Alone in the wash of light from his staff, Anskiere damped the winds of his conjuring. Wrapped in smoke and a drifting fall of ash, he bent his head in sorrow for the dead heaped grotesquely at his feet.
On the hilltop, stillness reigned. Jaric sheathed his sword. All expression erased from his face as he said, 'We'd better go down.'
Taen sensed the emotions he held in check, even under cover of darkness. She ached to touch him, but sympathy could not comfort. The survivors of Corlin's army might flee safely to town walls and their Duke; but the measure of Maelgrim's victory remained. Word of the sorcery that had unhinged this war host's manhood would travel the breadth of Keithland. Folk would believe that the malice of Ivain Firelord had been reborn in his heir. Hereafter, Jaric could expect locked doors, and welcome at no man's hearth.
Taen shared the chill of that rejection. She averted her face, as the sacrifices forced upon a man of gentle nature opened a wound near-impossible to bear. But sorrow, even bitterness, was a reaction too costly to indulge. The crisis was not over. Even now Maelgrim whipped up his Gierj for a second attack. Too likely this time his targeted victims would be innocents, the women, children, and elders who sheltered within Corlin's walls.
'The Dark-dreamer will be stopped,' said Jaric, his voice a reflection of Taen's fear. 'If we have to rip down the fortress of Morbrith to achieve it, your brother will never again wield Gierj.' Hands clenched on his sword hilt, he strode forward to join Anskiere.
The Dreamweaver followed, bitterly silent. The rending of Morbrith's battlements could help nothing. Maelgrim and his demons had grown too powerful to stop by force of arms. Only sorcery remained, and there the Vaere-trained had run out of resource. A Dreamweaver's gifts by themselves were not enough, and with horses the fastest means of travel, distance prevented Stormwarden and Firelord from launching an assault in time to spare disaster.
Taen was not alone in her assessment. Ivainson reached the boundary of a farmer's pasture and paused with his hands on board fence. 'What about the relief garrison from Corlin? After this, we'd be fools to order an army north to Morbrith.'
The Dreamweaver tried to match his restraint, and failed. Her voice shook. 'I've warned the Kielmark. The companies raised at his command already return to their Duke. But the King of Pirates insisted on coming himself.' At Jaric's unspoken protest, she shrugged. 'I can ward the man's mind from Maelgrim's Gierj more easily than I could stop him, I think.'
Jaric caught her close. 'Little witch,' he murmured into her hair. 'I'm sorry.'
His clothing smelled of cinders and sweat. Pressed against him, Taen felt fine tremors wrack his body. Powerless to ease his distress, or the slightest bit of her own, she made a stilted effort at humour. 'I'd rather be here than wait out the conflict at Cliffhaven. Do you suppose Corley's got a blade left that isn't sharpened down to a needle?'
Jaric raised her in his arms and perched her on top of the fence. 'I doubt that. The Kielmark has steel enough in his armoury to choke the channel through Mainstrait. And look, he's reached Anskiere before us.'
Taen twisted around to see a broad-shouldered figure with blood-stained gauntlets striding toward the Stormwarden. The sovereign Lord of Cliffhaven had taken charge with his usual impetuous initiative; with reins gripped in both fists, he towed four shying horses by main force over the scorched and corpse-strewn field.
'Kor,' said the Dreamweaver. Strain broke at last before laughter. 'Did he have to anticipate the possibility we wouldn't be mounted? Put me in the saddle again, and I swear by Kor's Fires, I'll die of a fall.'
'Do that and I'll jump after you.' The Firelord vaulted the fence and raised his hands to lift her down. 'Some things are more important to me than Keithland. Now will you walk, or because there are horses, must I drag you?'
* * *
The Stormwarden paced the ravaged earth of the battlefield. Except for the Kielmark's presence, he walked alone, a dark figure against a darker expanse of seared and trampled landscape. His clothing was silted with ash, and his features were like flint from suppressing sorrow and exhaustion. 'The Gierj still sing,' he observed as Jaric and the Dreamweaver arrived. His voice showed all of his concern.
Enchantress and Firelord were equally weary and soiled. Jaric had thrown off his fine tunic. Clad in the singed linen of his shirt and hose, he looked haunted by the sorrows of the damned. Taen's robes were crumpled from her sitting unprotected in the dew. Her spirits seemed little better. She halted well clear of the Kielmark's horses and called answer to Anskiere over the restive stamp of hooves. 'I couldn't stop the Gierj. Maelgrim has grown too strong. Perhaps if we rode to Morbrith.'
