The Far Side Of Forever Part 29

"Well, then-everything's fine, then, isn't it?" the very hearty words came after the pause I hadn't used to add anything, the pause that had grown rather awkward. "To-

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night, of course, f'll be back in my usual place near your bed."

"Don't bother," I said and then walked away, making sure there was nothing to show that I'd had that nightmare again the night before. I'd never been able to remember that nightmare once I was awake, but 1 always knew it was me same one-and me night before InThig hadn't been there to tell me everything was all right when I awoke from it. I'd remembered then that InThig was with some- one it liked better, but 1 hadn't cried; I'd learned a long tune ago that tears don't do a d.a.m.ned thing to help-

i wandered around a little until the others began emerg- ing from their pavilions, then mounted my gray and waited a short distance from the other horses. Su raised a hand to me in greeting as she pa.s.sed and I nodded in return, but that was about it as far as my capability for the amenities went. I was on the quest to protect the group and to be a part of it, but I no longer wanted to be a part of it. I would shield them with magic, provide what they needed, and fight with everything in me to see that they won-but I didn't want to be one of them.

It didn't take long before everyone was mounted, so I banished the camp with a word and then followed when Su took up the trail again. All in all everyone seemed rather subdued that morning, and the landscape we were riding through did nothing to encourage friendly conversation.

Tall gra.s.s surrounded us just about as far as the eye could see, with larger and smaller stands of trees scattered hap- hazardly through it, a world that felt empty and yet not empty, full of life that wasn't our sort. Even that early in the morning the cool of darkness was being chased away.

letting us know that the heat of the day would probably be something special. The horses, clearly well-rested, were making no attempt to rush the pace, which meant they knew what was coming. It would have been nice if we could have said the same-about something other than the heat.

"You were right," a voice came from my left, and Rikkan Addis moved up to ride beside me, about ten feet back from where Su rode in the lead. "I couldn't quite believe it last night, but this morning me pain is all gone.

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InThig said I activated your automatic defenses, so that what happened most likely wasn't done deliberately. That's another thing I wasn't ready to believe last night."

He chuckled very faintly and paused, as if waiting for me to agree concerning my peaceful intentions, maybe even waiting for me to share the joke- I didn't see any joke and wasn't feeling very peaceful, so I just let the silence stretch. After the gap had widened a bit, fearless leader got the message-

"InThig is really upset," he said, all traces of jolly amus.e.m.e.nt gone from his voice- "It said you two had an argument last night, and when it tried to apologize this morning, you refused to listen. It really cares for you, Laciet; don't you think you're being too hard on it?"

"What 1 do is my business," I said. undoubtedly sound- ing as distant as I felt. "When I want your opinions I'll ask for them, and in the meantime you can let InThig care about you. I don't need any garbage like that."

1 kicked my gray into moving forward away from him, still not having looked at him even once. InThig had liked him almost from the first moment it had met him, and I hoped me two of them would be very happy together. As far as 1 was concerned, I couldn't have cared less.

We continued in peace and quiet for a while, no more than the sounds of our horses* hooves and the cries of birds overhead breaking in, and then, without warning, we were being attacked. The-things-rose up out of the gra.s.s in front of us, white-eyed, greenish brown sheets that spread out right in our path, rectangular and silent and waiting for us with open arms. It was fairly clear what would happen if any of us ended up clasped in those wide embraces, and for an instant it seemed that Su, who was ahead of me, would fall right into one. She had pulled back on her reins at the first sight of the things, her pinto trying desperately to obey, but the creature directly in front of her was too close. It stood taller than horse and rider together, and was emitting a sound of eagerness that could be felt more than heard. It wanted to eat, and was just about to do so.

My gray skidded to a halt in the midst of shouts and

screams and almost reared, but my own calm helped to keep him calm-and let me do what I was so ready to do.

1 raised my right hand and pointed to the creature that was about one step away from enfolding Su and her horse, then spoke the spell I'd decided on very early that morning.

There was a sound like the heavy rushing of air, and then the blackness appeared right next to me creature; the thing paused, turned white eyes on the blackness, then had time for a single scream before it was absorbed. The blackness had drawn it in and engulfed it, both at the same time. and the creature hadn't had a chance.

There were other greenish brown sheets both in front of us and to the sides, and 1 quickly moved the blackness after them. They screamed when they saw it coming and stared at it with very round eyes, but none of them tried to run from it. I thought I knew why that was, and briefly felt very sorry for the sheets, but there was nothing else I could do. One by one the blackness engulfed them all, searched briefly to make sure it hadn't missed any of them, then disappeared with satisfaction when I spoke the banishing word. I hadn't expected the thing to feel satis- faction, and I had to hold back a shudder even as I got rid of it. It was then that I noticed the heavy silence all around, which Su broke after taking a deep breath.

"Don't know what those were, but I'm sure glad they're gone," she said, raising one arm to blot at her forehead.

"Thought I'd had it there for a minute, and that's close enough to hold me for a while. Didn't even have time to clear my scabbard. What was that you used against them?"

"It was an entry to another plane," I answered, under- standing that Su's long, involved speech-long for her, that is-was a symptom of fear and relief. "It came to me that what we faced on this world might be protected against magic, so I prepared something that would handle anything, protected or not. That plane doesn't contain life, it seems to have a life of its own; its entries will go after anyone calling them into being, unless the callers have protected themselves, and then they'll go after anything not protected. Ordinary warding won't stop them for an instant; they're not using magic, so they don't have to be

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able to See things. They simply engulf whatever's there, no matter what shape it is, and then go looking for more.

My spell protected us and the horses, but not the sheets."

