ALL HAPPEN FROM NOT TWENTY FEET away, crouched within the convenient pile of rubble behind which he had dropped during the first few seconds of the encounter. He had not once given any thought to going to the aid of Mallich or The Hammer; his common sense told him that they were likely not going to come out on the winning end.
He shuddered now, remembering what had just witnessed. The crince, freed from its chain, going after what appeared to be a ghost image that had attached itself to Mallich and led to his demise. He could still see the crince ripping its master to pieces, tearing at him until nothing recognizable was left. And then the oketar joining in on the frenzied feast, all of them become maddened and uncontrollable in a matter of seconds.
He glanced down at his hands. They were still shaking. He hadn’t been able to stop them from doing so. That boy. What sort of magic did he possess? How had he managed to turn those savage animals against Mallich? How had he managed it so easily?
He picked up the flash rip from where he had dropped it and tightened his grip until his knuckles turned white, forcing his hands to be still. This wasn’t over yet. He looked up to where the boy and the girl were still locked in an embrace, arms about each other, heads pressed close. The girl, he thought, was as dangerous as the boy, although her methods were more conventional. She carried a weapon even more advanced than his own, a prototype that was supposedly in no one’s hands but those of its developers. Clearly this was not the case, and he found himself wondering how many others were out there that shouldn’t be.
His gaze shifted momentarily to the inert form of The Hammer, sprawled face-forward in the rocks, lifeless. That girl had taken him down with two well-placed shots, either of which would have killed him. She was skilled with that weapon, and whatever she and the boy they were to each other, they were a formidable pair.
Would they come looking for him? Not even knowing he was there, would they decide to mount a search just to see if they had missed anyone? He could face them, he supposed. He could kill one or even both of them perhaps. But did he want any part of such an encounter? What was the point?
It was Arcannen he had come to find, and the sorcerer hadn’t made even the briefest appearance.
He watched the boy and the girl separate, moving apart but still holding hands, talking now, their voices too low to hear. In a moment they would be on the move. What was he going to do?
He watched the heavy fog momentarily enclose them in its folds. Now he could see the crince snarling at the oketar, driving them back as it dragged the remains of Mallich out of the rubble and into the rugged terrain inland, warning off its competitors. The oketar were snarling back, but even together they weren’t a match for the crince, so they made no move to attack as it hauled its kill into the rocks and disappeared. After giving momentary consideration to the boy and the girl and deciding that wasn’t worth the attempt, the oketar moved off as well.
Usurient had just about decided to stand up and shoot both the boy and the girl before either could respond and then have a look around for Arcannen when a door set deep within the back walls of the ruins swung open and the sorcerer walked out.
“Did you hear that?” Avelene asked Paxon, stopping short of the crest of the ridgeline fronting their approach route to the coast.
“It sounds like animals fighting,” he said.
They had flown in during the early hours of the morning, departing Sterne before it was light and finding their way east by reading the stars. By then, the storm that had threatened early had blown south, taking clouds and wind and rain with it, leaving behind the beginnings of a warming trend that left the surface of the earth below covered in layers of brume.
Avelene had thought it might be best simply to fly into the ruins of Arbrox and confront whatever was happening there, directly. But Paxon persuaded her that Druids would intimidate neither Arcannen nor those hunters sent by Usurient to stalk the sorcerer. They would simply be putting themselves in danger by announcing their presence. It would