The Dreaming Hunt (79 page)

They cut up all the rope they had, and Will laid down his staff, gathering the ropes, slinging them over his shoulder. “Are you two ready? Remember, Rosie, hold off casting as long as you can.”

“Got it.” She nodded.

Will went first, charging into the inner circle. He threw out a rope in a line between him and the claviger and cast a wall of force. He darted forward to one side, tossing down another rope and another wall.

The claviger noticed him and threw a spell at Will as he dived to the side and laid down another rope as he rolled. Up went another wall. So it went, with Will dodging and tossing down walls. When a dozen of them formed a zigzagging progression in the general direction of the claviger, Will yelled, “Now!”

Rynn sprinted out from behind the standing stone and started running the maze Will had built for him. The claviger threw several spells at Rynn, but the walls of force repelled the magical energy in sizzling explosions of sparks that flew away harmlessly.

As they'd expected, Rynn was starting to catch up with Will, and he frantically threw down a couple of more ropes and walls, building a maze ahead of the running paxan.

A big fire elemental and a white, misty phantasm ran after Rynn. But they, too, were hampered by the walls and had to go around them or else suffer damage from touching one. Worse, walls of force threw anyone who touched them back violently from them.

Dregs. His magic was getting low. That had been the one unknown variable. Would he have enough magic to build enough walls to get Rynn to the claviger? They were only about halfway across the gap between the standing stones and the tympan.

“Need some help?” Raina panted, coming up beside him, her body just finishing assuming a corporeal form.

“Know how to cast a wall?”

“Yes.”

Praise the Lady and all her minions. They might win this day yet. Will threw down several more ropes. Rynn was almost on them now. Raina cast two fast walls of time.

Will darted to one side, threw down another rope, and then darted forward and threw down another one. As fast as he could put down the ropes, Raina cast the walls, and Rynn ran the maze they built for him, dodging the elemental and the phantasm.

The fire elemental almost caught Rynn, and seeing the problem, Will cut through a gap. As Rynn streaked past, he snaked out a length of rope and threw up a new force wall. The elemental screeched to a halt only inches from the new obstacle, roaring a gout of fire in its frustration. The creature had to retrace its steps back through the maze of walls to acquire Rynn's trail once more.

Will returned to Raina, and they ran forward, building walls as they went. The claviger cursed as his magics bounced harmlessly off the network of walls closing in on him, his enemies safe behind them. It was laborious work, running, dodging, and casting walls, and the amount of magical energy they burned was staggering.

Rosana ran up behind them, her hand glowing strangely. Since when had her magics become brilliantly colored like that? Right now, her hand glowed the color of blood.

“A few more walls,” he panted.

Rynn was getting close to the target. They watched the paxan weave his way among the walls, at times only a few yards from the claviger. Will looked ahead of the paxan, anticipating his path, guessing when and where he would emerge to make the attack. The timing of their plan was going to be tight.

Will ran with Raina and Rosana to a gap in the walls and crouched to one side of it.
Get ready,
he mouthed to the gypsy. One more wall to go.

Rynn made the turn Will was waiting for. Will spun out from behind cover, exposing himself to the claviger's fire. He threw down a rope while Raina incanted the magic. Using the last wall for cover, Rosana stepped out from behind him and lit up the mage with a barrage of silence spells.

The claviger was forced to defend against the curse spells, frantically throwing up new magic shields every time one of Rosana's silences brought down the previous one. Raina started sending raw magical energy into Rosana, sharing power with the gypsy.

Will threw one last wall for Rynn. The paxan ran down its length and turned the corner only feet from the furious claviger, who was still having to continuously cast shields on himself.

The thing about most mages was they had fairly scrawny bodies in comparison to warriors. Something about the magic seemed to prevent them from ever bulking up. And the need to be able to gather and cast magic meant mages had to have a lot of freedom of movement, particularly in their upper bodies, which made wearing heavy armor pretty much impossible.

Rynn closed on the mage, battering at the claviger with his hands and feet in a blindingly fast barrage that the mage simply had no defense against. In a matter of seconds, Rynn had pounded the man senseless, and the claviger dropped to the ground, unconscious.

