Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Eighteen

Rennyn stepped into the Eferum in a blaze of power. Until she discovered a better way to hide, her approach would be to play on her strength, and it gave her a good deal of satisfaction to send deadly bolts shooting in every direction hoping one would meet her Wicked Uncle. She kept up a steady assault on the emptiness around her, chopping and changing between a number of pre-prepared offensive spells until Solace’s focus warned her it was time to get down to business.

Relying on one last pulse of force to hold back immediate attack, Rennyn allowed her attention to be taken up by the attunement. Even as far back from the breach point as she was, the strength of the attraction between the focus and the Summoning dragged at her, but it was easier to resist when she was prepared for it. Done.

A small cluster of Eferum-get were approaching the breach, and she paused to blast them with raw power, incinerating them in a most thorough and final manner. Nothing like stopping an attack before it even started. But there was no wisdom in lingering in the Eferum congratulating herself, so Rennyn stepped back into the world.

Dawn. She’d managed to get in and out in only a few hours. The gentle hills to the east were picked out in pastel shades, with a hint of mist between clumps of sheep. Below, in the shadow of the cliff, the Sentene waited beneath their summoned lights for an incursion which would not come. A gull called, muted and distant.

"It went well?" Lieutenant Danress, standing at the very edge of Rennyn’s circle.

"Uneventful. There were a few smaller Eferum-Get heading for the breach, but I had an easy chance to kill them. Duramoi, I think. They weren’t carrying a shield-breaker this time, that I could see."

The faintest ring of metal made her turn. Captain Faille had drawn that overlong sword and was gazing out to the western horizon, his entire body taut with energy. In the delicately-tinted light he was a roseate gossamer man, and she saw in him an unexpected beauty. Dawn was the hour of the Kellian’s creation, and would be the time of their greatest strength.

"Captain?" Lieutenant Danress asked.

The grim lines on either side of his mouth deepened. "Something is coming." He turned a fraction toward Rennyn. "Bring them up from there. This is another trap."

Wryly reflecting on Lady Weston’s opinions about Kellian leaders, Rennyn obediently hoisted sixty people up a cliff. Since people and especially mages had an intrinsic resistance against Thought magic worked directly on them, this was not such an easy thing as throwing individual rocks about, and she was glad of Lieutenant Danress' steadying hand on her shoulder. She’d already used a lot of energy with her offensive spells in the Eferum, and had to take them in clumps.

"Arrowhead formation," Captain Faille ordered, underlining the command with a brief hand gesture. The Sentene rearranged themselves immediately, drawing the Hand mages with them so that only a small line remained on the cliff’s edge and the rest spread back in a triangle. "Return to the camp, my Lady," he added to Rennyn.

Rather than divide his attention, Rennyn retreated: not to the camp, but back and to the left. Faral and Meniar shifted out to flank her. And they all waited. There was no sign of whatever attack was coming. The breach had closed, and Rennyn had killed the Eferum-Get before they’d even reached it. Still, she was learning to recognise that the Sentene trusted Kellian instincts for good reason.

Her world was growing more complicated. She wanted to protect them. A sense of responsibility for the Kellian had overtaken her, along with a growing attachment. It was exactly as she had anticipated and very much not wanted. She hadn’t missed that they were all calling her "my Lady" now, and not just because it was a deal less clumsy to say than "Montjuste-Surclere". A return gesture for her grandstanding in the Hall of Question.

"There!"

Out beyond the shadow of the cliff, where the sea had lightened to stripes of oyster and pearl, a black shape had broken the shining lines. At first Rennyn thought it was a ship, but then it vanished, only to resurface a few moments later, much closer. Something very large, swimming.

It was moving at an incredible pace. If they hadn’t been all staring out to sea from a cliff-top vantage there would have been almost no warning. As it was, Captain Illuma gave several curt orders and everyone moved further away from the drop to the beach. A few of the Sentene mages began writing on slates, but most of them had already cast their offensive spells, and were simply holding them on trigger till their target came within range.

The swimmer struck the rock below, ramming it like a goat in rut. The impact was enough to shake more than a few mages from their feet, and a large section of the cliff fell away. The thing made a booming, moaning noise and then rose so they could properly appreciate what they were facing.

A column of muscle, greenish-grey with a pattern of scales overlaid by a sheen of slime. It was well over fifteen feet in width, and would tower over every building and most trees Rennyn had ever seen. The head, rising well above the top of the cliff, was a massive wedge of streamlined bone, crested with a frill of yellow and green, and most otherwise mouth.

Sea serpent. For all the tales of them wrecking ships, Rennyn had never begun to picture the scale of such a thing. It dropped its jaw to make its drawn and mournful cry, and display fangs as tall as she. The stench was sickening: year-old fish gone well beyond fetid. Its eyes were long and dark and Rennyn saw in them a gleam of sorrowing intelligence before thirty battle-ready mages released their arsenals.

