Blinking heavily, she gradually remembered where she was: a shaded hollow under a tumbled cliff of red-brown stone, the best shade she’d been able to find. The cliff wound its way south-east, following the course of an old dried-up river. She’d followed it, unable to stomach the brackish seawater where she had waded ashore and unable to find more promising tributaries.
So far all she’d found was damp mud caking in the heat. The need for liquid was becoming pressing – despite the oppressive warmth she was no longer sweating, and her head felt thick and clogged.
It had been foolish to fall asleep. More than foolish – dangerous.
She looked around her, squinting against the hard light on the rocks. No sign of movement, pursuit or tracks.
Drutheira pushed herself to her feet, collecting her staff and leaning on it heavily. For the first time ever she regretted having spent so long cultivating the arts of Dhar at the expense of all else. It might have been nice to conjure up something to drink. She could have fooled herself easily enough with chimeras of wine or ice-cool water but the effects would not last. The only things her sorcery could genuinely construct out of nothing were destructive – the bolts of aethyr-lightning that tore through armour, the snarls of unnatural flame that crisped flesh and melted eyes.
It suddenly struck her as so pointless, so wasteful. Out here, in the parched hinterland, she was no better than any mortal.
Drutheira started to limp, keeping to the shade of the cliff to her left. Ahead of her the path wound along the foot of the cliff, choked with loose stone. To her right ran the base of the dry riverbed, the far shore of which rose up again a few hundred yards distant in another cliff face. Its twin rock-tumbled edges were far apart, enclosing a shallow dusty bowl between them, but they gradually drew closer together the further she went.
In time the riverbed narrowed to a gorge. The sun sailed westward, still horrendously hot. Drutheira’s mouth became too dry to open without pain. Her lips cracked and bled, and she breathed through her nostrils as sparingly as possible.
The passing hours gave her no fresh indication of where she was. She remembered vague rumours of a vast land to the south of Elthin Arvan. Malekith had been interested in it, saying that he sensed some strange and potent magic brewing there, but that had been decades ago and Drutheira suspected he didn’t truly understand what he was speaking of. As far as she was concerned the place she was in had no magic about it at all, let alone strange and potent magic. It was a forgotten land, a between-place wedged amid greater realms, no doubt destined to remain barren forever.
She caught sight of bushes clustered in the lee of the nearside gorge-wall. They were harsh, dense things – black-leaved, bristling, no more than five feet tall – but it was a hopeful sign. It might even mean water.
She picked up her pace, ignoring the protests from her strained leg-muscles and forcing herself to keep going. She had another day, perhaps two, before the thirst would get her, and she had absolutely no intention of meeting her end in such an undistinguished place.
It was then that she sensed it, hovering close, barely noticeable but wholly unmistakable.
Drutheira crouched low, hugging the rock wall once more and letting its shadow slip over her. She scanned the landscape around her, sniffing, her eyes wide and her senses working hard.
She is close, she thought, recognising the stink of the asur. She could not see or hear any sign of the dragon, but the aethyr-presence of the red mage was definitely hanging on the wind.
The sunlight made it hard to see much at distance – dazzling out in the open, causing the air to shake and shimmer. Drutheira did not move for a long time, hoping her adversary would betray herself first.
Can she detect me? she wondered. It was possible that, in her diminished state, Drutheira’s aura would be less obvious to a fellow magician than in the normal run of things. Dangerous to rely on the chance, but something not to ignore either.
She crept onwards, hugging the shadow of the gorge, her eyes sweeping around at all times, her staff ready. The scent faded, replaced by the wearyingly familiar tang of burned earth. Perhaps she had been mistaken, or perhaps the dragon rider was still aloft, miles away now, her scent carried by the wind.
Then she saw something else, lodged in the thick tangle of black-leaved bushes ahead – a flicker of red, barely visible, quickly withdrawn. Drutheira tensed, wondering if she had the strength for a summoning.
The asur mage was there, somewhere, crouching or lying among those dark branches. Was she waiting for her? Or was she, too, lost in the wilds and seeking some respite from the beating sun?
The more Drutheira watched, the more her conviction grew. She screwed her eyes up, letting a little sorcery augment her already-sharp vision. Something was hidden in the bushy cover, clad in red, prone on the ground as if exhausted. Drutheira tasted the nauseating tang of Ulthuan mingled with the hot metal aroma of dragon.
Drutheira broke into a lope, going as silently as her training enabled. She flitted across the gorge-floor, body crouched low and robes whispering about her.
She was soon amongst the bushes, ignoring the sharp jabs from the thorns as they ripped through her clothes. She raised her staff quickly, kindling dark fire. Ahead of her, only half-obscured by a tight lattice of thorns, was her enemy: out cold on her back, her pale freckled face staring up at the sky, unmoving.
Drutheira pounced, forgetting her fatigue as she crashed through the final curtain of spines, jabbing her staff-heel down at her enemy’s heart.
The metal tip hit the ground hard, jarring Drutheira’s arms.
