Guardians of the West

"Yes, Aunt Pol."

After he had helped her to the ground, she looked at him soberly. "There's a large cult force lying in wait two leagues ahead of you," she told him.

"How large?"

"Half again as large as yours."

"We'd better go tell the others," he said grimly, turning his horse.

"Is there any way we could slip around them?" Durnik asked after Polgara had told them all of the cultists lying in ambush ahead.

"I don't think so, Durnik," she replied. "They know we're here, and I'm sure we're being watched."

"We must needs attack them, then," Mandorallen asserted. "Our cause is just, and we must inevitably prevail."

"That's an interesting superstition, Mandorallen," Barak told him, "but I'd prefer to have the numbers on my side." The big man turned to Polgara. "How are they deployed? What I mean is-"

"I know what the word means, Barak." She scraped a patch of ground bare with her foot and picked up a stick.

"This trail we're following runs through a ravine that cuts through that low range of hills just ahead. At about the deepest part of the ravine, there are several gullies running up the sides. There are four separate groups of cultists, each one hiding in a different gully." She sketched out the terrain ahead with her stick. "They obviously plan to let us march right into the middle of them and then attack us from all sides at once."

Durnik was frowning as he studied her sketch. "We could easily defeat any one of those groups," he suggested, rubbing thoughtfully at one cheek. "All we really need is some way to keep the other three groups out of the fight."

"That sort of sums it up," Barak said, "but I don't think they'll stay away just because they weren't invited."

"No," the smith agreed, "so we'll probably have to put up some kind of barrier to prevent their joining in."

"You've thought of something, haven't you, Durnik?" Queen Porenn observed.

"What manner of barrier could possibly keep the villains from rushing to the aid of their comrades?" Mandorallen asked.

Durnik shrugged. "Fire would probably work."

Javelin shook his head and pointed at the low gorse bushes in the field beside them. "Everything in this area is still green," he said. "I don't think it's going to burn very well."

Durnik smiled. "It doesn't have to be a real fire."

"Could you do that, Polgara?" Barak asked, his eyes coming alight.

She considered it a moment. "Not in three places at once," she replied.

"But there are three of us, Pol," the smith reminded her. "You could block one group with an illusion of fire; I could take the second; and Garion the third. We could pen all three groups in their separate gullies, and then, after we've finished with the first group, we could move on to the next." He frowned slightly. "The only problem with it is that I'm not sure exactly how to go about creating the illusion."

"It's not too difficult, dear " Aunt Pol assured him. "It shouldn't take long for you and Garion to get the knack of it."

"What do you think?" Queen Porenn asked Javelin.

"It's dangerous," he told her, "very dangerous."

"Do we have any choice?"

"Not that I can think of right offhand."

That's it, then," Garion said. "If the rest of you will tell the troops what we're going to do, Durnik and I can start learning how to build imaginary bonfires."

It was perhaps an hour later when the Rivan troops moved out tensely, each man walking through the gray-green gorse with his hand close to his weapon. The low range of hills lay dark ahead of them, and the weedy track they followed led directly into the boulder-strewn ravine where the unseen Bear-cultists waited in ambush. Garion steeled himself as they entered that ravine, drawing in his will and carefully remembering everything Aunt Pol had taught him.

The plan worked surprisingly well. As the first group of cultists dashed from the concealment of their gully with their weapons aloft and shouts of triumph on their lips, Garion, Durnik, and Polgara instantly blocked the mouths of the other three gullies. The charging cult members faltered, their triumph changing to chagrin as they gaped at the sudden flames that prevented their comrades from joining the fray.

Garion's Rivans moved immediately to take advantage of that momentary hesitation. Step by step the first group of cultists were pushed back into the narrow confines of the gully that had concealed them.

Garion could pay only scant attention to the progress of the fight. He sat astride his horse with Lelldorin at his side, concentrating entirely upon projecting the images of flame and the sense of heat and the crackle of fire across the mouth of the gully opposite the one where the fight was in progress.

Dimly through the leaping flames, he could see the members of the cult trying to shield their faces from an intense heat that was not really there. And then the one thing that had not occurred to any of them happened. The trapped cult-members in Garion's gully began to throw buckets full of water hastily dipped from a stagnant pond on the imaginary flames. There was, of course, no hiss of steam nor any other visible effect of that attempt to quench the illusion. After several moments a cult member, cringing and wincing, stepped through the fire. "It isn't real!" he shouted back over his shoulder. "The fire isn't real!"

"This is, though," Lelldorin muttered grimly, sinking an arrow into the man's chest. The cultist threw up his arms and toppled over backward into the fire -which had no effect on his limp body. That, of course, gave the whole thing away. First a few and then a score or more cult members ran directly through Garion's illusion. Lelldorin's hands blurred as he shot arrow after arrow into the milling ranks at the mouth of the gully. "There're too many of them, Garion," he shouted. "I can't hold them. We'll have to fall back."

"Aunt Pol!" Garion yelled. "They're breaking through!"

"Push them back," she called to him. "Use your will."

He concentrated even more and pushed a solid barrier of his will at the men emerging from the gully. At first it seemed that it might even work, but the effort he was exerting was enormous, and he soon began to tire. The edges of his hastily erected barrier began to fray and tatter, and the men he was trying so desperately to hold back began to find those weak spots.

Dimly, even as he bent all of his concentration on maintaining the barrier, he heard a sullen rumble, almost like distant thunder.