Flesh fountained in every direction and the massive head whipped back, then fell out of sight, crashing to the water below. Even the sea seemed to hold its breath, then Captain Faille gave a sharp hand-back signal and the Sentene hastily drew further away from the cliff’s edge as the creature’s long body began to thrash and spasm. Its death throes were brief but intensely violent, sending large sections of the cliff tumbling. Then – hush. The waves soughed, the gulls remembered their voices, and the Sentene approached the edge to look down at water churned to a bloody froth and coil upon coil of muscle relaxing in death.

The Sentene broke into squads: to recover their equipment from the beach, search out whatever was the source of the compulsion which had drawn the serpent here, and not incidentally shift a corpse. Unhappy to own the name Montjuste-Surclere, Rennyn walked back to camp. And here were Kendall and Sukata, eyes wide and weary. Her students. A study in contrasts and probably another thing she was going to regret.

"Did that come out of the Hells?" asked Kendall, for once more awed than pugnacious.

"No. Well, perhaps originally. As a rule a breach wouldn’t be big enough or open long enough to fit something like that through, but it’s likely it was Eferum-Get once. They adapt to this world after they reach it, just as we change if we stay too long in the Eferum. But nothing came out of the breach this time, so far as I could tell."

"Then how come–?"

"It was under a compulsion." One of the Hand mages, the stocky, short one whose name was either Intsen or Insen. He stalked up, scrubbing a hand across his face angrily. "Tell me, Lady Montjuste-Surclere, how is it that no matter what we prepare we are circumvented? Why are we always on the back foot?"

This was hardly answerable, and Rennyn only looked at him as others of the Hand and the Sentene Senior Captains came to join them: a council of war.

"Our opponent sees the advantage of constantly changing tactics," Captain Illuma commented neutrally. "We should not be surprised by that."

"Changing tactics is one thing," Magister Intsen said, setting his feet. "But this – how is what we saw today even possible for someone in the Eferum?"

"I don’t know." Rennyn glanced at the lightening horizon. "The hurdles he has to overcome – we have days between each incursion, while he has only hours. And that attack was specific to the breach point being on the water’s edge, which even we didn’t know until yesterday afternoon. I suppose that unlike me he may be able to pinpoint the breaches ahead of time, but even with that, to bring that serpent here from outside the bounds of Tyrland–" She lifted her hands. "Perhaps he’s come through a natural breach and is now operating in this world."

Not a comforting thought, and she wasn’t the only one who glanced at the green hills around them, wondering if they were being watched. If her Wicked Uncle was no longer in the Eferum, the danger of everything coming undone had increased immensely. He could take Solace’s focus and complete the attunement. Worse, he could decide to hunt Seb.

"Even if that is the case, he is likely to wait until the attunement is complete, and take the focus from you then," Captain Illuma said. "His current intent appears to be to reduce our numbers."

He was certainly taking a few pointed shots at the Sentene. Rennyn wondered how much of her Wicked Uncle’s actions were within Solace’s plans, and whether she could be fortunate enough never to meet him again.

Captain Faille signalled for the pull-down of the camp to begin, evidently not seeing much value in sitting around asking why?. "We will no longer focus our preparations purely on attacks out of the Eferum," he said matter-of-factly, and headed back to the cliff’s edge.

Feeling cramped, Rennyn went for a walk up the nearest hill, trying to pretend Faral and Meniar weren’t trailing discreetly behind. She returned none the wiser as to whether her Wicked Uncle had an agenda of his own, but refreshed enough to face the coach journey. One of the Ferumguard handed her a steaming bowl of oats laced with honey and fruit, and she sat on the coach’s step to eat.

"Is he a better mage than you?"

Kendall, eyes groggy from a night spent watching and waiting, had reverted to her usual charming self.

"Almost certainly. Just not as strong." Rennyn weighed the castings she’d experienced. "Though that, too, might have changed since our last encounter. If he’s in this world, he can summon a focus, and I doubt he faces the dangers we do. The Grand Summoning may even impact focus-summoning, though hopefully not casting in this world."

She could see the girl methodically working through that one. "So, even if you stop the Grand Summoning, we might end up with some incredibly powerful part-monster running about trying to take over the kingdom? One that keeps Night Roamers for pets?"

"One that eats people himself, unless I miss my guess."

"What does he look like?"

"Human. Unremarkable. Like Solace, but with the Surclere colouring." With a curl of amusement, she considered the girl’s cropped head. "Not like Seb."

The girl pulled a face, her now-familiar glower darkening her eyes. "So where are we going next?"

"South-east, into the forests. We’ll be going past Sark."

"And Falk?"

"As near as is safe."