“You say you’ve done that before?” Ryshad’s embrace tightened round me.
“Twice, ’Gren confirmed gleefully.
“Just the once with me,” I reminded him.
“Why?” Ryshad’s bemusement made me turn my head to look at him.
“We needed a distraction,” I shrugged.
“Which is what we wanted here.” Sorgrad still wasn’t quite sharing ’Gren’s uncomplicated jubilation but his eyes were bright with elation. “I’d say we’ve got one.”
Beyond the causeway, the abrupt devastation of the mill had thrown Olret’s people into utter confusion. Girls ran screaming from the goat sheds, too startled to secure the gates so they were instantly pursued by their yammering herds. Girls and goats alike collided with men and women pouring out of the storehouses by the keep, some rushing for the shore, others pausing to look at the mountains inland, wild gestures eloquent of their fear that some fire from beneath the earth was about to erupt and destroy them. Wiser heads might have got some grip on the situation but went unheard as folk rushing from the long sheds down by the jetties added to the uproar with questions no one could answer.
Men in twos and threes headed unbidden towards the destruction but were diverted almost at once as the goats seized the chance to run loose among the yards and fields. Some leapt the walls surrounding the banked and enclosed fields, eager to gorge themselves on the precious crops. Others jinked around the troughs of gutted fish, heads high and noses questing. Several tried to evade capture by running out on to the landing stages only to misjudge their footing and fall with a splash into the sea or on to a boat and cause yet more chaos.
“Time to go, Shiv.” Ryshad held me closer still.
“This has to be quick so it’ll be rough,” the wizard warned.
“Hold on to your breakfast,” ’Gren advised.
I would have stuck out my tongue at him but on balance thought clamping my jaws shut more sensible. The magic was different this time; a rapid blanket of cold mist shot through with blue that enveloped us inside half a breath. Thorn bushes, dam and millpond all vanished into whiteness. The shift was a brutal one, jarring me from head to heels but paradoxically, I felt less inclined to throw up. Fog was still filling my eyes and I rubbed at them.
“Ah!” Shiv let out a harsh gasp. “I’ve one more spell in me.”
“Let’s make it count,” suggested ’Gren.
“Where are we?” Sorgrad demanded urgently.
As my vision cleared, I saw we stood in the corridor below the floor with the captive women. I headed for the stairs, Ryshad at my side, his sword drawn. ’Gren said something I didn’t catch. I turned to see him and Sorgrad racing down the corridor in the other direction.
“Where are they going?” demanded Ryshad.
’Gren’s just remembered something,” was all Shiv had to say with sharp annoyance.
“Leave them to it.” I was sorting lock picks and knelt by the metal gate.
“We agreed a plan,” Ryshad fumed.
“It’s only ever a plan as long as they choose to go along with it.” I glanced up to see he’d dearly love to expand on the dangers of such ill-discipline. “Keep watch and let me open this.”
Shiv stood where he could see down the corridor and Ryshad moved for a better view of the stairs. Turmoil was coming and going in waves below us, urgent shouts beating down wrathful voices answering impossible queries. People ran and doors slammed but, as we’d intended, everyone’s attention was on the inexplicable catastrophe over on the causeway. That’s where everyone was heading, either to help or more likely just to gawp and exclaim over the misfortune of it all.
“Can you work that concealment charm?” Ryshad asked, voice low and cautious.
“Would you like me to juggle a few knives while I’m at it?” I muttered the arcane words under my breath and did my best to hold the refrain in my mind while probing at the workings of the lock. I closed my eyes the better to concentrate, my fingers remembering the pattern I’d teased out of the hidden shapes before. The lock snicked open. “That’s it.” I stood and pushed the gate open.
“Lock it behind us,” Ryshad ordered.
“What about ’Grad and ’Gren?” I objected.
“Leave it.” Shiv was already taking the stairs two at a time. “If Olret comes after us, he’ll have a key.”
I shrugged as Ryshad hissed through his teeth and we both went after the mage.
“It’s me.” I knocked on the bolted door a brisk double tap. Ryshad knelt to pull the lower bolt aside, Shiv reaching for the upper one. “With friends.” I hastily wiped any wish for concealment from my mind and sincerely hoped someone within had the skills to read my intent for the truth. Otherwise we were in more trouble than I wanted to contemplate with no ally at our backs. I took a deep breath before I had to brave the stench within and lifted the latch.
