“At once, Commander,” Jordet said, bowing. “It will be my pleasure.”
The smirk on Lord Marhal’s face vanished instantly, and Lord Vander looked completely taken aback. “No, no,” Vander said hastily. “It would be better to give him time to get over the shock. No need to go at once.”
“But I thought that the shock was what worried you!” Herre said in mock amazement. “Well, we shall let it be for the moment; I am sure you have other duties to attend to.”
The Alkyran Lords looked a bit disgruntled at this thinly veiled dismissal, but they did not quite dare to openly challenge one of the legendary Shee.
Gahlon looked relieved at the outcome, and Armin grinned openly at Herre as he left. Jordet watched them go, a little smile of amusement playing about his lips. As soon as the Lords were out of hearing, the younger Shee gave a low whistle.
“Gahlon was certainly right about them!” he exclaimed. “They are just looking for a chance to discredit Bracor and take over themselves.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” Herre said dryly. “I think they had conveniently forgotten that Bracor is the only one of them with family ties among the Shee.”
“Well, they have been rather forcibly reminded of it,” Tamsin said from the back of the tent. The minstrel came forward, frowning. “I do not mean to presume, Commander, but was that wise?”
“Perhaps not, but these Lords will not try to make trouble with me again,” Herre said. “Armin and Gahlon can be trusted to keep them out of mischief until the battle; after that we will have more leisure to deal with them if necessary. Now, if you do not object, I really do have duties to attend to.”
A messenger was sent to Isme the next day. Nothing more could be done. Morale in the army sank to a new low; Alethia had been beloved by her city, and though she was not known to most of the Shee or the Wyrds, the gloom that hung over the Brenn troops infected the others as well. The cold and darkness had already taken its toll; some of the Alkyran soldiers who had not fought at Brenn were already grumbling about the hazards of becoming involved with the Shee.
The reports of the Wyrd scouts that arrived that afternoon did nothing to mend matters. Now that the Lithmern army was a bare two days away, it became obvious that there were nearly three times as many of the enemy as there were of the Alkyrans and their allies. To add the finishing touch, it was soon certain that the Shadow-born were nearing the point at which the Shee wizards would be unable to contain them. When word of this reached Maurin, the Trader went to seek out Har.
He found the young Noble talking with Jordet and Tamsin. “Hello!” Har called cheerfully as he came within earshot. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”
“Have you heard Dlasek’s report?” Maurin demanded, ignoring the question.
“Yes, but it won’t matter,” Har said.
“Won’t matter! Three times as many men, and the Shadow-born as well? How can it not matter?”
Har grinned. “Tell him, Jordet.”
Maurin turned to the Shee and opened his mouth. Hastily, Jordet grasped his arm and pointed down the length of Coldwell Pass. “Look there, and tell me what you see.”
With a puzzled frown, Maurin turned to stare at the two-mile crack in the mountains that was Coldwell. The sides of the ravine were sheer cliffs, narrowing as they drew toward the eastern end of the pass. At the narrowest point one rock wall curved out and sloped into a ridge that almost blocked the pass completely; behind it the main part of the Alkyran armies could wait in concealment until the last minute.
“I do not see anything new,” Maurin said. “What is your meaning?”
“Look up, there,” Jordet said, pointing. Maurin looked. Above the sheer cliff wall rose the side of a huge mountain, crowned with snow.
“What does that have to do with Lithmern?” Maurin asked impatiently.
“As it is, nothing,” Jordet replied. “But if it were to conveniently fall as they bring their army through the pass?”
Maurin’s eyes widened. “It would crush their army. And block the pass forever.”
Beside him, Tamsin gave a low whistle. “If it works, you will make legends with this battle,” the minstrel said.
Maurin looked at Jordet with a touch of awe. “You can do this?”
“Not I,” Jordet disclaimed. “But the Wyrds and the Veldatha have been spending a good deal of time up there, and they think it can be done. Two days from now they will be ready.”
