Beyond the Pool of Stars

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “They do.” And then it was as though a damn had broken, for she found the words pouring forth. “I’ve missed the smell of the salt air, and the roll of the waves, and the sights of the deep. My father swore it was in my blood, and I swore I was never coming back.”

  “But you did.” Ivrian lowered his voice. “These people need you, Mirian. Rendak is a fine captain, but you’re a better leader, and you know it.”

  She was flattered, but she shook her head. “I just want to get us home. We can talk about the rest when we get there.” She fell silent and leaned forward to peer out at the grasses. Then she swore.

  “There’s someone moving out there.”

  39

  Surprise Attack

  Rajana

  She should never have trusted anything important to her sister.

  Sylena always had extra motives apart from serving her country and adding money to the family coffers. Thanks to her sister’s foolishness, Rajana now wasn’t entirely sure she could do either herself.

  Certainly it would be a trick getting her hands on the treasure she was owed by her agreement with the Icehand, for she no more trusted the woman than the Icehand trusted her. Of course, the most important thing was keeping the money from Sargava’s government.

  She had two things in her favor. First was the cool weather, so different from the blasting heat typical of Sargava. The conditions almost rendered the journey pleasant. The other was careful preparation. That morning she’d wisely readied two scrying spells, and had used them to great effect over the course of their trip. With her last she determined that the lizard man rested in a stone tower. With that information, she and the Icehand’s captain, Karvak, had narrowed the possibilities down to one of the structures in a ruined native fortress.

  Thinking the main approach to the ruins would undoubtedly be watched, Karvak led them to a back trail too steep for the horses.

  Karvak seemed a good man to have on her side, at least for now. All the same, she still had her teleportation scroll tucked up one sleeve, and expected to use it soon.

  Four soldiers were left below with the animals. Rajana hated to leave her mount, for hidden in her saddle gear was the extradimensional bag with all of those lizardfolk book cones and the pack of gems and statuary her sister hadn’t managed to lose.

  One way or another, she planned to put her hands to all of the treasure at the same time, then use the scroll to vanish away to Cheliax. Leaving any of the treasure aboard her ship would have just about guaranteed its loss, for the Icehand moved quickly. Possibly the ship was already being searched.

  Once they reached the narrow plateau, Karvak halted and stared at the outline of the fortress looming against the sky a half mile north. He split his forces into two groups and then led them forward. She asked him about the wisdom of attacking in full darkness, but he only tapped an amulet engraved with an owl. “I can see in the darkness pretty damned clear.”

  Karvak and his guards moved carefully through the mix of low foliage. There were occasional clusters of palm trees and, more rarely, lines of stone from some edifice older even than the ruined fortress. Rajana scanned the distance, and the moon hanging a lance-length higher than the ruin’s longest tusk. She saw no one, but that meant nothing.

  Rajana didn’t hope for complete surprise, or even desire it. It would be far simpler to escape with the treasures if Mirian Raas and her expedition thinned out the soldiers. Unfortunately, Karvak’s people seemed as skilled as he, and they made only an occasional sound as they threaded their way through the terrain. Could a good sentry see their movement, or the occasional shift of plant life as they pushed it aside?

  Maybe not.

  She told Karvak she must stop to ready a spell, and the captain warned her not to delay long. Rajana waited only until the men had their backs turned, then pushed against a young palm tree so that its trunk swayed. She pushed it twice more before moving forward. Two of the guards looked back at her as she stumbled deliberately against a jeerenberry bush. This produced only a little noise, but more movement.

  Sylena picked herself and muttered embarrassed thanks as one of the men helped her to her feet. Her faint smile was genuine. If there were sentries looking this direction, they couldn’t possibly have missed what she’d done.

  Bit by bit, they closed upon the partly collapsed wall of the fortress. Rajana peered at its four towers and wondered which housed the sleeping lizard man.

  As they drew closer, one shape proved not to be a hill or cluster of trees, but a ruined building, still partly roofed. Karvak sent half his force to look it over and advanced with Rajana and the rest toward the silent towers.

