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the Lake. Turning, he followed the insect’s gaze and counted the distant specks. Black against the orange mist.
    “Five, six, seven. Dragonflies?”
    The ant’s carapace tilted in agreement.
    “Seven,” Calistrope rubbed his prominent nose. Two or three perhaps, could be ignored; a pair coupling over the waters or males fighting for a female were not that unusual but seven … Seven must be a foraging party, uncommon in such still weather when fish were so easily caught. “We had best prepare,” he said but the insect was already gone and conferring with its fellows. “Ponderos,” he called and both his fellow Mage and Roli looked up from whatever task they were attending to in the stern. Calistrope pointed to the marauding party. “Dragonflies.”
    Some minutes later the high pitched thrum of their wings thrilled the air, sunlight coruscated from the membranous wings in colors of fire opal. The dragonflies scouted the craft, darting back and forth to hover now over the stern, now above the bows
    There was no warning of the sudden attack, no perceivable signal given. Two of the insects plunged towards the raft, their bodies arched to bring the blade-like stings to bear.
    Calistrope’s armament was already primed—the final word of a mantra and he hurled a tight ball of incandescence at the nearer of the two creatures. Simultaneously, the raft’s pilot loosed a quarrel from his crossbow to strike the other in its side. The one insect erupted into smoky flame but the second ignored the glass quarrel lodged in its thorax and lanced an ant through its compound eye. Discommoded only and plainly immune to the effects of any poison, the ant retaliated, clamping razor sharp mandibles around the dragonfly’s neck and squeezing. A third dragonfly plummeted towards them, attacking the ant which held its fellow. Calistrope’s fireball and Ponderos’ throwing club struck together. The fire consumed it from the inside and greasy smoke vented from the insect’s joints and mouthparts, hiding the combat from view. A dragonfly’s head rolled free, spinning in chance directions as its mandibles snapped spastically.
    Behind him, the Mage discovered another duel just ending. Roli was belaboring a dragonfly with a pole while an ant chewed through its leg. The attacking insect sprang into the air as its upper joint parted and Calistrope drew upon his power to send more spheres of lightning as it rejoined its three companions.
    Three. There should be another …
    An unnerving scream turned all heads. The fourth dragonfly had seized hold of the pilot and with a flurry of glittering wings pulled him from the pulpit. The man screamed again as he was borne off across the water, carried in a cradle of interlaced forelegs.
    There was nothing the ants could do, they watched impassively as Calistrope flung fireball after fireball and Ponderos hurled whatever he could find. The insect with its piteous burden was quickly out of range and the remaining dragonflies hovered, waiting for further opportunities.
    Suddenly, a strangely cold feeling overtook Calistrope, the energy field had weakened alarmingly and his weaponry was dwindling in both size and strength. “Oh, corruption ,” he whispered dismally, “of what use am I now?”
    The dragonflies seemed to sense their lack of defenses and swooped as one. An ant was killed immediately in the onslaught, pierced between head and thorax. Ponderos knocked a dragonfly from the air to float, twitching, on the salty waters until some denizen of the Lake took it from beneath. Calistrope wielded a boat hook and was holding off the last insect until he took a cut in the left shoulder. The pain was unbelievably fierce; his arm began to stiffen almost at once.
    “Boy,” he called, teeth clenched against the pain of the spreading venom. “Roli, take this and help Ponderos.”
    As Roli ran to his master, the ether grew thick with power once more and the Mage was able to throw off the effects of the