Dhiammara

22 The Old Magic

The same nightmare repeats itself, again and again. Vannor turns restlessly and awakens with a hoarse cry of dismay. The horns and cries are loud now. The Phaerie have come to Nexis to extract their vengeance. He runs to the window.—In the city, the warning bell of the Garrison has begun to ring, alerting him to the city’s peril.

He hears a tumult of voices from downstairs, where the household staff are beginning to panic. Through the window he sees them running outside to witness the spectacle. “Get inside,” he bellows. “Get into the house, you fools—and stay there.” Snatching up his sword, he runs downstairs, glad that Dulsina has left him. With the Nightrunners she’ll be safe.

As Vannor watches, the Phaerie sweep down on the city. The exultant horns take on a deeper, more menacing note. Light leaps from the Mages’ Tower as the Immortals ride past, and spreads down through the Academy complex. Similar patches of effulgence spread rapidly through the city, wherever the Phaerie touch down—then hungry flames leap up, and the shrilling of the horns is drowned by screams.

Vannor runs through burning streets, his boots slithering on blood and entrails. He sees a man cut in two by a Phaerie sword, his guts spilling out across the cobbles. A child with a rag doll weeps over the headless body of her mother. A lad runs from a burning house, trailing streamers of flame, and falls to the ground, engulfed in a ball of fire. A woman shrieks as her children are snatched away, screaming, by a Phaerie woman with burning sapphire eyes. Scenes of torture, torment, and slaughter enacted over and over again, while Phaerie stalk the streets, cold-eyed and terrible . ..—Out of nowhere, a sword swings down in a glittering arc, and the blue-eyed Phaerie woman crumples to the ground, golden blood pouring from a deep rent in her flesh. The children, released, run back to their mother, who receives them with a cry of joy. The tatt wielder of the sword, whose identity is hidden in a shimmering haze, swirls a heavy cloak from its shoulders and covers the burning man, smothering the flames. The youth springs up from beneath the cloak, restored and healed.

The mysterious warrior calls to Vannor. “Come with me, and fight them. Fight the bastards, Vannor. Fight your way free!”

And Vannor remembers the sword in his hand, and his limp grasp tightens round the hilt. At the side of his unknown redeemer he scours the streets of his city, helping folk wherever he can, while the Phaerie fall to his sword like wheat before a scythe.

And at last he fights his way out of the city and stands on the high northern road that leads out across the clean, untainted moors. The cool, fresh wind scours the stench of blood and smoke from the air. The numinous stranger turns. The concealing cloak of mist dissolves away, and he sees the face of Aurian. She holds out a hand to him. “You’re free, now, Vannor. Free to return. Come back with me, my friend, come back ...”

Slowly, Vannor reaches out and takes the hand .. .

. . . And the high moors swirled away, and he found himself lying on a bed, in a cavern, with no memory of how he had come to be there. Everything was strange—except the face, the same, familiar face of the Mage, looking down on him kindly and holding his hand tightly in her strong, callused grasp, as if to anchor him in life.

Aurian smiled at him. “Welcome back,” she said.

“Welcome back, Vannor,” Eliseth snarled, “and about time, too.” In truth, however, she was not displeased, for the last three days of constant vigilance—three miserable days spent peering into the dark, dead depths of the grail until her head and eyes ached, had finally paid off. She looked at the image in the grail with narrowed eyes. Really, it was laughable. Dear, good little Aurian had kindly brought the former High Lord back to his senses—and so created her own undoing. Now, at last, Eliseth had a spy and an agent in close proximity to the Mage.

Eliseth let her consciousness mesh with the power of the grail, until, with an abrupt and dizzying switch of focus, she viewed the scene through Vannor’s eyes, concealing a flash of cold hatred at the sight of Zanna. Well, now that the Weather-Mage had Vannor back under her control, there would be ample time and opportunity to deal with his daughter....

“I’m only too glad that it worked,” Aurian was saying to the woman.

“Hopefully, he should be fine, now.”

“I can never thank you enough.” Zanna tucked her arm through that of the Mage, and they walked away, almost out of earshot. “Now, do you know exactly what you’ll need for your journey south ...”

