Battle Magic

As she danced and sang, her white crystals formed a solid, unbroken line. In it tiny shamans danced and twirled like she did. They made swirls in the white stuff without disturbing the evenness of the white line. The more Riverdancer and the small shamans danced, the more his pain eased. When she closed the circle, the fiery agony stopped. The tiny shamans waved to Briar and vanished.

Rosethorn sat up. “Thank you,” she whispered. “That was — horrible. They would have killed us.”

Riverdancer grinned and made a remark.

“Now they will burn, the Yanjingyi,” her translator said. “We will take the power they threw at you and return their curses to them.”

“Can you stop them?” Briar asked as Rosethorn leaned against him. “You don’t even know who has our sweat or whatever it is.”

The translator smiled. “You would be surprised by the things Riverdancer can do on her own.”

Rosethorn leaned against Briar. She was reaching for more of the catapults. Briar put an arm around her and watched the shamans. Several of them had come to make a shielding line in front of Briar, Rosethorn, Evvy, and Luvo. They began to chant softly. Now and then they stamped, or rang tiny bells. Their voices soaked into Briar’s bones, drifting down through them like silt.

Movement in the air caught his attention. From the walls of Garmashing, arrows and big stones took flight, then dropped down into the ranks of the emperor’s army. Again and again the city’s defenders shot, hammering the Yanjingyi enemy on the western side.

Briar let his own magic seep into the hillside. His body was weary; he felt battered after the mage assault. But it was spring: Everything in the southern Gnam Runga Plain was growing. Briar drew only a small part of that strength into his veins, just as he knew Rosethorn drew on part of it. As soon as he was ready, he sped through the interwoven grass roots down the rise and into the flat plain.

Horses thundered over his head. Next came the remains of the catapults Rosethorn had changed to form the trees above him: They hummed with her power. Beyond those lay the weight of more catapults that were in the process of becoming trees once more, stabbing new roots down into the earth. Above the ground he sensed thousands of crossbows and bolts carried by the archers who stood in their ranks around the imperial platform.

Briar was not searching for catapults or archers. He sought the white blaze of magic laid on the cool touch of willow, oak, and gingko.

The mages were bunched in small groups protected by archers, many of them arranged in steps on the great observation platform. To his magical senses they floated at different levels in the air depending on where they stood on the platform. Each mage appeared in his magical vision as a series of bead groups; these glittered with an overlay of Yanjingyi magic. He felt the clash between the magic and the wood’s own power: Didn’t the Yanjingyi mages understand how much more powerful their spells would be if they worked with their materials?

He picked at the alien spells for a moment, curious, then gave up. Whatever they did, it was dedicated to the destruction of the Gyongxin army and the kind of pain that had made Rosethorn scream. He was going to do his best to do some damage to them and to the mages who wielded them.

Briar gave one set of beads a mage’s tap. It released the magic that had been forced on them: The wood was already dry and brittle from lack of care. The beads shattered; the oak ones spraying splinters into the mage’s face, the tough gingko beads cutting the string on which they were threaded. Briar searched for the next cluster of beads, creaking under their magical burden, and tapped them until they broke. When he found a mage who had strung his beads on cotton or linen, he coaxed the fibers to part and gave the beads enough strength to roll out of all reach. Each time he parted a mage from his beads, Briar immediately turned his attention to the next one, hoping to stop any of them from making Rosethorn suffer again.

Briar was deep in a mage trance at her side when Rosethorn sat up with a moan. Riverdancer and her fellow shamans sat close by, sharing dumplings.

“The work here continues,” the translator said, motioning to a group of shamans who danced at the front of the army. Mages in the robes of different temples were nearby, also busy with spell signs and gestures. “There were more of the zayao bombs, one batch over our eastern flank and one over the road behind us. The shamans called up a very strong wind high in the air. It blew half of the zayao balls aimed at our eastern flank onto open ground.” She touched her clasped hands to her head and lips in a prayerful gesture. “The general ordered our people off the road, thinking the enemy might strike there, so the bombs did not kill as many as they could have done. Now they have stopped the zayao bombs, because someone put too many trees in the way.”

Rosethorn cursed bombs and the enemy under her breath. On the slopes below she could see screaming horses and the slumped bodies of soldiers. How many of the wounded and dead were men and women she had joked with, or healed, before? And when would she be able to help the healers again? She felt wrung out. The wind blew the stench of scorched meat and the dark, bleak scent of black powder into her face. Her stomach rolled.

She looked up, and her blood quickened. There was something … off … about the gigantic observation platform that had been at the heart of the imperial army. She got to her feet, shielding her eyes from the sun. Sections of the steps on the platform had collapsed, as if worms had eaten the wood. She could not see well enough to tell if there were bodies on them or not. And part of the entire platform listed sharply to the east. It looked as though a hole had appeared there, knocking the whole monstrous structure off balance.