“Of course not!” snapped Seriene. “But we can’t rush headlong into that place. Give me time to examine the spells he’s created around the stones. I’ll find a way to pass them.”
Erin moved up beside Gaelin and put her hand on his shoulder. “Be patient, Gaelin. Seriene knows what she’s doing. A delay of an hour or two doesn’t hurt us.”
Gaelin slammed his sword back into its sheath at his hip.
Ilwyn was only about thirty yards away. She seemed more dead than alive, lying limply on the stone as if she were about to be entombed. “Fine,” he said. “But the sooner we get her and leave, the better.”
Seriene frowned, and paced forward to survey Bannier’s defenses. “I’ll work as quickly as I can,” she promised.
“Gaelin, make sure everyone stays near, and don’t let anyone nod off. Erin, stay with me. I may need your help.”
“Of course.” The minstrel moved forward to confer quietly with the princess. Gaelin snorted impatiently and set about dividing the guards into two-man teams and posting them as watches nearby. It looked as if they would be there for a while.
Chapter Sixteen
Without sun or moon, Gaelin had no idea how long they’d been in the Shadow World. The bitter cold numbed his hands and feet and slowly chilled his torso, until he found himself shivering constantly and uncontrollably. To keep his mind from wandering, he continuously circled the hollow, keeping a close eye on the guardsmen who stood watch. The gloom was wearing on them all, deadening their senses and slowing their reactions.
In the hollow itself, Seriene had finished her initial survey of Bannier’s defenses. With a silver powder she kept in a pouch by her belt, she had laboriously scratched grooves and whorls in the dark earth, creating a diagram that surrounded Bannier’s standing stones. As he watched, she finished her first orbit of Bannier’s source and began to embellish her design with various complications. He thought about going over to ask her what she was doing but decided not to – en- chantments could be tricky, and he wouldn’t want to ruin the spell by interrupting her.
After aiding Seriene in her first examination of the site, Erin hovered near the Dieman, waiting for opportunities to be useful. Gaelin knew enough about magic to recognize that some portions of Seriene’s work were best performed with two people, especially the more complicated designs. After checking once again on the guardsmen, he walked over to stand beside Erin. “How is it going?” he asked quietly.
“Seriene’s about halfway done,” Erin replied. “It’s a tedious task, but one that has to be done just right.”
“What exactly is she doing?’
“I don’t understand the details of the enchantment,” said Erin. “Seriene tells me that it’s beyond my skills. If I’m not mistaken, she’s creating a barrier that will stop the flow of mebhaighl into Bannier’s source, sort of like damming a river.
Bannier’s most potent defenses are linked to the source itself, and if she succeeds, they will fall.” Erin watched Seriene for a short while, and added, “She’s a more powerful sorceress than I would have guessed.”
“As strong as Bannier?”
“We’ll soon see.” Erin reached over and grasped Gaelin’s hand. Her fingers felt cold on Gaelin’s, and he realized that with her lighter garb and smaller frame, she must be feeling the chill even more than he was. He undid his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, and she smiled gratefully at him. Suppressing a shiver, she spoke again, gazing off into the darkness. “Listen. About the last two nights… they’ve been wonderful. I can’t stop thinking about you. But I don’t know if it would be fair to you for things to continue as they are. Someday you’ll have to marry. The daughter of a highranking noble, I suppose, or you’ll risk losing everything you’ve been fighting for. Persuading the southern lords to return their loyalty to Mhoried will be difficult enough without the question of a commoner at the Mhor’s side.”
Even though he had been expecting this, Gaelin’s heart wrenched. Thickly, he said, “What do you want to do?”
She considered her words in silence. “I’ll leave, once we finish here. I’ve made a terrible mistake, coming between you and Seriene.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“How can I stay?” she said. “As your mistress? Or would I see you day after day, pretending that I don’t love you?”
“You deserve more than that.”
He struggled to find something else to say, but no words came to him. Erin’s face, pale and radiant in the gloom, made Gaelin’s heart ache. She looked down and held his hand tighter. “I’ll have to leave, then,” she said.