Eliseth could hear no more—but she had all the information she needed right there. Wrenching herself back into her own body, she emptied the water in the grail out of the window, and despatched a servant to find Skua and Sunfeather.—If she wanted to be secure in Dhiammara before Aurian reached the place, it was time to make a start. And the first obstacle that would have to be dealt with was Eyrie—the southern Skyfolk colony at the edge of the great forest, and the place that was currently harboring Queen Raven herself.

Eliseth smiled coldly. The colony and its human counterpart set up by Aurian’s former companions would make a superb supply base for defenders of Dhiammara—and the Skyfolk and their human friends would make useful slaves.

The hawk had flown wide and far before Anvar remembered who he was, where he had come from, and why he must return. He did not reach this awareness all at once—instead, the information filtered, very gradually, into his consciousness, like bubbles of air rising from the bottom of a pool. Only when some vague sense of identity had awakened within him could he begin to work out what was wrong. It was a difficult process, as if each thought was a tiny, glittering bead that must be taken out and examined in detail before it could be strung with the others on a thread of consciousness. The efficiency of his thinking, however, improved with practice, until finally he decided his difficulties stemmed from the fact that the vast, complex entity that was the spirit of a human and a Mage fitted ill inside the bird’s small body and even smaller brain.

All the time Anvar had been deliberating, he had been flying steadily along the coast, with the ocean on his left wing and the land on his right. Suddenly he became aware of what he was doing. I’m flying! I don’t know how to do this!—It’s impossible! The thoughts scarcely had time to flash into his mind before land, sea, and sky were whirling across his vision in a disorientating jumble as he plummeted, tumbling end over end in an uncontrolled and helpless fall.—Anvar’s mind froze in panic—and instinct saved him. Clearly, the automatic reflexes for flight were contained within the hawk’s wings and brain. His wings flashed open, catching the wind beneath them and tilting to swoop him up at a dizzying angle, so close to the surface of the sea that one wingtip actually caught the top of a wave.

Gods—that was too close! As he careened unsteadily on his way, the Mage ordered himself not to think of the technique he was using—in fact, preferably not to think about the whole business at all. It proved easy enough, for his brain only seemed capable of dealing with one subject at a time. To be on the safe side, however, he flew inland—almost drowning himself again with his first attempt to turn—and once he had solid ground beneath him he flew as low as he dared, to reduce the chance of his hurting himself should worse come to worst.

That was how he came to see the rabbit—several of them, in fact, in a grassy hollow a short distance back from the brink of the cliff. A red spike of hunger flashed across his brain. Instinct took over once more. He didn’t have far to drop—he simply selected his prey, angled his wings, and tucked them close to his sides, letting his momentum drive him, talons extended, into the fleeing rabbit. He hit the beast, knocking it off its feet, his wings extending at exactly the right instant to take him up again, a fingertip above the grass. Then he was turning at an impossibly steep angle, and gliding back to the ground to finish his stunned prey with a sharp blow of his beak.—Dipping his head, he began to tear through fur and into the still-warm flesh.—He was halfway through the grisly meal when the sense of wrongness overtook him. No, this isn’t right! This is not what I eat! Not raw! He remembered a face—a human face, with blue eyes and blond hair. Me? Hands, brown, with fingertips callused, not from a sword, but from harp strings. A harp—there had been a wonderful harp....

Then Anvar saw another face, its sculpted features as aquiline as those of the creature he had become. There was tangled hair of a deep copper shade, and intense green eyes. . . . Aurian! The next minute, the clifftop was empty, and a hawk was streaking along the coastline; the sea on its right wing, the land on its left, heading back with all speed the way it had come.

“If we make all speed we can get there in about three days, my Lord. Much quicker, if this wind swings round instead of staying set against us. Your sailors wouldn’t have the skill to get into our anchorage, and in any case the keels of your ships will be too deep, so we’ll drop anchor in the next cove and bring the soldiers in overland.”

From his great chair, high on its dais, Lord Pendral looked down at the unkempt, unshaven smuggler. This was a pinch-faced, unprepossessing wretch, to be sure—but there were two details about him with which the High Lord of Nexis could readily identify: the all-consuming lust for vengeance, and the glint of pure, unadulterated avarice in Gevan’s eyes. The man’s arrival had surely been sent by the Gods themselves—but if Pendral’s success as a merchant had taught him one important thing it was not to appear too keen, too soon. “You seem to have thought it all out.” He laced his ring-encrusted fingers across his ample belly and narrowed his eyes at the ruffian. “And just what do you expect from me in exchange for this information?”