The Stormwarden stopped abruptly. 'We dare not. With Gierjlings still active, to go closer would invite failure and Corlin's certain doom. Taen, the Firelord and I must lend your mastery support. If we can channel our powers through your gift, you must try again to break your brother's link with the Gierj.'
Yet the risks of that suggestion were surely too perilous to contemplate. Had the ground not been littered everywhere with the charred bones of corpses, Taen would have gone to her knees and pleaded to be quit of the Stormwarden's request. No need in Keithland could be great enough to demand such responsibility of her. She controlled but a single Sathid crystal, where Anskiere and Jaric each held mastery of two. For the Dreamweaver to merge minds with them offered the doubled effects of an exponential increase in power. That Taen by herself should trust her lesser discipline to wield the combined might of Stormwarden and Firelord was unthinkable, a transgression of natural limits no desperation would sanction.
'I dare not.' she protested.
Jaric steadied her from behind, yet he offered no further encouragement. Anskiere remained silent also, his eyes impenetrable as sheet silver. Neither Stormwarden nor Firelord would compel her to attempt this most dangerous of undertakings. Nor would the sorcerers badger her if she lacked enough courage to try.
The Kielmark had no such scruples. 'Girl, you must.' He stood like an anchor against the drag and plunge of the horses. 'What end could be worse than conquest by Shadowfane's compart?'
'If I failed,' Taen said, so softly her voice became lost in the empty landscape. Only a sorcerer bonded to Sathid might understand the consequences. The smallest mistake would bring backlash, an uncontrolled burst of power capable of unleashing cataclysm. The disasters at Tierl Enneth and Elrinfaer would seem but a pittance before the ruin courted by stakes such as these. First among thousands of casualties would be the same Vaere-trained defenders who upheld mankind's last hope of survival.
The choice was one Taen begged to avoid; could time turn backward, she would have asked her lame leg back, and her talents left latent, to unsay Anskiere's words. Not least was the anguish of chancing such unprincipled power to destroy one born as her brother.
Alone of them all, Jaric seemed to recall this; he gathered her firmly against his shoulder. 'Maelgrim's death need not be on your hands, little witch. Confine his Gierj-powers under ward, and Anskiere or I will wield the sword.'
'Or I,' the Kielmark said quickly. 'I've not forgotten the oath of debt I swore to the Dreamweaver who spared Cliffhaven from invasion.'
But in the end, the support of friends and Firelord did not help. Taen was forced to decision as her brother whipped up his Gierj for renewed assault upon humanity. Even as she deliberated, demonsong resonated against her awareness, invasive enough to paralyse thought. Reflexively Taen cast wards about her dream-sense, yet this time no precaution sufficed. Maelgrim's forces built, and coiled, and beat against her mind, prying to gain entry. The horses milled against the Kielmark's restraint as if crazed, and the very earth went still as the Dark-dreamer marshalled his powers to destroy.
Compelled by a greater fear than failure, Taen slipped clear of Jaric's embrace. She encompassed both sorcerers and the Kielmark with a look that was poignant to acknowledge. In the heat of crisis, how easy it had been to overlook the fact that the Dreamweaver was younger in actual years than her body appeared.
br />
Yet when she spoke, her voice was steady. 'By Kor's divine mercy, act swiftly.'
'Jaric!'Anskiere spoke sharply.
The Firelord wrested his gaze from the Dreamweaver's. Concern for Taen might inhibit an expedient that might endanger her; though he could be trusted to find his equilibrium in the face of Keithland's need, the slightest delay might cripple their chance to stop Maelgrim. Anskiere took no risk, but raised the powers of his staff at once.
The wards flared active with a crackling explosion of light. To merge with him, Jaric must match the force with conjury of equal and opposite intensity. Blank-faced, he drew his sword. Less fluid than Anskiere, but growing daily more proficient at his craft, he wove sorcery until the haloes surrounding staff and sword stood configured in mirror image.
The orange-red light of Firemastery merged gradually into the blue-white glare of storm sorcery. With trepidation, Taen readied herself for what no training offered by the Vaere had prepared her for; as the auras of both sorcerers joined into a halo of incandescent brilliance, she had but a second to brace her will. Then Stormwarden and Firelord caught her into the link.
