Page 86 of Valdemar

“The birds are shielded!”he shouted, his words picked up and relayed in either direction, and echoed a moment later by Ardatha’s mental “shout,” :The birds are shielded!: The distinctive echo of Ardatha’s Mindvoice told him that the Companion had just projected the warning into everyone’s mind, even those who didn’t have Mindspeech.

No point in wasting any conventional weapons on the maka’ar. A Poomer shot could fell one, shields or not, but the chances of hitting were minuscule. For this section of the wall at least, the defense would have to depend on Kordas and Isla.

Isla said, “Dust defense,” and Kordas knew just what to do. The King and Queen joined their spellwork as easily as joining hands.

Let’s see what we can do about those shields.

This was hardly a conventional spell. In fact, it was the equivalent of a street fighter picking up a handful of dirt and throwing it in his opponent’s face. When the mages had been stretching their brains trying to think of smaller magic that the Adept would be unprepared for, this was something Isla had thought of, and it had made Jonaton cackle.

With the first gesture, lids flipped open and a thick, nearly impenetrable cloud of dust rose up from bins spaced around the base of the wall behind them—a fine dust specifically created for fire suppression by Pebble, but this series of spells was a wholly different application indeed. With the second gesture, the dust, churning in the air by a magically induced updraft, got charged. This was a variation on the spell to bring down lightning, and no doubt everyone could feel their hair standing up. Small snapping sounds and curses were heard along the wall as the charge built up. In unison, Kordas and Isla raised palms up as if pushing from the ground within the Palace complex, then tilted their palms toward the flying maka’ar, and a strong, broad gust of wind brought the surface of the monsters’ shields an opposite charge, which was the other half of the lightning spell. A fourth synchronized gesture, looking like throwing an invisible sack of beans, and the cloud of dust flew to meet the maka’ar.

When dust cloud met maka’arjust before they reached the wall, well . . . if the situation had not been so deadly, Kordas would have laughed. Where there had been a flock of deadly, airborne creatures headed for their position, there was now a giant cluster of fuzzy-looking beige spheres, and squawks of confusion and rage from inside them.

The maka’armanaged to make it over the wall, intent on swooping back to engage, but when the dust cloud enveloped them, their already-meager cohesion abandoned them. Maka’arhovered in place, tried to “dive” in every direction but down, and some just turned in drunken-looking circles. Defending the wall, the Poomers boomed, and the monsters below the walls howled, shrieked, screamed, screeched, or otherwise registered their objection and pain. Above, the maka’ar were doubtlessly gulping in lung-clogging dust, and they couldn’t see to attack, they couldn’t see to fly, and they couldn’t see to land. The only way to enable any of those things was to disperse their shields. Would the Adept do that?

Well, they were on the other side of the wall now, and not Kordas’s problem—the maka’ar-problem solvers were arriving just now to handle them. Jonaton and the Old Men arrived on the scene by a single-horse narrow wagon, trailed by a dozen students and porters on foot, laden with satchels, midsized trunks, and sailor bags. Jonaton spotted Kordas and Isla up on the wall, shouldered a second bag, and ran for the stairs to join them on the walkway. Wis and Ponu coordinated the porters, and Sai assembled the apprentice mages—a diverse lot from elder to adolescent, and all awestruck by the battle—into circles of six, each around a hastily planted, saddle-sized, folding copper pyramid capped by a device of glass. The students immediately began casting, resulting in completely straight beams of light lancing out, from the glass to individual balls of dust. The lines moved wherever the dust-bound maka’ar wandered, only gaining in brightness over time.

Targeting assistance, visibly tracking the shields. There’s much more to light-spells than just spotlighting performers.

“This was quicker than I’d have liked,” Jonaton huffed when he reached the wall’s top. He set both of his bags down, then set about unfolding the end of the larger one.

“We didn’t expect an attack like this. We weren’t prepared.” Kordas frowned to his longtime friend.

“I’m always prepared,” Jonaton said, jamming his arm into the bag and, apparently, unleashing a mage-bolt. He hoisted the opened bag between the wall’s crenellations, and shook the bag’s contents widely onto the monsters below. Almost immediately, loud cracks and shrieks came from an increasingly disorganized cluster of creatures. Jonaton’s reaction was a half-smile and a “Heh.”

Isla asked, “What . . . ?”

“Animated ropes, made of flexible explosives. They find something living, wrap around it, and detonate. They prioritize the largest targets. Simple.” The number of loud cracking noises and cries increased on the invaders’ side of the wall. “Now let’s get to work,” Jonaton said, slapping his palms together.

