[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
glassy, ghostly form.
But the spirit did not move, and after a moment Tzigone realized that it
wasn't a ghost-at least, not a ghost in any conventional sense.
Beside an ancient swamp oak stood a translucent statue of a beautiful
female, far too lovely to be human. The slender hand disappeared into the trunk
of a thick tree, and the frozen face was upturned with the hopeful expression of
one who expects sanctuary. This, Tzigone realized, had been a dryad. She took
a deep breath and plunged on.
As Tzigone walked, she saw other glassy forms of creatures suddenly
drained of magic, and therefore of life. There were more dryads, and among the
leaves, she saw the tiny fallen bodies of sprites and pixies, many of them nothing
but shards. She saw a single faun frozen in midcaper and more elves than she'd
seen in all her travels through Halruaa.
She'd seen one of these crystal shadows before and had thought that only
elves could suffer this fate. But the lie was all around her. All magical creatures
fell to the mystery of the swamp. No wonder wizards seldom emerged from
Akhlaur!
A voice in her head sounded, part warning and part taunt. This could be you.
Tzigone blinked away the phantom image of her own glassy shadow and
plunged deeper into the swamp.
Chapter Twenty
Matteo and Andris walked side by side, talking softly of all they had done
since they'd parted and of the task that lay before them. Try as he might, Matteo
hadn't been able to convince Andris to flee the swamp. He couldn't walk away
and let his friend fight alone.
But his decision to stay went deeper still. Matteo had been raised with a firm
sense of his own destiny. That had been sorely shaken. Lacking a vision of his
own, he accepted the one shining in his friend's eyes. He would fight the laraken
for Andris, not for Kiva. And when the battle was done, he would find a way to
deal with the magehound.
An undulating cry howled through the forest, a terrible sound that was both
deep, bone-shaking growl and raptor's shriek. Distant but powerful, it reminded
Matteo of the winds that blew off the Bay of Taertal before the onset of a
monsoon.
Matteo and Andris unsheathed their daggers instinctively, moving in perfect
unison.
"It is still some way off," Andris said softly.
Matteo nodded. As he put away the daggers, an annoying little whine
sounded just above his head. Instinctively he swatted at it, then realized his
mistake and dropped to the ground, shouting for the other men to do the same.
A dark, whirring cloud swept down on them, moving in deadly formation. The
cloud dived sharply, and then at the last moment swerved in a rising arc to keep
from crashing into the ground.
"A surge swarm?" muttered Andris. "What next?"
Angry and cheated, the swarm of mosquitolike creatures broke formation
and began to whir around in small circles as they selected their prey.
Matteo groped for the thong that bound the four-foot pike to his back. He
tugged it free and surged to his feet, thrusting at the stirge that swooped toward
him.
The enormous insect slid wetly down the slender blade, its slide aided by the
blood it had stolen from some hapless forest dweller. The stirge stopped only
when it struck the pike's cross guard. Its long mosquitolike snout still stabbed and
probed, even as it twitched in its death throes.
Matteo ducked and thrust and stabbed again and again, until the skewered
bodies of giant mosquitoes filled half his pike and slowed his movements. He
tossed the weapon aside and pulled his daggers, slashing at any of the creatures
that came near.
The men fought furiously, and soon they were joined by unlikely allies-the
stirges themselves. Desperate for food, some of the giant insects fell upon their
fallen kin and thrust their swordlike snouts into their rounded bellies. Macabre
little tunes, the stirge song hummed by the feeding monsters, filled the air as the
creatures drank the twice-stolen blood.
Their traitorous behavior disgusted Matteo. He fell upon the cannibals,
slashing and stabbing until the stirge song faded into silence and the bodies lay
thick upon the ground.
Andris waded over to him through the grim carpet. "Big swarm. Even so, they
had to be desperate to attack an armed band."
Matteo nodded. He stooped by one of the men, a young jordain he
recognized but whose name he had never known. The man had been bitten two
or three times. He was as pale as a man drained by vampires. A pike lay nearby,
heavy with skewered stirges. Another stirge lay dead beside him, leaking ichor
from a gaping hole in its head where the snout had been. This protruded from the
man's chest. He had torn it away when he ripped the giant insect from him, but
not quickly enough. Blood had bubbled from the top of the tube, but the flow was
stilled now.
Andris stooped and gently closed the man's eyes. He rose and motioned for
the others to follow. The ground grew soft beneath their feet, and soon bog gave
way to shallow water. They waded through it, moving into the deep shadows of
moss-draped trees.
Matteo bumped against someone and stopped suddenly, instinctively putting
out his hand to steady whomever he'd jostled. He felt a deathly chill and
snatched his hand back. Squinting in the faint light, he made out the glassy
shadow of an elf. Behind the crystalline form was another elf, and as his eyes
adjusted, he made out several more. Matteo would have thought them to be
clever statues but for the incredible cold within.
"I'm beginning to see why Tzigone warned you away from the swamp," he
told Andris, shaking his head in awe. "By all the gods that ever were! This laraken
is no ordinary monster."
"Since when did monsters become ordinary?" Andris said with an attempt at
lightness. But his eyes were pained as he took in the ghostly shadows. "Let's
keep moving."
The swamp water grew steadily deeper, the shallows unexpected giving way
to sudden dangerous drops and deep pools. As they skirted one such pool,
Matteo thought he saw the crenellations of a vast sunken tower, but he couldn't
fathom a valley deep enough to swallow such a thing.
As he studied the towerlike shape, the water stirred. Before he could draw
breath to shout a warning, a figure rose suddenly from the water, and of the
water.
Shaped more like a giant bear than a human, its form was dark and brackish,
and small fierce fish schooled frantically within the watery body.
Matteo shouted an alert and pointed to the magical creature. "Water
elemental!"
For a moment the fighters paused. Such creatures were fought with spells
and weapons of magic, and they had none.
Andris pulled a small bottle from his bag and shouted a command. Matteo
quickly lit a torch and waited until Andris and several others had tossed the
contents of their bottles into the fetid water.
He dropped the torch, and the swamp gas exploded into a ring of bright
flame, which quickly engulfed the water elemental. With a roar like that of an
angry sea, the creature fought to beat through the flames. Its body began to
dissolve with a searing hiss. Clouds of steam billowed upward. Finally the
creature could take no more and disappeared back into the pool.
Matteo and Andris regarded each other somberly. "A powerful wizard could
summon an elemental, but no such person could survive here for long. Yet there
is much magic here," Matteo observed.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]