Fitch launched the fireball and everything became dream-like and slow. Kali came to a faltering stop and tracked the crackling sphere of fire helplessly, her mouth falling open. As it passed the halfway mark between Fitch and Slowhand, she turned slightly, yelling to Gabriella to drive her onward. Ripping away her armour as she went, driven as much by momentum as muscle, Gabriella left the ground, throwing herself forward through the air, but it wasn't Slowhand she was throwing herself at, it was the fireball.
Enlightened One and fireball collided in mid-air and Gabriella DeZantez was consumed by the magic, disappearing inside an explosion of super-heated fire. The infernal heat it contained would, had she still been wearing it, have turned her armour red hot in an instant, roasting her inside, but with only her surplice she would likely suffer a quicker death than that. She had no chance of surviving, none at all, and so it came as something of a surprise to Kali when, as the fire blasted about Gabriella and then dissipated, the Enlightened One fell to the ground with her surplice burnt away, smoking and stunned, but otherwise apparently unharmed.
Slowhand looked about him in confusion. Fitch, meanwhile, stared at the recovering form of Gabriella DeZantez in disbelief. For his part, Jakub Freel covered the remaining ground between Fitch and himself where he flattened the psychic manipulator with a single punch to the face.
Kali turned her attention back to Slowhand. The archer had stripped off his shirt and was wrapping it about Gabriella as he lifted her slowly from the ground. The woman was clearly stunned, but there wasn't a mark on her, not a single blemish or burn. It was no time for questions, however, and Kali and Slowhand took Gabriella between them and slowly led her back to her tent. Slowhand paused mid-route and nodded to Freel.
'Thanks,' he said.
'Don't mention it.'
The Final Faith enforcer watched them depart with their charge. Neither of them noticed as, behind them, he hauled Fitch to his feet with one hand and roused him. Neither did they hear the words that passed between the enforcer and the cadaverous manipulator.
'I told you not to make a move,' Freel said. 'I told you that when the time comes, Killiam Slowhand is
Chapter Twelve
They entered the Sardenne at dawn, not that Twilight's distant sun ever made much difference in the heavily canopied forest. The first few yards of their ingress plunged them into shadow, the next few beyond that to a darkness equivalent to longnight, and with every step thereafter the ambient light lessened until, in parts, their surroundings were as black as a windowless room. To aid their progress, the mages in the party wove soft and subtle light threads that played about them like fireflies, not bright enough to attract unwanted attention but enough to make the individual members of the party aware of where they stepped and distinguishable from each other. Their beacon, albeit an ominous one, was the pillar of souls. The column of spiritual energy continued to grow, and offered a continuous reminder of why they were treading such dangerous ground.
They were amidst the soul-stripped now and followed the route that the Eye of the Lord had suggested was safest, though watching the images the device had returned to them had still been a discomfiting experience. The small sphere had woven a meandering course through the soul-stripped, manoeuvring up to and around them, between them, but never drawing too near and — in case Kali was wrong about what would alert the Pale Lord — never lingering too long. The Eye's passage nevertheless allowed it to see a level of detail that no human would have survived long enough to absorb, snatches of facial features of the soul-stripped — an ear, a nose, a mouth, a dangling lock of hair. That close, they almost became individuals again, might have been husbands, wives, sons, daughters or friends, but it only took one glimpse of their rigid forms or whitened eyes to remind all who watched that they were nothing to each other or their loved ones now.
However uncomfortable watching the images had been, the party's progression along the route mapped by the Eye was worse.
They moved in silence and almost in single file. Every breath, every footfall brought with it a palpable sense of fear. It seemed that each piece of tinder that snapped beneath a boot, each branch disturbed, would alert the soul-stripped, and that it was only a matter of time before one of them turned its gaze toward them. As a result, Kali moved everyone forward with great caution.
It had fallen to her — as one of the few, and certainly the only member of the current party to have ventured deep into the Sardenne and survived — to take point and in that role she had advised them of a few of the realities of the sprawling, ancient domain. The most important was that the soul-stripped were not the only things to be afraid of. The further they progressed into the forest the stranger and more dangerous the threats they might face. She had allocated everyone some floprat render, the olfactory camouflage she found worked best within the Sardenne, but some, the Swords particularly, wore the foul smelling substance awkwardly, as if they thought she was playing some practical joke at their expense. Kali's sincere hope was that they didn't have to find out otherwise. Familiar with the Sardenne's unnatural menagerie first hand, she doubted that any of the men or women present would believe her if she tried to describe some of the things she'd seen, so she didn't bother.
Oddly enough, though, there were none of the hisses, caws, growls, rumbles, rattles or shrieks from the surrounding undergrowth that she would normally expect to hear. She wondered whether the presence of the soul- stripped, or the aura of Redigor, had actually done their party a favour, driving the wildlife deeper into the forest and leaving the path ahead of them clear. They would only know the truth as they forged deeper.
Though their passage through the soul-stripped was tortuous and took some hours they miraculously avoided detection, reaching a point at last where the Pale Lord's puppets thinned. Soon after, they had passed beyond them completely.
It was at this stage that Kali instigated the second part of her plan to negotiate the Sardenne successfully. Her main reason for including the mages in the party was not for them to help tackle Redigor — five
The ploy was not without its logistical problems, however. For one thing, the effort and energies involved meant that the mages would have to work in turns, and would only be able to move them a league or two at a time. For another, they would be teleporting blind. It was the reason they could not use the same technique to bypass the soul-stripped — the last thing Kali wanted was to materialise in the middle of a mass of them — and they could only hope that more of them, or other hidden hazards, did not lie ahead.
Slowhand looked uneasy as the first wave of mages began to weave the threads. They were helpless to sudden attack from the forest while the weaving took place, so the Swords stood vigilant around them.
'You've done this before?' The archer said to Kali.
'Sure. The old man and I travelled from Gargas to Andon during the k'nid invasion. It's what gave me the idea.'
'And you arrived okay? I mean with… all your bits?'
'My bits? Gods and hells, Liam, is that all you ever think about?'
'
'Of course I did! Stinking pits, I would have thought you'd have noticed by now!'
Slowhand faltered. 'Oh. Right. Yes. They seemed okay.'
'
'Dammit, Hooper, you know what I mean!'
Before them, the mages had completed their weaving and the portal had formed, a shimmering circle that flared outward briefly before just hanging in the air a few inches off the ground. Slowhand swallowed as, with a distinct squelching sound, Jakub Freel stepped into it and vanished. DeZantez, Fitch and the ranks of the mages and Swords followed.
'Our turn,' Kali said. 'Want me to hold your hand?'
'I don't think so,' Slowhand answered through gritted teeth. 'Much as I love you, Hooper, I don't want us