Raina whipped out from behind the wall and threw a confining spell at the claviger. Rosana added insult to injury and cast one last silence on the mage to be safe.

They looked up hopefully at the portal, and it still shimmered between the stones.

The fire creature burst out from behind one of the other walls. It roared and charged the fallen claviger and her friends.

“Incoming!” Rosana cried. “Get away from the gate! He'll throw you through!”

Rynn reached down to grab the mage and drag him away from the gate, which was only a few feet behind two of them. Raina jumped forward to help and took the mage's arm just as the elemental attacked.

But now that they knew it
not
to be a real elemental, but rather a phantasmal representation of one, Rosana fired an awakening spell at the phantasm while Will read a scroll for dispelling enchantments. They blasted the being simultaneously, and Rynn, grinning broadly, jumped in on the attack. He obviously knew how to battle phantasms. Will joined in with his staff, and in a matter of seconds, the creature dropped.

“Is it dead?” Raina asked breathlessly.

“As dead as its sort can be,” Rynn declared.

Two cadres of Dominion, one led by Goldeneye and one led by Vedara, had started into the maze of walls and were chasing the lone remaining phantasm, gradually cornering it.

“How do we close the gate?” Raina asked.

Will raced over to the tympan and yanked the narrow shaft out of the center of the elaborate carving. He thought it had had a large, ring-shaped handle on it before, but it didn't now. The teeth mounted on the arrow-like rod cleared the tympan.

Nothing happened
. As he'd feared. The key had been broken.

The gate continued to shimmer between two of the nullstones. Will cursed violently inside his head. For the moment, no more phantasms bearing the aspects of elementals or elementally aligned beings were coming through. But he suspected it was only a matter of time until whatever force lay on the other side of the gate sent another stream of them through.

The Dominion forces outside the outer ring surged inward, shouting a deafening battle cry. The wave of changelings rolled over the remaining elemental phantasms, destroying every being in their path. As for the maddened changelings, piles of their comrades appeared to have landed on top of each of them, pinning them to the ground. It was not a perfect solution for the problem, but at least the brawling was contained for the moment.

Goldeneye strode up to Will. “Why is it not closed? We must kill the mage.”

Raina stepped in front of the unconscious Mage of Alchizzadon. Will had to give her credit for courage if she planned to stop the Dominion leader from making his kill. “Does anyone else in town know how to close a gate?” she asked.

Goldeneye frowned. “Only the claviger holds the key and knows how to align the gate.”

“Then I'd suggest you not kill this man,” she replied tersely.

Goldeneye scowled fiercely at her. She visibly recoiled from the violence in his gaze. Will gave her even more credit. It was one thing to stand up for one's beliefs. It was another to do it in open defiance of such a fearsome creature.

Will asked carefully, “Is there by any chance a spare key?”

Goldeneye's scowl deepened. He would take that as a no.

Rosana tried, “Are there any elementally aligned scholars here who might be able to decipher the symbols on the stones?”

“We do not indulge in such useless learning,” one of Goldeneye's lieutenants scoffed.

Will murmured, “Rynn, could you find Eben and bring him here? Mayhap he knows something about elemental magics or symbols that might tell us how to close the gate.”

The paxan took off running down the hill.

Goldeneye had moved over to the unconscious mage and nudged the blue-clad body with his toe. “What got into him? Always he has been quiet like a mouse. Happy to dust off his gate and tend to it.”

Will answered, “His mind must have been tampered with like everyone else's. Perhaps some creature from the other side of yon gate controlled him and compelled him to open it.” The other option that he left unspoken was that someone in Goldeneye's own stronghold had done it.

“He must be killed,” the cobra changeling declared.

“He must be cured,” Raina contradicted gently.

Goldeneye's head whipped around, and he stared at her angrily, hood flaring. If a look from him could kill, she would already be dead. Will took a step closer to her, and brave, sweet Rosana stepped up on her left side.

Raina pitched her voice in mild, reasonable tones. “If you lose your claviger, you'll lose control of the gate. Cure him. Earn his undying gratitude for rescuing him from whatever attacked him. And the gatekeeper's masters will also owe you a great debt.”