Gevan’s eyes shifted away for an instant, and flicked back to the High Lord.

“I want to be a merchant like yourself, my Lord—successful and respected. I want my own crimes to be pardoned, I want five hundred gold pieces to start up in trade, I want a warehouse of my own down on the wharves—and when you destroy the Nightrunners, I want my pick of their vessels.”

Pendral’s eyes widened. “Indeed? You don’t want much, do you?”

Gevan shrugged, and was about to spit on the highly polished floor—until Pendral fixed him the gaze of a snake about to strike. He swallowed the mouthful hastily. “My Lord, think what the Nightrunners cost you and this city in trade each year. Without my help you’ll never find them—no one ever has.—And as I told you, right now they’re sheltering the thief who stole your jewels. Surely it would be worth anything to you, to lay your hands on him?”

Pendral nodded. Why delay on this matter, he thought. The mere mention of the thief set his guts roiling with rage—and he was anxious to strike as soon as possible lest the slippery wretch should take himself elsewhere. “Very well—

I agree. You shall have what you desire—and what you so richly deserve.”

The treacherous smuggler was effusive in his gratitude; and, as Pendral had expected, he was far too stupid to notice the implicit threat—or promise—that lurked behind the High Lord’s words.

Aurian slipped out of the room, leaving Vannor to his reunion with Dulsina and Zanna. When she returned to her quarters, she was pleased to find Shia and Khanu there. “What have you two been doing?” she asked them. “I haven’t seen much of you this last day or so.”

“Mostly, we’ve been hunting on the moor,” Shia told her. “We don’t like being cooped up with all these humans.” She gave the Mage a piercing look. “Where is the other one?”

Aurian sighed. For some reason that she would not disclose, Shia had taken a marked dislike to Forral, and refused to even name him. “Forral is talking to Parric and Hargorn,” she told the cat with a smile. “There seems to be some kind of warriors’ reunion going on, so I hope that Emmie has plenty of drink on hand.”

“Humans and their drink! We waste time here,” Shia grumbled.

“You’re right, I know.” Aurian flopped down into a chair. “We’ll be going soon

—I must start arranging . . .” She was interrupted by a knock at the door.—She signed. “Who is it?”

“It is I—Finbarr.”

Aurian was all too aware that it was not the archivist who spoke, but the Wraith who shared his form. “Now what?” she muttered sourly under her breath, though it struck her that she was being somewhat unjust. Ever since his arrival, the wraith had remained solitary and apart from the Nightrunners, in order to escape both suspicion and alarm. Only Zanna and Tarnal were aware of the creature’s true identity—and it said a great deal for their trust in Aurian that they allowed the entity to stay.

As the tall, gangling figure walked into the room, Aurian had to remind herself sharply that some ghastly, inhuman creature controlled this body in place of her old friend. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“We have—a difficulty.” The grating, emotionless voice sent a chill through the Mage. “Now you have removed the spell that took me out of time,” the creature continued, “I must feed—but if I quit this body, my host will perish.—Once more I need your help, Mage. When I leave this form you must take it out of time once more, and restore it only when I wish to return.”

For a moment, Aurian had difficulty finding her voice. “Let me get this straight,” she said quietly. “When you say feed, do you mean you need to take a human life?”

The expressionless figure nodded. “As you say.”

“But you can’t do that!” the Mage burst out. “These folk are our friends. They have given us shelter—they trust us. I can’t just let you go and kill one of them!”

“You have no choice.” The Wraith regarded her impassively, its utter lack of emotion shocking on Finbarr’s face. “My instinct for survival is as great as that of any other being—I will feed with or without your help. If you will not assist me in the preservation of this body, I will simply return to my old shape for good, and abandon this carapace to die.”

Aurian sank down into the chair. “How much longer can you last?” she whispered. “How soon before you need to feed?”

“I can last perhaps two or three days more—then I must feed or perish.”

“I must have gone mad,” Vannor said, in a voice that was heavy with shame. He looked at his daughter, and then at the woman he loved. “There’s no other explanation for the way I was acting. How could I have driven you away from me, Dulsina? I would rather cut off my other hand!”