  A thunder lizard trumpeted a challenge from their left.

  Rajana had heard the beast call in the arena, and this one sounded nearly as close. She jumped in surprise as the guards pulled at their weapons.

  Rajana cast her invisibility spell and vanished.

  The beast roared again. The three men in the vanguard broke and ran, even as Karvak shouted to hold position. She could see the moonlight silver their fear-stricken faces as they raced back the way they’d come.

  A scream rose from the east. She whirled to see a man whose chest armor bubbled in a sizzling green circle. “Help me!”

  A green bolt raced out of the darkness and took another soldier in the helmet. She dropped, crying out in terrible pain.

  Mirian Raas must lie nearby with her acid wand.

  “It’s some kind of trick,” Karvak shouted, then looked in vain for Rajana. “Cursed witch! Where did you go?”

  Smiling to herself, Rajana stepped away even as a lizard man erupted from the foliage and brought a blade crashing down on another of Karvak’s guards.

  Beautiful, she thought. She left the two groups to whittle each other down and went to find her treasure.

  40

  Duel with a Monster

  Mirian

  Mirian lay hidden in the palms where Jeneta had just used the lizardfolk horn, so she was more than a little surprised when another call trumpeted somewhere to the east. She glanced to make sure Jeneta remained beside her. The young woman sat motionless, hand to her long sword.

  Once more the other horn call blasted.

  “Is that a real one?” Mirian whispered.

  Jeneta nodded.

  “Sound our horn.”

  “And call it here?”

  “And even the odds.”

  Three soldiers had raced into the darkness after Jekka, leading them straight into an ambush from Rendak and Gombe. That left ten more. One of those dropped as a well-placed acid bolt from Ivrian tore through him.

  Their leader pointed his sword and sent two men scurrying toward the cluster of bushes that hid the lord.

  Jeneta raised the instrument to her lips and sounded it once more. In comparison to the real thing, this call seemed ghostly, hollow.

  “They’re over there,” the leader cried, pointing in their general direction.

  But one of his warriors cried out because the ground rumbled. A heavy creature was closing, and let out a sustained roar to announce its arrival.

  Mirian looked out to see the leader marshaling his people into a line and presenting bladed weapons even as another distant scream sounded. Jekka and his team had worked their ambush.

  From out of the darkness loomed a great reptile tall enough to peer into a second-story window. While the invaders nervously stood their ground and shouted, Mirian leveled her wand and took one of the men in the side. He dropped, his scream sounding more like fright than pain. He struggled to tear off his armor. The remaining soldiers flinched, and the monster roared at them.

  Suddenly a flaming hound popped into existence a few feet to Mirian’s right, identical to the one that had appeared near her in the arena. It let out a fiendish howl and pushed into the brush.

  So the Icehand had sent a spellcaster.

  The monster was almost as tall as Mirian’s shoulder, the shadow of a hound wreathed in red and y
ellow flames. Its pointed teeth bared in a sadistic grin.

  Naturally, Mirian’s second wand blast didn’t work.

  Jeneta rose and spoke in a sonorous, commanding voice. The creature briefly halted its approach. The black leaves through which it had thrust its body began to smoke.

  Mirian backed away as she fired a second time. This time the emerald blast caught the creature in the side of its skull and the air was immediately filled with the scent of smoking flesh. Jeneta slashed the beast with her blade even as it leapt to claw her leg. The priestess dropped to one knee, and the monster bore in.

  Mirian stepped to the side, brought her sword down across the back of its neck. The hound threw back its head to howl in terrible disappointment, then dissolved in black smoke.

  Mirian bent to Jeneta, but the warrior priestess was fighting to her feet already. “Find its summoner! I can heal myself.”

  Mirian scanned their surroundings and spotted the caster almost immediately. She was ten feet back of the line of men still brandishing weapons at the thunder lizard, launching a red bead of flame that grew into a ball of fire as it soared toward the giant lizard’s head.

