Free The Rite by Richard Lee Byers Page A

wind blew harder, flinging grit into the air.
    Pavel tied his horse to a branch, then beckoned for Will to follow him. Keeping low, the halfling obeyed, but only until they’d skulked to the edge of the trees, where he heard the wind howling, and the ogres clamoring down in their gorge. The blue hadn’t yet attacked them with fang, talon, or breath weapon, but it had done something on its initial pass. Will just hadn’t been able to tell. In any case, the important thing was that he and Pavel could talk.
    “Hold it!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing, breaking cover?”
    “If we’re lucky,” said Pavel, the blue won’t notice us. It’s busy changing the weather.”
    “But why risk it?”
    “To help the ogres,” Pavel replied as he crept forward. “I’ve never hated you,” observed Will, following, “as much as I do right now.”
    As they stalked toward the ravine, Will felt as exposed and vulnerable as ever in his life. Even an expert housebreaker generally required cover to go undetected, and the barren moor had little to offer. He silently prayed to Brandobaris, Master of Stealth, to hide him and his demented friend, too.
    And perhaps the god heard, for the blue didn’t dive at them. Not yet.
    As they reached the ravine, thunder boomed. Will peered cautiously over the edge, then narrowed his eyes in surprise. Because to all appearances, the terrain at the bottom had changed, from hard, pebbly ground to muck, patches of which steamed, bubbled, and looked as if they’d burn the foot of
    anyone who trod in them. Stranger still, the lower portions of the gully walls had disappeared to reveal further expanses of the same hellish mud flats. Most of the ogres regarded the altered landscape with alarm and confusion. The shaman with the blood-red eye chanted and lashed his flint-tipped spear through a mystic pass, but whatever magic he was attempting, it didn’t seem to be working.
    “The blue cast an illusion.” said Pavel.
    “Obviously,” said Will, “but why?”
    Raindrops started falling.
    “For that,” said the priest.
    He brandished his pendant, recited a prayer, and grew taller, more impressive, the very definition of strength and wisdom. It was a glamour he used to make it easier to influence others. He stood up straight, revealing himself to the ogres. From the way the long-armed brutes with their warty hides gawked, it was obvious they could see him, though Will suspected that from their vantage point, Pavel appeared to be floating in midair.
    “What you’re seeing isn’t real,” Pavel called. Lightning flared, thunder roared, and the rain started hammering down in earnest. “You’re still in the ravine. Grope around, find the walls, and climb out, or at least, partway up.”
    His magically augmented force of personality wasn’t enough to deflect the ogres’ reflexive hatred of humans. Several heaved their long, heavy spears. He had to leap backward to avoid being spitted.
    Will was still hunkered down behind a bump in the ground. He popped up just long enough to spin his warsling and let fly. The skiprock cracked into one ogre’s skull, then rebounded to strike another in the ear. The brutes lurched off balance, their heads bloodied.
    “I’ll kill the next fool who raises a weapon,” he shouted. Pavel stepped back to the brink of the gully. “You’re caught in an illusion.”
    The ogre with the crimson eye snarled like a beast. “I know that, sun priest, but I can break us free. My god is stronger than yours.” He gripped his spear in both oversized knotted fists and raised it over his head in what was plainly the start of an invocation.
    “I didn’t cause this,” Pavel said, “a dragon did.” That made the shaman hesitate, and his followers babble. “The point was to disorient you and stop you from moving, and to hold you in place for the next attack. It’s coming now. Listen, and you’ll hear it.”
    Will strained, and after a moment caught the sound despite