He rubbed his eyes to clear them, and sent Vree to perch in the tree over his head. Another of the dyheli called mournfully, and the cry cut into his heart. He knuckled his eyes again, blinking through burning eyes, but still could see no way out of the trap.
Even the spring-fed waterfall was not big enough to do more than provide a little water spray and a musical trickle down the rocks. There was no shelter for even one of the dyheli behind it.
I can't bear this, he decided, finally. All I could do is shoot them and give them a painless death, or leave them, and hope that whatever this poison is, it disperses on its own-or maybe won't be able to get past the mist that the waterfall is throwing.
Two choices, both bad, the second promising a worse death than the first. His heart smoldered with frustration and anger, and he swore and pounded his fist white on the rock-hard dirt, then wiped the blood off his skinned knuckles. No! Dammit, it's not fair, they depended on Tayledras to protect them! their has to be somethhe looked back into the valley, at the tugging of an invisible current, a stirring in the fabrics of power, the rest of his thought forgotten.
A sudden shrwing along his nerves, an etching of ice down his backbone, that was what warned him of magic-magic that he knew, intimately, though he no longer danced to its piping-the movements of energies nearby, and working swiftly.
His fingers moved, silently, in unconscious response. He swung his head a little, trying to pinpoint the source. there-the mist below him stirred.
The hair on the back of his neck and arms stood on end, and he found himself on his feet on the floor of the valley before the wall of mist, with no memory of standing, much less climbing down. It didn't matter; magic coiled and sprang from a point somewhere before him, purposeful, and guided.
Striking against the mage-born wall of poison.
The mist writhed as it was attacked, stubbornly resisting. Magic, a single spell, fought the mist, trying to force it to disperse. The mist fought back with magic and protections of its own. It curdled, thickened, compacted against the sides and floor of the valley, flowing a little farther toward the dyheli.
The spell changed; power speared through the mist, cutting it, lance-like.
A clear spot appeared, a kind of tunnel in the cloud. The mist fought again, but not as successfully this time.
Darkwind felt it all, felt the conflicting energies in his nerves and bones. He didn't have to watch the silent battle, he followed it accurately within himself-the spell-wielder forcing the mist away, the mist curling back into the emptying corridor, being forced away, and oozing back in again. He reached out a hand, involuntarily, to wield power that he had forsaken Then pulled his hand back, the conflict within him as silent and devastating as the conflict below him.
But before he could resolve his own battle, the balance of power below him shifted. The magic-wielder won; the mist parted, held firmly away from a clear tunnel down the middle of the valley, with only the thinnest of wisps seeping in.
But he could feel the strain, the pressure of the mist on the walls of that tunnel, threatening to collapse it at any moment.
It can't hold for long!
But again, before he could move, the balance shifted. The ground trembled under his feet, and for a moment he thought it was another effect of the battle of mist and magic being fought in front of his very eyes. But no- something dark loomed through the enshrouding mist, something that tossed and made the ground shake.
The dyheli!
Now he dared a thought, a Mindspoken call It didn't matter that someone or something might overhear; they had been started, or spooked, but without direction, they might hesitate, fatally. 'Brothers-hooved brothers! Come, quickly, before the escape-way closes!' There was no answer except the shaking of the ground. But the darkness within the mist began to resolve into tossing heads and churning legs-and a moment later, the dyheli bucks pounded into sight, a foam of sweat dripping from their flanks, coughing as the fumes hit their lungs. And behind them-something else.
Something that ran on two legs, not four.
It collapsed, just barely within the reach of the mist. And as it collapsed, so did the tunnel of clear air.
He did not even stop to think; he simply acted.
He took a lungful of clean air and plunged into the edge of the roiling, angry mist. His eyes burned and watered, his skin was afire. He could hardly see through the tears, only enough to reach that prone figure, seize one arm, and help it to its feet.