Dulsina shook her head. “At the time it was like a dreadful nightmare—like living with a total stranger—but it’s over now, love, at any rate. I’m only too glad to have you back again, and acting like yourself. This last year has been the loneliest of my life. You know, I was so angry when I left you—I told myself I never wanted to set eyes on you again.” She shrugged. “It didn’t take too long before I discovered my mistake.”

“I’m glad to be back too—but it doesn’t explain or excuse my actions. What happened to me, Dulsina? Why in Creation would I want to order an attack on the Phaerie? The whole idea is insane! I must have lost my mind completely—had a fit or a seizure or something—I don’t recall.” He rubbed his one hand across his face. “Can you believe it?” he whispered, the words coming muffled from between his fingers. “I actually ordered all those men and woman to their deaths—and I can’t even remember! What kind of monster am I?”

Zanna laid a hand on her father’s shoulder. “What’s the point in torturing yourself like this? It won’t do you any good, nor will it bring those people back. Besides, I agree with you—had you been in your right mind you would never have acted like that. It must have been the poison that affected you—the Gods only know how you survived it at all. . . .” Her words trailed off into silence as she remembered her earlier conversation with Aurian.

“Dad . . .” she began hesitantly. How in the name of the Gods could she suggest that he might have been under the influence of Eliseth without putting ideas into his head—either that or alarming him so badly that he never dared make a move again? Or worse still, she thought with a shiver, actually alerting Eliseth in some way to the fact that they knew what she had done?

“Can you remember anything about the time you were poisoned?” Zanna plunged on recklessly. “When you were actually ill, I mean? Did you have any strange dreams, or visions? And what about the old woman who saved your life? What did she do to you? Have you any recollection of her at all?”

Vannor shook his head and sighed. “I think I had some weird kind of dream about Forral, that I can scarcely recall, but apart from that, I don’t remember anything about the entire episode, love. Not a bloody thing ...”

“Never mind, Dad—it doesn’t matter,” Zanna assured him—but even as she spoke the words, a shiver went through her. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it would matter—very much indeed.

Aurian sat in her darkened chamber and studied the faint and feeble glow that emanated from the crystal at the head of the Staff of Earth. This isn’t right, she thought despairingly. Where has the power gone? What can have happened, Between the Worlds? The corporeal Staff that had been left in the mundane world with Aurian’s body appeared to have come out of the entire episode unchanged—but the ethereal manifestation, the core of the Artifact’s power, had been virtually destroyed in the Well of Souls. Indeed, had Aurian not been able to rescue the serpents and the crystal, she had a very bad feeling that she would have had no Staff to come back to on her return. Even as matters stood, she was in serious trouble.

Wondering what she could do to restore the power, Aurian cradled the Artifact in her lap. It felt like watching over an ailing friend. Normally, when she touched the Staff a glorious surge of vibrant energy went coursing through her. Its power had a distinctive feel to it, for, like the Harp of Winds, the Staff had an intelligence and a character all its own. Now, as she held it, she could barely feel a tingle, and she could feel no more personality than was present in any other dead stick.

The Harp! Now there was an idea. Perhaps the power of its fellow-Artifact could revive the Staff of Earth. Aurian ran to fetch it. As always, the Harp thrummed discordantly when she picked it up, and the Mage found it difficult to hold, as though it was constantly trying to writhe out of her grasp. As she touched the crystalline frame, an image of Anvar leapt into her mind; so vivid that she felt she could touch him. The Harp gave a shimmering sigh, and a cascade of notes, each one visible as a falling star, swirled away from it.

“Anvar,” it sang, over and over. “Anvar . ..”

Aurian sighed. “I know,” she told it. “I miss him too. But we’ll both have to do without him for the time being, and if you want him back, you had better cooperate with me.”

The Mage’s words cut harshly across the liquid fall of light that was the Harp’s song, and abruptly, the Artifact fell silent. After a moment, the frame ceased to feel slippery in her hands, and a tentative tingle of energy leaked into her fingers and ran through her arms. In her thoughts, Aurian sent out a wave of gratitude toward the Artefact, and felt it thrum in response.—Carefully, she laid it down on her bed, beside the Staff of Earth. “Can you tell me why the Staff has lost its power?” she asked the Harp of Winds, “and what I may do-to heal it?”