“That day’s not here yet.”
“No, it’s not. But if I wait a few weeks, a few months, maybe a year or two, how much harder will it be?” Erin looked up into his face, but Gaelin couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know if I could stay away from you, knowing that you’re somewhere nearby.” Her eyes softened for a moment, then she stood abruptly and stalked away, shrugging Gaelin’s cloak from her shoulders. He watched her leave, and bowed his head.
At that moment, Seriene struck Bannier’s trap. A brilliant flare of light seared Gaelin’s eyes, leaving colored spots in his sight for a long moment. He blinked his eyes clear, drawing his sword by instinct and whirling to face the black stones in the heart of the hollow. The great column of dark energy seethed and crackled, a leaping pillar of noxious flame that pierced the blank sky like a steel rapier. Not only was it visible again, it was blindingly bright, a beacon that cast weird, dancing shadows over the entire hilltop. Gaelin gaped in awe. The light would be visible for dozens of miles, a beacon that shouted their position to anyone – or anything – nearby.
The column flickered, as a dark band of matter rose along its length, then streaked outward along one of the faint ley lines, arrowing off to the west. A signal to Bannier, he realized.
Seriene lay huddled outside the circle, a frail white doll discarded on the ground. Black energy danced and snapped in cold, lightless arcs all around her. Swallowing his amazement, Gaelin cautiously stepped closer, even though the roaring of the energy hammered at him with tangible force.
“Seriene!” he called. “Seriene! What did you do? How do we stop it?” But his voice was drowned by the shrieking storm of darkness that spouted from the ancient stones. He took another cautious step closer, and then his feet froze to the earth as he saw the true nature of Bannier’s defense.
The unhealthy light of the raging magic was too bright to look at directly, bright enough to throw surging shadows from the dark outlines of the old standing stones. Each of the seven rune-carved pillars was joined to a pool of darkness, and, as Gaelin looked on in horror, the shadows opened. From impenetrable depths of darkness, nightmarish shapes were rising, mist-cloaked wraiths with baleful eyes that exhaled streamers of cold vapor as their hungry maws yawned wide.
The pervasive chill of the Shadow World suddenly became much more acute, as if the shadow things gathered and focused the twisted energies of the place. Gaelin’s heart labored in his chest, trying to pump blood that was growing sluggish.
The first of the shadow creatures stepped free of its prison beneath the earth and silently advanced on Seriene.
Whatever the shadow creatures were, Gaelin suspected that mere swords would not deter them. He prayed Seriene was only stunned and would know of a way to dismiss them.
With a gasp that seared his nose and throat with cold, he broke free of his paralysis and scrambled down the shallow slope to Seriene’s side. He arrived a step ahead of the shadow thing and launched a desperate assault of slashes and cuts, hoping to keep it at bay.
The creature roiled and flowed like living darkness, slithering away from the sword blows just as a patch of shadow might retreat from the advance of a man carrying a torch. As soon as the sword passed, its body returned to its former shape. With inhuman swiftness, it lunged forward and slashed its icy talons across Gaelin’s chest, scoring his breastplate with four long, frosted furrows and
sending a tremor of aching cold through his body. He stumbled back, giving ground to the monster’s attack. Around him, he could make out the dim cries of his guards engaging the shadow thing’s companions.
Ducking beneath a wild slash, he leaned forward and ran his sword clean through the shadow’s center of mass, a strike it was unable to completely avoid. There was a curious tugging or resistance on the blade, as if he’d just stabbed a pool of water, and his hand was stung by a searing wave of cold that raced up the sword’s hilt. The creature recoiled as if wounded, and Gaelin followed with a second sword thrust that passed directly between its baleful red eyes. This time, there was a little more resistance, and with a soft, hateful hiss the thing discorporated, dissolving into an inky black vapor that dissipated to the ground. “Aim for their eyes!” he cried.
“They’re most vulnerable there!”
