The Riddle - Alison Croggon [51]
“It’s a Hull,” hissed Cadvan. “At least, I hope it’s only one.”
“I can’t see anyone,” said Maerad, searching the bracken nearby. They were tall enough to conceal a man. Maerad reached out with her mind to touch Cadvan’s, uniting their strengths, and together they searched the valley, tracking down the source of the evil they both felt. It was hidden in a thicket of the low trees. Even as they found it, another attack came, this one directed at Cadvan.
This time, Maerad could see it: a bolt of energy as swift as an arrow. As always when her life was in peril, time seemed to have slowed down. She and Cadvan instinctively parried the blow, using both their swords and their Bardic powers, and the bolt ricocheted up the gorge wall, hitting it with a huge crack and splitting off splinters of rock. One hit Maerad’s face, cutting her on the cheek, but she didn’t notice the pain.
It wasn’t, she thought, a particularly powerful blow; dangerous for a Bard caught unaware, but unlikely to hurt anyone with their defenses up. She and Cadvan both dismounted, silently commanding their quivering horses to remain where they were, and moved warily toward the thicket of trees. Elenxi lay very still on the ground, his arms outflung, and for a moment Maerad wondered how badly he had been hurt. There was no time to think about that yet.
“Not too close,” murmured Cadvan. “It could be trying to draw us closer, and spring a trap.”
They steadied themselves and then sent a blast of light toward the trees. It was White Fire, the most powerful of Bardic weapons against the Dark, but it seemed to have no effect; it was as if a pebble had been thrown into a swamp. The energy simply vanished. They still could not see anyone.
The answer was swift in coming: an assault that shocked Maerad with its strength and almost knocked the two of them flat. Her sword rang as she swung it against the Hull’s bolt of black light, driving it into the ground in front of her, and her shoulder jarred with the effort. There was a black notch on the blade afterward, as if it had struck fiery iron. The blow singed her hair and filled her mouth with a taste like burned iron, bitter and foul. She reflexively lashed out with another strike, this more powerful than the previous one made by both of them, and it was answered at once with a bolt of dark energy that nearly broke her defenses, shivering her mind as if she were a thin blade of steel. She reeled with pain; she hadn’t been struck in this way before, with magery. It was as if a black, hideous void exploded in the midst of her being.
“Stop!” said Cadvan sharply as she readied another bolt. “It’s using us. I don’t know how, but that had White Fire in it.”
“What?”
“We can’t attack it. Not with the White Flame. It’s having no effect on it. And that was your Flame.”
Maerad turned to Cadvan in disbelief. “Then what do we do?”
“Are you certain of your shield?”
Maerad mentally tested her defenses. Despite the jarring shock, they seemed whole. “As certain as I can be,” she said.
“Good. Keep it whole. We shall have to fight hand to hand.”
“But what if it’s a trap, like you said?”
“I feel there is only one. And I do not know what else we can do.”
Maerad took a deep breath. Then she and Cadvan continued their slow pacing toward the trees, buffeted by attacks from the Hull that were not serious enough to get past their shielding. As they neared the trees, she saw at last a single figure among them; it was hard to see, since some sorcery entwined it with shadows so it tricked the sight, and it seemed to be part of the tangle of branches. It did not come forward to meet them.
When they were only ten paces away, Cadvan called out in the Speech: “Who attacks travelers in this peaceful land? Name yourself!”
There was a long silence, and they were about to take another step forward, when a thickset man moved into the lesser shadow of the gorge.
“It is none of your business who I am, Cadvan of Lirigon,” said the Hull. It, too, used the Speech, but it seemed strangely