In the darkened room, the crystal frame of the Harp began to glow with a soft incandescence that expanded and reached out to embrace the dormant Staff, outlining the twisting shapes of the serpents in a nebulous luster. At first, Aurian thought the misty luminescence was playing tricks with her eyes. As she watched, the serpents, still holding the dull crystal, lifted their heads from the Staff to watch her with coldly glittering eyes. In the ghostly radiance of the Harp, their colors looked flat and faded; no longer the brilliant red-and-silver and the vivid gold-and-green that she recalled.

Then, once again, the Harp began to sing in its shimmering voice. “They say the fault is yours, O Mage. They say you abused your guardianship. that you used the Staff for ill: for death and slaughter.”

Aurian’s blood turned to pure ice in her veins as she remembered her slaughter of Pendral’s soldiers in the tunnels beneath the Academy. It was as she had suspected then—but somehow hearing the truth spoken aloud by the Harp brought home to her the enormity of what she had done.

“You knew, Mage, that there would come a reckoning,” the Artifact sang on, its notes now as hard and sharp as diamonds. “Firstly, there will be an equal price to pay for your deeds that day. Secondly, to win back the Staff you must prove yourself worthy once more. You must atone. And you must pay back in love and healing all the power you took from the Staff for death and destruction.—Then both you, and my fellow-Artifact, will be renewed.” With one last shimmering note, the Harp fell silent.

It was some time later when Chiamh found the Mage, still sitting in the darkness with the dormant Artifacts laid in front of her on the bed. Gently, he wiped the tears from her face and held her in silence for a long moment.

“Come on,” he said at last. “Let’s get you out of this deep darkness, and back into the open and the light.”

“You must be out of your mind! I can’t do that!” Aurian looked from Chiamh to D’arvan in dismay. These last days had been difficult enough without being asked to usurp the Old Magic—the province of the Phaerie—and use it in night.

“I’m not a bloody Phaerie,” she objected. “I don’t know what makes the Xandim fly and I don’t want to! You know how I feel about heights, D’arvan. Just being here on top of this cliff makes me uneasy, and I’m nowhere near the edge. That business with the Skyfolk nets was bad enough, but there is no way—and I mean no way—you’re getting me up in the air on anything I could fall off!”

D’arvan shrugged. “Suit yourself. Of course this means you’ll take months to get anywhere, with Eliseth up to all sorts of mischief in the meantime.—Furthermore I’ll have to come with you, and abandon Maya to the Gods only know what fate....”

The Mage’s dismay turned into stone-cold horror. “Do we really have to fly?” she asked in a small voice. “Surely it’s not absolutely necessary....”

“Look,” D’arvan told her, with a patient expression that she itched to strike from his face, “Eliseth is a long way ahead of you, Aurian. You told me yourself she’s had time to conquer Aerillia. The longer you delay, the more she can consolidate her position and the more difficult it’ll be for you when you eventually catch up with her.” He patted her gently on the arm. “Come on, Aurian—think how far you’ve come, and all you’ve achieved since the night you fled Nexis. You know you can do it if you have to. You know you will.”

Aurian gritted her teeth. “D’arvan,” she said tightly. “I hate you. You know me far too well for my own good.”

The Windeye held out his hands to her. “It won’t be so bad, my friend. I won’t let you fall—you should know better than that. It won’t be the first time we’ve ridden together.”

Aurian sighed. “That’s all very well, Chiamh, but you’re not exactly an expert at this business yourself. You’ve only done it a couple of times—and with Phaerie to assist you. What if we both mess it up?”

“We’ll stay close to the ground until we’re confident.” He grinned. “Come, Mage. Think what fun we could have with this.”

Aurian held up her hands in defeat. “All right, all right. Let’s get on with it now, before I change my mind.”

D’arvan lifted Hellorin’s talisman, on its glittering chain from around his neck, and laid it in the Mage’s outstretched hand. As it touched her skin the gleaming surface of the stone changed from misty grey to clear silver, and flashed once with blazing white light. Aurian staggered as a fierce, alien power pulsed through her, as bright as suns, as dark as the vault of the universe, as strong as the very bones of the world and as ancient as time itself.

“Seven bloody demons! What in perdition is this?”

“The talisman has been imbued with the Old Magic by my father,” D’arvan told her. “You hold in your hand the power of the Phaerie.”