“Do you bring help?” As before, Shernasekke’s lady wasn’t wasting time on pleasantries. “Have you spoken to our kin?”
“We’ll help you if you help us,” I matched her directness. “We’ve killed Ilkehan and now Olret wants us dead. Give me your word your friends will defend us and we’ll get you out of there.”
“I swear by the duty I owe the land of my line and those of my blood within it.” The woman’s blue eyes were pale in her drawn and filthy face.
“That sounds good enough.” Ryshad moved warily towards the cage that held her. “Stand back.” He kicked hard at the crude lock with his booted heel once, twice and with a curse, a third time. It might have been proof against the women’s fingers but this onslaught twisted it sufficiently for Ryshad to wrench the door aside. The woman seized her little daughter’s hand and pulled her out of their prison, slipping on the ordure underfoot.
Shiv was keeping watch by the door. “How far do you need to be from here to use your Artifice to contact your kin?”
She looked blankly at him.
“Your lore.” I remembered the Mountain word for the aetheric enchantments of the Sheltya. “True magic.”
The woman’s face cleared, then she grimaced. “Do you have anything to eat? I’m famished beyond all reason.”
I was about to say we didn’t have time to dine when Ryshad pulled a flatbread stuffed with goat meat out of his bag. “My lady.” He proffered it with the instinctive courtesy drilled into him by years in D’Olbriot’s service.
“I’m no one’s lady now, good sir.” She managed a wry smile around a mouthful of food before bolting the rest with far from ladylike grace. “Just Frala Shernasdir.”
“Get us out,” the grandmother demanded urgently. “If we can touch hands, we can work together!”
Ryshad broke her free and I tripped the locks of a cage that held one of Frala’s sisters. She gripped my hand as I let the door swing open. “You have the lifelong gratitude of Gyslin Shernasdir.” Her fervent words had a formality ill suited to her stained green dress and grimy face.
“You’re entirely welcome.” I moved on to the next sister who was all but rattling her bars in her desperation. Ryshad released the younger girls, both rushing to cling to each other in a shaky embrace.
“Get your wits about you,” their grandmother snapped. “Forget your aches and your bellies and concentrate on what has to be done.”
Of course, I realised belatedly. Olret wasn’t just being a vindictive bastard keeping them in this squalor. He was making certain sufficient physical discomfort hampered their capacity to use Artifice, if not curbed it all together. I dug in my own bag for whatever food ’Gren had cached there and shared it out as best I could between Gyslin, her sister and their daughters.
Ryshad handed the grandmother a battered hunk of sausage and unhooked his water bottle from his belt. “Shiv—”
The wizard cut him short with an impatient hand. “Someone’s coming up the stairs.” He moved behind the door, keeping watch through the crack at the hinges.
The women froze, food forgotten. Ryshad flattened himsel
f on the open side of the door, sword ready. “Shiv, can you bolt it?”
An urgent whistle pierced the tense silence. “No, wait.” I left my last few darts still in my belt pouch. “It’s them.”
Ryshad muttered something under his breath. Shiv didn’t close the door and I risked a quick look around it. Sorgrad and ’Gren came running down the corridor from the opposite stairway, each with a cloth-swathed bundle over one shoulder, swords in hand.
“Here!” I beckoned them in and each dropped their burden with a muffled clatter.
“This is hardly the time to go thieving,” I told Sorgrad forcefully.
Sorgrad raised innocent eyebrows, plainly unrepentant. “Not even for more Kellarin artefacts?” The patterned cloth fell aside to reveal the gleam of old steel and the copper binding of a dagger handle. “Maybe even the last ones you need?”
’Gren was smirking too. ”Whatever Guinalle doesn’t want is ours, remember that.”
“You’ll cut me a share or I’ll know the reason why.” I couldn’t help smiling until I saw the blood on ’Gren’s blade. “Who did you kill to get it?”
“No one,” ’Gren protested, injured. “That’s from the miller. The nurse all but pissed herself and ran like a scolded dog.”
“I guessed he’d hide valuables in that room where his son lies.” Sorgrad answered Ryshad’s unspoken question, daring the swordsman to challenge him.