A hammer wall of force slammed Taen's mind. Utterly overwhelmed, her senses became sundered from reality as a torrent like white-heated magma coursed across her dream-sense. The channels of her awareness burned raw under the pressure. Heightened sensitivities escaped control, and she felt as if her spirit were blasted headlong into the void before creation.
Colours streamed past her inward eye. Her ears were buffeted by unidentifiable sound. Taen struggled to orient, to bridle the forces raging wild within her. Yet even the most basic discipline of her craft failed. As she reached for mastery, her awareness imploded to a pinpoint focus that threatened to pierce her very being. Power that tore with the cataclysmic force of the tides unexpectedly responded to a feather-light touch.
The irony daunted; Taen faltered, directionless in the flood. Afraid to grapple for command lest she misjudge and destroy herself, she knew if she held herself passive she would be equally lost.
'Imagine you could balance a boulder on the shaft of a needle.' The voice was Jaric's, and the encouragement an observation gained from his recent initiation to the handling of shared power.
The Firelord's advice seemed simple. Taen fought to embrace the forces that ravaged her inner self, but found them too potent. Her awareness could not encompass such depths, or the dizzy breadth of vision that great power required. Brought to her knees by the scope of her own inadequacy, she struggled through other channels to grasp the subtleties that Jaric had striven to impart.
The knowlege she required was inherent in the minds of the sorcerers who shared their access to power; but the key to true partnership, the path of Jaric's new learning, lay twined through skeins of association. Taen reached forth and became entangled in memories whose vividness shattered thought.
Anskiere's past touched her first. Through him, Taen relived an earlier backlash, the result of a stolen ward-spell that brought destruction upon Tierl Enneth. The Dreamweaver felt the rumble of the wave that had arisen to rip homes and men and all their children, wives, and livestock from the shores. She heard the suck and boom of the waters, the splintering of wood. Droves of people fled with their mouths opened wide with screaming.
Yet no mortal could outrace the sea. The cries of the doomed became buried amid tumbling masonry, the falling, grinding crash as an entire generation met its end by drowning. Spray fountained like jewels over the collapsing tiles of the rooftops, then cascaded into waters congested with flotsam. The terrible wave receded, dragging dark swirls of current through a city's ruined beauty; the agony afterwards became unbearable. Taen recoiled in an anguish only partly the Stormwarden's: too easily, Tierl Enneth's misfortune might become Hallowild's.
She voiced an unthinking protest. 'Having failed Tierl Enneth, how could you ask this trial of me?
Anskiere fielded her accusation with equanimity. 'I made no choice without discretion. Should a Vaere-trained Dreamweaver be compared with a thief enslaved by demons? Merya Tathagres was driven by the greed of the compact. She had no understanding of the powers she stole and tampered with. But if I am wrong, Taen, and my judgement stands in error, better that Keithland's north shore comes to ruin through backlash than fall in malice to the Dark-dreamer. As one born and trained to rule, I say this risk is justified.' Here the sorcerer who had once been heir to Elrinfaer's crown paused. All the years of his sorrows rang through the nets that bound three Vaere-trained minds together. 'Never did I claim to welcome such a choice.'
Humility leached away Taen's fury. Power ripped at her senses, made her body ache for a refusal that now was too late to sanction. Jaric had risked his father's madness; Anskiere had seen Tierl Enneth destroyed and before that the ruin of his own fair kingdom of Elrinfaer. Neither man had abjured either sorcery or responsibility. Could she do less and find peace anywhere in Keithland? Cold to the heart, and ridden with doubt, Taen imagined that she balanced a boulder on the shaft of a needle. She immersed herself within the terrible nexus of powers and somehow achieved a response.
Dream-sense answered, but not in any familiar manner. Taen experienced her native talent with a scope and intensity incomprehensibly wide. Her awareness engaged fully with the powers of Stormwarden and Firelord, and the margin of safety narrowed to a thread. If her touch was too bold, she would upset the balance of the link; and if she acted too timidly, Maelgrim's attack would sweep her defences away before any ward could be conceived to restrain him.