Kordas met Jonaton’s eyes and was about to say something, but was interrupted.

“I know.” Jonaton grinned and opened his next bag. “And more coming, when the porters bring them. Students are setting up other fun things. You’ll like this one.” The mage pulled out a plate-sized, metal-edged ring, thickly edged and clearly lathe-turned. “Remember our little spy hole over the Adept’s city? We didn’t know all of this was being set up, due to fog, but it made us suspicious. Must have all been staged under that fog. Clever. This is like that little spy hole, but a lot more local.”

Jonaton waved his hands over the disc and its center shimmered and gave way to—grass. “So how’s the day been?” Jonaton asked conversationally while he pinched his fingers over the disc and mimed pulling something upward. The view inside the outer ring became the battlefield, with the point of view brought up from “ground level” to “quarter furlong.” It was a view of the actual battlefield, not a diagram.

Jonaton set a pocket brazier out and ignited it. “Sleep well?” he asked.

“I was awakened too early,” Kordas answered. He knew this wily old mage well enough to understand, when he acted like nothing at all was happening, big things were happening. “We could use some breakfast,” he continued.

“Oh, me too,” Jonaton said, pulling out a paper-wrapped box with a cord sticking out from one corner. He touched the cord to the brazier, and the fuse burned brightly. “I get in the worst moods when I’m hungry.” With that, he dropped the box into the ring, and they all saw it dwindle into a dot as—out there—it fell among a cluster of the spiders. In a flash of orange and white, there were no spiders, just a hundred pieces of spiders flung from an explosion, which sounded as loud as a Poomer when they heard its report from outside the wall. Jonaton’s forelock was blown away from his face by the explosion’s noisy rush of expanding air through his tiny Gate. He looked satisfied with himself as he offered the King and Queen a stack of the boxes from his bag, and then he sat down to “fly” the view from cluster to cluster of hostile creatures, and snickered when Isla gave one of the boxes a try. “Now, with this, you use the usual gestures for teaching spells to move the aperture around, and when you pull like this, you can get an overall view of the entire field of battle. Push down to get closer. And, since it’s an open Gate, just drop things through when you feel the need. I thought you might like it.”

Kordas also knew when Jonaton was avoiding saying something. “And the dangers, Jonaton?”

“Well, after a half-candlemark, it gets hot enough around the edges to start a fire. If it gets too hot, it’ll ignite its own metal, and someone could lose their vision. Or a hand, or pretty much anything nearby. And don’t get it near a Gate when it’s on. Moon above us, it does not play well with other Gates at all.” He guided the view through the circle over a knot of wyrsa and dropped a lighted box, then whistled. A half-dozen wyrsa faces looked up at the whistle from midair to see Jonaton’s face, which zoomed up out of sight in the next instant. The box exploded in a fireball on the far side of the battlefield, and then there were fewer wyrsa to worry about. “But up until then? I think it’s handy.”

The three of them rained their “gift boxes” upon groups of enemies, resting and recharging their own magic, until they ran out of the boxes. They hadn’t even come close to running out of enemies, but there was no sign of a coherent formation left out there. If there was an active general coordinating that mob, they weren’t showing themselves.

“Oh, I have to try this,” Isla said to Jonaton, while nocking an arrow. “Find me a neck.”

“My Queen, my love for you has never been stronger,” Kordas replied, before hearing status reports from a runner. Isla’s efforts with a bow were successful after a few tries, but it was clearly difficult to determine range through the little Gate’s “window.” Jonaton steered the aperture for Isla’s murderous pleasure, then yelped as he blistered his right hand. “Shuttering to cool,” he warned, while holding the scorched hand to his chest, and he performed the same gestures as before, in reverse, with his other hand. The view through the circle ceased, and Isla laid her bow aside and held his blistering hand while Jonaton hunted up a water bottle from his satchel. Instead of soothing himself, he poured it onto the Gate-circle, which steamed and hissed in response.

And then Kordas, Jonaton, and Isla had a new challenge to face.

The monsters parted and a turtle formation of humans appeared, carrying not just heavy shields over their heads, but a pole-supported structure with a metal roof. They marched it right up to the gate and butted up against it, as arrows and bolts bounced ineffectively off of the structure’s roof. A moment after that, Kordas heard a peculiarly sharp, very loud pop, and ridiculously bright white light, together with showers of sparks, appeared at the outer gate’s portcullis.

The distinct scents of burning wood and red-hot iron came up to them.

“What is that?” Isla shouted over the din.