servants of the Nameless One were trying to work their magic. If the soldier had been in the elf’s place, he wouldn’t have let slip the opportunity to swing his bidenhander a couple of times.
“Maybe shamans and maybe not,” Tomcat said with a shrug. “But it’s magic, that much I can guarantee.”
“It has to be shamans, it couldn’t be anyone else!” Kli-Kli sighed.
“Can we avoid it?” asked Markauz, tugging on his mustache.
“I can’t do anything,” said Miralissa, spreading her hands helplessly. “My skill’s not great enough. I can’t feel anything.”
“It’s weather sorcery. The element of rain is pretty unstable,” Tomcat muttered.
“What’s that?” Hallas said impatiently.
“We were taught . . .” Tomcat hesitated for a moment. “We were taught that the rain magic created by shamanism is unstable. It lasts for no more than four or perhaps five hours and is heavily dependent not only on the skill of the shamans, but also on natural phenomena. The wind, for instance.”
“You want to try to get away from these clouds?” asked Ell, one of the first to grasp what Tomcat was thinking.
“Uh-huh. The wind now is blowing directly to the southwest, so we can gallop southeast. If we’re lucky we’ll part company with the storm.”
“Oh, sure,” Honeycomb snorted. “It looks like someone’s driving it along. Just look how fast it’s moving!”
I glanced involuntarily at the wild weather advancing toward us.
“And just what can that little cloud do?” I couldn’t help blurting out.
“Nothing.” Egrassa answered me instead of Tomcat.
“Then what are we planning to run away from?” asked milord Markauz, getting the question in ahead of me.
“From what that cloud is trying to hide,” Miralissa answered him in an extremely dismal voice.
“That will be an ordinary rain cloud, with ordinary thunder and lightning,” Tomcat said. “The worst it can do is soak us to the skin. And if the shamanism is really good, there’ll be a really wild storm. But not directly aimed. That is, it won’t try to destroy us especially. It will be an ordinary storm, just like hundreds of others. If anyone’s hurt, it will be by accident.”
“You ought to give lectures at the university in Ranneng. I didn’t understand a thing!” Deler complained. “What about the thing the clouds are trying to hide?”
“A bank of rain clouds with thunder and lightning always covers up any other magic,” Miralissa explained. “There isn’t a magician in Siala, even if he’s worth three of the Nameless One, who can see hostile magic inside a thundercloud until the sorcery is literally right there under his nose. Tomcat senses that the storm was created by shamanism, but he doesn’t know what it might be hiding. The shamans could have hidden something that they don’t want the magicians of the Order to see. Clouds make a magnificent screen.”
“The nearest magicians are tens of leagues away, they needn’t have worried,” Arnkh growled.
“Then they must be hiding something that can be seen for tens of leagues,” Kli-Kli disagreed.
There were more lightning flashes and rumbles of thunder, still in the distance, but much closer now.
“Enough idle talking! Tomcat, since you can sense the storm, you’re the one to get us out of this. Lead on!” said Markauz. He had no intention of waiting for the rain.
And our crazy game of tag with the weather began.
Tomcat took control with an assured hand and set the horses a pace no worse than when we were hightailing it out of Vishki. The rumble of the thunder kept getting closer and closer. The wind grew stronger, bending the tall grass right down to the ground. The music of the crickets and the songs of the birds fell silent. Every now and then one of us would look back to check how much farther we could gallop before the rain hit us.
But I just kept looking straight ahead. In the first place, at such a furious gallop, I was afraid of falling off Little Bee, and in the second place, the one time I did look round I got such a fright that I almost yelled out loud. The cloudy sky that was dogging our heels was black enough to darken a hundred worlds.
Even Eel had turned pale, and that was completely out of character for the coolheaded Garrakan.
“The wind’s changed!” Kli-Kli shouted. “To the east! The clouds are being carried off to the side!”
I forced myself to look round. Now, no matter how hard the storm tried, there was no way we could end up at the very heart of it. It