Stalking Darkness

on, plunging her poison into his veins with the last of her strength.
    Micum’s deadened leg folded under him and he felt her grip change as she slowly pulled herself up his body. He could hear Seregil shouting nearby. Micum’s throat worked soundlessly, choked with the vengeful hate of the dyrmagnos.
    Alec was down to the three white arrows when he saw Micum thrashing on the ground just above the pool. His belly went cold as he realized what the monstrous thing clinging to him must be. It was pointless to shoot from here; there was no way to hit the dyrmagnos without killing Micum at the same time. Gripping the arrow like a dagger, Alec bounded down over the rocks, praying he wasn’t already too late.
    Looking back over her shoulder, Beka saw that Braknil’s decuria had succeeded in setting fire to the Plenimaran camp. At this signal, she and Rhylin’s decuria opened fire on the Plenimaran soldiers massed in the natural amphitheater below. From where they stood on the ledges, it was like shooting pigs in a sty.
    They were not the first to fire, however. Even as she loosed arrow after arrow, Beka wondered how Braknil had gotten back here so quickly and what his group was doing on the opposite side of the cove. One of them had managed to hit the sorceress before Beka could give the order for her group to fire. Whatever the case, the prisoners were breaking free below, just as she’d hoped.
    “That’s got them moving,” she growled, turning to the others. “Come on,
urgazhi
, let’s leave them to it.”
    “Hold on, Lieutenant,” whispered Rhylin. “It looks to me like we’re not the only ones who were after them!”
    The frantic prisoners were pushing their captors back toward the cliffs, but a smaller knot of fighting was concentrated near the water’s edge. Torchlight glanced off steel in the shadows of the natural basin that lay in the embrace of the two ridges of high ground. General Mardus was nowhere in sight, but the Plenimaran’s sorceress was still alive and wrestling with a large swordsman.
    Beka’s heart skipped a beat.
    “It can’t be!” she gasped. Then Alec bolted into view from behind a jumble of rocks, splashing wildly through the shallow water toward the struggling pair with nothing but an arrow in his hand.
    Dropping her bow, Beka began scrambling down the steep rock face.
    “What are you doing?” Rhylin cried, catching her by the wrist.
    Beka pulled free so violently that she nearly dragged the startled man over the edge.
    “My father’s down there!” she snapped over her shoulder as she plunged on.
    “Riders,” barked Rhylin behind her, “follow the lieutenant’s lead! Attack!”
    Micum was still struggling weakly beneath the dyrmagnos when Alec reached him. Grasping Beshar by what was left of her hair, Alec plunged the arrow into her neck. The resulting blast knocked him over onto his back, ears ringing.
    Releasing Micum with a wild screech, Irtuk Beshar dragged what remained of herself at Alec and locked a hand around his ankle.
    “I’ll have you after all,” she rasped, pulling herself along his leg with both hands like some nightmare lizard.
    Alec saw his own death in her eyes. In his haste to aid Micum, he’d left the last two white arrows behind with his bow.
    “Aura Elustri!”
he panted, struggling to wrest his sword from the scabbard pinned beneath his leg. Before he could shift it, another blade flashed down, sending the dyrmagnos’ head spinning into the surf.
    Shaking off the clinging hands, Alec lurched to his feet andstared in disbelief as Beka Cavish hacked furiously at the flailing arms and trunk.
    “Get away from it,” he warned. “You can’t kill it.”
    “What are you doing here?” she demanded, backing away from the twitching remains.
    “No time for that. Where’s Micum? Go see to him.”
    Beka found her father lying motionless where he’d fallen, eyes shut as he fought for breath. Sweat ran down his face in rivulets, carving trails in the black strip painted across his eyes.
    “Father, it
is
you!” Beka exclaimed, kneeling to inspect the terrible wound in his leg. The dyrmagnos had torn away skin and muscle in her frenzy, and the raw flesh was already going dangerously dark.
    “Beka?” he gasped, opening his eyes. “Scatter the parts, scatter—it won’t die.”
    “Alec’s doing that,” she assured him. She pulled off her gloves to take his hand and saw for the first time the strange designs that had somehow appeared on her