With a quarter of a mile remaining to the cover of a feather-tree copse at the bottom of the slope, Castor's panting reached an anguished level. The Fanist grabbed him with his upper two arms, lightly tossed him over his shoulder, and began to sprint for the small grove. As soon as he and Grantin had slipped under cover of the feather tree's drooping branches, Chom dived to the ground and pulled Grantin down beside him.
"What's the matter?"
"Someone comes."
"Where?"
"From behind. Someone or something is coming very fast."
Grantin and Castor squinted at the hillside behind them. Though the grass was a lush green, at its deepest point it stood barely a foot high and offered little scope for a stealthy advance. Grantin studied the hillside but spied no pursuers.
"I don't see anything. Are you sure someone is there?"
"Wait, I think see something, to the right about a hundred feet above the top of the ridge there's a sparkle of some sort in the sky."
Chom sped forward, crawling on his four elbows and two knees. The Fanist's gray hide blended perfectly with the fallen leaves, branches, and bare earth beneath the feather trees.
"Chom, what is it?" Grantin called, pointing at the approaching glimmer.
"I am not sure. I noticed it just before we reached the grove. I cannot make it out. It looks like a large glass ball with something dark inside. We will have to wait until it comes closer."
As the apparition neared, the angle at which the sun impinged upon its surface shifted and the sphere became transparent. As it passed abeam of the feather trees its composition was clearly illuminated. More than anything else the craft resembled a soap bubble twenty feet in diameter. Inside, a vital, bronze-skinned man was seated in a rich red-velvet chair. Hazar rode the winds like a king. On the transparent floor in front of the Gogol lord sat a disheveled Mara. To Hazar's left, a thin figure in a black robe and a wizard's pointy hat lay twisted, his body tightly secured with bands of coarse rope. Even allowing for the awkward angle of view, Grantin was certain the body was that of his uncle Greyhorn.
"Do you think he saw us?"
"I do not think so, but our troubles are not over. From now on there are bound to be guards, warning posts, deadfalls, traps, and alarms. We must devise a plan of defense."
"What do you suggest?"
"Grantin, your stone is capable of projecting great amounts of energy. You must work on a spell which could be used to destroy any missiles or physical attacks made against us. Castor, what sort of spells do you possess?"
"I can defend us against psychic intrusion and attacks by magic."
"Very well. Grantin, if you can neutralize Shenar's spell, for my part I will attempt to detect ambushes and traps."
"How am I going to do that?"
"Shenar's hex enfolds me like a blanket. Close your eyes and visualize me through your bloodstone as if it were the window to your brain."
Grantin sat cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, his fingers caressing the stone. Chom's form swam into view, but hazily, as if seen through wrappings of dirty gauze. Shenar had been a master wizard indeed. His spell had survived even his own death. Grantin visualized a pair of psychic hands which, under the control of his mind's eye, ripped away the gauze that swaddled Chom's form. A moment later Grantin opened his eyes and looked questioningly at the Fanist. "I am free," Chom announced.
A few minutes later the three moved out with Grantin rubbing his bloodstone while Chom and Castor each fingered the powerstone appropriate to his race. Chom led the group a rough zigzag course through clumps of trees, back and forth across the stream, and at least once through a patch of immature razorbrush.
It was after the sixth hour when they reached the last bit of shelter before the mountain. Ahead a grassy meadow extended several hundred yards up to the edge of the mountain's sheer walls. The fugitives studied the clearing in the same way that a cliff diver stares at the sea beneath him.
"Why don't they do something?" Grantin whispered. "They must know we're here."
"Perhaps they don't have enough men to risk meeting us in the open," Castor suggested.
"No," Chom replied. "They are just waiting until they have us bottled up in the caverns where we will not have room to maneuver. A few men in front, a few behind, and they will keep us trapped until we fall asleep from fatigue. They know we cannot maintain a spell forever."
"In that case, why don't we avoid the passage and simply climb the walls?" the Gray asked.
"They would detect us there as well. How long could we repel the boulders they would drop from above?"
"Chom, couldn't you and Grantin construct a bubble like that which carried Hazar-something which would float us up over the wall?"
"Perhaps, but it would take all our energy. A hasty flotation spell might get us off the ground, but we would have no power left to repel Hazar's bolts and blasts."
"Why couldn't all three of us work together on the same spell?" Grantin suggested. "With the power added by the stones it should at least be equal to anything Hazar and his men can command against us."
"What kind of spell?" Castor asked. Chom considered.
"It must be something simple, an image all three of us can grasp at once. Any weakness, any imbalance, could cause a feedback and destroy us all."
"Why not just create a band of demons and send them on ahead to destroy Hazar's defenders?"
Chom and Castor considered Grantin's suggestion and agreed to give it a try.
"Each of us will create one demon," the young Hartford suggested, "and send it through the tunnels to clear the way."
Grantin closed his eyes and caressed the powerstone. In the clearing a hundred yards ahead a misty red shape began to form. In a few seconds the apparition had congealed into an eight-foot-high biped each of whose arms was tipped with five long steel talons. From the beast's mouth protruded four great fangs which dripped droplets of blood-red saliva. With sweat beading his forehead, Grantin opened his eyes and practiced putting the monster through its paces, causing it to march awkwardly left and right and slash the air with its taloned paws.
