Dragonfang Read Free

cranking arm. Jelindel’s heart sank. There were only three bolts.
    She quickly fitted an iron bolt into the fluted channel of the crossbow, cranked up the string, and aimed. Muttering a spell of true-aim, she let fly. The bolt found its mark and a deadmoon warrior plummeted from the sky.
    ‘Oh Mother of Redemption, lead us …’ prayed several novices in quavering voices.
    ‘We’re holding our own,’ Jelindel reassured them. As if to mock her words, twenty deadmoon warriors that had been held in reserve outside the walls of the Temple suddenly rose into view above the battlements, hovering like a terrible veil of blackness. Their sheer number shattered the spirits of all in the courtyard. Novices and priestesses alike cried out in horror and flung their weapons from them, demoralised.
    Jelindel realised it was part of the enemy’s strategy. In all wars and confrontations, the psychological edge was often the one that bit the sharpest.
    The new reinforcements emitted an eerie cry that paralysed many who heard it with abject fear, and gave all others a sense oftheir own danger. The warriors swooped in for the final all-out kill.
    ‘Hold your ground!’ Jelindel ordered. Some broke rank, but others held firm.
    The same binding spell as before presented itself to Jelindel, but this time it appeared with the symbol for ‘like but unlike’. For an instant it meant absolutely nothing to her. Then she saw what it was trying to tell her. She shouted a new spell at the massed horde screaming down upon them from above.
    ‘ Ketar unsa kitab! ’
    At her utterance the airborne warriors were momentarily blinded.
    Unable to see, and blasting down with speed, they smashed in wave after wave upon the flagstoned walls and battlements, till the Temple was dotted with the broken remains of the aerial assassins. In the light of the bonfire, they looked like so many squashed raisins.
    ‘Back,’ Jelindel cried out to the startled women. ‘Get back!’
    Deadmoon warriors plummeted. But some veered away, eluding Jelindel’s snare. Others managed to save some of their falling brethren.
    Within moments it was all over. But Jelindel was deaf to the praise raining down on her. She was too busy pondering what little difference there was between the words ‘binding’ and ‘blinding’.
    She untangled herself from the clutching novices, who clearly saw her as a newborn messiah, and hurried to the bell tower to check on Kelricka. The crumpled form of the Holy Priestess was still sprawled on the cold stone. But she was breathing and her pulse, though weak, was steady. Jelindel expelled a deep sigh of relief. She fumbled her way to the rearmost wall and felt alongit till she came upon a torch embrasure. She was about to use a lighting spell to ignite the torch when she was struck on the back of the head, and she knew no more.

Chapter 2
            THE TOWER INVIOLATE

    T he thing about being transported to another world via magic is that there are no guarantees where you may land, or if you will land at all. Nor can you pick and choose which reality will be your host.
    When Daretor and Zimak were first flung across the paraworlds, they landed reasonably softly and with few ill effects. It was unfortunate that they arrived at a recent massacre and had had to defend themselves against two brawny victors. Having survived that encounter, Daretor decided that they would attack the freebooters and free their prisoners.
    ‘Daretor, what are you thinking of? There must be a dozen of them, maybe fifteen,’ Zimak remonstrated.
    ‘Maybe more,’ Daretor replied.
    ‘This is the end, this is the beginning,’ thought a resigned Zimak.
    In the next instant, a vortex of bluish light spotlighted them. In that split second their screams were cut off and they werehurled up at such fantastical speed that both men passed out.
    Moments later, a terrifying blast of sound broke like a thunderclap across a darkening sky in which three pale moons rode high