’Gren had already dismissed the matter, turning to sweep a low bow to the women who were looking at the two of them with lively curiosity. “My ladies, my duty to you.” He winked at me. “We needn’t have worried about finding a bath.”
Ryshad had more important things on his mind. “Shiv, take us out of here now.”
Before the mage could reply, the grandmother choked on her meat. “Olret comes,” she gasped.
Her three daughters instantly joined hands, Frala in the middle.
“Quickly.” Gyslin beckoned urgently to her daughter and niece. The grandmother hobbled to the other end of their line and the little girl hid her face in Frala’s skirts.
“We’ll just have to risk it.” Shiv set his jaw.
“No!”
“Guinalle?” I couldn’t help myself; I actually looked round to see if the demoiselle was there in the room.
“What?” Ryshad and Shiv stared at me as if I’d lost my wits.
“Livak, it’s me.” I heard the noblewoman’s voice again but from the bemused faces all around, I was plainly the only one. “Don’t let Shiv work any magic,” she went on urgently. “Olret will kill him.”
“No spells, Shiv. Guinalle says no spells.” I struggled to hear her words at the same time as I was trying to explain. “Usara’s scrying for us and Guinalle’s working her Artifice through his spell.”
“How are they working that?” Shiv was intrigued.
“Can’t that wait?” I glared at him. “Just remember you can’t do any magic without Artifice to ward you or Olret will kill you!”
“Swords’ll kill us a cursed sight faster.” Sorgrad was next to the door, ’Gren beside him. “Half a cohort’s on its way.” The tramp of nailed boots echoed ominously up the stone stairwells.
“Shut the door,” Ryshad ordered. “Bolt it, one of you.” He swept his sword at the women.
I heard the bolts slam home as I tried to concentrate on Guinalle’s far-distant voice. “I have to speak to the adepts you’ve found. Join their line.”
I really didn’t want to do that and not only because the girl’s hand closest to me was so filthy, but we were running out of options fast so I grabbed for her.
The room turned dim around me and for one appalling moment I thought I was fainting. Then I realised I was somehow locked in a corner of my own mind with Guinalle’s will controlling my body, my voice, my gestures. I could look out through my own eyes but in a peculiar, cramped fashion, only able to look directly ahead and as if through Ryshad’s spyglass. I did my best to quell the panic rising within me and then realised that it would do me no good to yield to the impulse to scream, to protest, to fight the enchantment. I had no voice to cry for help, no strength to hit back.
“I am Guinalle Tor Priminale, acolyte of Larasion, sworn to the discipline of Ostrin.” She spoke with my lips and raised my hand to the grandmother. “Will you aid me in the name of all that you hold sacred?”
“We will.” The voices of all six Elietimm adepts echoed around me as the grandmother took Guinalle’s hand to complete the inward-looking circle. The room was instantly overlaid with new images; glimpses of Suthyfer and the newly reclaimed landing, Vithrancel and the busy market place, Edisgesset and the no-nonsense realm of the miners. Each place and person within them was as abiding and as ephemeral as the reality I could no longer feel beneath feet that no longer belonged to me. Something froze around me then Guinalle smashed it like someone breaking winter ice to reveal the fast flowing mysteries of the river beneath. My mother had warned me never to play on a frozen river with graphic tales of children carried away beneath the ice and drowned unable reach the light and air above. The fear I’d felt then was nothing to the terror paralysing me now, even as I felt the women of Shernasekke reaching for the aetheric power long denied them with all the desperate thirst of travellers lost in a waterless waste.
I wanted none of it, struggling not to fall into that torrent of mystery and peril, straining to see the world beyond the enchantment trapping me. Ryshad and Shiv were breaking apart the cages as best they could, ’Gren and Sorgrad piling the twisted bars and frames against the door, wedging broken bits of metal under the bottom, into the hinges, under the latch.
All that was less real than Guinalle now standing before me, dressed in the proud elegance of the Old Empire. Rings shone on every finger, a crescent of gold set with diamonds in her hair, more diamonds around her neck brilliant with fire struck by some unseen light shining on the silk of her flame-coloured gown. The soiled faces of the starved women each faded behind some simulacrum of how they wished to be seen. Frala’s hair lightened to the pale gold of sun-bleached straw, piled high on her head with bone pins tipped with blood-red gems. Her full-skirted gown was a maroon rich against her milky skin. Gyslin and the other sister were dressed in the same style, in differing shades of blue, a many stranded rope of curious milky gemstones twisted around Gyslin’s neck. The younger women wore less costly shades of green, dresses cut to display nubile charms instead of matronly modesty. The grandmother wore black made all the more severe by a few silver ornaments. With her thin face and sharp nose, she looked more like a crow than ever. Only the little girl was left in her grubby chemise, still clinging to her mother’s skirts with one filthy hand and her bedraggled animal in the other.
A booming assault on the door helped pull my wits back to the real world where Ryshad and Shiv were bracing themselves against the wood with ’Gren and Sorgrad still reinforcing their stubborn barricade.
“If we are not all to die at Olret’s hand, we must have help,” Guinalle began.
Civility be cursed, I thought furiously. Get on with it!
“Seldviar namayenar ek tal rath,” chorused the Elietimm women and their questing dragged me along with them. Now a third layer of reality or illusion overlaid everything and I knew without question I was in very real danger of being swept away by the currents of aether coiling around me.
“Har dag Vadesorna abrigal.” Frala summoned up a thickset man as bald as an egg, shoulders bunching in anger as she spoke to him so rapidly I hadn’t a hope of understanding her. He turned and stormed off into invisibility, melting like a shape imagined in smoke.
“Edach ger vistal mor din.” Gyslin and her daughter were pleading with a nervous-looking woman whose jaw dropped in shock, shadowy shapes hurrying to cluster round her.
“Olret evid enames Froilasen ral Ashernasen.” The grandmother wasn’t about to stand any nonsense from the well-muscled youth her enchantment had lighted upon. Fortunately he seemed as much inclined for action as her,
a spear appearing in his hands in answer to his unspoken wish and his shirt dissolving into a dark cuirass of hardened leather.
Frala turned to Guinalle. “We have summoned aid. They come as fast as they may.”
Was that going to be fast enough? Even through the Artifice clouding my perception, I heard the splintering crash of an axe hitting the far side of the door. I forced a memory of the room before my mind’s eye, picturing Ryshad’s face and Sorgrad’s, Shiv’s lanky frame and ’Gren’s short, wiry one. Thought became reality and I saw the wood splintering as blows came hard and fast, Ryshad and Shiv forced back lest they lose an eye or worse.
“Olret comes!” Gyslin’s simulacrum turned towards the door even as her true form remained locked in the circle.
Even through the wall, I felt Olret’s complete conviction that his intent was strong enough to overwhelm the physical constraints of wood and metal barring his way. He wasn’t wrong. The door shattered into kindling almost as completely as the mill had done, splinters gashing Ryshad and the others. Their swords met those of Olret’s men who could reach through the narrow doorway. Ryshad and ’Gren took on the foremost guards while Sorgrad and Shiv used twisted lengths of metal on the second rank.
Olret’s Artifice slammed into the circle of women but that held. I could see the bastard lurking behind the skirmish in the doorway, face twisted with hate.
“Guinalle! Guinalle!” He sounded as if he were half a league away but that was definitely Usara speaking. “Give me the ring! Temar, put it on!”
“I can only shield you for a short time.” That was Temar’s voice, grim with determination and warning in equal measure.
“That’ll be enough.” I was startled to hear Allin sounding so forceful. “Shiv! Sorgrad! We’re going to form a nexus so make ready.”
A sphere of light appeared between the two of them; long-schooled wizard and untrained mageborn. It burned with a ruddy fire, not the crimson of elemental flame but darker, more ominous, weighted with the power of the earth. Shiv reached a hand out towards it and the colour darkened still further yet paradoxically burning all the more fiercely as his own magelight surrounded him with an emerald aura. Shiv nodded to Sorgrad who set his jaw, no more about to duck this challenge than any other he’d ever faced. He spread his hands in an oddly defiant gesture and blue radiance surrounded him, his fine hair blown about as if he stood exposed to a winter storm. Ducking his head like a bull about to charge, Sorgrad thrust his hands, palm out towards the roiling nexus of power. The spell sucked at the caerulean light and the confusion of colour burned away to leave only an eye-scorching whiteness.
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