  The light of the flame permitted a brief glimpse of the woman’s face, one so like Sylena that Mirian doubted her eyes. How could the woman possibly have survived her arena injuries?

  If it was her, she wouldn’t be standing for much longer. Mirian whispered the activation word, and the acid blast streamed forward from her wand, exploding against the wizard’s blue dress.

  Except instead of burning through, the acid just stuck there, sizzling. The caster pivoted sharply, her sinister smile lit by the shimmering green energy. “Did you really think you could use the same trick twice?” She raised a hand in a cryptic gesture.

  Mirian mouthed the words to activate her wand. It failed again, but the woman’s arm was painted by another harmless acid blast from her right. Ivrian, may Desna bless him. He’d escaped from the soldiers sent to kill him.

  But Ivrian’s blast neither eliminated the woman’s magical protection nor disrupted her concentration. Mirian dashed and dove behind a boulder just as a powerful fireball exploded over its front.

  She pulled herself up, thrusting the wand back into its holster, and peered around the boulder.

  The great lizard had stamped backward, whipping its tail in agitation. Sylena’s lookalike advanced through the rubble toward Mirian’s position, clutching a wand.

  Fabulous. Mirian very much doubted the spellcaster would miss as frequently as she herself had, if at all. Mirian crept backward and almost fell sideways over a broken stone that ringed a yawning hole. She clutched at a palm tree, brought herself upright behind it, and considered the black circle into which she’d almost plummeted. From below wafted the musty scent of wet stone. A well?

  Mirian heard the distinct sound of Ivrian’s magical wand, then the crashing blast of some other sorcerous energy. From out of the darkness, a shape emerged, moving swift and low: Jeneta. The priestess arrived to crouch at a palm tree beside her.

  “Sound the horn,” Mirian said.

  Jeneta raised the horn to her lips, and once more the call rang out on the night air, to be answered by the deeper, full-throated blast from the monster.

  Mirian peered out in time to see the thunder lizard advance against the soldiers, who scattered in all directions. It reached down to snatch one of the fleeing figures and leaned its massive head to snap at another.

  The spellcaster set it reeling with a powerful blast of blue-white energies, directed from a wand. The monster lizard reared back, pulping the man it carried as it clenched its clawed hand in pain. It moved off to chase the running prey, the ground thundering beneath it.

  Mirian blasted again at the spellcaster. She’d seen enough wizardry to know protective spells could be worn down, but there was no knowing how strong this woman’s was. Mirian threw herself flat as the woman leveled her own wand. A cone of ice swept up against boulder and palm tree and blasted Mirian’s side with cold so intense it stung like a sunburn. She staggered to her feet even as the woman charged toward them, wand leveled.

  Jeneta stepped forward, blade high, and took the full brunt of the next ice blast. She collapsed, covered in deadly, shimmering frost. Mirian stepped to the back edge of the well even as the spell-caster advanced.

  Mirian lowered her sword. “Spare my people,” she called, “and I’ll tell you where the treasure’s hidden.”

  The woman came closer, closer, and the moonlight showed Mirian a face that was only similar to Sylena’s, not identical. A sister?

  The caster’s wand pointed steadily at Mirian’s chest. “Do you think I somehow failed to notice the hole in front of you?”

  “I’d hoped,” Mirian admitted. “But I’d counted on you missing the lizard man to your left.”

  The woman spun as Jekka reared up, his cousin’s laumahk in both hands. His blade lashed out, catching the wizard in the side.

  The woman screamed in pain, but before she could complete an incantation Mirian lunged and struck. The sweep of the blade sent the woman’s wand and three of her fingers flying into darkness. The woman shrieked and tottered forward into the well.

  Her fall was silent. Mirian had hoped for a satisfying splash—or better, a crunch. But then the thunder lizard came up from behind, its stride shaking the ground. She threw herself to the right even as her friends went left. She rolled through a screen of rough bushes and emerged upright, scratched and torn.

  Behind came the clomp of great feet. She diverted right again and found herself near the shell of the temple.

