How comforting it would be to get lost in the affairs of state. To sit with Denser and organise messengers and scouts. To plan rationing and discuss defensive tactics. He envied Denser. Right now the Lord of the Mount would be heading to a meeting with Septern where the peerless genius was going to impart his knowledge on building a ward grid to protect the city.
‘But you have to stop running, old man,’ he said to himself.
Sol sighed and turned around. He walked back along a couple of side streets and back onto The Thread. The college and its great ornate gates, open to all comers, was just to his right. He paused a moment to look at it. Imposing walls fifty feet high and with the Circle Seven Towers visible as they were from every point of the city, fingers of power thrusting into the sky. Foreboding and awe-inspiring.
‘But they won’t save you, Denser. Not this time.’
Glancing to his left, he could see the sign of The Raven’s Rest swaying gently in the breeze that seemed forever to be blowing up Xetesk’s main street. The Thread ran from the north to the south gates. As colourful a street as any in Balaia. Packed with history, filled with the dark times of the old college, which were only just washing away in the face of the new Xetesk. A place of which they could all be proud.
‘And soon to be so much rubble.’
Sol chided himself. The king muttering to himself as he tried to avoid going home to his wife. No better than the midnight drunks he ejected from his inn every closing time.
He took a deep breath, calmed himself and strode down The Thread, nodding and smiling at all he passed though there was only anxiety on the streets. There was an ugly undercurrent too and he felt eyes on him, not all of which were friendly.
Sol walked down the alleyway to the side of the inn and opened the gate to the yard. In the stables to his left Jonas was grooming his horse. The other two mares were turned out into the small paddock at the back of the inn. There were the clattering sounds of work going on in the kitchens and someone was whistling tunelessly to the accompaniment of a sweeping broom.
‘Jonas, how are you feeling?’
Jonas turned a beaming face on Sol and ran over. Sol hugged him and ruffled his hair. He was going to be every bit as big and powerful as his father. Sol hoped he got his hair from his mother’s side.
‘I’m fine, Father. Did you tell them what Sha-Kaan said? What are we going to do? He’s in danger, Father, I can feel it. Despite what he says. We have to help him. What’s going to happen?’
Sol fought the urge to crush his son to him and burst into tears. A wound opened in his heart and the ache was unbearable.
‘Everything will be all right, Jonas. I promise.’
Jonas pulled back and looked up at Sol, his head cocked to one side and his eyebrows raised.
‘I’m thirteen, Father, I’m not stupid. That doesn’t mean anything. Only little Hirad would be satisfied with that sort of answer. What are you going to do? It hurts in here.’ Jonas placed his hand on his chest. ‘The Kaan are fading.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sol crouched down and took Jonas’s arms. ‘Fading how?’
‘Their link to Balaia, to me and all the Dragonene. The melde. It’s weakening. I can feel it.’
‘Then you aren’t fine, are you? Why didn’t you say this before?’
‘I didn’t know before, Father. Or I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.’
‘And I’m fifty-one and I’m not stupid either. Tell me what happened. ’
Sol stared into Jonas’s eyes. The young man was frightened beneath the bravado, and to see it in him was a sword to the soul.
‘It was the last fleeting thought Sha-Kaan gave me. The melde is attacked directly. Dragons resting in their Klenes have been killed where they lie. Inter-dimensional space is filled with enemies. What happens if they kill Sha-Kaan, Father?’
‘They won’t. He’s too smart and too powerful. But this is big information for our fight to come. Why didn’t you tell someone?’
‘Because I was waiting for you to come home. Don’t be angry with me.’
Sol pulled Jonas into another embrace. ‘All right, son. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘What happens now?’
‘We get you sorted out. I’ll speak to Denser. There will be others in your situation after all.’
‘What about the enemy? What about what you told them?’
Sol stood. ‘That’ll have to wait.’
