“Dread Master?” Pryddian spoke tentatively.
Dzhir Kar gestured and a wall of heatless blue fire sprang into being across the door to Pryddian’s alcove. The apprentice cringed back away from the deadly flame.
“Stay there until we return,” he croaked and hobbled out.
It turned out to be nearly as hard to keep the hunt going as it had been to avoid it entirely. By alternately showing and concealing himself, Wiz was able to keep his pursuers after him. Once or twice he almost had to shout at them to bring them back on the track. At first he worried about being too obvious. Then he saw that the wizards were so eager to catch him that nothing could make them pause to consider his motives.
He had to wait for several minutes outside the gate near the strange tower before he was spotted by a wizard. Then three of them came around the corner at once and let fly at him with a flurry of lightning bolts as he dodged through.
“This way, Dread Master, this way,” the wizards chorused a few moments later when Dzhir Kar came up, using his staff as a crutch.
“He did not go beyond this place,” another assured him. “We came from all point of the compass.”
Dzhir Kar peered through the gate at the courtyard beyond. The square was windowless with walls perhaps four times the height of a man. A single door gaped on the opposite side of them from the gateway.
“Trapped!” Dzhir Kar crowed. “There is no way out of that building. We have him now. Spread out, brothers. Spread out fingertip to fingertip and we will hunt down our Sparrow.” He picked up a handful of windblown dust from the marble paving and threw it into the air before him.
“Use the dust. It will show his form.”
The wizards quickly formed a ragged line. Two paces apart they advanced across the court, tossing dust into the air as they went.
Lying on his belly on the roof of the building Wiz watched them come. It had taken him the better part of the night to chop and pry a hole in the roof so he would have this vantage point and escape route. Now all he could do was watch and wait—and be ready to run if his plan went awry.
The line of wizards was half-way across the square when the shadows in the building began to move. As one man they stopped, forewarned by their magical senses. The line wavered as some of them stepped back, away from the darkened doorway where something was clearly stirring. Wiz held his breath.
And into the square came the demon Bale-Zur.
Normal mortals would have fled. But wizards need courage beyond ordinary men and women. Besides, they knew it would be futile to run.
A score of wizards threw back their sleeves and raised their staffs almost in unison. Suddenly it was Hell out for the Fourth of July in the square.
Magics flashed and roared across the square. Spells crackled through the air to bounce off the demon like many-hued lightnings. Balls of green and purple and blinding white fire flew this way and that across the square.
None of it mattered. Bale-Zur did not even flinch as he came across the marble flagging with a hopping, toad-like gait. A wizard screamed as the creature reached out with great rending claws.
Crippled as he was, Dzhir Kar could not run. He stood his ground to the end, flinging spells at the demon until the clawed hand reached down and scooped him up to the rending, blood-stained jaws.
The last few wizards tried to run, but it made no difference. In spite of his clumsy gait Bale-Zur was far faster than any human. Their screams mingled with the demon’s roars as he crushed the life out of them. Wiz clapped his hands to his ears and turned away from the scene in the court below him.
Then all was silent. There were no more cries, no more roars, no more crash and flash of magic. Suddenly the only sound was the icy wind playing over the stonework and making weird little whistling noises as it stirred the dust below.