Shadowheart

Chapter 28

In the end, the One-inspired storm did more than keep familiars from the air. It kept the sky dark until well after dawn. The Raven, exhausted, wounded and carrying Erienne, who showed no signs of regaining consciousness, had made tortuously slow progress through the gorse and then across open land, first west, then south and finally east and back towards the Al-Arynaar camp.

Though they kept to deep shadow, shallow valley and tree or scrub where they could find it, they ran a constant risk of encountering Lysternan or Dordovan patrols. It made the walk mentally as well as physically draining, the wild weather conditions merely compounding the problems they faced.

The first ClawBound found them after perhaps an hour. It might have been more, Hirad couldn't be certain. The rain was driving head-on into them, the wind forcing their movement back to little more than a shuffle. He was leading, the blood loss from his chest making him light-headed, with pain spearing his lungs every time he breathed. The Unknown was at his side, one arm around Darrick's waist. The general was in trouble, his hip having stiffened, sending an ache up the entire side of his body and into his neck and face, his blood loss from beneath makeshift bandages a cause for real concern.

Behind them, Thraun's huge arms enveloped Erienne, keeping the worst from her, while beside her, Denser shivered with the cold and mental fatigue, his cloak wrapped around his wife. Sian'erei walked with them too, cutting a lone hunched figure, lost in dread thoughts about the death of Julatsan magic.

The panther had approached from downwind, appearing from the dark and wiping a wet flank along Thraun's undamaged leg. Another had immediately run out of low cover to their right and not long after, came their unmistakable elven partners. Tall, long-fingered, impossibly graceful, their white-and-black painted faces unspoiled by the rain.

Hirad had felt a relief that surprised him, while The Raven were happy to have their direction changed, edging them south-east. One of the pairs walked with them, the other well ahead, scouting the terrain for cover and any sign of allied patrols. The pair with them didn't stray from Erienne. The panther walked easily by Thraun, the elf on his other side. Normally impassive, the elf s face wore a frown and he rarely took his eyes from her. As if he could sense the turmoil within her.

Hirad relaxed. Not just because the ClawBound would give early warning of any attack, but because he had to. He couldn't fight his weariness any longer. His chest was freezing and a riot of pain, his whole upper body felt like he'd taken a beating with iron bars and his legs were leaden and sluggish. The only way to keep himself going was to retreat inside himself and concentrate on just putting one foot in front of the other.

Even so, by the time they had walked for over two hours, he was forcing himself to continue by sheer effort of will. He could sense The Unknown struggling too, though he had the considerable burden of Darrick to weigh him down. The general could hardly walk at all, but they would not stop, and nothing would stop them. Not the wind throwing dirt and leaves in their faces, nor the rain tearing at their clothes and chilling their skin.

'Can you ride a horse?' asked The Unknown suddenly, his words just carrying over the gale.

‘Iwould kiss anyone who presented me with one, kiss the horse and leap on its back in a single bound,' said Hirad.

'I look forward to it.'

Hirad raised his head. Incredibly, The Unknown was smiling. The big man nodded forward, Hirad followed the gesture. There in the path ahead, hidden from plain view by a bank of trees on the down-slope of a shallow valley, was a group of elves. Each one had a horse by its reins, the animals grazing quietly or looking about them vacandy. Actually, they weren't all elves. One was bigger and broader; he was standing next to Rebraal.

'Blackthorne,' said Hirad.

'I've heard that beards rub the skin of the face,' said The Unknown. 'Pucker up.'

Hirad laughed. It was brief, the pain flared across his chest. The elves and Blackthorne were walking the horses towards them. The barbarian stopped and looked behind him. He felt like sagging to the ground but knew he'd never get up again. Relief was stamped across Thraun's face and Denser's had softened just a little.

'You boys need a ride?' asked Blackthorne as he reached them.

'Now you mention it,' said Hirad.

Blackthorne's dark eyes sparkled but his expression was grim when he took them all in.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's not waste time. You need help, all of you.'

Hirad nodded. 'I'll kiss you later.'

'Pardon?'

'Never mind,' said The Unknown. He clasped Blackthorne's arm. 'We won't forget this.'

It was a long time before Erienne even recognised that the world she knew was gone. It was a long time before she recognised anything at all. Awareness was not something she could take for granted, she thought. Or did she? This could be a dream, in which case, she was not necessarily aware. She had no sensation of breathing, movement or life. None of her external senses revealed anything to her. She might well even be dead.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more likely that outcome became. Her memories were fragmented. Not those of her past; they were as clear as they had always been. But there had been a transition. And somewhere between Myriell's shattering cry and the restart of her thought processes, the memories had been broken, scattered.

