As one of the Endarkened was trying to seduce him now. This, then, was their last line of defense, and the most compelling of all.
"Well…" Kellen said, walking closer and lifting the keystone in his hands as if he were about to hand it over. "I guess I really ought to be smart and do what you say."
The Other-Kellen smiled triumphantly and relaxed, certain of its victory.
"But I'm not going to!" Kellen shouted.
He brought the keystone down—hard—on the doppelganger's hands. It howled and recoiled as if it had been burned, jerking its hands back from the point of the obelisk.
And in that moment, it… changed.
The Other-Kellen was gone. In its place stood a Demon.
It—she!—towered over Kellen, her wings spread wide. He caught a confused glimpse of bloodred skin, of horns and claws, but she was barely there for an instant, for in the moment that the Demon had released her hold on the obelisk, Kellen slammed the keystone down over the tip of the stone.
The instant Idalia's keystone touched the obelisk, Jthe Demon howled in fury and vanished, her cheated rage a whiplash across his senses. For a moment he was blind and deaf in a paroxysm of pain. He cringed, but kept his hands on the stone.
They had not counted on his experience with being lied to. And perhaps that was the greatest weapon Lycaelon Tavadon had given to him.
I know a lie when I hear it, you bastards.
Kellen trembled all over, realizing in that moment how close the Demon had come to winning. But it hadn't.
Now it was up to him. Despite everything he had already gone through, the hardest part was still to come. He took a deep breath and reached down into the keystone with his Wildmage senses, touching the power waiting within. The power leaped toward him eagerly, but Kellen knew that he was not to be its destination. Gently he turned it toward the obelisk.
He felt the obelisk's resistance, and pushed harder, adding the last of his strength and all of his will to the keystone's power, forcing the link into being. It was like healing an unwilling subject, if such a thing were conceivable.
One by one, the obelisk's defenses gave way. Kellen felt the triggering force begin to rush through him and into the obelisk. He kept his palms pressed against the keystone's sides; withoufhim to maintain the link, the spell would be broken before the Barrier was breached. And all of it—the journey, the others' sacrifice—would all have been for nothing.
Then, breakthrough. And his body spasmed, convulsed, his mouth going open in a silent scream. It was nearly impossible to keep his feet; he wouldn't have been able to if his muscles hadn't all locked at once, freezing him in place; head flung back, back arched. He felt as if he were being struck by lightning, a bolt of energy that somehow went on and on and on, searing its way through him.
His hands were burning. He stood the pain as long as he could in silence, but then he had to scream. Holding the keystone was like clutching red-hot metal fresh from the forge, and there was no respite, no mercy. He could smell the pork-like scent of his cooking flesh, could feel blood running down his wrists as blisters swelled up and burst, and then, in a thunderclap of agony, the fire was everywhere, coursing through his veins with every beat of his heart.
Kellen howled unashamedly, great wracking sobs of hopeless agony. And he held on. Perhaps it was stubbornness, but he had always been stubborn. And he would not give the Demons this victory.
I'm going to die.
Suddenly he realized that was the price of the spell, the rest of the cost. It must be. A Wildmage's life. Idalia must have known when she created the spell that the price of casting it would be the life of the one who triggered it. His life. Kellen felt a flash of pride in his sister at keeping the painful secret so well.
But he would have to consent. No Wildmage could give up that which belonged to another—not without turning to the Dark.
She had known the price of the magic, but she could only have hoped he would pay it.
If that's the price, he shouted silently to the Powers, then I will pay it! I wish I didn't have to, but I swear I pay it willingly and without reservation!
But more than ever, having surrendered his life, he yearned to keep it. To see the sun again, to feel the gentle summer wind, to walk through the forest or drink a cup of morning tea. But all those things had their price, and so did keeping them. And some prices were too high to pay. The price of his life would be the destruction of all those things, soon or late. The price of keeping his life would be victory for the Endarkened.
No. Never.
My life for the destruction of the Barrier. A fair bargain. Done. Done!
Then the pain was too great for thought.
As if it were made of flesh, not stone, the obelisk began to warm. Beneath his hands, seen even through his closed eyelids, it glowed an unhealthy green. The ground started to tremble beneath Kellen's feet, and a low rumbling sound filled the air, growing louder, becoming a roar, then a wail.
Abruptly the obelisk began to swell, its stark lines distorting as if the malign power it contained was backing up inside it, filling it beyond its capacity. Its swelling carried him upward; he collapsed against its surface, clinging to the keystone, and still it swelled. Now the stone was a baneful pus-yellow color, nearly spherical. Kellen lay upon its surface, unable to preserve the thought of anything beyond the need to maintain the link.
The whole cairn shook like a tree in a windstorm.
The wail rose to a scream. The toxic light flared lightning-bright.
And for Kellen, there was sudden darkness and a release from all pain.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Storm Wind and Silver Feather
WAITING WAS THE hardest thing, No matter how many times Idalia told herself that Kellen had the more difficult and dangerous task, her own part—waiting for the Barrier to fall—ate at her self-control.
There was nothing she could do until the Barrier did fall, and the fact that she spent her days in comfort and safety while the two men she loved most in all the world—Kellen and Jermayan—rode off into danger did nothing to soothe either her nerves or her temper. And if Shadow Mountain should capture them, Idalia knew very well that the Endarkened would account both an Elf and a Wildmage—not to mention a unicorn— very great prizes. Jermayan and Shalkan would certainly die horribly. As for Kellen… death by torture would be the kindest of the things the Endarkened would do to a Wildmage who fell into their hands.
She thought about Jermayan often as the days passed. It was safe enough now, she thought bitterly. He was probably going to die making sure Kellen reached the Barrier alive. Why had she been so stubborn, so proud, so arrogant?
Stubborn as an Elf… When you came right down to it, everyone, Elf and human, had the same life span. They lived until they died, that was all—and with Shadow Mountain moving against the Bright World again, the lives of Elven Knights would be measured in years, not centuries.
A few days, a few hours, of happiness would have been something—a gift to him, a gift to herself, something they could have shared, a moment of sweet fulfillment with which to defy the monstrous Darkness that Jermayan was even now laying down his life to destroy.
Her thoughts were bleak, anguished, and the passing of the days only increased her despair.
Even if they succeeded, she would probably never see either of them again. The energy released when the spell was triggered would be… well, she did not know enough even to guess at the effects. Add to that the power of the unbound weather patterns, unleashed from their unnatural binding… lightning, hurricane, gale-force winds, and there, high in the mountains, in winter, snow. Heavy snow.
How could two men and a unicorn, probably wounded, battered, definitely alone, ever hope to survive even a single night in a blizzard?
Even success would not guarantee their safety, or their lives.
And so Idalia took care to keep entirely to herself in the days that' followed Kellen's departure, lest her unhappiness contaminat
e the hope that was growing in Sentarshadeen with each passing day.
IT was over a sennight since they'd been gone. Idalia had been restless all day, wandering far beyond the city, into the Flower Forest beyond the House of Leaf and Star. There were no flowers now. She could feel the sorrow of the trees and plants, their slow withering starvation and death, and her helplessness in the face of their need was like a fresh grief. The narrow canals the Elves had dug to bring water to the forest held only dampness, for the five springs were not inexhaustible, nor were there enough Elves in Sentarshadeen to man the pumps to fill the canals every day.
Who shall live and who shall die? They have had to make so many choices already, and if my spell does not succeed, if Kellen and jermayan do not succeed, they will have to make more…
Sick at heart, Idalia turned away from the slowly dying forest and crossed the unicorn meadow again. It was nearly lantern'lighting time, the bright, ever-cloudless sky dimming as the sun set. She should go home, and rest. Tomorrow morning she would come back here, to the spring called Songmairie and do as she did every morning. She would cast her Seeking Spell to see if the Barrier was down. Perhaps tomorrow she would scry as well, but she had been afraid to do that for fear of what her spell would show her. Like the Elves, Idalia wanted to hope until all hope of hope was gone.
Suddenly there came a pulse of magic so strong it staggered her; a lightless flash perceptible only to her Wildmage senses, but it blinded and deafened her to all else for one incredulous moment.
Kellen has triggered the keystone!
Wild hope and sudden fierce joy filled her. He's gotten through!
She stood, staring northward, fists clenched, willing him to hold out, to keep the link true until the spell was complete. She hadn't known she'd be able to sense it, but the keystone was part of her, formed of her magic and linked to her, and so she'd felt that first fierce uprush of energy as the keystone began to give up its spell. But now… nothing.
Nothing but hope, and her faith in all she knew Kellen to be.
Idalia turned and began to run.
She was back in less than half an hour with her tools and a full bag of charged keystones. Heart hammering, hands shaking, she dipped each in the spring and began to lay them out in a circle around her. There was a bag of crystallized honey-disks in her tool-bag as well, used for sweetening tea, and as she worked she pulled one out and popped it into her mouth. She'd need the energy, now and for the rest of the night. If the spell had worked.
Please, you Gods who shape the world. Let it be so!
She paused for a moment, waiting. But the spell would run fast once it was triggered. If it had worked, she would be able to sense the results now. Or the failure.
Once more—as she had done so many days ago—she dipped water from the Elven spring and scattered it around herself, touched water to her lips, raised her dripping hands to the sky, and called to the rain.