The Dreamweaver focused and gained a vision of Morbrith castle that dizzied in its clarity. The view lay silvered in moonlight, the stone of tower and barbican slashed with ink-deep shadow. Where normally the initial probe would encompass visuals alone, the added talents of Firelord and Stormwarden coloured the result; Morbrith rang with emptiness, a queer, brooding presence like coming storm. Breezes soughed through fields overgrown with weeds. Grasses habitually grazed short by livestock waved tasselled heads in the pastures. Dream-sense blended with glimmers of an Earthmaster's perception, of soil leached by unharvested crops and undipped hedgerows. Stone itself spoke through the link, alive with the glint of mica and the captive heat of sunlight.
Taen was in no way tempted to explore this rich influx of sensation. Her borrowed powers encompassed the city of Morbrith from flag spires to dungeons in a fraction of an instant; amid the wonders of nature and the varied invention of man, the pervasive presence of Maelgrim and his Gierj stood out like rot in the heart of a flower. Even as the Dreamweaver recognized the enemy, Shadowfane's Dark-dreamer sensed her presence.
He struck with the speed of a snake.
Taen had no time to consider consequences, but only to react as energy arose like a whirlwind to crush her. The counterward she crafted sprang up with the brilliance of lightning flash, combining the strengths of three Vaere-trained masters. Stonework seared, and the air flashed fire. Maelgrim howled curses in surprise.
He emerged unscathed. Vexed mightily, and aware that Stormwarden and Firelord had joined their talents to bring him down, he rallied his Gierj. Taen felt his hatred as a storm wind of malice and murder that threatened to smother her defence. She fought an influx of nightmare; if she succumbed, Maelgrim and his demons would rend her mind. They would take their pleasure and hideously dismember her body before she died. The Dreamweaver retained her grip against a wave of stark horror. Maelgrim was too strong. Unless she acted instantly, the combined powers of Stormwarden and Firelord would not be sufficient to thwart the evil her brother had become. Scared to defensive desperation, Taen seized the powers of the link. Heedless of peril, she wove energy into bands that crackled and burned, then forged the result into a barrier to imprison.
The walls of Morbrith defined her outer bastion. To stone and mortar and the metal of lock and drawbridge she added bindings fashioned of sorcery. As the patterns of her labours bloomed in light over postern and gate towers, she felt other forces twine with he
rs. Finely spun as spider silk, but stronger than drawn wire, Stormwarden and Firelord joined their own spells through the link. Anskiere's long years of experience at confining demonkind made his handiwork practised and swift. Before Maelgrim could raise counterwards, the lattice of Taen's prison became anchored by spells wrought of air and weather. Jaric joined in, adding stay-spells rooted like knotwork through the heart rock of earth and stone.
Maelgrim immediately divined his predicament. Gierj-song shivered the air, and his counterthrust shot sparks against the shimmer of the wardspells. Yet the barrier deflected his sally in a pulse of blinding light. Morbrith keep remained unbreached. The Dark-dreamer's cry of rage and frustration echoed among deserted towers, then diminished. Before his last hope of freedom could be sealed, Maelgrim resorted to guile.
Gierj-song breached Taen's shield. In an image keen as a knife slash, she saw her brother, cruelly exploited by demons and pleading a sister's forbearance. Let her hand turn from redress to mercy, let the smallest measure of forgiveness be granted, and Marlson Emien vowed to turn coat on his demon masters. Morbrith's fate might be shared by Shadowfane, and mankind's survival be assured.
'No!' Taen's denial echoed over towers whose occupants were dead beyond redemption. Inured to loss as were her fisherman forebears, she locked sorrow and grief in an iron heart. The boy Emien had chosen his own course; the betrayals that had brought him to his transformation at Shadowfane had revoked any right of reprieve. Yet even as Taen Dreamweaver held equilibrium, the powers of Stormwarden and Firelord faltered. In horror she saw that Maelgrim had breached the link.
The images he inflicted were personal and poisonously cruel. Anskiere of Elrinfaer saw his royal sister, who had died with her kingdom under the depredations of the Mharg. Young, alone, she sat weeping with a crown she had never wanted pressed hopelessly between her hands. Over and over she cursed her brother, for leaving his inheritance to her in his pursuit of Vaerish knowledge. For all his sorcerer's mastery, the Stormwarden was not present to intercede when creatures out of nightmare dropped from the sky and slaughtered Elrinfaer's citizens in the street.