“I hope so,” Maurin said, sobering suddenly. “In two days the Lithmern will be here.”
“Already?” Jordet frowned. “I had not heard. Pardon me, but I must give this news to Rialla, if she does not know already.” The Shee Ward-Keeper bowed and left, and a few moments later the others followed suit. Maurin was thoughtful for the next two days, and found himself looking more and more frequently at the imposing mountains above the pass as he went about the business of making ready for the coming battle.
Alethia recovered consciousness slowly. At first she did not know where she was; then memory flooded back and she tried to sit up and look around. It took three tries. She was terribly weak, and her left arm was almost useless. Blood from the torn shoulder had soaked her sleeve and dried to a hard crust that pulled painfully at the wound whenever she tried to move.
Finally she succeeded in propping herself upright. She was in a small cave, dark but dry. Nearby her horse stood watching. Quite sensibly, the animal showed no inclination to go back out into the raging storm. Unfortunately, it also showed no sign of coming any nearer to Alethia.
The girl put out her good hand and tried to coax the horse over. Eventually, it came, and she grabbed for the dangling loop of rein. The horse tossed its head, carrying the loop out of reach, and Alethia remembered that she had knotted the reins to keep them from sliding out of her fingers in the cold.
Gritting her teeth, Alethia lunged upright and caught the reins. She almost screamed aloud with the pain in her shoulder, but at last she had the horse. For a few moments she leaned against the animal’s side, recovering; then she began to undo the buckles that held the saddle in place.
It took several tries to unfasten the girth; working one-handed was awkward, and Alethia kept jostling her shoulder painfully. Finally it was done, and Alethia gave the saddle a shove and let it crash to the floor of the cave on the opposite side of the horse. The animal jumped and shied, almost knocking her off her feet, but Alethia clung grimly to the reins until it was quiet once more. Then she unfastened the bridle and slipped the bit off. The horse moved away, and Alethia sank gratefully back to the floor of the cave.
Her next task was to investigate the saddlebags. This was easier; she could remain seated, and the fastenings were not complex, nor were the bags mobile the way the horse was. Alethia quickly found what she was looking for—blankets, water, and food.
Alethia provided water and grain for her horse before eating her own meal ravenously, then wrapped herself in the blankets and fell almost immediately into the sleep of exhaustion. Hunger woke her, but she stayed awake only long enough to satisfy it, then fell asleep once more.
When she awoke for the third time, the howling of the wind had stopped. She had no idea how long she had been lying on the floor of the cave. She was still weak, but her strength was no longer dangerously low. She looked around for the horse, and found it munching mouthfuls of green from the snow-covered bushes that screened the opening of the cave.
Alethia sat up and reached for the provisions. She ate slowly this time, and gave sparingly to her mount, noting how dangerously depleted her stock of food and grain had become. When she finished, she repacked the saddle-bag, wondering how she was going to get it back on the horse with only one arm.
There was very little she could do about her wound. She constructed a sling, using strips of her cloak; this gave the arm something to rest on and made it less painful, but it was still useless. Then she went to the mouth of the cave and peered out.
The scene was a study in s
hades of grey. The mountains were blanketed with snow; not clean and white, but a dingy grey in the faded light that filtered through the heavy clouds. The shapes of trees stood out in stark relief, dark grey against light, and above them grey rock poked through the snow. Nothing looked familiar in the least.
Alethia went outside cautiously, watching the sky for large birds. Her most pressing needs were fire and food. Though she knew that she could use the firestone to summon wood she was unwilling to do so, for she suspected that the effort of finding shelter by magical means was what had so exhausted her. Moreover, she was reluctant to chance using magic again so close to Lithra.
Half an hour later Alethia had found only two small sticks, and she realized that she had no choice. Exhausting herself physically plowing through the snowdrifts was just as dangerous as the energy drain of using magic. Carrying the little wood she had found, Alethia trudged back to the cave.