Jonas followed Sol into the inn. The kitchens were a-buzz with activity but there was none of the usual humour in the voices he heard. Diera was wiping down tables in the bar, and when she turned to see who it was, her face turned his heart to dust.
‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Somebody die?’
Diera threw her cloth into the pail. Water slopped onto the floor.
‘You, apparently.’
‘Wait outside, Jonas.’
‘What does she-?’
‘Jonas!’ Sol caught himself. ‘Please, son, just for a moment.’
‘All right.’
Sol waited until Jonas had closed the door behind him.
‘Denser’s been here, has he? Doesn’t waste much time, I’ll give him that.’
Diera turned her back on him. ‘Yes, he has. At least there’s someone in this ridiculous city who still has a steady head on their shoulders.’
Sol moved towards her. She wrapped her arms around herself and stiffened.
‘I need you to understand why there is no choice for me.’
He reached out a hand.
‘Don’t touch me, Sol.’ She rounded on him. ‘And I understand perfectly well, thank you. Your dead friends want you to join their merry band of lost souls, and you’re too stupid and blinded by your wonderful Raven past to see you’re being sold serpents for firewood.’
‘I can hear Denser in everything you say, Diera. So let me speak. Do you really think I’d be doing this if I felt there was any other choice? It’s a long shot, granted, but we are truly desperate. Denser has no answers and the Garonin will tear this city down stone by stone. Come with me to the west. I can protect you all the way and you can be first to follow me to our new home.’
‘Follow you? You’ll be dead, damn you! What good is that to me?’
‘There is no other way to save you and the boys.’
Sol hadn’t seen her arms tense and he felt the full force of the slap across his face. The sound ricocheted about the bar and Diera was screaming at him.
‘How dare you say that to me. Your death does not save us, it damns us. What will I say to the boys when nothing comes of it? That their father threw his life away after people long dead but still more important to him? You can’t do this to me, you can’t. I can’t do this without you. It isn’t life without you.’
Sol resisted the urge to reach out to her again. She stood tall and resolute despite her words. He chest was heaving and her cheeks were damp but she would not crumble.
‘What will you tell them if, by my actions, countless thousands are saved?’ he asked quietly. ‘What then? Would that be throwing my life away?’
Diera put a hand to his face and stroked the red mark she had made.
‘No, of course it wouldn’t, my darling. But you don’t do this any more. It’s all just a memory. You have to listen to Denser, to reason. The place to stand and fight is here. Chasing heroic deeds won’t work. Look at me. At Jonas and at little Hirad. Can you really bear to know you have seen us all for the last time? Can you die knowing you are depriving your children of the father they worship? Can your sacrifice really be worth such loss?’
‘What I cannot do is follow a path in which I do not believe and have that cause your deaths. This isn’t about being a hero, Diera. It never has been. It’s about doing the right thing. The only thing.’
‘Oh dear me, they really have done a number on you, haven’t they?’
Sol spun round. Denser had appeared from nowhere and was walking the last couple of paces to the front door.
; ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ demanded Sol.
‘Determining the state of mind of my king,’ said Denser. His hand rested on the door bolt. ‘And I don’t like what I hear.’
‘I don’t have to explain myself to anyone who eavesdrops from behind a cloaking spell.’ Sol turned to Diera, sure she had knowledge of Denser’s presence, but the look on her face told him otherwise. ‘I suggest you leave, my Lord of the Mount.’
Denser nodded. ‘I will, Sol. And I’m sorry, I really am.’
He opened the door, stood back and began to cast. Six men were running in. Big men.
‘What the-’
Diera screamed Sol’s name. No time to think. Sol picked up a chair and threw it at Denser. It caught him around the waist and knocked him into the wall just below the painting of Hirad, disrupting his casting preparation. Sol strode towards the six, reached above his head and grabbed the cudgel from the beam mounts on his way past.
‘Come on then, boys. Let’s see you take an old man, eh?’
The college heavies fanned out, shoving tables and chairs aside to give themselves clear space. Sol moved into the centre of the room and tapped the end of the cudgel on the timber floor of the inn. To his left, Denser was getting back to his feet.
‘Diera, keep on poking that bastard; don’t let him get a spell off.’
‘With pleasure.’
‘Who’s first? You?’ Sol pointed his cudgel at a squat man with a barrel torso. Pasty skin, flabby arms and a thick powerful neck.
The man grunted but didn’t move forward. Sol cursed under his breath. He knew what was coming. They rushed him as one. Two dived forward, aiming to grapple his legs. The other four went for his upper body. Sol jumped, bringing his legs up under him. He swung the cudgel, feeling a satisfying thud as it connected with a long-haired skull.
He landed on top of one of the divers, forcing the air from his lungs. He brought the cudgel round again, meeting the gut of a third man. Below him the diver moved, sending Sol off balance. He fell backwards, already beginning to turn before he hit the floor. He thrashed the cudgel above his head, missing this time.
Someone was on his legs and he kicked out hard, feeling his boots pummel soft flesh. But the arms clung on. Three others dived on top of him. Sol dropped the cudgel and smashed his left then right fist into the face of the closest heavy. The man’s nose and lips burst, showering blood everywhere. Sol took a punch to the stomach. And another. Someone else was on his legs now and he couldn’t move them.
He heard the splash of water, plenty of water. Denser swore. Sol managed a smile. He cocked his fists again but this time his shoulders were forced back onto the ground and his arms pinned by his sides. Sol bucked and twisted under the weight of the men on top of him. He glared up at the nearest, who set his fist above Sol’s face.
‘Don’t make me, Sol. Relax. Relax.’
Sol let the tension flow out of his body. The college men did not let up their pressure and they would not. He was beaten. For now.
‘Stand him up,’ said Denser. ‘And one of you get Diera off me, please?’
A slap of hand on face. Another expletive from the Lord of the Mount.
‘Don’t any of you so much as lay a hand on her,’ growled Sol. ‘Diera, it’s all right. It’s over.’
Sol allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. He pushed the college men away and tried to shake off restraining hands. Diera retreated towards the bar. He saw her hand go over the counter but he shook his head and she withdrew it. He let his eyes play over the six in front of him. One had blood pouring from the side of his face where the cudgel had struck him. Another was resting on a table, hands on his belly. A third stared balefully at him while the blood continued to run from his nose and mouth.
‘Don’t worry, you were ugly already,’ said Sol.
‘Don’t push your luck, my King,’ slurred the man.
Sol turned his head to stare at Denser. The Lord of the Mount was soaked through.
‘And you.’ Sol spat on the ground. ‘You have betrayed me, Xetesk, Balaia and most of all The Raven. I no longer know you.’
Denser stalked in to stand a few feet away.
‘I am doing what is right for our city and our country. You will not be allowed to fragment our defence by running off on your fool’s errand. No one is leaving Balaia. No one needs to. I know what Auum and those foolish old men are planning even if you don’t, and they will be stopped. We have the power and the strength to beat these Garonin. Xetesk will prevail.’
‘You will all die and I will laugh in your faces,’ said Sol.
‘Lystern has fallen. Julatsa is under attack. Dordover is long gone. And that leaves Xetesk as the one power on this continent. Do you think I or any mage of my college would pass up the opportunity for us to take up our natural position as rulers of Balaia?’
Sol felt numb. He stared at Denser and searched his eyes.
‘What’s happened to you, Denser? All that we’ve done in the last ten years. Does it really mean that little to you? The deaths of your friends?’
‘Until the Garonin came, it meant everything. But it’s all been washed away now and I cannot have dissension. There is a single purpose, and it is the protection of this city and its college. You need to spend some time alone thinking about that and about why you should be protecting the living, not seeing them into the hands of the dead and a fool’s march west.’
Sol shook his head. ‘I would rather protect the dead than the living like you.’
‘Right,’ said Denser. ‘Time for you to rest. We don’t want a scene when we return up The Thread, now do we?’
