Instead, the magnificent stallion leaped skyward, then continued to gallop through the air as though its hooves were on solid ground. As the horse passed over the astonished orcs, Vangerdahast pulled something from his pocket and sprinkled it on his foes. The terrified swiners dropped their pikes and leaped to their feet, brushing at their scalps and screeching in fear.
They did not die until Vangerdahast’s support riders arrived to cut them down in a tempest of whirling horses and slashing steel. So furious was the attack that Tanalasta did not realize until an instant later that only two escorts were involved in the assault. The third lay back at the wagon circle, his chest opened by a gaping wound visible even from the princess’s perch. The man’s horse was a few feet from the body, stumbling around in fear and tossing its head.
Tanalasta had no time to ask her companions if they had seen what happened. Vangerdahast’s mount dropped down behind the orc leader, prompting the huge swiner to turn and sprint across the sandy ground so fast it took even the royal magician’s powerful horse a full second to catch up. By then, Vangerdahast had once again drawn his staff from its saddle holster and lowered it like a lance.
Tanalasta expected to see some spell blast the orc’s skull into a spray of blood and bone, but Vangerdahast simply aimed his lance at the back of his quarry’s head and allowed the momentum of his charge to drive it home. The leader sailed half a dozen paces before finally crashing to the ground in a limp heap. The royal magician reined his horse to a stop and wheeled around to face the caravan.
The orcs began to scatter, wailing and screeching as though their demonic lord had risen from the pits of the Abyss. A couple of well-placed fireballs helped the panic along, then the swiners on Vangerdahast’s side of the battle broke and fled en masse. The wizard threw up a pair of fire curtains to force them toward Ryban’s hiding place on the mountain, then started around the caravan to rout the warriors on the opposite side of the caravan.
A black streak shot from beneath a burning dray wagon, then seemed to explode into a crescent-shaped phantom of darkness. Before Tanalasta registered that this was the same huge bird she had seen earlier, the shadow sprang into the air and struck one of Vangerdahast’s escorts full in the flank. The rider’s torso simply fell off, leaving the man’s terrified horse to gallop off with his seat still in the saddle and his boots still jammed into the stirrups.
The phantom was on the second escort even as the man turned to see what had become of his companion. The dragoneer vanished beneath the thing’s black wings, still struggling to bring his sword around. His horse emerged an instant later, saddle gone and blood pouring from three long gashes in its flank.
“Helm guard us!” gasped one of Tanalasta’s guards. “‘What is that thing?”
“You called it a vulture,” Tanalasta remarked bitterly.
When Vangerdahast continued forward, oblivious to what had just happened behind him, she pictured his face in her mind.
Vangerdahast, behind you! It’s some sort of demon, or…
Tanalasta did not finish, for even as she sent the warning, the phantom was spinning to look in her direction. The thing seemed a grotesque fusion of woman and wasp, with a powerful torso, impossibly small waist, and long sticklike limbs folded into inhuman shapes. Its hair was as smoky and black as its eyes were white and blazing, and the princess could just make out the crescent of a yellow-fanged smile.
Tanalasta, stay still.
The princess glanced back to Vangerdahast and saw the wizard struggling to wheel his galloping horse around. He leveled his staff at the phantom and unleashed a brilliant bolt of emerald light, but the creature was already launching itself into the air. The streak blasted to ground where the thing had been half an instant before, hurling the mangled remains of the second rider in every direction.
The phantom’s wings pounded the air, catapulting it over the caravan toward Tanalasta’s hiding place. Already, the princess could see a pair of naked female breasts and ten ebony talons curling from the ends of the thing’s slender fingers. A small flaming orb sizzled up from Vangerdahast’s direction to strike the creature full in the flank. It veered slightly, then lowered its dark wings and streaked away, leaving the wizard’s sphere to explode into a roiling ball of flame. As the thing drew closer, the princess could make out the narrow blade of a nose and a long haggish chin smeared with red gore.