Parts of it were still there. Dimly-heard shouts. A pain like she had never experienced before, splintering through her mind. Voices in the darkness. A curious odour like paint burning. An enveloping of her consciousness in a strangling mesh. Contracting, contracting.

It was this she had woken to, with the thought that she must fight. With no idea of the passage of time, she was unaware how long her mind had been under attack. And it was an attack, she was sure. Like it had been waiting for a slip, the One entity inside her had reacted instantly to Myriell's death and the removal of the suppression of its potential.

Now she could recall it burgeoning within her with a power far too strong to control or even deflect. It had used her mind as a focus and gorged itself on the elements around it. But it had not been allowed to give unfettered vent to itself. Something had blocked it from the outside. Denser. It had to be. Qnly he understood. Only he among those she had been standing with was capable.

For the first time in what felt like an age, she experienced warmth in her mind. She reached out and probed gently for Cleress but the Al-Drechar was not there. She might be dead too. Probably was. That meant that she, Erienne, was alone to fight the One. Not to defeat it, but to bend it to her will. She imagined it like a spider, the great mound of its body resting on her conscious mind, its eight legs gripping her and squeezing. She couldn't hope to push the body away, not with her limited experience. But she had to stop the constriction. So, in her mind's eye, she had to keep on prising away one of the legs, or maybe two. Keep it occupied, keep it off balance.

The question, of course, was how.

What had Myriell and Cleress told her? She struggled to remember. Her mind was clouded, the One all around her, trying to feed off her, drag her mind's energy, leach it away and use it. It came to her. The One was not sentient and it was dangerous to think of it as such. That was what they had said. In fact, it was little, more than a channeller for elemental forces as much as her mind was a focus for those same forces.

This was where she had had difficulty understanding them. It was not sentient but in one sense it had to be an entity or how had they managed to transfer it from her dying daughter to her? The point was, she had been told, that it was an unguarded channeller. Her mind had to be both guardian and focus. And it was the guardianship that was hardest learned, the suppression of the ability of the One to suck in energy and use it destructively.

That was what the Al-Drechar had been doing. Closing off its access to the elements. And this was what made it different from any magical power. Mana was naturally chaotic and unfocused, harmless in its natural state. So were earth, air, fire and water harmless. The

One entity, though, gave them direction. And the mind of the mage in which it rested gave them focus, gave them outlet.

In order to prise one of the legs away, then, she had to force her mind to focus in the way she wanted it to. Wrest back control. Imagination was the key as it was to most magic. The ability to see the shapes the power formed and imbue them with the necessary motive force.

Actually, she thought as she swam towards some form of active conscious thought, that was a very simplistic view. Her Dordovan masters would have chastised her for it. The Al-Drechar would have praised her.

She kept the idea of the spider and its legs uppermost in her mind. The first thing she had to do was stop the dragging in of elemental chaos. That was like a gale inside her head. Once she had done that, perhaps she could begin to bend the One her way. Perhaps not. She looked deep inside herself and saw the yawning chasm the One had opened up to the flow of the elements. It was terrifying, like standing at the mouth of a volcano as the lava boiled up and knowing she had to close the crater.

She quailed from the task, immediately feeling the legs begin to tighten.

No, she said to herself and for the benefit of her unwelcome parasite. I will not yield to you. You will not have me.

And it will not, said a voice. Not with your strength. And not while I have mine.

Cleress? Delight flooded her. Another voice. A hand in the dark.

I am weak but I am here. Come on child, let us get you back to those who love you. The One blocks you. It is a case of knowing where to push and then how to hold open the door.

Can I do it?

Only you can ever know that.

Tessaya, Lord of the Paleon tribes, and leader by consent of the Wesmen nation, had been pleasantly surprised by the response of the lords and tribal heads gathered before him as dawn broke over the encampment.

His palatial tent was full of leather and fuf-clad senior tribesmen, all of whom he knew by name. The air was thick with pipe smoke, sweat and opportunity. The eyes that stared back at him from beneath hard brows were concentrated with energy and desire.

Representatives of forty tribes had answered his call, spurred to action by the mode of communication, passed by the tribal Shamen through the Spirits rather than by bird or rider. War council was invoked, his message had said. Muster your men. Be ready for victory over our oldest enemy. Come and hear my words.

And they had come and Tessaya was pleased. Now they waited for those words.

