Ravensoul lotr-4

by James Barclay

  ‘It’s over,’ he said, feeling a strange sense of relief. ‘Only Xetesk left now. And I think that should worry us.’

  Hirad stretched over from his chair and patted Ilkar’s knee. ‘Well it would if it weren’t for the fact that the Garonin are going to roll over here in a few days too. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I’ve been robbed. I can’t touch anything that is mine, if you see what I mean. The house is empty and will never be refilled.’

  He smiled but was aware how hollow it must look. Hirad rubbed a hand over his chin.

  ‘So is that it? End of you as a mage?’

  ‘Well, some would argue that happened when the Elfsorrow killed me.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yep, sorry. And no, it isn’t the end, but you have to understand the mechanics of spell casting.’

  Hirad’s face fell. ‘Must I?’

  Ilkar laughed. ‘Gods drowning, I’m glad you’re with me. This is the most depressing day in the life of any Julatsan mage but at least I can console myself that I am not you.’

  ‘Mechanics,’ said Hirad.

  ‘Look, until the Garonin take every bit of mana, then any mage can still cast, sort of. What a Heart does is concentrate and feed out mana. It brings consistency to the mana density and each college’s Heart balances the others. Or used to. Now, if I try and cast, I’ll find it hard to drag enough mana in to construct my casting. It’ll take a whole lot more effort too and the outcome will be less certain.’

  ‘So, more difficult, more tiring and more dangerous to cast.’

  ‘Nothing gets past you, does it, Hirad?’

  ‘Fu-’

  The door to the frugal student chambers that the two of them were sharing with Sirendor opened with some vigour. Denser stood in the doorway. Dystran was at his back and a cluster of other men could be seen in the corridor outside.

  ‘Come in,’ said Hirad. ‘Oh, I see you already have.’

  Ilkar stood slowly, a crawling sensation in his gut. ‘What’s going on?’

  His tone was picked up by Hirad, who tensed and let a hand drop to his sword hilt. Denser walked in and let the room fill behind him. Ilkar nodded at Dystran and counted the number of guards with him. Too many.

  ‘Ilkar, I am deeply sorry about what has happened to Julatsa. We were tracking the battle by Communion Globe but of course there was little we could do.’

  ‘Any idea how many escaped?’ Ilkar raised his eyebrows. ‘Or who in particular?’

  Denser shrugged. ‘They had begun an evacuation when it was clear all was lost, but who actually got out is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Pheone?’ Ilkar didn’t really want to utter the name of his former lover, now High Mage of Julatsa, lest it damn her.

  ‘Like Heryst she was in the Globe chamber until very late on. Heryst did not try to run, we know that. As for Pheone… I’m sorry, I think you have to assume the worst.’

  ‘The good news keeps on pouring in, doesn’t it?’ muttered Hirad.

  ‘It does rather,’ said Denser. Ilkar saw him shift uncomfortably and redden a little at the neck. ‘And that’s kind of why I’m here. Why we’re here. There’s been a change of plan.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ilkar did not like the way Dystran was smiling.

  ‘With Julatsa fallen it rests with Xetesk to rise to the challenge as the last bastion of power on Balaia, the last chance to save our country for all who survive the Garonin. We cannot countenance desertion. So many people in far-flung parts of the country will be untouched by the enemy but will feel the effects of their passing. For the greater good of Balaia, for her people and for the continuation of magic, Xetesk must and will survive. No one is going to the Wesmen. Here we stand and here we fight. I am closing the gates to the city.’

  ‘Have you completely taken leave of your senses?’ asked Ilkar, disbelieving what he had just heard for a moment. ‘I mean, no doubt you are about to deliver that same great leader speech to the masses or something, but this is me. This is Hirad and Sirendor. You know you can talk to us person to person. We’re friends, remember? And we all agree we need a way out of here should you fail. Right?’

  Denser shook his head. ‘Wrong. We will not fail. We have the means and we have the ability. Xetesk will stand and will rule the new Balaia.’

  Hirad’s mouth hung open. It was almost comical. Ilkar cleared his throat and rubbed his face.

  ‘I know you aren’t wild about our escape plan but you can’t just put a stop to it. It doesn’t make any sense. What does The Unknown have to say about this?’

  Denser looked at the ceiling. ‘Our king is currently indisposed.’

  Hirad exploded across the room. Two of Denser’s guards got to him. Just. He jabbed a finger between them as they pushed him back away from their Lord of the Mount.

  ‘Fucking idiot. Fucking betrayer. You’ll kill everyone. Are you blind? I am coming for you, Denser. You can’t do this.’

  ‘Shut up, Hirad,’ said Denser. ‘I can and I will. I am Lord of the Mount of Xetesk. This is my duty.’

  Ilkar had his hands on his mouth. He felt detached. Like he was watching a play or something.

  ‘You stand on the brink of annihilation and yet still you dream of power and dominion,’ he breathed. ‘I will not help you do this. No dead will help you do this.’

  ‘That’s not strictly speaking true but we anticipated such a reponse. We know what drives the dead. We know what you desire for yourselves and for those who brought you back. Did you really think I wouldn’t get wind of your little plan to sneak my people out of my city?’

  ‘You have no right-’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about rights, Sirendor. This is my city. I cannot, I will not have the dead poisoning the minds of my people any longer. There is fighting in the streets, there is tension where there needs to be calm preparation and there is divisiveness where there must be unity. But you can still help me. Your friend Auum has conveniently collected nearly every one of the dead in a single place. You will join them but you will not leave there. And when the Garonin breach the walls of the city, you will have your chance for revenge while we continue laying our plans for victory. Every moment will count. Fight hard.’

  Ilkar sat back down. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘What?’ asked Hirad, still restrained by the college guardsmen.

  ‘You heard what Auum said. About splitting the density of souls to fragment the Garonin invasion force. That bastard wants to use us as a decoy.’

  Hirad’s face greyed. ‘You traitorous little fuck.’

  ‘That’s enough, Hirad,’ said Denser. ‘I have to save those who can be saved. You are dead. It is already too late for you.’

  ‘Have you listened to nothing?’ Hirad’s lunge forced his guards back a pace. ‘There is nowhere for the dead to go. Nowhere for the living who die to go. You are betraying everyone. For fleeting power. You were a man I loved and trusted. A Raven man. What happened to you?’

  ‘Goodbye, Hirad. Ilkar, I wish you well. And Hirad, don’t make it hard, eh? You will leave the college right now or your soul will fly to the void.’

  Chapter 20

  ‘It really is the only way,’ said Dystran.

  ‘Then why do I feel like I am the lowest form of life in this city?’ said Denser.

  ‘Feeling sorry for yourself won’t help you.’

  ‘It seems a good place to start, all right?’

  Denser walked out onto the highest balcony of his tower. It afforded him unsurpassed views of his college, his city and beyond. It showed him the few remaining dead scattered about his city being rounded up and escorted to their desolate quarter of Xetesk. Easy enough to do. For the ones that weren’t displaying the manner of their deaths like a badge, all that was needed was to shine a lantern on them and their shadow gave them away. No hiding place. No exceptions. Well, one.

  ‘But you can feel the tension lifting, can’t you?’

  And he could. It was quite something. With his guards ere
cting barricades across all exits from the area of parkland and abandoned homes in which the dead were effectively corralled, the living were regaining control of their city. Already, they were beginning to gather in the college courtyard, on the apron outside the college’s south gate and anywhere on the approaches. Denser was due to address them from the tower.

  Denser turned. The exception, Septern, was at his shoulder. On the table behind them the master mage had overlaid a ward grid on a map of the city. It was a true work of art both aesthetically and technically.

  ‘You had to do something,’ added Dystran. ‘The dead were dividing us just by their presence and the more dangerous souls were sowing rotten seed. Feel the mood of the city when our defence is organised. Think of the support when you remind them that hundreds and hundreds of mouths to be fed are gone. Never underestimate the greed of the individual desperate to survive.’

  ‘I certainly won’t do that,’ said Denser.

  Out in the city his mages were laying wards in locations matching Septern’s exact specifications. Beyond the gates the horizon was obscured from north to south by the Garonin’s expanding cloud of dust and burned mana. Korina was the only other major city still standing and was not as yet under concerted threat; it was as though the capital was being left until last.

  What Denser really needed to know was when the new Garonin machine would achieve its critical mass and head back towards Xetesk. He had scouts tracking it and mages ready to fly in with any news. So far though, the Garonin were content to amble along in a seemingly random pattern about four days out. It was a hiatus that would not last for long.

  More dead were moving along The Thread. Hirad, Ilkar and Sirendor were with them. He had acquiesced and let them say their goodbyes to Diera and her boys but had refused them leave to see Sol. At least they were causing no trouble. He bit his lip and swallowed a lump in his throat.

  ‘They were fine people when they were alive,’ said Dystran. ‘But something changed in them when they died. The manner of their deaths, the places they died. Something. They are different. Not The Raven you remember. Don’t be beguiled into remembering what you saw as your friends. They stopped being that the day they died.’

  ‘What do you think, Septern?’

  ‘If death changed me, then I do not remember my old life. But I care not for loyalties and guilt. Both are wastes of effort. I only care whether my grid will work. Let me take you through it.’

  Denser moved to the table. Septern was right. And he was different from every other dead person that Denser had met. Completely consumed by himself and what he could do for magic on Balaia. Just like the stories about him when he was alive. And Hirad had been different from his old self, hadn’t he? The old Hirad would have wanted to fight to the bitter end. Save his country and all that. It was not and never had been his way to run from his enemies.

  ‘I’d better be right about this,’ Denser said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Septern.

  ‘Nothing. Let’s look at your plan.’

  The three men leaned over the map and its overlay. The city was picked out building by building, street by street. On top Septern had indicated the position of every ward, and had added a symbol as code for its exact construction, direction, exclusions and power. Each ward was connected to others by lines either dotted or solid. He had drawn arrows to indicate things like mana flow, energy spill and trigger direction.

  ‘The beauty of this is its simplicity and its perfect logic. As with all my finest creations.’

  Denser smiled at him. ‘You haven’t lost your modesty, I see.’

  ‘What use have I for modesty? I suspect I still am the greatest mage ever to walk any dimension in this or any other cluster. And cut off in my prime too. Betrayed by my own students, agents of the Wytch Lords would you believe?’

  ‘Yes, but we got the Wytch Lords,’ said Denser. ‘I cast Dawnthief to destroy them.’

  Septern choked on his next words and pulled back from the map. He grabbed Denser’s shoulders and turned him round.

  ‘You cast it? What were you, crazed? That spell was never intended to actually be used. It was a theoretical demonstration.’ Septern spluttered a little more then waved a dismissive hand. ‘But clearly you got it wrong or else none of us would be here, would we? This place would be a vacuum.’

  Denser bridled. ‘I didn’t get it wrong, thank you very much. I adapted it. Luckily you left enough room in the lore for Dawnthief to be cast at less than its complete power using an altered structure. So it destroyed the Wytch Lords and left us, well, nearly intact.’

  ‘Nearly?’

  ‘There were… consequences. Side effects.’

  Septern shook his head. His eyes were twinkling and there was a smile on his face. ‘Fascinating. So tell me. What did it feel like to actually cast?’

  ‘Painful, if I remember rightly. I stopped breathing for a while, I know that.’

  Septern looked crestfallen. ‘Not engorged with power or elated or something like that?’

  ‘Possibly, but the pain blotted it all out.’

  Dystran cleared his throat. ‘Much as I would love to hear more, can it wait until later? We need this working and understood or the Garonin will do to us what Dawnthief didn’t.’

  Septern chuckled. ‘It is turning into quite a day. We must dine together, Denser.’

  ‘I think that is a very good idea. So. The grid.’

  ‘Yes. Now, when I was constructing the grid for my own house, a somewhat smaller task I admit though the principles are the same, I was concerned to build outer deterrents followed by inner cells designed to kill everything that ignored the first warnings.

  ‘Here I’ve dispensed with the deterrents as I think they will be of little value. I’ve concentrated on feeder cell formation and causing maximum damage when a given ward is tripped.’

  Denser may not have felt elation when he cast Dawnthief, nor when he was throwing his old friends out of the college to face the Garonin. But he felt it now, listening to the man whose genius remained, as he had guessed, unsurpassed.

  ‘So, to illustrate. Take this cell here.’ Septern circled a group of about fifty wards positioned by one of the outer grain stores and covering some of the south-eastern streets leading onto The Thread. ‘Now, all the wards will be active when the enemy move into the area but only one has a physical trigger. This one here.’

  He pointed at a central ward at the head of the grain store where the Garonin would have to pass if they were to access any of the surrounding streets.

  ‘When this ward is triggered it dominoes mana through every second ward in this cell and they all go off simultaneously. HellFire, FireGlobe, FlameOrb, EarthHammer. I don’t know your fancy new names and I care less about them. The area is deluged in flame and levelled by earth movements in less time than it takes me to drain a glass of wine.

  ‘But that’s not all. Because we expect the Garonin to be determined and adaptable, we can expect them to come through the same area again, assuming the danger has passed. So the triggering of the first set of wards also passes mana to the other half. The trigger ward becomes this one here and the process begins again.

  ‘And that’s not all either. The fact of a detonation of a set of wards feeds mana back up through the chain to the adjacent cells, bringing them to a ready state. The point of that is that we leave as little mana floating about as possible, making it very hard for the wards to be detected. Dormant wards last for ages if they are set correctly.

  ‘And the final thing is this. Right here, above the gates of the college, is your master ward. Master switch, if you like. The whole system lies dormant until this ward is completed. Once it is, the mana circuit is active and we sit back and watch the Garonin getting destroyed while we manage our mana stamina for any close combat.’

  The twinkle remained in Septern’s eyes. ‘Good, eh?’

  It was a while before Denser could speak. He stared at the map, the cells and the connectivity
and could do nothing but shake his head.

  ‘Good? It’s genius.’

  ‘That’s all I ever deliver.’

  ‘This would have saved us a whole lot of bother when the demons came knocking,’ said Dystran.

  ‘Yes, but it will level the city,’ said Denser.

  ‘Which is no more than the Garonin will do anyway,’ said Dystran.

  ‘Thank you, Septern. That is truly amazing.’

  ‘I can do nothing but agree with you,’ said the master mage.

  ‘Can we bring all the population within the college walls?’ asked Dystran.

  ‘I have designated safe areas to the west as well,’ said Septern. ‘Plenty enough for those who remain.’

  ‘And the dead? They are going to be right in the middle of the grid. Murdering them wasn’t in my plans,’ said Denser.

  Septern waved a hand to quieten him.

  ‘If you look more closely, you’ll see that I have excluded their area from the main grid but left a defensive line on their borders. Your guards will not need to stand there once the grid is activated. And, in addition, we can expect any Garonin stumbling into the dead’s area to be damaged and demoralised. Easier to fight. A positive outcome, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Denser nodded, feeling just slightly less guilty at his actions.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Though I’m not sure my former friends will feel the same.’

  There was a knock on the door. After a brief pause, Brynar entered.

  ‘You, my young mage, have just missed a master class,’ said Denser.

  ‘But don’t worry,’ added Septern. ‘I’ll be walking the grid with Sharyr later, checking the accuracy of today’s work. Why don’t you attend me?’

  Brynar looked at Denser, who inclined his head.

  ‘It would be an honour, my Lord Septern,’ he blustered.

  ‘Then it is settled,’ said Septern.

  ‘Brynar, you have something to report? No doubt our king is still ranting about dragons?’

  Denser chuckled at his own cleverness. Something about Septern and his effortless genius was infectious and energising.