"Perhaps I am mistaken, yet does it seem as though there is considerable danger in the use of such an-entry."

Kadnm's voice came from behind me, sounding faintly worried, "is that plane not one which is best avoided?"

"The best way to avoid that plane is to know how to reach it," 1 said, glancing back to see that he still held his sword in his fist. "What you want to avoid doing is stumbling over it while unprepared. 1 suppose most of the Sighted remember the spell so that they'll never invoke it, but then most of the Sighted don't engage in quests like this one. We needed it so I used it, and now we'd better get moving again."

No one seemed tembly eager to move on, but when it came to other choices, we had none. Dranna had been between Zail and Rik, white-faced and trembling with one hand to her mouth, but even she hadn't protested going on.

We all knew that sitting in one place didn't mean we would not be attacked again, so trying it wasn't worth the effort. I didn't tell them that the sheets had probably been under a compulsion to attack JIS-which was why they hadn't run when they could have. If one life form was under compulsion so might the rest of them be, and that meant we'd have to wipe out future attackers rather than finding it possible to drive them off. If that turned out to be true, the rest of them would leam it soon enough.

We traveled on across that world, at first finding it possible to avoid the stands of trees, but the time finally came when the trail led right through the middle of one.

InThig went through first, ail senses alert, but nothing jumped out at it in attack. We followed cautiously, ready for just about anything, but the same thing happened with us. No trap, no ambush, no attack-nothing-

" Don't any of you relax," Rikkan Addis said as soon as were back in the open. his voice distracted and annoyed as he continued to look around- "They're probably ready to hit as soon as we do relax, and this sort of safe pa.s.sage is designed to make it happen, i don't want any of you on

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edge, but 1 do want you alert. Keep your eyes open and we'll be fine.'*

"Fine," I echoed with a laugh, then urged my gray after Su's pinto without adding anything. There's a big difference between keeping up morale and lying in your teeth, but fearless leader seemed never to have learned that. I had the impression he wasn't very happy with my comment, but didn't bother turning around to check.

Fifteen minutes later we learned how "fine" we were ' going to be. The pack of dog-like things jumped out at us from me tall gra.s.s the way the sheets had, but they were considerably faster and a lot more agile. InThig was at- tacked first and then they were leaping at the rest of us, snarls and growls mixing with screams and shouts and the neighing of horses. Most of them were various shades of brown but the teeth in their mouths were pure white, something we were able to see much too easily. Before we were able to blink they were in our laps, and the fight was on for certain.

The first two or three that came at me died quickly, engulfed in blue, but 1 was too busy trying to stay in my saddle to really notice. My gray was also being attacked and was fighting back with hooves and teeth, nearly un- seating me in the process. When 1 was finally able to look around I saw that Su and the men were using daggers rather than swords, and InThig had taken care of the ones that had gone after it and was now back helping with the rest. The barks and growls and screams were nearly deaf- ening and the brown bodies were beginning to be piled high, but they were still coming on. 1 quickly spoke a spell of power, hoping it would do some good, but no such luck.

The dog-things were warded, and all my spell did was make them shiver, as though shaking water off their backs.

I would have enjoyed muttering curses under my breath, but you can't do that and speak a spell at the same time. I looked at the dog-things and Saw down to the bones and hearts of them, described their basic patterns, then created me daggers keyed to those patterns. The long, sharp dag- gers winked into existence, gleamed silver in the sunlight, then quickly turned a smeared red as they began doing

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their job. Growls turned to screams and whines and yelps, men disappeared into twitching silence; in a matter of minutes the daggers were done, and so were the dog-things.

It would have been nice if we could have ridden away from there then, but just about everyone but me had been clawed and bitten and first needed to be healed. 1 kept the daggers on alert as I first Saw to the horses and then the people, mending them one at a time as I had no choice about doing. You can get away with ma.s.s healing if everyone has a headache or indigestion or a fever, banish- ing the ailment in general rather than getting down to specifics; when it comes to wounds, though, you rarely have anything but specifics.

Once everyone was taken care of we moved on again, grimly determined to remember that we were moving toward the gate oul of there, not just on to the next attack on the list. After the first few minutes 1 got rid of the daggers that were keyed to the dog-things, certain the next, group of attackers would be something new, and it turned out I was right. The sun had risen angry and hot, making the air around us heavy and too quiet, and that's the direction the open-ended balloons came from, the over-bright, too-silent sky. Unfortunately for them their shadows gave us warn- ing, and we looked up to see them no more than fifty feet above us, descending rapidly like gaping, orange mouths moving soundlessly in for the kill.

Dranna gave a small gasp of horror, but even she was becoming too used to being attacked to go all screaming and hysterical. The sound of swords being drawn was a single sound, caused by everyone doing it at the same moment, but there was no need to let things come to close-up combat. I spoke the spell and gestured in the necessary arc, and when the balloon things reached a height of ten feet above us, they began frying and explod- ing in fiery blue sparks. I'd extended one of my personal defenses to cover all of us, a defense I wouldn't have been able to make adequate use of if the balloons had been as substantial, say, as the dog-things. For some reason spread- ing out a field tike that thins it, making it more and more tenuous the more it's stretched. The dog-things might have

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sizzled a little going through it, but that would have been alt; the balloon things were too flimsy to ignore even that weak a charge, and as they fell into it they fried and burned.

As soon as all the balloon-mouths were caught in the field, we rode away from the greasy smudges floating in the still air. It would have been nice if everything could have been kept away from us that easily, but it wasn't a fun-time joy ride we were on. The next attackers were very tiny but their teeth weren't, and they soared out of a nearby stand of trees to reach us. The others needed to be healed again after that, and the silence we rode on in was thicker than it had been.