Denser began to cast, Sol’s eyes burning into him the whole time. And when the spell was done and the hands laid on him, Sol slipped quickly into unconsciousness, his head falling to one side and his eyes flickering closed. But not so quickly that he didn’t see the door to the yard, which had been open a crack, closing quietly.
Above the mage college of Julatsa a dense, dark cloud exploded and evaporated. Rebraal stood with his primary mage, Dila’heth, five miles from the city yet still they could feel the heat and the vibrations through the ground. Their horses, bought from a farmer on the coast of Triverne Inlet, grazed nearby, showing little sign of nervousness.
Julatsa sat like a pearl on flat open ground below them. Even from this distance the elves could see the dust of the Garonin approach, the flash of spells and the damage the city had already taken. At its centre the college still stood proud. Banners from her masts fluttered and a constant stream of spells fled out from her walls, tower and other high places.
‘The Garonin are in the city,’ said Dila. ‘It will soon be over.’ Rebraal turned to her. ‘I am sorry, Dila. Tual will give you strength. Ix will not desert you nor your brothers and sisters.’
Dila’heth fell to her knees.
‘Tual help us,’ said Rebraal. He crouched by her. ‘Dila?’
She was not looking at him but past him. Down across the plain the sky was dark. A cloud wider and deeper than any they had seen before was building over the centre of the city. It was spiralling slowly and its core was dense with the yellow of Julatsan magic.
Dila retched and groaned. Rebraal put an arm about her shoulders and held her to him, feeling her trembling and gasping for breath as if her chest was constricted. The cloud was spinning and growing. The cracks of lightning sent echoes across the plain. Spells still flew from the college but nothing would save them now. A stillness fell, emanating from the centre of the cloud. The pressure built, pressing on Rebraal’s ears like he had dived too far underwater. Dila was shuddering in his arms. He could feel her tears splash on his fingers and the low moan she uttered was strangling his heart.
Wider and wider the cloud spread. Faster and faster it turned. Yellow light shimmered all around and flashed dangerously within it. The stillness became a hum and the ground began to shake. Just a slight quiver through his feet but there all the same.
Rebraal saw buildi
ngs rocking. He saw slates fall and walls begin to collapse. From the west gates, people were running. Tiny dark shapes on the pale grass of the plain. The hum rattled the teeth in his jaws. Dila put her hands to her head and scratched at her skull. Her voice became a keening wail.
The cloud detonated.
A blinding yellow light flashed across the plain. Thick black smoke chased it away. The sound wave rolled out. Buildings shivered and fell. The tower of Julatsa exploded outwards. Stone was catapulted high into the sky, huge boulders turning lazy arcs to smash down on the city and the college. A massive column of yellow light streamed up, turning to smoke and haze before shutting off with the finality of a prison door slamming.
The force of the explosion swept out. Grass was flattened, trees bent, snapped, were uprooted or swayed back, scattering their leaves. Heat washed over the elven force. Rebraal turned himself and Dila away. The wave knocked them down. He breathed in hot air and choked out a cough.
Struggling to breathe for a moment, Rebraal dragged himself and Dila’heth to their feet. Across the plain was a sight that he could not take in and one that would remain with him until death closed his eyes the final time.
Half of the city was gone. Levelled. Dust was rising and billowing. Only the western edge of Julatsa remained, while beyond it the escaping Julatsans could be seen still running, protected at the last by the stone of their homes.
In the midst of the devastation he could hear exultant voices raised to the sky. In his arms Dila was reduced to wracking sobs, the centre of her life stolen away. He rocked her there for a while until she had calmed. She pulled away from him a little.
‘Nothing left for us here now,’ she said, her voice empty. ‘We should get back to the ships. Time is against us.’
Ilkar pulled himself upright and leaned back in the deep armchair. The nausea passed but the gulf in his body remained. He met the barbarian’s even gaze and could see the old Hirad shining through the unfamiliar face he now wore.
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