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nearby norits had escaped though they spent some minutes in frantic efforts to shield them-selves from the flying oil. Tuli gaped at the damage Ildas had done with one well-placed squirt. He came prancing back, wriggled round her, bumped against her, rolled onto his back so she could scratch his belly. You re a one soredak army, Didi, she whispered to him. She continued to stroke him as she watched the surviving norits go from body to body, cutting throats of any who still lived. The noise diminished here by the Highroad, but she heard screams and shouts and curses drifting from the army, the protesting hoots of macain and the high angry squeals of rambuts. Coperic, she thought. No, can t be. He and his folk must have been in and out already; they wouldn t make that much noise. Should be getting out myself before they start hunting. She began inching backward out of the shelter of the roots. Ildas walked beside her, snapping the web of light back into himself. When she was clear of the roots but still deep in shadow, she sat on her heels, looking about. The traxim in the trees had whipped into the air with the explosion of the Warwagon and hadn t yet settled back to their roosts; any sentries close at hand had rushed into the open, looking vainly for some way to help the dying, or joining other men to roll the next Warwagon farther from the fire and save that one from burning also. Soon someone out there would start thinking instead of reacting and send searchers into the trees to sniff out whoever had set the fire. But not yet. She got to her feet and fled through the trees, leaving the seething turmoil behind, heading for the rendezvous with Coperic. He was probably there already, waiting with the others for her to show up. She slowed and began to relax. A norit stepped from behind a tree, hands raised and filled with fire, eyes glaring, mouth opening in a long ululating scream that tore from his throat and assaulted her ears. He flung the fire at her. Tuli swerved so sharply she had to scramble to keep on her feet; arms waving, kicking herself in the ankle, she plunged for the shelter of the nearest tree, a spindly brellim, knowing she couldn t reach it in time, suspecting its shelter was no shelter at all from the magic fire. He screamed again, outrage in every hoarse syllable of those unintelligible words. She looked back, saw Ildas leap between her and the fireballs, bat them down, the norit not seeing him but seeing his fire fail; she sucked in a breath to laugh her triumph and crashed into the tree. She was stunned for an instant, then got shakily to her feet. From the corner Page 119 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html of her eye she saw Ildas play with the fireballs, jump on them and eat them. The norit stared, open-mouthed, as his fire vanished, bite by bite. For the moment he d forgotten her. Tuli whipped around the still shivering tree and fled into the dark, her head clearing as she moved, her first panic settling into a mix of terror and rage. She ran furi-ously twisting and turning through the trees. And Ildas kept the fireballs as well as the rest of the norit s magic away from her. But she couldn t outrun him and he was an adult male, so much stronger than her, he didn t need magic to deal with her; it was only his rigid mind-set that kept him stopping to use that magic. Not that she thought all that out; fragments of it came to her while she ran, coalescing into a sense of what was happening, adding pinches of hope and contempt to the mixture seething within her. She forced herself to slow a little and use her nightsight to plot her route, diving beneath low-hanging limbs, bounding over root tangles that were traps for un-wary feet. Several times she heard him flounder and curse, felt a fleeting satisfaction that vanished into the chill real-ization that she couldn t get away from him no matter how hard she ran. Twice more he stopped and tried his magic on her, twice more Ildas slapped fireballs down, ate them and set himself between her and other manifestations of the norit s magic that made her hair and skin tingle but had no other effect on her. Before she was ready, she was out of the trees, running into moonlight that nearly blinded her, through grass that whipped about her flying feet and threatened to trip her. She was getting tired, her legs were stone-heavy, the breath burned her mouth and throat, but she drove herself on. She could almost feel his hands reaching for her, his breath hot on her neck. He was so close, so desperately close. She zigged and zagged like a startled lappet, trying to get back into the thin fringe of woodland along the Highroad beyond the grove of Blasted Narlim camp. His fingers scrabbled at her arm. With a small sobbing cry she flung herself around and away, cutting perilously close to him, trusting in the agility that had saved her so far. Again and again she managed a swerve, a dodge, a lunge at the last moment, avoiding the clutch of those long pale fingers; once she threw herself into a rolling fall past him and managed to bound onto her feet before he could bring himself around. That time she nearly made it to the trees, but in a straightaway run she was no match for him and she had to swerve again to escape him. As she had in the hallway in Sel-ma-Carth, she wanted fiercely and use-lessly to know knife work, to have Coperic s skills in her hands and mind. It might have given her a chance, at least a chance. This chase had only one end, but she refused to think about that. While she had breath in her body, until her legs folded under her, she would fight him, she would struggle to get away. Ildas brushed against him, drained his strength, brushed against her, gifting her with that strength so she could keep on long after she should have dropped, exhausted. The image of the charred agli came to her. Burn him, she screamed silently at the fireborn, burn him like you did the agli. But the norit must have had stronger defenses than an agli; he and Ildas balanced each other. Neither could harm the other. And it seemed to her Ildas shrugged and told her in his wordless way that he was doing all he could. The norit s fingers were lines of fire on her shoulder, but her tunic burned away from under them and she threw herself to one side, rolling up onto her feet and darting away. Ildas, she thought, ashing the cloth. Her legs were timber baulks, as weighty and stiff as the beams in the watchtower, her breath came in great gulps, she was beyond pain now, knew the end was near. Ildas brushed her leg, and fire jolted through her. Again the norit s hand closed on her, catching the cloth of her sleeve, again the cloth ashed as soon as he grasped it, but this time instead of rolling away from him, she dived past him only inches from his body, too soon and too fast for him to change his lunge. As he came around, his boot caught in the grass and he fell on his face. Hardly believing her luck; she forced her body into a sprint toward the trees. And was forced to swerve away again; a straight run was impossible. He didn t Page 120 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html quite touch her but she felt him like a torch at her back. She heard a gasp, quickly hushed, a slithery thump, felt a coolness in the night about her as if a fire were suddenly smothered. She chanced a look over her shoulder, stum-bled to a shaking stop; her legs folded beneath her and she [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |