Enchanter's End Game

her side to support her. "Are you all right?" he asked worriedly.
    "Just give me a moment," she said, wilting against him. "That took a great deal of effort." She smiled at him, a wan little smile, and then her head drooped wearily.
    "Won't they come back?" Ce'Nedra demanded. "What I mean is, it didn't actually hurt the real Grolims, did it? Just their shadows."
    Polgara laughed weakly. "Oh, it hurt them, all right," she replied. "Those Grolims don't have shadows any more. Not one of them will ever cast a shadow again."
    "Not ever?" the princess gasped.
    "Not ever."
    Then Beldin joined them, swooping in with the wind tearing at his feathers. "We've got work to do, Polgara," he growled even as he shimmered into his natural shape. "We're going to have to break up this storm they're bringing in from the west. I talked with the twins. They'll work on the southern side of it, and you and I'll take this side."
    She looked at him inquiringly.
    "Their army's going to be advancing right behind the storm," he explained. "There's no point in trying to hold it back now. It's got too much momentum. What we want to do is break open the rear edge of it and let it spill back over the Angaraks."
    "How many Grolims are working on the storm, Uncle?" she asked him.
    "Who knows?" He shrugged. "But it's taking every bit of effort they can muster just to keep it under control. If the four of us hit the back side all at once, the pressures in the storm itself will do the rest."
    "Why not just let it pass over?" Durnik asked. "Our troops aren't children. They won't fall apart just because of a little squall."
    "This isn't just a little squall, blacksmith," Beldin said acidly. Something large and white thudded to the ground a few feet away. "If you get four or five of those hailstones on top of the head, you won't care how the battle turns out."
    "They're as big as hens' eggs," Durnik said in astonishment.
    "And they'll probably get bigger." Beldin turned back to Polgara. "Give me your hand," he told her. "I'll pass the signal to Beltira, and we'll all strike at the same time. Get ready."
    More of the hailstones thudded into the springy turf, and one particularly large one shattered into a thousand fragments as it crashed down on a large rock with stunning force. From the direction of the army came an intermittent banging as the hailstones bounced off the armor of the Mimbrate knights or clanged down on the hastily raised shields of the infantry.
    And then, mixed with the hail, the rain squalls struck-seething sheets of water driven before the wind like raging waves. It was impossible to see, and almost impossible to breathe. Olban jumped forward with his shield raised to protect Ce'Nedra and Errand. He winced once as a large hailstone struck his shoulder, but his shield arm did not waver.
    "It's breaking, Pol!" Beldin shouted. "Let's push it once more. Let them eat their own storm for a while."
    Polgara's face twisted into an agony of concentration, and then she half slumped as she and Beldin unleashed their combined wills at the rolling sky. The sound of it was beyond belief as the vast forces collided. The sky ripped suddenly apart and lightning staggered and lurched through the smoking air. Great, incandescent bolts crashed into each other high above, showering the earth beneath with fireballs. Men fell, charred instantly into black, steaming husks in the driving downpour, but the casualties were not only among the men of the west.
    The vast storm with its intolerable pressures recoiled as the combined wills of Polgara and Beldin on the north bank and the twins on the south bank ripped open the back edge of it, and the advancing Malloreans received that recoil full in the teeth. A curtain of lightning swept back across their close-packed ranks like an enormous, blinding broom, littering the earth with their smoking dead. As the fabric of Grolim sorcery which had driven the stormfront toward the river ripped apart, the gale winds suddenly reversed and flowed back, shrieking and howling, confounding the advancing Angaraks with rain and hail.
    From out of the center of the dreadful cloud overhead, swirling fingers of murky black twitched and reached down toward the earth with hideous roaring sounds. With a last, almost convulsive jerk, one of those huge, swirling funnels touched the earth in the midst of the redclad Malloreans. Debris sprayed up and out from the point of the dreadful vortex as, with ponderous immensity, it cut an erratic