An unaccustomed fury rose up inside Tanalasta, and suddenly she could think of little more than slaying her foe. She jumped to her feet and thrust a hand into her cloak pocket, in her excitement fumbling for the steel Peacemaker’s rod Vangerdahast had given her. To her amazement, she felt no fear at all, only a thrilling bloodlust that filled her with a strange euphoria and muddled her thoughts. Could this be the battle rapture Alusair was always talking about?
One of Tanalasta’s guards grabbed her collar and pushed her toward the horses. “Run!”
The dragoneer’s shove brought Tanalasta back to her senses, and she was seized by a queasy terror as she recalled how easily the phantom had slain Vangerdahast’s escorts. She stumbled back two steps, then stopped when her guards drew their swords and stepped forward to meet the phantom at the edge of the cliff
“Don’t be fools-retreat!” Tanalasta yelled. She released the steel rod and pulled her hand from her pocket, then began to fidget with one of the rings Vangerdahast had given her in Arabel. “Now!”
The guards did not obey. They merely roared their battle cries and raised their swords, and it was too late. The phantom swooped over the rim of the outcropping, impaling one man on along talon and batting the other off the cliff and continuing toward Tanalasta at lightning speed.
She pointed her ring at the ground, commanding, “Dragon’s wall!”
Tanalasta felt a sharp pain in her finger, then a shimmering wall of force sprang up between her and the phantom. A muffled whump reverberated across the outcropping, and the creature was hanging in the air before her, its night black wings spread across the horizon on the other side of the magic barrier.
The phantom gave an ear-piercing scream, and its white eyes turned human and ladylike. The darkness drained from its face, revealing the visage of a handsome noblewoman about the same age as Queen Filfaeril. Tanalasta staggered away from the inexplicable apparition, so shocked and terrified that she forgot to run.
Vangerdahast’s voice came to her. Tanalasta?
The phantom pulled its head free of the magic wall and turned toward the wizard. Tanalasta’s heart sank as she realized the implications. The creature could hear their thought-talk.
Answer me!
The phantom pulled a wing free of the barrier, and Tanalasta’s sense of danger came flooding back.
Quiet, you old fool! The princess turned toward the horses.
Then suddenly Vangerdahast was there before her, sitting on his stallion between her and her own horse, swaying and blinking with teleport after daze. Tanalasta glanced back and saw the phantom springing over the top of her magic wall, its face once again a mask of gore-dripping darkness. Tanalasta spun around, stretching an arm in its direction and slapping the opposite hand down on her wrist bracer.
“King’s bolts!”
A searing pain shot through her hand, and four bolts of golden magic streaked toward the phantom’s chest.
The creature’s wing curled around in a blur of darkness, and the bolts erupted against it in a series of dazzling yellow flashes. The appendage turned briefly translucent, revealing a fanlike network of finger-thick bones, then began to darken again.
Vangerdahast’s staff tapped Tanalasta’s shoulder. “You have proven your point, Princess,” he said. “Now why don’t you leave your old fool to have his fun with this nasty wench?”
Too tired to trade banter, Tanalasta merely nodded and sprinted to her horse, pulling herself into the saddle as the wizard’s first spell cracked across the outcropping behind her. She leaned down to free the reins of the dead guards’ mounts, then glimpsed the phantom hurling toward Vangerdahast in a blazing ball of white fury. He turned his staff horizontal and raised it in front of him. A hedge of silver-tipped thorn bushes sprang up to intercept his shrieking attacker.
Tanalasta started to turn her mount toward the rest of the company, but saw a horde of orcs streaming up the mountain and realized she would never reach them alive. Praying to the goddess that Ryban could see what was happening on the outcropping, she turned in the opposite direction and urged her mount to flee.
The terrified beast sprang up the rocky slope as though it were a mountain goat, and the last thing Tanalasta heard behind her was Vangerdahast’s astonished curse:
