Vrath watched as his second volley struck the ground and burrowed deep within. The tremors and thunderclap of the impact were deafeningly loud this close, but he did not need to brace himself. The son of Jeel was capable of standing upon still water. This was solid earth. His horses whinnied in distress, and he spoke to them gently, reassuring them.
He watched the ground carefully. It was impossible to tell exactly where Jarsun had burrowed to. The speed with which the Reygistani had achieved that feat was impressive. In a mere blink of an eye, he had split himself again into segments, this time burrowing down instead of flying up. But Vrath had countered the move with that second volley. The snake arrows he had used had penetrated the surface and were now crisscrossing the ground beneath the field in a widespreading pattern impossible to predict or to avoid. This time, no matter how thinly Jarsun divided himself, or how cleverly and quickly he wriggled, he would not escape harm. The snake arrows would turn even the smallest pebbles underground into grains of sand. No living thing could avoid being destroyed by their progress. They would burrow fifty yards deep then be still. By now, Jarsun was probably reduced to a million infinitesimal parts.
Vrath allowed himself a grim twist of his lips to show his satisfac-tion—
When suddenly the ground beneath his chariot erupted.
A wave of wetness drenched his entire form, and metal shards exploded through the air, flying in every direction.
He himself was thrown up, up into the air forty, fifty, sixty . . . a hundred yards high, savaged by a series of ripping, bone-deep cuts and stabs and punctures, spurting blood and precious fluids from a hundred wounds all at once, pain coursing through his entire being.