underneath the marble steps. The demonology section was just ahead. It was the first of three they'd identified. Sharyr checked them all again, saw the strained but determined faces. Outside, spells cracked and echoed in the quiet of early morning. Distantly, a demon screamed.
He turned back and there they were. Floating gently down from the upper floors. He wasn't sure how many. Ten at a quick count. He backed up under the stairwell. Suarav just in front of him, the others behind, all wanting to feel a wall at their backs. The demons were stark grey against the deeper background, shining slighdy.
They were all of one strain. Long faces containing huge oval eyes. Tiny mouths but rimmed with fangs. Distended skulls. Delicate feathery wings and long slender arms at the end of which spidery fingers writhed.
'Keep calm,' said Sharyr. 'Keep your concentration.' He had lost his ForceCone construct and was desperately trying to reform the shape. 'Don't show them fear. We can take them.'
'You heard him,' growled Suarav. 'They've got to get past me first.'
He stepped square in front of the mage team, indicating the conscript do the same. The man didn't move but for the quaking of his body. A whimper escaped his mouth.
'Stand aside, Captain,' said Sharyr.
'They will not take you before me.'
'You're standing in the line of our spells.'
'Just tell me when to duck.'
The demons watched the exchange intently. Sharyr, who hadn't taken his eyes from them, felt as if he were being examined. Studied. He became aware that he could hear the whirring of their wings at the edge of his consciousness.
'We don't want to have to cast,' he said.
'The damage to the library would be considerable,' replied one of the demons immediately, voice soft and seductive.
The conscript muttered again.
'Strength,' snapped Suarav. 'They don't know what to do.'
The demons spread slightly, moving to cut off any escape back towards the main doors. There was a gap to the back of the library. It had been left quite deliberately. No escape there.
'They're going to get us,' said the conscript.
'No they aren't, not if we stick together,' said Suarav. 'Keep your blade out front.'
'Won't do any good. Just one touch.'
Sharyr felt the soldier tense to run. They had little time. 'Mages, what do you have? Speak quickly.'
'Orbs.'
'Orbs.'
'Ice.'
In concert, the demons opened their arms and glided in. 'Your souls will replenish us.'
'No!' The young soldier broke left and ran, colliding with one of the archivists and sprinting away into the shadows.
'Structure down.'
'Reform!' snapped Sharyr.
'Get back here!' roared Suarav.
'Forget him and duck,' said Sharyr. Suarav dropped to his haunches. 'Orbs now.'
It was a single focused FlameOrb and it struck the centre of the pack. The glare was painful, the effect brutal and instant.. The tight globe of flame singed wings and burned coarse hair. It ate demon flesh. Smoke roiled. The scream was terrible. Sharyr followed it with his ForceCone. He directed it at the left side of the group. Unprepared, the demons were flicked away, twigs in the gale. He drove them up and back, flattening their bodies against the marble balustrade opposite. He wouldn't kill them but it represented space and time.
'Ice, right!'
Hardly had he uttered the command than the spell washed out, sucking and tearing at demon bodies, driving freezing air through their mana protection. Gouging, flaying.
'Now run, left. Find that idiot and get searching. We've still got a job to do. I'll hold these here.'
His men obeyed without question, scattering into the back of the library. 'And be careful of what's down there!'
Sharyr took stock. He held four struggling demons in check. The others were dead or dying. The IceWind blast had covered shelves, texts and tables over a ten-yard area with a thick coating of frost. That wasn't what worried him. It was the fire taking hold where the Orbed demon lay. And as the first scream of pure terror rang out from the back of the library, he turned to warn them that time was running out even faster than they had first thought.
The four surviving mages flew in at a frightening pace. Left and right, spotter soldiers called out the locations of demons now turning their attentions to the Xeteskians in front of the tower complex. Focused Orbs scattered out in a wide arc. In the thinning mist,
demons howled and the noise grew as more and more ignored their airborne quarry. And in the centre of the mage defence, deep blue ForceCones and IceWind kept open the slimmest corridor.
'Let's be moving back slowly!'
Chandyr's voice towered over the slowly rising panic. They had to get this just right or they'd lose more mages saving Dordovans than if they'd all stayed inside and let their erstwhile enemies die. Dystran eyed the sky again. Vuldaroq was at their head, the other three now in close attendance. They had abandoned any thoughts of evading the mass of demons closing around them and were flying headlong and head-first straight at the doors of the complex. The timing was going to be tight.
'FlameWall preparation now,' he barked to the mage at his side.
Both men formulated the rigid, single-sided structure into which was built the mechanism that caused the flames to decay slowly, lt was a static spell. They could cast and forget. Right now that was more than merely a blessing.
From his left, Dystran heard a sudden surge in shouting. Demons were attacking hard on the flank, threatening to overwhelm the flimsy mage defence.
Chandyr's voice sounded softly in his ear. 'It has to be now, my Lord.'
Dystran nodded his understanding. 'Ready,' he said.
'Last spells and retreat!' shouted Chandyr. 'Don't look back, get inside the ColdRooms. I want men ready if any of those bastards follow our friends in. Go!'
Heartbeats later, a volley of spells clattered into the mass of demons still a hundred yards distant but closing hard. To the left, the distance was not so great. Mist burned away, screams filled the sky and cold washed out over the college, IceWind finding its targets and flaying the skin from its victims. But there were so very many of them. They choked the sky and now the ground in front of the college. All the spells had done was buy them a few moments.
'Run!' Chandyr led the charge back to the doors, stopping by Dystran who had backed right to the edge of the ColdRoom.
Soldiers and mages rushed past. Demons closed in from left, right and above. The corridor down which the Dordovans flew narrowed, the quartet dropping to line astern to keep the demons crucial feet
from them. The last mage didn't want to look back. A huge winged creature was slashing at his feet, missing them by hairs alone.
'Wait just a moment,' said Dystran, feeling the anxiety of the mage next to him. Vuldaroq was fifty yards away. 'Right, let's give them something to aim at.'
The two mages cast, FlameWalls, parallel, forty feet high and a hundred long sprang up either side of the doors. Demons coming in from the flanks were forced to stop, those above veered away. Vuldaroq charged headlong.
'Oh Gods,' muttered Dystran and stumbled back inside the complex, dragging Chandyr and the other mage with him. 'We're going to have to break their fall. Get in front of the tower pillar. This is going to hurt.'
He'd only got a few yards inside and turned before Vuldaroq flew into the doorway. The ColdRoom snapped off the flow of mana. His ShadowWings disappeared and he plunged the dozen or so feet to the ground and rolled out of control towards the uncompromising stone of Dystran's tower. Fortunately for him, he hit Dystran first and