He glanced about, trying to get a sense of what was going on. All around him, men cursed and screamed as they fought the shadow monsters. Bull held one at bay with wild, twohanded sweeps of his sword, keeping the creature on the defensive as it deftly avoided the singing blade. Afew feet away, Erin cast a dazzling spell of light that blew a creature into nothingness.
But more were rising from the shadows beneath the standing stones, and already several of Gaelin’s men were down. He growled a curse, not knowing what to do.
“Gaelin, help me.” He looked down in surprise and saw Seriene struggling to stand. He reached down and hauled her to her feet. The princess looked weak and frail, and Gaelin could feel her entire body shaking in cold or exhaustion, but there was fire and fight in her eyes. “You’ll never defeat them all,” she coughed. “They’ll keep coming until they overwhelm you.”
“What do we do?” he shouted.
“Help me finish the spell,” she replied. “When I seal the source, they will vanish.” She pointed at the monoliths across the clearing. “I’ve prepared barriers for all the stones save one.”
He nodded, and half-carried her over to the place she indicated.
Even as he set her down, another of the shadow creatures flowed forward and launched itself at him. Gaelin slashed at it desperately, hoping to keep it away from Seriene.
The entity took advantage of his distraction and sank its freezing talons into his left forearm. With a great cry, he wrenched free and brought his sword down on its head, striking it down, but his arm now hung limp and useless by his side, numbed by the creature’s touch. He tried to shrug it off, but now two more of the monsters were sidling forward, preparing to attack. “Seriene! You’d better hurry!” he called.
Behind him, Seriene chanted the end of her spell, kneeling to scribe a pattern in the ground with her fingertip. She risked a glance up from her work, and found a free moment to snap, “Gaelin, hold them off! I’m almost done.”
Gaelin gave a couple of steps to the shadow things, menacing them with his sword. One flowed smoothly to his right, drawing his point away, while the other quickly slithered around him to the left, trying to get at Seriene. He had only a moment to make up his mind. With a yell, he turned his back on the creature menacing him and struck across his body at the monster that rushed at the princess. His blade caught the creature in the center of its torso, and it disintegrated into the mists and darkness from which it had come. But, before he could return his attention to the other foe, talons of searing cold raked at his face and throat as the creature leapt on his back.
Screaming, Gaelin staggered to his knees, flailing wildly with his sword. The monster’s shadowy claws seemed to pass right through his armor, leaving white patches of frost where the weird substance of its body pierced the plates and mail. Shadow stuff clawed at Gaelin’s heart within his chest.
The cold seized him in a relentless grip, and he sank to the ground.
As his sight reeled and darkened, he caught one last glimpse of Seriene, her face twisted in distress. “Gaelin!” she cried. For a moment, she stood paralyzed, unsure of whether to rush to his aid or finish her spell; then she whirled away and shouted a long invocation in an ancient language. The enchantment rolled melodiously from her tongue, filling the air with its liquid syllables. The diagram that Seriene had scribed around the clearing blazed with silvery light, as the runes and patterns came to life. Instantly, the roaring chaos of energy that raged in the clearing’s center fell silent, fading from view. As the wicked light disappeared, the shadows thrown by the stones died as well, and with them the shadow creatures vanished, hissing in anguish. The thing that clung to Gaelin seemed to dig in its claws one last time, trying to anchor itself to him, but then it faded into nothingness.
His ears rang from the noise, and he blinked to regain his sight. Agony racked his body, but with a herculean effort, he raised himself to his hands and knees. He hoped that his powers of healing were capable of stemming the damage; he felt torn and cold inside, as if he’d been stabbed with an icicle.
“Gaelin! Are you hurt?” Seriene was kneeling beside him, her arms around his shoulders.
“I’ll live,” he coughed. He tried to stand, but his strength failed him and he sagged back to the ground, a trickle of cold blood starting from his mouth.
“ You saved my life,” Seriene whispered. “Gaelin, you could have been killed.” Her face was open with astonishment.
He nodded, and gasped, “I had to, or none of us would have survived. How are the others?” Of the ten guards they’d brought with them, five lay on the ground, unmoving. In the clearing, all was as it had been before – but the brooding menace of the stones was gone, somehow screened or blocked by Seriene’s enchantment. He looked up at Seriene.
