Phoenix Rising by Ryk E Spoor Page B

belched from the mass of rock as the remaining fire-essence sought release from within the rockfall. He tumbled uncontrollably, fetching up with a jolt against the base of another stalagmite.
    Slowly the rockfall slackened from a fall to a stream to a trickle of sifting dust. Duckweed righted himself gingerly and listened. Everything was deathly silent except for the slow grumble of settling stone and the faint hissing of dampness boiling away from the heat of the fire essence. Dust clouded everything and for long moments he couldn’t see anything; only the eerie rock-fire in the center provided light at all, and it was half-buried and slowly, slowly starting to fade.
    But as the dust gradually cleared, the faint breeze showing that some small outlet, at least, remained to the surface, Duckweed became aware that there was another source of light. A glowing sphere floated about fifty feet away, near a shadowy upright silhouette.
    “So near. So very near. By the Gods Below, how could this have happened? ” It was the same human voice, filled with disbelief and rage. Muttered arcane words, and a wind ripped through the remaining cavern, clearing away the dust as though it had never been. Only some small clouds remained, seeming to glow in the unnatural light.
    Duckweed could see now, in the flickering light from both rockfire and magical glow. Human, all right, long brown hair in carefully arranged braids, a set of three long, fine white scars in parallel on his bare upper right arm. He wore some sort of leather protective garment that left his arms clear. His lower half was dressed in black cloth pants with tough-looking leather boots.
    Much more worrisome for Duckweed were the eyes, which were now focused on him.
    “Could it be . . . ?” The man studied him intensely; abruptly, a strange carven crystal implement was in his hand, pointing in Duckweed’s direction. “Speak now if you can, Toad, or I will incinerate you where you sit.”
    The little Toad debated the question for a moment, but as the tanned hand began to tighten on the crystal, hopped forward a pace. “All right. I’m speaking.”
    A hiss, almost like that of a mazakh , escaped the man. “Surprising. Surprising. Would I be correct in surmising you are responsible for all this?”
    Duckweed shrugged. “Well, some of it. I didn’t really mean to bring the whole cave down. You had waaaaay too much of that fire-essence stuff.”
    The man gave a very small humorless grin. “So it would appear.”
    Duckweed blinked. It looked as though one of the clouds of dust was getting bigger. And the color looked . . . wrong.
    “Your people are usually such lazy cowards. What fortune brought me you ? One willing to risk such dangers as you cannot even imagine . . . and with such magnificent timing! You have ruined years of work, and with but seconds to spare.” The wizard—for he was clearly some kind of magician—shook his head slowly. “Truly, I would like to take weeks to devise a suitable punishment for—”
    “Sssummonnerr . . .”
    The voice was faint, distant, yet cut through all other sound as a blade through grass, a hiss and a scrape as of metal claws climbing a cliff of granite. “Summoner . . .”
    The man whirled. Scarcely ten feet from him, the thing Duckweed had taken for a strange dust cloud had grown larger, a perfectly circular pearlescent gateway, and within it something of polished black armor, bladed, edged, eyes that glittered with facets, mandibles and cutting, grasping mouth, something huge and terrible and very, very near to entering indeed. “My Lord . . .”
    “Complete . . . the Summoning . . .”
    The wizard glanced around. “I . . . I cannot. My pentacle is—”
    “Ssspeak my Name, human. Sspeak it and I shall be free.”
    Duckweed was appalled. All he’d done, and the summoning could still be completed? With a broken pentacle? No, no, that’s not just bad, that’s very, very bad, like a drought that makes the whole lake dry