Nightchild

Chapter 13

Darrick faced down the angry Dordovan mage master in front of him. The young General hadn't slept, though his cavalry and mage charges had grabbed a few hours after arriving in the ruins of Greythorne in the middle of the night. Having overseen the picketing and feeding of the horses, he'd toured the ruins, resolving immediately to leave half of his four hundred cavalry to help the salvage effort, taking the balance on after a day's rest and assessment.

What he didn't need, with the stubble itching his chin, his eyes red and smarting and still wearing his riding garb, was the mage, Tendjorn, to disagree.

'These people need our help,' said Darrick. 'While you were resting, I was walking these streets. My decision stands.'

Tendjorn, not yet forty and with a flat, supercilious face, looked along his wide, veined nose from where he stood in the centre of Greythorne, clearly able to see the situation for himself.

'Your orders, if I'm not mistaken, General, are to support the forces now in and around Arlen and rendezvous with Vuldaroq on his arrival with your entire force. Our latest intelligence from Gorstan indicates we are close to finding the girl but will need to move fast. Ornouth is a long way and Xetesk and the Protectors are not far behind.'

'Open your tiny eyes, and see what I see, Tendjorn. I see a small town destroyed by a hurricane. And it was a hurricane that, by your own admission, was probably a result of Lyanna's awakening power.

'Now I understand your need to recapture her to stop all this but we have a duty as responsible ambassadors of magic to help those who have become innocent victims of whatever this actually is.'

Tendjorn smiled, a patronising gesture that sparked Darrick's anger, though he kept himself in check.

'General, I think you fail to fully understand the situation. This is not the end, though if we don't find the girl soon, it will be the beginning of the end. Every hour spent here is an hour wasted.'

'My decision stands and I would advise you to lower your voice next time you choose to utter such an insensitive remark. We do have the time.'

Tendjorn shook his head, his untidy dark hair flapping around his small round ears. 'I don't think so, General. Might I remind you-'

Darrick grabbed Tendjorn's shirt at the neck with both hands and dragged the mage close.

'Listen to me, Dordovan, and listen very well,' he grated, his eyes cold. He could see the sudden fear in the mage's face. 'These people need our help now. Not in a day, not in seven, but now. Do you really believe that I, as an emissary of Lystern, can ride out of here without lifting a finger? Never mind the unconscionable moral wrong, what the hell sort of a message do you think it would send them about us?

'This operation is under my control. It is two and a half days' ride to Arlen from here. It will take twice that time to secure and provision enough ships to sail as far as Ornouth. My cavalry are tired, my horses exhausted. We will stay to oversee the cleaning up here. Only then will half of us move to Arlen. There, I will decide if Izack and his men stay here or join us. Do you understand me?'

Darrick let the mage go and stepped back. 'Attempt to remove me from command if you dare.'

'Don't challenge me, Darrick,' spat Tendjorn, straightening his clothing and failing not to appear ruffled.

'It's not a challenge. I'm in charge here, remember that.'

'And remember who wields the real power,' returned the mage.

Darrick laughed. 'Yes I do. But we're not in Dordover now, are we? And you are among Lysternans.'

The young General stalked out of the square towards the camp to rouse his tired men to uncover more of the dead.

There had been no trouble with the townspeople who'd come to check on The Raven after the attack by the Dordovan mages. They had no energy to question their story and anyway, The Raven could always be trusted. A further blessing was the dry weather overnight

and The Raven woke shortly before dawn, at the insistence of The Unknown. The Communion to Denser had come with a pale light filtering beneath fast-moving, thin, high cloud across the wrecked town, the renewed noise of activity drifting up to them. Another weary day.

'Who is it?' asked Hirad.

Ilkar regarded him blankly. 'Well, it's a little difficult to tell, strangely enough.'

Hirad made a long face. 'Thought you mages knew this sort of stuff.'

'Tell me, Hirad, if someone gives a friend of yours a letter while you're standing there, do you immediately know who it's from?' Ilkar's ears pricked in irritation.

'Well, letters aren't magical, are they? Isn't there an aura or something?'

'Gods, Hirad, how many Communions have you seen? Isn't it obvious that it's a personal and private conversation?'

'But that doesn't mean you don't know who's talking,' said Hirad evenly but a smile was edging the corners of his mouth.

Ilkar pointed at his face. 'See these? They're eyes. See that? That's Denser, lying on the ground, receiving Communion from the Gods know where or who. I am a mage, not a seer, all right?'