“That’s it?” he asked.
Seriene sat back on her heels. “The barrier holds. Bannier has been cut off from the land’s mebhaighl.”
“So he’s helpless?”
“No. He possesses whatever skills and spells he had before and may still be a formidable enemy. But he’s lost access to the most devastating spells he could wield, and as long as my shield holds, he’s no more or less dangerous than any common mage or wizard might be.” She gestured at the stone ring. “It should be safe to enter now.”
Gaelin followed her glance. On the altar at the center of the ring, Ilwyn lay pale and still. Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet and advanced toward her, pausing to look back at Seriene before actually setting foot within the ring. She nodded, and he stepped inside, wincing in anticipation. Nothing happened.
In a moment, he was by Ilwyn’s side. The girl was barely breathing, and her skin was so cold that at first Gaelin feared she was dead. With his sword, he cut the ancient iron shackles free and used main strength to bend the manacles enough to slip her ankles and wrists free. The effort made his vision swim, and icy air seared his lungs as he panted for breath. Ilwyn stirred and murmured in her sleep. Gaelin picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the stone ring to his waiting companions. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
*****
Forty miles away and across the threshold of eternal night, Bannier rode through a dark vale in the highlands, a dozen of Tuorel’s Iron Guards following him. Tuorel’s camp was two hours behind them, and this high in the hills of Winoene there was little to see except for gray, rock-crowned hillsides and a dense overcast that promised more of Mhoried’s endless rainfalls.
As they rode forward, Bannier carefully scanned the hillsides for signs of the place he remembered, an old goblin barrow where a door to the Shadow World could be easily opened. He was accustomed to shifting himself across the boundary at any point he liked, but the task was much more difficult with a dozen soldiers following him, and he needed to find a weakness in the Shadow’s barriers in order to bring the swordsmen along.
“Where are we going?” A keen-eyed, fierce young knight led the detail that accompanied Bannier. Bannier had already developed a distinct dislike for the man, but there was a chance the Ghoeran soldiers might prove useful. From the scowl on the fellow’s face, Bannier suspected
that the Ghoeran reciprocated his sentiments. “We’ve been riding in circles for an hour now.”
“It’s a shortcut,” Bannier replied. “We’d have to ride a day and a half to get to Caer Duirga, but I mean to be there in an hour.”
The Ghoeran barked laughter. “In these hills? Impossible!”
Bannier shook his head, smiling. “You’ll see soon enough, Sir Knight.” More than ever, he regretted the loss of his tower in Shieldhaven. In razing his conjuring chamber, Tuorel’s men had also destroyed his scrying pool. Without his divinations and auguries, Bannier had no idea whether or not Gaelin had started for Caer Duirga, or even if he was coming at all. He felt blinded and helpless, at the mercy of events.
One of the leading Ghoerans reined in his horse and pointed. “Lord Bannier! Is that it?” A low, weed-grown mound rose in a small hollow, surrounded by rings of small, weathered rocks.
Bannier rode up beside the fellow. He could sense the nearness of the Shadow without seeing the mound. “This is it,” he said. “Wait nearby until I call for you.” He slid off the horse and handed the reins to the guardsman, stalking forward to examine the site. Without waiting to see whether or not the Ghoerans withdrew, he started to work the spells that would part the veil between the worlds.
He was nearly finished with his task when he felt the strident shock of his source’s defenses waking. Caer Duirga’s magical energy suffused his body, basking him in a dark ra- diation that only another wizard could perceive, and the signature he’d placed over the old stones was unmistakable. He straightened up, dropping his staff to the wet earth, and stared off to the east in astonishment. Who is it that challenges me? he thought. One of the Gorgon’s fledglings?
Or… No! Someone is trying to rescue Ilwyn! With a vicious oath, Bannier wheeled and waved to the Iron Guardsmen.
“Come here! We ride now!”
The Falcon and The Wolf Page 28