his view of the far bank below the bridge where Roxane’s house lay, the house
where Gilla was now….
“What will you do?” he asked the mage.
“I have a Power Globe of my own,” Randal said thoughtfully. “Perhaps I can use
it to counter Roxane’s magics. I can try.” He looked over at Lalo.
“There’s no way I can help you here.” Lalo answered the question in the mage’s
eyes. “But if my hands are no use for magic, at least they can build a dyke as
well as another man’s. I will be down there.” He gestured toward the river. If
he could do nothing to save Gilla, at least he could be near her when the river
swept everything away.
From the floods, at least, Gilla was not in danger. The bubble of magic with
which Roxane had surrounded her house repelled the waters as it repelled all
other sorceries. The personnel inside the house were another matter. So far,
Snapper Jo had warned off the green house snakes- six feet long with blank
ophidian stares more disturbing than the beynit’s vicious gleam; undeads with
empty eyes and the rotting stink of unburied flesh; and assorted thralls whose
bodies yet breathed but whose souls had fled or, worse yet, were locked in some
tormented reality from which an occasional gleam of awareness appealed to Gilla
for a release from pain.
Even keeping a houseful of children indoors through a solid month of rain-which
had been Gilla’s previous definition of purgatory-paled by comparison. And of
course, even when she had lived in the depths of poverty at the edge of the
Maze, Gilla had never allowed her house to reach such a state of squalor.