Aurian shook her head. “Surely it can’t be that easy,” she argued. “I mean, if you were to give this to Zanna, for example, she couldn’t just go flitting about the sky on Chiamh’s back....”

“She certainly could not,” the Windeye put in with a laugh, “because I wouldn’t let her.”

“Don’t be daft, Aurian—obviously you’d have to be a Mage,” D’arvan told her with a touch of irritation. “A Mortal couldn’t possibly manipulate—or even recognize—power like this.”

Aurian was looking doubtfully at the talisman that lay, quiescent now, in the palm of her cupped hand. “I’m not sure that I can, either. It’s so different, this magic.”

“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work,” D’arvan insisted. “After all, the Artifacts give you access to the High Magic—this talisman gives you power of another kind. Just think of it as an Artifact of the Old Magic, Go on—put it on.”

The Mage slipped the talisman around her neck—and gave a cry of astonishment.—She could see the living energies of her companions, cloaking their bodies in auras of shimmering radiance that were in constant flux, renewing themselves with each thought and motion. She saw the green haze of living energy that shone from each blade of grass. The rock below her feet was like a fractured mass of translucent crystal, in shades of amber and red, and the ocean was like a silken cloak thrown over the bones of the earth, glowing softly with opal, moonstone, and pearl, and limned with vibrant lapis, aquamarine, and amethyst to mark the movement of current and swell. The winds that swirled around the exposed clifftop streamed like glistening silver ribbons, and each/gull that was wheeling and diving through the air above the ocean was a spark of silver that trailed a streaking tail of light like a shooting star.

“Aurian! Aurian—come back!” Hands were gripping her shoulders, shaking her violently. Distantly, she felt someone lifting the talisman and pulling it over her head. With a cry of dismay she snatched at it, but was too late.—Aurian’s vision cleared to see D’arvan standing in front of her, with the stone at the end of its silver chain, swinging from his outstretched hands.—Without it the world seemed a dull, flat, colorless place, and Aurian was assailed by a deep sense of loss. “Plague take it, D’arvan,” she said irritably, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“I had to do something,” D’arvan protested. “You stood there for ages, not speaking or moving, just staring into oblivion. You were completely captivated.”

Aurian sighed, trying to grasp at the last elusive memories of the wonder she had witnessed before they slipped away from her entirely. “It was breathtaking, D’arvan. Why didn’t you warn me?”

D’arvan looked puzzled. “Warn you about what?”

“About . . .” With some difficulty, Aurian tried to explain what she had seen.

“Why,” the Windeye cried excitedly, “that’s exactly what I see with Othersight!”

“Well, I certainly don’t see anything like that,” said D’arvan. “So how do you account for it?”

“I think I understand,” the Mage said slowly. “Because your race was so closely connected with the Phaerie, Chiamh, the powers of the Windeye must stem from the Old Magic. But the Phaerie themselves are actually part of that magic—they’re living manifestations of the Old Magic, if you like—and so they don’t discern what we non-Phaerie perceive.”

“It’s a pity—from what you and Chiamh say, I feel as though I’m missing something special,” D’arvan said. “There’s only one problem, Aurian—how are you going to control this Othersight? It’s no good you having access to the Old Magic if it’s just going to enthrall you.”

“Let her try it again,” Chiamh suggested, “and we’ll fly this time. She’ll know what to expect, so it won’t come as such a shock, and what’s more she’ll have something else to occupy her attention. I’ll teach her to control the Othersight, but it will require a lot of practice—there’s no time to do it now.”

“Do you think it’s safe?” D’arvan began doubtfully.

“Oh, let’s get on with it,” Aurian said impatiently, “before we grow old and grey standing here on this blasted cliff. You’ve already explained what I ought to be doing—give me back the talisman, D’arvan.”

Reluctantly, he handed the shimmering stone to her. The Mage almost snatched it out of his grasp. When she hung the chain around her neck once more, the world sprang back into radiant splendor. Entranced, she watched Chiamh’s outline change and his aura alter to darker, more smoky hues as he changed from human to equine shape. Well, standing around putting off the moment of action wouldn’t make her feel any less nervous. D’arvan made a stirrup of his hands for her, and taking a deep breath, Aurian scrambled up onto the Wind-eye’s back.