Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [138]
"I could get to enjoy this flying thing," the swordswoman said, turning a somersault in the air. She sheathed her sword and landed back on the ground, then began dragging saurials off the path so they wouldn't be crushed by any that followed.
Akabar was intent on the remaining saurials charging up the hill. He already had his wand pointed at them. The Turmish mage whistled out the command word, but as the wand fired its icy cone, it crumbled in Akabar's hand, its power spent.
Suddenly, from the air above her, Alias heard chanting. She looked up to see two saurials of Dragonbait's type looking down on Akabar. Spell-casters, she realized, with fly spells like our own! The Turmish mage couldn't hear them, so he was oblivious to their presence.
"Akabar! Above you!" the swordswoman called out in warning, but Akabar still didn't move. He was frozen in the same position he'd been in when he pointed the wand. The saurial mages held him fast with their magic.
Alias drew her sword and flew up into their midst, shouting a battle cry in saurial and blasting the scent of her anger in their direction. The mages quickly flew off in separate directions. Alias turned back to Akabar, only to discover that a third flying sauriai had snatched up the paralyzed mage in a net and was now flying back toward the camp with him.
Alias flew after Akabar's captor. Slowed by his burden, the saurial couldn't keep ahead of the furious swordswoman, but Alias had forgotten about the other two mages. She heard a chanting just above her, and suddenly she felt as though she were flying through jelly. Her flight had been slowed with magic. Akabar's captor burst ahead of her. The other saurial mages swooped down on her with another net, and she couldn't dodge out of the way in time. They closed her up in the net and wrenched her sword from her hand. Then they flew after Akabar's captor, toward the looming pile that would become Moander's new body.
*****
Olive tossed the stub of her spent torch into the burning brush. "I sure hope I don't run into any treants or druids tonight," she muttered. She looked eastward at Grypht's wall of fire. Olive had never seen a blaze so big.
It was getting terribly hot in the vale, and the halfling noticed steam rising from the pile that was to become Meander's body. She knew the fire's main purpose was to herd the saurials toward Akabar's and Grypht's cones of cold, but she couldn't help wishing they'd get extra lucky and manage to burn the wet pile of hacked forest as well, despite the magic that protected it from fire. She would never be comfortable until she was sure Moander's waiting body was gone for good.
She had begun to move eastward, out of the vale, when she noticed something moving near the top of the pile, something white. Olive shook her head in surprise. It was Coral, climbing to the top of her god's potential body. She must be pretty far gone to hang around a burning vale. Olive thought. Then she saw another figure about halfway up the pile, also climbing toward the top. The halfling gasped. It was Dragonbait!
"Stupid paladin!" Olive growled. "After I specifically told him that Alias didn't want any dangerous heroics. He'd die up there, Olive realized, if she didn't get him to climb back down. With an irritated sigh, she moved toward the pile and began climbing after the paladin.
*****
Grypht threw a cone of cold at a group of saurial stragglers moving up the hills away from the burning vale. He landed beside a cluster of sauriai bodies lying on the ground. It was getting warm from the fire's heat; the fallen would rise out of their torpor soon, but many of them would be too weak to move without the rotting vines providing energy to their bodies. He walked through the bodies until he found a perfect candidate to help him-one of the large saurials with the sharp, diamond-shaped plates of armor running down his back.
The wizard bent over the sauriai and shook him. "Sweetleaf," he called, "snap out of it." Grypht forced a danger scent from his glands to help bring