he saw the truth of Ivan's "eagle," a leonine beast taller than Cadderly and with a wingspan fully twenty-five feet across. The swooping creature did not come in close to Shayleigh and Danica, but instead abruptly broke the momentum of its dive, rearing in the air and whipping its tail over one muscled shoulder.
A volley of iron spikes shot out at the two. Danica pushed Shayleigh to the side, then contorted her own body somehow, miraculously avoiding any serious hits, though a line of blood, stark red against the white background, appeared immediately along the side of one arm.
Shayleigh was quick to ready her bow, but the leonine creature swooped away, and her shot was a long one, lost in the wind and the driving snow.
Up ahead, Vander got hit again and shrieked as Cadderly would never have believed the stoic and proud giant ever could. The young priest stumbled forward to discern the cause of the fighting, squinting and shaking his head, for he could not believe that his friends were fully surrounded by some sort of animated snow!
Their repeated blows had no effect - other than to create more monsters.
Cadderly fell into the song of Deneir, the logic that guided the harmony of his universe. He saw the spheres, not just the celestial spheres, but the magical spheres of elemental and energy-based powers. The simple and evident truths led Cadderly quickly to the conclusion that snow would best be battled with fire, and, hardly thinking about the movement, the young priest lifted his fist toward the largest section of creature between himself and his friends and uttered "Fete!" the Elvish word for fire.
A line of flames shot out from Cadderly's gold and onyx ring, engulfing several of the snow monsters in a sizzling blaze. Animated snow became insubstantial steam and gases, blowing away on the wind.
Then something struck hard against Cadderly's back, hurling him to the ground. Fear told him that the leonine monster must be back and he swung about, his clenched fist out in front
He saw Danica standing protectively behind him and realized that it was she who had struck him. She now faced the newest beast that had entered the fray, a beast that had apparently been intent on the distracted young priest.
"Chimera?" Cadderly asked as much as stated when the winged, three-headed monster rushed in at Danica. Its central head and its torso were, like the other beast, those of a lion, but this one also had an orange scaled neck and head of a small dragon flanking it and a black goat's head behind.
The creature reared in midair; the dragon's head breathed forth a line of flame.
Danica jumped to the side away from Cadderly, then leaped up and caught a handhold on the stone above her, tucking her feet up high and somehow escaping the searing blast. She came back to the ledge after the fires had expired, but found no safe footing, for the flames had melted away the snow and weakened the integrity of that section of ledge. Ice reformed almost immediately in the freezing temperatures, and the young monk fell down hard onto her back. And then, dazed, Danica slipped out over the ledge.
Cadderly's world seemed to stop.
Farther down the trail, Shayleigh put her bow to deadly use, firing arrow after arrow at the leonine monster. Even with the powerful winds, many of her shots hit the mark, but the beast was resilient, and when its spike-throwing tail whipped about once more, Shayleigh had nowhere to run.
She grimaced at the dull thuds as several missiles blasted her to a half-sitting, half-leaning position on the mountain slope. She felt the sudden warmth of her own lifeblood flowing from several wounds. Stubbornly, the elf maiden put another arrow to her bowstring and let fly, scoring a solid hit in the monster's thick-muscled chest
*****
Cadderly dove flat to the stone, reached out desperately for Danica, who had gained a tentative handhold several feet below the ledge. She couldn't possibly climb up the ice in the driving wind and snow, and Cadderly, for all his straining, couldn't reach her.
The priest sang along with the song of Deneir, again seeking out an elemental sphere, this time searching for answers in the realm of air.
Danica heard his singing and looked up plaintively, knowing that her one hand would not keep her in place for very long.
Moments later, Cadderly ended the song, looked back at Danica, and commanded her in magically enhanced tones to jump up at him.
She