'You know, I've really missed our intellectual debates,' said The Unknown dryly. He knelt by Denser and moved the mage's head further on to his rolled-up cloak. 'So well constructed and delivered.'

'Glad you think so,' muttered Ilkar, throwing a sideways glance at Hirad.

'What I think,' said The Unknown. 'And you think too, Ilkar, is that Denser is most likely in contact with Erienne. After all, few enough know his signature, let alone can guess or have worked out his likely whereabouts.'

'That presupposes Erienne to be not too far distant,' said Ilkar, nodding nonetheless.

'A meeting was always inevitable,' reasoned The Unknown.

'A bit convenient though, isn't it? I mean, we show up here in the middle of basically nowhere and Erienne drops a message in after weeks of nothing?'

The Unknown shrugged. T think we've been together long enough not to believe in coincidence or convenience. Erienne left Denser a letter knowing he would try to find her and that we would help him, should he ask. If her need for him has grown, she'll try to find him now too. It just makes sense for them to meet where she believes he will come to.'

'Clever lady,' said Ilkar.

'I never doubted it,' said The Unknown. He straightened and looked back down the small rise into the centre of Greythorne. 'Some horsemen arrived last night. Cavalry by the order of the hoofbeats. We should find out who it is.'

'Dordovan, no doubt,' said Ilkar, scowling.

The Unknown nodded. 'In all probability. We can show them the bodies of their colleagues, can't we? When Denser comes round, we'll go and look. Just keep your ears open and your eyes sharp. It's looking like we aren't on the same side. All right?'

'Mummy! Mummy!' Lyanna's repeated screams woke Cleress before Aviana's urgent message reached her tired mind. The Al-Drechar's house was dark as she came to but even as she fought for focus in mind and eye, she heard the urgent speech of Guild elves and the snap of Ephemere's voice ordering calm.

But as Cleress emerged into the corridor from her room, a shawl about her shoulders, feet rammed into sandals, night dress floating about her skeletal frame, it was clear Herendeneth was anything but calm.

Outside, a wind howled down the wood-panelled passageway, rattling the pictures hanging on the walls and ruffling the rugs underfoot. Behind Cleress as she limped towards the guest wing where Lyanna slept, a vase crashed to the floor and the breaking of glass echoed from a distant part of the house.

Ahead of her, Ephy had stopped at a set of doors and was speaking to a Guild elf, Cleress couldn't make out who. She saw him nod, bow slighdy and hurry back up the passage towards her.

'Ephy!' called Cleress. Ephemere turned, her face grey and anxious.

'Let Aronaar help you,' she replied. She opened a door but the

wind snapped it shut, the dull bang reverberating along the corridor. Ephemere frowned.

Aronaar trotted up to her, deep green eyes tight with recent sleep, shirt and trousers hurriedly put on. He was barefoot.

'Thank you,' said Cleress, leaning gratefully into him, taking the weight from her stiff and painful right knee.

'You set the pace, my Lady,' said Aronaar, inclining his head slightly.

'Then we'd better make it quick.' They started towards Ephemere. 'We're following you, Ephy. Is she in bed still?'

Ephemere had dragged the door back open and braced it with a foot. She nodded.

'Sitting up but still asleep, Ana says. This could be trouble. She's in danger of becoming uncontained.'

Cleress felt fear shift through her, tensing tired muscles and catching her breath.

'Faster, Aronaar. Much faster.'

It was the flow of the mana they had to assess. The depth of any flaring and the vortices it produced. Without that knowledge, they could do Lyanna incalculable harm, shutting off streams that, with no escape, would disperse themselves inside her mind. Hurrying down the corridor, towards her room, Cleress wondered if that wasn't already happening.

Outside, the orchard was largely still, but every window overlooking it had smashed outwards, leaving jagged spears of glass and warped frames swinging on the wind that gusted strong into their faces.

Above it, Lyanna's wails ran like acid through Cleress' veins and she could but imagine the torment of the young child as she fought a desperate battle to bring her burgeoning power under control.

For days now, the four elderly Al-Drechar had kept unflinching vigil over Lyanna as she descended into her Night. At no time was she left alone in her mind; it was the only way to monitor her acceptance of the mana as part of her being and discern any hint that she was understanding control.