Standing in the shrub-covered opening, she grasped the drier of the two sticks and tried to remember Clasiena’s instructions. The summoning of like to like was a spell that she had learned the day before Har’s arrival in Eveleth, and she had not had a great deal of time to perfect it. When she was sure she had the spell clear in her mind, she began to grope for the power that linked her with the firestone.
At first she could not find it, and that worried her. She set the wood down carefully, and drew her hand closer to stare at the glow in the depths of the firestone ring. Suddenly it came, flooding her with so much power she could hardly handle it. Alethia cried out in protest at the searing force, and for a moment she almost lost control. She fought for balance, trying to force the power into the mold she had chosen for it. She was only partially successful; then, as suddenly as it had come, the surge of power passed.
Alethia staggered and almost fell into an absurdly huge pile of dry wood before her. She shook herself a little, feeling surprised that she was not drained after such prodigal use of power. “Like using Thoren’s Sword to chop grapes!” she muttered, and reached for the firebox that held her flints.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Alethia laid the fire a little within the mouth of the cave. The flints were awkward to use with only one hand; she wedged one between two rocks and tried striking it with the other. It didn’t work very well, but eventually she got the fire lit.
With a sigh of relief, Alethia sat back, looking at the fire. As she did so, the light changed; things grew clearer and more sharply defined, and Alethia knew that the off-again, on-again spell-sight had returned, wakened perhaps by the surge of power she had felt when she used the firestone. She sighed again, wondering why the erratic gift had come now, when she did not need it, instead of a few minutes or days earlier, when she was trying to find her way through the blizzard or attempting to gather firewood. She started to rise, and as she did so she glanced out of the cave mouth. And froze.
The sky was no longer simply heavy with clouds. To her newly awakened spell-sight, it was shot with dark lightnings. Flashes of blackness leapt along a web of power that could only have been constructed by the Shadow-born. Alethia dropped the firebox and shrank back, trying to make herself as small as possible in the hope of being overlooked.
Nothing happened. Gradually she realized that she was not being hunted; if the Shadow-born had been seeking her, the tremendous power that had overwhelmed her a few minutes before would surely have attracted their attention. The lines of force were herding the clouds southward; she was seeing only a visible manifestation of a spell being cast miles away, perhaps in Mog Ograth itself. Unless she tried to tamper with the web itself, her only danger lay in blundering into the path of the spell, as she had when she was lost in the storm.
As she began to comprehend more fully what she was seeing, Alethia relaxed. She had, she realized, a tremendous advantage over the Shee wizards. As long as the spell-sight was working she would instantly know of the use of magic anywhere around her, without having to resort to detection spells which might betray her own presence. Her confidence started to return, and she glanced around for the firebox.
Only then did Alethia notice that the cave seemed to be full of light. She stopped and turned slowly, then looked quickly at the firestone. The ring was indeed glowing. The lines of power were obvious to her spell-sight, but it was not the source of the pulsing, golden light she saw.
Once more she reached out for her power, and the ring blazed in response. Suddenly she realized the source of the unexpected surge that had nearly overthrown her attempt to summon firewood; the golden glow was raw power, unchanneled. Alethia’s eyes widened and she looked up to find the source of the magic.
The glow seemed stronger toward the back of the cave. Alethia walked forward and the firestone grew warm upon her finger, but she could not see anything that seemed to be the source. Patiently, she continued searching.
The cave was much deeper than she had suspected. When she reached the back wall, Alethia found that it was really only a sharp, narrow bend, partially blocked by a rockfall at some time in the past. Alethia moved a few of the rocks, then squeezed through the opening, wincing as her injured shoulder scraped against the rock walls.
She found herself in a large open area. The glow was perceptibly brighter, and she heard the sound of water dripping. The girl moved toward the noise, and the glow grew brighter still. Now she was moving in a bright haze of power, and the firestone was blazing in response. Alethia came to a halt.