Hesitation. Confusion. And then…
Haste. Urgency. Frenzy. Need. Long-penned forces boiling across a barrier that had suddenly been cast down, roaring through the parched and empty halls of air with the force of a landslide, carrying a tidal wave's worth of water with them, shedding it indiscriminately and violently on the desert-dry land below…
Kellen had won! The spell was cast. The Barrier was down. And all the pent-up rain that belonged to Sentarshadeen and the Elven lands was coming this way.
Fast.
She needed to slow it. Holding the clouds back would mean heavy snows for the mountains—that couldn't be helped. She must hold cloud-packs over lakes and rivers as much as possible, and let them gently into the Elven lands to provide the gentle soaking rain the forests needed, or else the rain would do as much damage as the drought had done. Keep storm systems from forming to minimize as much as possible the devastating winds and lightning storms that could still set tinder-dry woods ablaze even through the rain…
She had time to think carefully. Even the fastest-moving storm system would normally take several days to reach here from the mountains. This storm was coming as if sucked through a vacuum—the abnormally dry air saw to that—but she had time—barely, but enough—to be sure she made the right decisions.
This was not the sort of weather-working Idalia usually did, giving a gentle nudge to normal weather patterns. These weather patterns were abnormal to begin with, and she was trying to set them back into their normal ones. If she simply dissipated the force of the storm when it reached here, and broke up as much of it as she could as far away as she could reach, the pattern of the weather should quickly return back to normal, and Sentarshadeen wouldn't be drowned by flooding in the process.
She took out another honey-disk and crunched it between her teeth with nervous need. There weren't enough keystones in the entire world to provide energy for the work she had in mind. And it wasn't much more than a sennight since she'd called upon the Elves to lend power to the forging of the keystone she'd sent off with Kellen. She couldn't call upon them to share in a spell-price twice in so short a time. Many of them were still recuperating from the last Working. She knew they would help her willingly—and if they did, this time there would be deaths. She would not have that on her conscience.
It's all up to me, then.
She ate another honey-disk, thinking about what she needed and what she would pay. She would not set a price—it was always safest, and if she refused the bargain, she would be free to try again. But she must think carefully about what was needed before she began.
What was the most important thing? The Book of Stars said that all true magic came from the heart, and after she had thought about that for a long time, she had realized that one of the things it meant was that in every request a Wildmage made, there was one thing that was most important, the central element from which the rest of the request came. Focus on that, and see what else you could leave out. That was the most elegant way of working magic. Simplicity.
The weather patterns needed to be returned to normal. That was the most important thing. But in this case, it wasn't the only thing, because the Elven lands had to be protected from the damage that the weather would do while it was settling back into its normal patterns. She couldn't ask for either one without asking for the other, not and be certain of getting both.
So what was the best way to ask for both?
To ask for the strength to do it yourself. She knew she had the skill. All she lacked was the power. The Wild Magic would grant her that—if she was willing to pay the price it asked.
It would be a high price. She knew that already, even before the spell. The more specific you were, the higher the price.
Would it be worth it? Mageprices could be bitterly hard.
She looked around. How could she even ask? The flooding would drown everything in the canyon. It would destroy the city. And the forests and grasslands for hundreds of miles around were still tinder-dry. When lightning struck them, they'd burn. It wouldn't matter how hard it was raining. They'd burn.
She'd promised to protect the people of Sentarshadeen from that. She'd sent Kellen to the Barrier to end the drought, knowing how dangerous it was, knowing that the journey would probably take his life, knowing that if he lived to reach the Barrier, the spell would almost certainly ask for his life—and that Kellen, being Kellen, would give it freely, even joyfully. What was one more sacrifice? With power came responsibility.
With great power, greater responsibility.
She opened her work-bag and took out a tiny brazier and a bag of herbs. She set the small cake of charcoal into the brazier's pan and called it alight with a snap of her fingers, then burned her herbs. As she did, she formed her intention clearly in her mind, and asked her boon of the Gods.
To give me the strength to help the rains come gently and safely, and to return the weather to its rightful pattern, repairing the damage done to it by the Barrier. She did not specify the price she was willing to pay.
When she heard the Mageprice tha
t was her magic's cost, Idalia took a deep breath and lowered her head for a moment, closing her eyes tightly. For a moment she was tempted to refuse. Surely there was another way, a different spell she might cast!
But now the choice was hers. After a moment, she raised her head.
"I accept," she said in a hoarse whisper.
She felt the heavy sense of listening depart—the sensation Idalia always associated with the making of the bargains associated with Wild-magery—and then there was only the sense of competence and ability, the deep ever-filling well of Wildmage power, hers for use.
She got to work, putting the thought of the bargain aside.
She reached out with her heightened senses, touching the storm.
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