Tomas strode into the clearing and saw the first creature. It was one of the large ‘wolves’ lying across the threshold of a hut and as soon as it saw Tomas it leapt to its feet, took a bounding jump and with a ghostly howl attacked him. Tomas’s golden blade arced through the air and when it struck the creature there was an explosion of sparks, energy so bright that Jim, Kaspar and Jommy were forced to look away. A smoking gash where the blade struck erupted into tiny flames of silver and the creature staggered, then fell over on its side. With a gasp it went limp, then suddenly its entire form was engulfed in silver flames.
The commotion caused the human-like ‘riders’ and their creatures to erupt from the huts. Tomas lay about him with his sword, his speed and power astonishing. Miranda stood with hands outstretched and lances of dazzling blue energy skewered any creature that attacked her. Where her spells struck, the creatures were thrown backwards, crashing into the huts or sliding across the ground.
The howl of rage and pain was the strangest sound any of the three onlookers had ever heard, a distant empty hooting and grunting that echoed as if from the depths of some distant canyon. Miranda changed her attack and a booming sphere of white light exploded from around her. It passed through Tomas with apparently no ill effect, but when it struck any of the dark and smoky forms, they fell writhing and their echoing cries grew louder.
Tomas moved with stunning speed, wheeling his sword to left and right, and each time he struck a creature fell. With no defence due to Miranda’s spell, the remaining creatures fell to him as if he were a farmer scything down wheat.
He moved to the stone cage where the Void-darters were thrashing around, trying to batter their way to freedom. ‘Miranda, can you destroy those things without opening the door?’
‘What kills them?’
He held out his blade. ‘This contains magic which was ancient before man came to this world. As long as I have held it, I do not know exactly what went into its fashioning. But those things are feeders on life and so is this blade.’
Miranda said, ‘I think I know something I can try.’ She waved her hands in a quick, intricate pattern, and a pulsing globe of purple light sprang into being before her. With a wave of her hand she sent it crashing into the cage and as soon as it touched the creatures they began to thrash about even more violently. Still they did not die.
Miranda tried another approach and a wash of fire appeared from the palms of her outstretched hands. The flames burned bright orange and when they struck the creatures seemed to go rigid and fall to the ground. Tomas instantly threw up the latch, opened the door and was in the cage slashing with his sword until every darter was nothing more than smoking black char.
Miranda said, ‘Those things are very hard to kill.’
Jommy, Kaspar and Jim came to stand next to Tomas. Kaspar had been given a vision of the Dasati world by the god Kalkin and had been the one to carry the warning of the Dasati incursion into Midkemia to the Conclave, but even he had never seen their like before. He said as much. ‘Are they some sort of Dasati I don’t recognize?’
Miranda said, ‘They’re nothing like the Deathpriests.’
Tomas looked grim. ‘They are not of the Dasati.’ He looked deeply troubled. ‘They are worse, far worse.’
Jim looked at Kaspar and Jommy. ‘Worse?’
‘There is a crack in the face of reality, a tear in the universe, and what you see here is seepage from the Void. That is why the huts and fire are so alien. This place is now an anchor for that rift. More of those things can find their way here unless we—’ He looked completely around, and then asked Miranda, ‘Can you destroy everything here?’
‘Everything?’ she asked.
‘To the soil beneath our feet, to a depth of —’ he calculated.
‘Twenty feet. Everything. There must be nothing but a large hole in the ground here when you’ve finished.’
Moving away from the centre of the village, Miranda said, ‘Blowing things up was more Magnus’s predilection when he was young, but if you just want things destroyed, I can do it.’ To the four men she said, ‘You’d better move down the trail.’
They did as she requested and after a moment they saw her climb onto a low boulder, affording her a view of the village. She began a long and complicated enchantment and suddenly the ground beneath their feet shook and the trees nearby swayed. It felt as if a massive earthquake had been unleashed. But rather than rolling, it became a series of sharp shifts, as if someone were shaking the ground by hand in staccato jerks. Then a low sound, not the usual rumbling of an earthquake, but rather a deep, grinding howl started and grew in intensity. When it reached a volume that caused Jommy, Kaspar and Jim to cover their ears, a deafening eruption blew a massive tower of earth, rock and trees into the sky. It was as if a pair of vast, invisible hands had scooped up the soil beneath the village and everything on it, ground it all into dust and rocks and tossed the mass high into the sky.
Miranda hurried down to the four men and said, ‘We should get down the trail quickly. It’s about to start raining rocks.’
The five of them ran down the trail and as she had predicted, a pelting fall of stones and soil began to rain over them. Fortunately, they were near the edge of it when it began and quickly left the cascade of earth and rocks behind them.