Grantin noticed that Chom had also completed his demon, but one of a wildly different sort: a hazy bluish six-foot mound of plastic ooze. From its upper portions a myriad of hand-tipped pseudopods flashed from its bulk, whipped the air with crazy strangling motions, and then retracted again.
Castor finished his creation last. It was as different from the others as they were from each other. Where Grantin's monster had two arms and Chord's hundreds, Castor's had none at all. Instead he created a snake fifteen feet long and four in diameter, with a massive head, twin foot-long poison fangs, and a gigantic hinged jaw which could easily swallow a man whole.
Grantin's demon, the first to be created, now exhibited the most lifelike movements, even down to the nervous whipping of its long, thin tail.
"Grantin, you seem to be the most practiced of us. Perhaps your monster should go first."
Grantin directed his attention to the beast and maneuvered it several quick bounds forward toward the mountain. Suddenly it slowed and stopped. "What's the matter?" Castor asked.
"I don't know. It is becoming harder to control, almost as if it has a life of its own." As if to demonstrate the accuracy of Grantin's report, the creature turned back toward the copse, raised both claws high, and emitted a bone-chilling growl.
"I can't control it! It's getting away from me. It's angry with me for bringing it here; I can feel its hatred. The beast wants to kill us all," Grantin screamed as the monster began a purposeful stride toward the small grove.
Another shape flashed behind Grantin's creature. Just as the beast broke into a loping trot hundreds of translucent blue tentacles wrapped themselves around its body. The two demons rolled in epic battle, steel-tipped claws slashing deep into the putty-like structure of Chom's creation while the Fanist's monster sought to extrude itself into a wide thin shape which might enfold and presumably digest the beast.
Castor by now was also losing control of his creation. The snake exhibited signs of extreme excitement at the sight of the writhing blue and red masses. At last, unable to be restrained any longer. Castor's demon slithered forward, opened its jaws to their fullest extent, and attempted to swallow both combatants whole. More pseudopods shot out of the blue mass. Before the writhing bundle could be swallowed completely, the tentacles extended themselves to their farthest limit. They whipped around and around the snake's great head, tying its jaws together with translucent blue cable. The snake found itself unable either to regurgitate its meal or maneuver it into its stomach. Wildly disconcerted by this state of affairs, the demons whipped wildly back and forth and fled headlong across the basin.
With equal parts of terror and fatigue, a sweating, weak-kneed Grantin slumped to the ground, to be joined there shortly by his two comrades.
"What happened? Did Hazar turn our creations against us?"
"No, I do not think so," Chom replied. "We are not experienced at this sort of thing. We made our monsters too real. We called them up as if they were alive and visualized them having minds of their own. We created them with all the ferocity, savageness, and intelligence which we imagined a real creature of that sort would possess. They could do no less than become as we imagined them."
"Perhaps," Castor suggested, "the solution lies in imagining something without a mind at all-for example, a wall of flame which would travel through the tunnel engulfing all it passed."
"And what if there's something flammable in there?" Grantin protested. "What if they put Mara in the tunnel as a hostage? All they need do is stand back out of the way until the flames have passed and then attack us when we enter. No, it must be something which stops them and also protects us. A spell of some sort that doesn't necessarily kill."
"Perhaps Castor had the right idea in reverse. I propose that we surround ourselves with a wall of ice which will freeze anyone who attempts to penetrate it."
"Good, Chom-but not a wall of ice, a cloud, a transparent cloud. It should be a light mist so that we can see through it. Something so thin and delicate that Hazar's men will blunder into it unafraid. Something that does not kill but stiffens the victim, knots up his arms and legs, and numbs his brain."
"It is as good a suggestion as any. Castor, what do you think?"
"If you and Grantin think it will work, I am willing to try."
"Very well, then. We must work together. Let us all visualize the same thing. Grantin, you are the most familiar with what this field should resemble. Describe it as you see it."
"It's a mist, a light, pale white mist the color of steam as it first begins to rise from a bubbling kettle. I see it as a shell, a sphere around us, penetrating the rock fifteen feet over our heads and ten feet on either side as we walk abreast. The field moves as we move, turns as we turn, and as long as we stay together it cannot touch us. I see a Gogol soldier running toward us. He walks through the field and is instantly frozen stiff. He turns and falls, his arms and legs still bent in the positions they held as he penetrated its edge."
"I see it!" Castor suddenly exclaimed. "Another soldier comes toward us. He has seen his comrade fall, but he does not understand the field and he extends his arm into it. The arm stiffens and becomes as immobile as a piece of iron. He stares at the member in horror, then, he turns and runs from us, screaming."
"I see it, too," Chom declared. "A band of Gogols waits in a side passage, hoping to catch us from behind. We sense them and break into a run. The edge of the bubble races forward keeping pace with us. Our shield penetrates the solid rock and swirls over them, freezing them like statues. One of them has managed to fall backward out of the way and is unhurt. Grantin stands to my left and, seeing the soldier, he moves a few feet away from me. The bubble bulges in the direction that Grantin has moved, catching the Gogol in its grip."
Grantin, Chom, and Castor opened their eyes. Around them they beheld a shimmering sphere exactly as they had imagined it.
"Well, we seem to have done it."
"Yes, Grantin, it would appear so."
"What are we waiting for?" Castor asked.
Grantin ruefully shook his head and for the last time examined the sunny afternoon meadow and the sheer walls of Grog Cup Lake. "How do I get myself involved in these things?" he asked himself as the three advanced on the black crevice which led to the bloodstone mine.