. Vell gasped as he found that he directed the creature. His human mind remained in control, yet he felt a strange familiarity with the behemoth's body.

Controlling this animal as if he walked in its skin, Vell rushed to intercept the woman in black, sending great sprays of water up from the marsh. The water slowed her, and Vell had no trouble getting ahead of her. He let out a reptilian cry from his behemoth throat. Her pale oval face wore a determined look.

A crossbow bolt zipped past Vell's head but missed and flew off into the marsh. Fired from a great distance, its aim had gone wildly astray.

Then the woman opened an outstretched hand. A number of black bolts zipped forth and pelted Vell all along his lizard form. He braced himself and let out a tremendous moan. His mind was unaffected, for it was many miles away, but his body succumbed to tremendous inertia. Vell strained to move his torpid legs. He was all but rooted to the spot.

Springing across the water, the woman in black unsheathed her sword and ran close to Vell, using the weapon to rake his behemoth form as she ran, drawing blood from both front legs. Not caring to make a kill, she ran past him, bound for the menhir.

Vell focused harder, pushing away the pain and the paralysis from her magic, and managed to turn and pursue her. He leaped into the air, his forelegs leaving the marsh and sending a cascade of water down on the woman. She lost her footing and tumbled into the swamp face first, losing her sword in the muck, not more than a dozen feet from the menhir with its glowing red light. With a silent scream of success, Vell pushed his massive form onto her, landing a foot on her body, pressing her into the water and pinning her there. She squirmed and struggled against him

Then Vell felt a sharp pain on his backside, and, in an instant, his mind was thrown back to his own body.

* * * * *

Ardeth surfaced in the marsh on all fours and gulped air furiously as the behemoth vanished above her. She was soaked from head to foot. The marsh muck penetrated her leather clothes, and she threw her honey hair back, a slimy weight on her shoulders. The marsh was strangely quiet-perhaps Royce had succeeded in sending away all of the remaining behemoths. She groped for her sword before looking up at the rune-covered menhir towering above her.

Standing at the foot of it was a man. Dressed in pristine white robes, unstained despite the water and muck all around them, he was old-far older than even the ancient Uthgardt shaman she'd battled in the Thunderbeast camp. His face was chalk white, yet his hair was jet black and straight, like that of an Uthgardt. He spoke in the dialect of Illuskan that Gan had used, and had the same voice.

"Why have you come?" he asked. His voice was full of anger and sadness. "Why did you think to test a place that has stayed hidden for so long?"

Ardeth's hand found the pommel of her sword under the water.

"You hide powerful magic," she said. "Magic from Netheril. Did you think you could keep it secret forever?"

"Yes," said the man. "We did."

Ardeth burst from the water, swinging the sword around in a long, graceful slash. The ancient man made no move to resist her as the blade sliced through his middle. She gave him a quick, clean death, and he