  The monster ripped the sky apart with its call of rage, all but deafening her. She expected those teeth to close over her head any moment.

  She felt rather than heard the falter of its step, and risked a backward glance.

  The monster had turned, and the slapping tail missed Mirian’s head by inches. Jekka faced it, laumahk raised and glinting in the moonlight.

  He’d distracted it from her, and it was time for a return favor. She slipped past the beast’s tail and drove her cutlass deep into an immense ankle.

  Once more the animal roared and pivoted, moving so fast she didn’t have a chance to pull her sword out. Heart pounding, she sprinted for a gap she’d seen in the temple’s wall.

  The ground rattled and the tread drew closer.

  She reached the temple, reached the gap formed by the fall of a pillar through a decorative temple frieze. She caught a quick glimpse of graceful, slender folk bowing to a god descending on moonbeams.

  She flung herself into darkness. There was a brief instant that felt suspended in time. Before she hit, a dozen horrible possibilities flitted through her imagination. What lay beyond? A fall of thirty feet? A nest of venomous lizards? A giant spider web? A pile of rusted weapons?

  Her hands touched ground first, for she was a practiced tumbler. She landed on a salting of rubble and somersaulted over smashed tiles, popping to her feet beside a broken pillar.

  The wall collapsed in a rumble of stone as the beast pushed its head in to reach her. She dashed on through the darkness, stubbing her foot on a fallen stone. Overhead, the roof swayed and a vast section fell inward, raining tile. She backed farther into the black recesses. Her ringing ears faintly detected the sound of a distant roar she knew for Jeneta’s horn. Through the gap in the ceiling, she saw the great silhouette of the thunder lizard’s head turn as the creature sought the noise.

  Jeneta’s call rang out once more, and Mirian’s attacker opened its massive maw to roar a curious response, then stomped away to investigate.

  She knew she should go out there and help, but she remained in the shadows for a moment longer, straining to catch her breath. As her pulse slowed, she noticed just how much her right foot actually hurt. She wondered if she’d broken a toe or three.

  The remnant of the roof creaked ominously. More shingles crashed down to shatter into fragments, and there was moonlight enough to show her an upright
column tilting.

  She just couldn’t seem to catch a break.

  The only safe course was toward the already ruined wall. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she ran ahead of the rolling thunder of collapsing masonry and threw herself clear. The building disintegrated behind her.

  She landed on her hands and tumbled awkwardly down a short flight of stairs. She lay gasping, looking back to see the last temple wall collapse in a calamitous crash that hurled an immense cloud of debris into the starry sky.

  So much for drawing those particular friezes.

  She forced herself to her feet, pulled out her wand, and limped out to check her team. In the distance, the dark shape of the great lizard trod after a phantom caller, occasionally stopping to roar in answer. She might have been imagining it, but the beast sounded confused.

  Who, she wondered, was doing that?

  Not Jeneta. She found Rendak cradling her head in his lap as he raised a small gray vial to her lips.

  Gombe knelt beside his cousin, rubbing her hand. For once he couldn’t joke. “Mirian.” He gave her a troubled smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d made it.”

  “I’m all here,” she breathed. “I’m just not sure all of it’s working.” She pointed at the vial. “What’s that?”

  “The officer was trying to down this after Jekka wounded him,” Rendak answered. “I figure it’s a healing potion.”

  “What if it’s not?”

  Rendak grimaced. “Looking at her, I don’t figure she has much to lose. Helluva thing, to freeze to death in Sargava.”

  She nodded her blessing, and Rendak tilted the vial to the young woman’s lips. Mirian bent her head in prayer. “May Iomedae give you strength, girl. You surely showed her your bravery this night.”

  Jeneta gasped once, then sucked in a huge breath. The next one sounded far better, almost normal.

  “Praise Iomedae,” Jeneta said, softly.

  “Praise Rendak,” Mirian said, then addressed her first mate. “Where are Ivrian and Jekka?”

  “Jekka took the horn back and ran off with it.”