Enchanter's End Game

will have any strength left to fight them."
    "It's a gamble, Uncle," she admitted, "but the Grolims are stubborn. They'll try to protect this fog bank even after all chance of maintaining it has gone. They'll get tired, too. Maybe too tired to try anything else."
    "I don't like maybes."
    "Have you got a better idea?"
    "Not right now, no."
    "All right, then."
    They joined hands again.
    It took, it seemed to the princess, an eternity. With her heart in her throat she stared at the two of them as they stood with their hands joined and their eyes closed - reaching out with their minds toward the hot, barren uplands to the west, trying with all their strength to pull that heated air down into the broad valley of the River Mardu. All around her, Ce'Nedra seemed to feel the oppressive chill of Grolim thought lying heavily on the stagnant air, holding it, resisting all effort to dissipate the choking fog.
    Polgara was breathing in short gasps, her chest heaving and her face twisted with an inhuman striving. Beldin, his knotted shoulders hunched forward, struggled like a man attempting to lift a mountain.
    And then Ce'Nedra caught the faintest scent of dust and dry, sunparched grass. It was only momentary, and she thought at first that she had imagined it. Then it came again, stronger this time, and the fog eddied sluggishly. But once more that faint scent died, and with it the breath of air that had carried it.
    Polgara groaned then, an almost strangled sound, and the fog began to swirl. The wet grass at Ce'Nedra's feet, drenched with droplets of mist, bent slightly, and the dusty smell of the Thullish uplands grew stronger.
    It seemed that the blanket of concentration that had held the fog motionless became more desperate as the Grolims fought to stop the quickening breeze pouring down the valley from the acrid stretches to the west. The blanket began to tatter and to fall apart as the weaker of the Grolims, pushed beyond their capacity, collapsed in exhaustion.
    The breeze grew stronger, became a hot wind that rippled the surface of the river. The grass bent before it, and the fog began to seethe like some vast living thing, writhing at the touch of the arid wind.
    Ce'Nedra could see the still-burning city of Thull Mardu now, and the infantry lines drawn up on the plain beside the river.
    The hot, dusty wind blew stronger, and the fog, as insubstantial as the thought that had raised it from the earth, dissolved, and the morning sun broke through to bathe the field in golden light.
    "Polgara!" Durnik cried in sudden alarm.
    Ce'Nedra whirled in time to see Polgara, her face drained deathly white, slowly toppling to the earth.

Chapter Seventeen
    LELLDORIN OF WILDANTOR had been nervously pacing back and forth along the ranks of his bowmen, stopping often to listen for any sound coming out of the fog from the field lying in front of the massed infantry. "Can you hear anything?" he asked urgently of a Tolnedran legionnaire standing nearby.
    The Tolnedran shook his head.
    That same whisper came out of the fog from a dozen different places.
    "Can you hear anything?"
    "Can you hear anything?"
    "What are they doing?"
    Somewhere to the front, there was a faint clink.
    "There!" everyone cried almost in unison.
    "Not yet!" Lelldorin snapped to one of his countrymen who was raising his bow. "It could be just a wounded Thull out there. Save your arrows."
    "Is that a breeze?" a Drasnian pikeman asked. "Please, Belar, let it be a breeze."
    Lelldorin stared into the fog, nervously fingering his bowstring. Then he felt a faint touch of air on his cheek.
    "A breeze," someone exulted.
    "A breeze." The phrase raced through the massed army.
    Then the faint breath of air died, and the fog settled again, seeming thicker than ever.
    Someone groaned bitterly.
    The fog stirred then and began to eddy sluggishly. It was a breeze! Lelldorin held his breath.
    The fog began to move, flowing gray over the ground like water.
    "There's something moving out there!" a Tolnedran barked. "Get ready!"
    The flowing fog moved faster, thinning, melting in the hot, dusty breeze blowing down the valley. Lelldorin strained his eyes to the front. There were moving shapes out there, no more than seventy paces from the infantry.
    Then, as if all its stubborn resistance had broken at once, the fog shimmered and dissolved, and the sun broke through. The entire field before them was filled with Malloreans. Their stealthy forward pace froze momentarily as they flinched in