She stood before a small pool; water dripped slowly into it from a ledge far above Alethia’s head. Just in front of her, at the edge of the pool, lay a skeleton, covered here and there by shreds of cloth. Next to it, set carefully on a rock a little above the level of the pool, was a well-wrapped bundle that, to Alethia’s spell-sensitive eyesight, seemed to glow and pulse with power.
Gingerly, Alethia stepped over the bones and picked up the bundle. She backed up a little, putting some small distance between herself and the skeleton, before she knelt to pull at the greased layers of cloth that were wrapped tightly around the thing of power.
The bundle was tied with leather thongs that had resisted well the attacks of time. The knots securing them, however, had shrunk to unyielding, stony lumps, and in the end she had to saw at them with her dagger. Finally the last layer of cloth, stiff with age, came free. Alethia choked and almost dropped the bundle as she saw what it was she held.
Gold and silver twined in intricate shapes and spirals above a delicate circlet of gold set with opals. Precious stones flashed rainbow fire of diamond, ruby, emerald and sapphire from crystal cages that caught the light and multiplied it until the crown was ablaze. Over it all, overwhelming the beauty of the thing itself was power; power, coiling about it, fountaining from every spiral, focusing through every jewel, spilling over into every corner of the cave and filling it all with fire.
With a shiver of awe, Alethia set the crown on the cave floor. There was no doubt in her mind that she held the long-lost Crown of Alkyra; nothing else could possibly hold such power. It was easier to understand, now, why the firestone had guided her to this cave; it had been drawn by the echoes of the power of the Crown. Hadn’t Clasiena said that firestones were sensitive to power in other things?
Four other treasures had disappeared at the same time as the Crown. She rose to her feet and searched thoroughly, but there was no sign of anything but the skeleton. Alethia walked slowly back to the bones and, with a grimace of distaste, began to examine them more closely.
She did not learn much. The dingy scraps of material were too coarse-woven to belong to a well-to-do or powerful man; a servant, then, or common soldier. Nearby lay a rusty knife, thin-bladed and still bearing traces of brownish stains along the edges. When she picked it up to examine it more closely, she recognized the workmanship of the Lithmern. Underneath it was a small packet wrapped in oilskin.
The light wavered, and Alethia rose hastily, holding the packet. The spell-sight was fading again, and she had not
hing to see by once the glow of power disappeared. Hurriedly she snatched up cloth and crown together and headed back toward the outer part of the cave. She reached the rockfall and squeezed past just before the spell-sight vanished completely.
The fire was burning brightly, and Alethia sat down in front of it and opened the packet. It contained letters, or a diary of some kind. The pages were stiff, and they crumbled at the edges when she touched them. The writing was strange, but Alethia could recognize words here and there, and gradually she began to piece together a picture of the message she held.
A party of Lithmern had set out from Lacsmer three hundred years before to carry the Crown and the Gifts to Lithra. Alethia could not follow much of the next section; it seemed to be a list of disasters that had befallen the group. The words “injured” and “died” appeared several times, but the rest of the page was illegible. Alethia shrugged and went on.
The last page was a little clearer. The first paragraph was water-stained in spite of the protecting oilskin, and Alethia could only make out scattered phrases. The clearest were “quarreled last night,” “we pursued,” “killed at Coldwe” and “blocked the pass.” Further down, the writing changed and was easier to read. Alethia bent over the page in fascination.
“…had to leave the others there,” the manuscript read. “The Crown is the most valuable of the treasures, so I will take it with me. Hopefully, I can find some other way through the mountains and bring a party back to Coldwell to recover the rest before the snows come.”
Alethia put the note down and stared into the fire. She could almost feel sorry for the writer, the last of the convoy carrying the Gifts, dying lost and alone in a cave in the Kathkari. A thought occurred to her, and she looked at the note again. She began to grow excited; unless she was totally misreading the message, the remainder of the stolen Gifts were hidden at Coldwell Pass!
[Lyra 01] - Shadow Magic Page 19