Only now would the Al-Drechar find out whether their terribly short time of teaching had given Lyanna the knowledge that would save her life. But what nagged at them all was that, though Lyanna

was obviously bright and a talent with no bounds or equal to her potential, she shouldn't have had to deal with her fall Awakening until her teens. Not just her mental wellbeing but her physical state too had to be monitored.

The Al-Drechar did everything they could, though in truth it wasn't much. They kept her exercised and fed during the moments she was awake and shielded her from the excesses of mana strength while she lay semi-conscious. But so much of the battle was within her undeveloped psyche and they were helpless to aid her there.

The lucid periods were shortening dramatically and, more and more, Lyanna either lay on her bed or walked the corridors of the house, oblivious to all around her, Al-Drechar shadowing her every step of the way.

A keening cry split the whistling of the wind and with it, a jolt in Cleress' brain as Aviana's tenuous grip on Lyanna's mind slipped again.,

'Hurry, please,' came the exhausted thought. 'She's breaking me.'

'Almost with you,' pulsed Ephemere. 'Be calm, Ana.'

Aronaar reached out with his free hand and pushed open Lyanna's door. Ephemere strode in first, with Cleress unwrapping her arm from the elf s shoulder before following her in while he stayed outside.

Lyanna was sitting on the bed, legs not touching die ground. Sweat matted her hair and ran down her face and across her tightly closed eyes, dripping from her cheeks and chin. Her mouth hung open and she dragged in great breaths, moaning for her mother or whimpering, her brow creased by some savage inner pain.

In a chair near the bed slumped Aviana, her face white in the gloom and drooping to her chest. Her arms were gripping the sides of the chair and her legs were tucked hard under it. She was shivering, her eyes restless as they searched the mana spectrum.

Immediately, Cleress and Ephemere attuned their eyes to the spectrum, revealing the full enormity of what they had sensed on walking in.

Rippling and shimmering, unstable but holding, Aviana's mind-mana shield played like a hood around Lyanna's consciousness, its deep brown cut through with a brilliant emerald green that was Aviana's alone. Beneath it thrummed the chaos of Lyanna's

desperate fight to accept and control the mana flow coursing through her head, drawn there by what she represented as if it was alive.

And what the Dordovans had done was there for them all to see. Dominating the gentle brown that gave them cause for hope, indicating as it did her Drechar capabilities, was the poisonous orange of the Dordovan College. Here was where the fight would take place.

Looking deeper, Cleress could see striations of deep green, pale yellow and dark, dark blue assimilated in the streams. Much of it appeared calm but at the centre of the helical structure was the pulsing orange that signified Dordovan Awakening.

Like a lunging animal, no, a snake preparing to strike, the rogue Dordovan mana bunched and coiled before expanding explosively, ripping die gently modulating brown as it did so; and punching outwards as flares or, intriguingly and worryingly, part-constructs.

Aviana, with minute adjustments to her shield, accommodated her instant decisions, letting the flares and stronger constructs escape or, if she could, containing them, allowing them to disperse harmlessly away from Lyanna and almost certainly taking damage in her own mind in the process. It was impossible to see how she could do otherwise.

Cleress' pulse quickened. It was an onslaught, unintentional and quite without malice, but one under which Aviana, even Aviana, was beginning to wilt. The power it represented was quite without precedent. Should Lyanna complete the miracle and survive, she'd be a mage with no peer. It was something for the Al-Drechar to cling onto. At least they wouldn't be surrendering themselves point -lessly.

'Cleress, apply yourself to the shield,' said Ephemere. T need to calm the inner structure.'

'Be careful,' urged Cleress, already plucking at Aviana's mana strands to knit together the shield and provide a fresh and safer outlet for the flare. 'She's attempting to cast.'

'She's trying to contact Erienne,' said Aviana, relief in her voice as Cleress accepted some of the brunt of Lyanna's outpourings.

Through the jolt she felt and the concentration she partitioned to

help Ana, Cleress had enough about her to be irritated she hadn't spotted it straight away.

'Of course,' she muttered. Though Lyanna hadn't been taught even the rudiments of Communion, her innate knowledge led her subconscious mind to attempt it. Her constructs were ill-formed and impossibly unstable, lasting a few heartbeats at most, but they were there nonetheless as she attempted the flow across the spectrum that would lead her to her mother's mind.

It was lucky she had no hope of success. The base power of her casting occasionally reached dangerous peaks which would have slammed into Erienne with the force of a MindMelt. It was these Aviana had been filtering through the shield to dissipate away from that young, helpless mind. Even so, the pain must have been at times intense. Small wonder Lyanna cried out for Erienne so often.