The cobra changeling considered her argument. Thankfully, his lieutenants were all occupied elsewhere, tackling battle-crazed changelings whenever one happened to break free of the pile holding it down. Goldeneye would not lose face by accepting the logic of a weak, human girl. Will just prayed the Dominion leader would go for it; otherwise, the confrontation between Goldeneye and the White Heart would turn ugly. Personally, Will had no desire to stand before Lord Justinius and explain why he'd let a White Heart member be murdered in cold blood. As it was, Will was startled that the snake changeling didn't use his enslavement of Raina to order her to step aside.

“All right,” Goldeneye said suddenly. “Tie him up, and then heal him just enough to regain consciousness.”

Will and Rosana did the honors, tying up the mage with lengths of rope from a few of the expired walls of force that had been the claviger's downfall. Raina stepped forward. And gasped.

Will murmured low as he checked the mage's knots, “Know him?”

She ground out, “He's the spitting image of the man the mages planned to force me to have children with. This must be that one's father.”

“Remember, you can't kill him,” Will warned. She looked infuriated enough to blast the claviger into tiny bits.

Jaw clenched, she glared at Will and then trickled a tiny bit of healing into the fellow. His eyes blinked open, and he began thrashing in his bindings. Goldeneye knelt on the mage's neck, however, choking the claviger into submission. The cobra changeling glared into the mage's eyes for a full minute.

“Bring the open-eyed paxan,” Goldeneye ordered.

A contingent of Dominion warriors was sent to find Rynn and bring him back. Hopefully, they would bring Eben, too. The vignette froze for a full two minutes while they waited. And then Rynn and—thank the Lady—Eben raced into the Ringstones.

Goldeneye growled, “Paxan, I could use your help.”

It was a huge admission from the changeling, and it shocked Will.

“Of course, my lord,” Rynn murmured. He knelt beside the mage, who still turned his head feebly from side to side, half choked to death as he must have been by now. Rynn laid his hand on the side of the mage's head.

The mage's limbs twitched helplessly as Rynn and Goldeneye did whatever they did to his mind. It took several minutes, but gradually the mage's thrashing ceased. His wild gaze cleared, and finally, Goldeneye lifted his knee off the man's throat.

The mage sat up, coughing and wheezing.

Over his head, Goldeneye and Rynn exchanged a long, grim look. What had they seen inside the mage's mind? It was enough to make both of them look as if they'd seen a ghost.

“Close the gate,” Goldeneye ordered the mage soberly.

“Can't,” the claviger rasped. “I threw part of the key through to the dream plane while I was out of my mind.”

“Can you realign the stones and shift the gate away from the home of hordes of angry phantasms at least?” Rynn asked.

“Not without a complete key.”

“Where do we find another key?” Goldeneye demanded.

The mage shrugged. “I am sorry, but I am bound by death oaths never to speak of such things to an outsider. To do so would activate one of my marks and result in my immediate and permanent death.”

“Does he speak truth?” Goldeneye surprised Will by asking him.

He quickly reviewed what little he knew about runes. Why hadn't he paid more attention when Aurelius had droned on and on about how powerful runes could be when used intelligently? “It's possible,” he answered reluctantly.

Eben, who'd been examining the tympan and the portal while they talked, spoke up. “These are like the stone I took off an elemental earlier.” He opened his sack and pulled out a large, wedge-shaped piece of stone. Indeed, the carving on it looked very similar to the smaller wedges of stone in the tympan before them.

The Mage of Alchizzadon cried, “Give that to me!” He made a grab for the stone, but Eben yanked it out of reach easily.

“Uhh, no,” Eben replied sarcastically. Ignoring the ranting mage, who went on about that stone being his by birthright or some such tripe, the jann returned to his examination of the tympan, speaking low and urgently to Will. “I had a dream a while back of an army of elementals, jann, and elementally aligned races forming on the dream plane. It looked exactly like the creatures that came through here. Except the army I saw was huge. The bunch that came through today would have been but a small scouting expedition compared to the main army.”