'The storms have passed and we have emerged strong and united. That you are all here and in such obvious health is proof enough. Through the harsh times, we did not fight. We shared, we survived. We are fit, our crops grow once more and our children laugh while they play, their bellies full.

'It is not so in the east.'

Murmurs ran around the tent. He saw Riasu nod and smile. He knew more than most but less than Tessaya. It would forever be the way while he lived. Information was the key to power, not strength of arms.

'My Lords,' said Tessaya, holding up his hands. 'The warring colleges are tearing the east apart. The colleges blame each other and a single small child for the forces that raged against them. I prefer to think the Spirits have exacted their vengeance. Now it is our turn.

'It has set college against college, mage against mage. It has set man against his brother. But more, it has weakened them and the fabric of the society of which they are so proud. They sneer at us across the Blackthorne Mountains, terming us savages. Yet who is it whose children die in the streets in front of their fine-built houses? Who is it who determines to war until the last man lies dying in his own blood?

'We may not have the minds of mages. We may not have the great cities and ports. But we have something far more important.' He thumped his chest. 'We have heart.'

The Lords in front of him roared their approval. He waited for the noise to die down, draining his goblet and refilling it, enjoying the atmosphere. It would not be so easy from here.

'The true test of a people is that they can thrive in adversity. We have done so. We have emerged stronger but I also like to think we have emerged wiser.'

The assembled tribesmen quietened further, sensing they were not to hear exactly what they expected.

'The wars of six years ago have taken their toll. We are no longer a numerous people, able to mass tens of thousands of willing warriors for the fight. Indeed, had we taken Balaia in the last invasion, we would have lost it again when our enemies regathered. The Wytch Lords sought dominion by destruction. My vision is of a place where the Wesmeh tribes can prosper, becoming stronger every day. A place where our children can run free and where each of us here present is spoken of as our Gods are today.'

He paused and smiled, noting their reactions. Some were confused, others disappointed, most angry.

'So, are we to fight the colleges?' asked Riasu.

Tessaya nodded. 'No Wesman will ever offer them the hand of peace. For us nothing but their elimination will make our children truly safe and let us build our world. The colleges are a curse on this land. In that, if in nothing else, we agree with the Black Wings. But they would have been our masters in an unequal alliance. The reason their bodies smoulder still is that the Wesmen will be mastered by no one. No one.'

Faces were relaxing, expressions softening.

‘Iwill invite your thoughts in a moment,' said Tessaya. 'And I will invite your support also. In this fight, we must stand together and not stray from our singleminded path.

'Julatsa is still ruined and only hanging on to its status by the merest thread. Every piece of intelligence I have points to Xetesk being on the verge of collapse under the onslaught of Lystern and Dordover, who are in uneasy alliance and supported by elves who will return south when their work is complete.

‘Ipropose that we strike now at Xetesk. We take the city as we did Julatsa. We destroy the college as we did Julatsa. When Xetesk is gone, the balance of power will shift. Dordover will fight Lystern for dominion. All we have to do is wait for them to weaken each other while we reinforce and plan. When the time is right, we will move north and take them, one by one.

'But we will not repeat the mistakes of our past, when our lust for victory drove us on and on, ever thinner in strength. We will not fragment and we will not overstretch. So when the colleges are gone, we will stop, build our lives and share our new lands. And we will trade with the Barons and Lords of Eastern Balaia, letting their greed help us grow to dominance. What say you?'

'We are a warrior race,' said a voice from the back. It was Quatanai, a man with plenty of popular support. 'It is not our way to farm ourselves into decadence.'

'Neither is it our way to live in cities,' said Tessaya. 'Why should we tear them down when they can work for us? The colleges must be destroyed because magic must die. But beyond that, it is surely better to parley from a position of strength, make the Eastern Balaians trade with us on our terms.' He smiled. 'How many of us do not enjoy Blackthorne's wines?'

He heard chuckles and affirmatives and shrugged his shoulders, his palms up.

'Who here knows they can ferment the grapes better than the Baron's men? It is simple, my Lords. We keep what we need, destroy what we do not. Anything else is a waste of our blood and I will not have my people die needlessly. Not now, not ever again.

'Now, are you with me?'

The massed cry of'Aye!', the clashed goblets and the cheers told him he had them, for now at least. But he didn't fool himself that they bought all that he had said. For them, the chance to strike the killing blow against magic was enough. The test of his leadership would come should that battle be won.

Tessaya caught the gaze of Quatanai, saw his thoughts as plain as if he had spoken them aloud.

He would have to be careful.