'Aviana, let go if you need to,' said Cleress. Despite her tiredness, she felt able to sustain the shield while Ephemere cut off the source of the flares.

'I'm all right. I'll just pull back a little,' she said. 'Ephy, you'll have to talk her down quickly. The Gods only know what this is doing outside.'

'No, I'm not going to talk. I've got a better idea. I'm going to mana meld with her.'

'Risky,' said Cleress. The mass of trapped mana in Lyanna's mind coiled and sprang, spitting out another embryonic Communion. It was weak as Lyanna began to tire and Cleress was able to disperse it within the shield; a containment that represented a small victory for the seas around Herendeneth.

'She needs to understand how to bind the Dordovan magic into the One at source. She may be able to stand the reaction in her mind of not doing so but I don't think we or Balaia can.'

'Then do it, Ephy, if you believe you can,' said Aviana. 'Just hurry.'

Cleress watched closely as the smooth brown sphere that represented the calm of Ephemere's mind began to reach out, all the while never letting her concentration slip on the shield.

Strands of mana waved out from the sphere. Tiny filaments like hairs on an otherwise bald skull, probing so gently into the multicoloured confusion that was Lyanna. At first, the little girl seemed

unaware her mana coil was being touched and Ephemere was able to spread the gossamer tendrils wider, linking and diffusing areas of deep Dordovan orange, melding their flow with hers, removing its aggression.

But though Lyanna herself had no formal training in defence against such magical intrusion, her innate abilities, unschooled and uncontrolled, fired within her mind.

'Now it starts,' whispered Ephemere. 'Be ready. Accept the pain.'

Cleress frowned but in the next heartbeat understood only too well. The coiling core of Lyanna's mana focus dragged inwards at extraordinary speed, moving from the size of a skull to that of a fist quicker than the mind's eye could follow.

Ephemere gasped, her probing tendrils whipping away from their tenuous hold. Immediately, she constructed a convex surface and suspended it, base down, above the fist which punched outwards with blurring energy,

'Dear Gods,' whispered Cleress as the mana energy deluged Ephemere's deflector, disintegrating against the unyielding surface held by a mind of huge experience. Mana strands flashed away, tearing into the shield held by Aviana and Cleress, the two Al-Drechar modulating desperately to absorb the impact or let it pass through on its way to play havoc with Balaia.

Absorption was a hammer, pounding on her exposed brain. Lyanna's flares coursed the shield, seeking a path, their outlet Aviana and Cleress. Naturally, the Al-Drechar could have completed a circuit, building a contained sphere, but Lyanna would have been irrevocably damaged at the very least as her mana energy gorged itself in the active mind that had so recently given it its freedom.

And that could not be allowed to happen. So the Al-Drechar's old but strong minds had to take the force of it, letting go only that which would have compromised their concentration and hence the shield, so risking catastrophic flaring into the mana trails that covered Balaia. It was an acceptable state, but only for now.

Lyanna's resistance was violent but brief and Cleress realised that Ephemere had fully expected it to be so. Quickly, the mana flow subsided, the coil relaxed and the girl's breathing returned to a regular pace from its fevered speed.

'Join me,' said Ephy. 'She is spent.'

'We should keep the shield,' said Aviana immediately.

'It's done its work,' replied Ephy. 'Trust me.'

Together, the three Al-Drechar forged a lattice of tendrils that stroked the angry, tired coil of Lyanna's failing defences, teasing out the Dordovan strands and calming them to brown. Doing so, Cleress felt Lyanna's energy seep away, as did her own, and she reacted just quickly enough in the physical world to hold the child as she slumped, peaceful for now, to a deep and dreamless slumber.

'We should wake Myra,' said Ephemere. 'She can take the rest of the night.'

'No,' said Aviana firmly. 'I can do it. Just pray she keeps quiet through the day too.'

Cleress knew what she meant. They couldn't cope with another outburst like this without rest. Ideally, Myriell shouldn't be woken until noon and Aviana would have to sleep the whole of the next day and night. She and Ephy were in little better shape but had the rest of this night before having to once again take their stints guarding Lyanna from her own mind. Her Night was far from over.

Cleress and Ephemere made their way slowly and painfully back to their own rooms, spurning the Lemiir for the totality of rest. In truth, neither had the energy to sit and smoke.

Closing her door, Cleress mouthed a silent prayer that Erienne would return soon.