The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [113]
His brother dropped. Both butterfly swords came up this time. Straight up, the hooks along their backs catching the dao. Yu Mao twisted his massive forearms and the blades locked together. He stared up at Li. "When you see our honored ancestors," he said, "let them know I won't be joining them."
With a heave of his shoulders, he wrenched the dao away and sent it plunging over the edge of the roof. Yu Mao surged back to his feet. Li flung himself aside as the butterfly swords chopped down.
The water rose fast. Tycho hopped up onto the bench beside the table, and onto the table itself with Veseene and Laera, trying to stay ahead of it. Still playing, he stared in amazement as Veseene's song brought a flood into the sky and the alley. Hanibaz and Mosi weren't just staring, though. For a single moment as Mosi called up magelights and they saw what Veseene had done, they were, perhaps, startled, but then each mage cast a spell. Hanibaz spoke a word, spread his arms, and soared up into the air above the flood. Mosi spoke a different word and spun his finger in a circle. The water before him calmed and flattened into a disc-he stepped up and forward, standing firmly atop the water.
Their eyes shining in the magelights, the wizards turned to the trio caught on the table. Hanibaz's wand rose. Tycho swallowed. Grouped together with nowhere to go, they were an easy target! "Veseene!"
His old mentor's eyes crinkled. She raised an arm. Her song changed.
The other voice that had joined her song, the chill susurration of waves crashing against rocks, surged to a crescendo. Behind Mosi, the floodwaters began to froth and churn. The wizard spun around just as they rose up into a dark, swirling column. He gaped. Hanibaz, whirling in midair, gaped. Tycho gaped, too.
Magelights made bright reflections on the column's surface. The reflections blinked. Jets of water erupted from the column and swept out like arms.
Hanibaz swooped around, diving away from the ele-mental's watery grasp. Mosi, however, pointed his hand at the arm that reached for him and shouted a word. Fire roared out in a scorching path and the creature's limb hissed away in a cloud of steam. A shriek like a storm crossing the open sea burst out of the elemental and it seemed to sway and shrink back. Veseene's eyes narrowed and she poured new force into her song. Hastily, Tycho picked up the intensity on his strilling, adding to her voice. The elemental surged back to its full height. A new arm emerged and lashed out. Mosi flinched and almost stumbled off his disc before gasping out another spell. A veil of fire swept around him once more. The elemental hissed and recoiled.
Hanibaz came about in the air, his cloak whipping with the breeze of his passage, and dived back at the creature. His wand flicked and the red stone in it flashed. For a moment, the same red light flickered through the elemental, and it shuddered. The dark water swallowed the light. Both arms crashed up at Hanibaz. The mage dipped and swooped desperately.
Over the wash of surging waters, the shouts of the mages, and the music of his own strilling, Tycho heard another cry. He looked up and saw metal flash through magelight as Li's dao plunged down into the swirling floodwaters. Up on the Eel's roof, two figures struggled. "Veseene," he shouted. "Li needs help, too!"
Veseene looked up. Tycho saw her tense. The fingers of her raised hand opened wide and her song rose with the power of an entire choir. Like a woman gathering her skirts, the elemental turned and swirled. Water surged after it, flowing up and into its liquid form, adding to its bulk.
And it grew. The arms that pursued Hanibaz Nassor swelled-an entire river of water snaked across the sky and swatted him out of the air. He slammed down hard into the already collapsed and partially submerged pig shelter. Mosi Anu cried out as the water grabbed his disc and sucked him right into the elemental's body.
Likewise caught in the