As had the glow from his wrist.
“What is it?” he screamed to Taeris.
“I don’t know!” Taeris yelled back, only just audible. “We should leave it be, though! There’s no telling what it does!”
To his left, the door to the storeroom burst open.
Caeden turned to see a wild-eyed Davian rushing inside, followed closely by a red-cloaked man he recognised as Elder Eilinar. Both men stared at the vortex in shock, then headed straight for Caeden.
"Caeden!" screamed Davian, seeing the box in his hands. "Put it down!"
Caeden barely heard, even his shocked delight at seeing Davian alive registering as only a minor distraction. Somehow he knew that the vortex was meant for him. He was supposed to step into it. It would take him… he wasn’t sure where, but it was somewhere he wanted to go. Somewhere he needed to go.
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he yelled, including both Davian and Taeris in the apology. “I have to do this.”
"Caeden! Don't!" It was Taeris. "We need you here!"
Caeden closed his eyes. Breathed steadily.
Then he spun, sprinting as hard as he could towards the tunnel of fire. He could sense Taeris and Davian both moving to stop him, but he was too fast. He was always going to be too fast.
He leapt into the vortex at full speed, bracing himself.
There was heat, the briefest instant of feeling like the flames were dancing on his skin. The shouts behind him faded.
And then he was somewhere else.
- Chapter 50 -
Wirr stood alongside Aelric and Dezia atop the First Shield, staring apprehensively out over the plains beyond Fedris Idri as they waited for the first sign of the enemy.
The Blind were coming, and fast. The report had arrived an hour ago from one of General Parathe's scouts, who had ridden his horse near to death in his urgency to return. The invaders were no longer taking their time; they had seemingly marched throughout the previous night, pausing for neither sleep nor food. They were likely to reach the city walls by nightfall.
Now afternoon was waning to dusk, and the gates below were finally shutting. Wirr flinched as the massive doors sealed the city, the ominous boom echoing around the narrow pass.
Then the sound faded, leaving almost utter silence. At least a few minutes ago there had been the low murmur of voices from the several hundred men manning the First Shield, even the occasional nervous laugh. Now that had died away too as the sun began to slip below the horizon.
Wirr felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see Aelric looking at him with a serious expression.
"Are you sure you want to be up here?" the young swordsman asked quietly. He glanced across at his sister, including her in the query. "It's not like the Second Shield isn't going to need defenders."
Wirr winced, glancing around to check that no-one had overheard. His father had warned him that the fighting would reach Ilin Illan itself, and Wirr in turn had felt the need to tell Dezia and Aelric. That didn't mean he wanted the soldiers to know, though. For most of the men, their hope of victory - their belief that it was attainable - was what gave them the courage to fight.
Dezia evidently knew that too and gave her brother a withering look, shaking her bow at him. "We've already discussed this. My skills are going to be all but useless once it comes to hand-to-hand combat," she said in a whisper. "I may as well make a difference while I can."
"And I can be most effective healing the wounded from up here, getting them back in the fight quickly," added Wirr. "No different to the Shen Gifted." He glanced across at the nervous cluster of red-cloaked men and women, who stood together at the city end of the wall, back a little from the front lines. There weren't many of them, but it was more than Wirr had expected from Tol Shen. And their presence would make a real difference.
Aelric grunted as he followed Wirr's gaze. "Fair enough. Just... stay as far back as you can once everything starts, both of you. You're no good to anyone if you get hurt," he said gruffly, turning his gaze back out onto the plains.
Wirr exchanged a small grin with Dezia; her brother had already said something similar a few times in the past hour. He clapped Aelric on the back. "We will," he assured the young man.
On a whim Wirr wandered closer to the edge of the wall, tentatively leaning forward to see the hard stone below, marvelling again at just how high up they were. A mild wave of vertigo washed over him before he drew back. The First Shield – the outermost of Fedris Idri’s defences, atop which he now stood – was at least fifty feet tall, allowing anyone manning it to see for miles across the plains in any direction.
Height wasn’t its only advantage. Despite the narrow pass, the Shield's depth allowed hundreds of men to be atop it at once. At the front, its thin parapet tapered upward everywhere into sharp points, jagged but elegantly symmetrical, as if rows of enormous swords had been carved from the stone itself.
He’d tested one of the edges of those impossibly thin stone spikes himself, drawing blood from the lightest of touches. His father had once explained that the Builders had created every edge of the parapet to be razor-sharp; any attackers clambering over it would inevitably be cut. And the tapering shape of the parapet itself meant that ladders could never sit flat against it, could never jut out over it in order to bypass its dangers altogether.
Even so, none of it made Wirr feel any safer.
"So what news from General Parathe?" he asked after a moment. "I saw you speaking to him a few minutes ago."
Aelric shrugged. "He says there's likely to be about a thousand of the Blind. They're not going to fit more than a couple of hundred into the pass at once, though, so that's something." He hesitated, glancing along the line and lowering his voice. "He's worried about how these men are going to hold up in a battle. Many of them were left out of Jash'tar's force for a reason - Parathe said a lot of them have had discipline issues, lately. Difficulty completing their drills sometimes. Gone for a day or so doing fates know what, then back and pretending like nothing's wrong. Not men he particularly wanted to have to rely on."
Wirr grimaced. "Just what we need."
Aelric grunted his agreement. The three of them stood side-by-side for a while, the heavy silence pressing on Wirr's shoulders like a physical weight. He was so lost in thought that he jumped when a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
Wirr turned.
"Davian!" he exclaimed.
Davian smiled tiredly, then gave a short laugh of surprise as he was enveloped by embraces from Aelric and Dezia.
"Wirr said you were alive, but I wasn't sure I believed him until now. It's good to see you, Davian," said Aelric.
"You too," said Davian. "I just wish it were under better circumstances."
Wirr's heart sank as he saw the expression on his friend's face. "Tol Athian...?"
"Did not go well." Davian paused, then gave Aelric and Dezia a hesitant glance.
"They know about you, Dav," said Wirr, a little apologetically. "There didn't seem to be much point hiding the truth after Deilannis."
Davian inclined his head, looking more relieved than anything else, and related what had happened at the Tol.
"Fates," murmured Wirr when he was done, a sick feeling in his stomach. "So only the Shen Gifted to heal the wounded, and now we have to keep an eye out for Caeden, too. And the Council locked Taeris up?"
Davian nodded. He looked about to say more when there was a shout from down the wall, followed by a low murmuring as soldiers began to point out towards the plains. Wirr looked up, squinting in the fading light.
Fires had begun to dot the horizon.
Aelric turned to Davian, his voice tight. "Things are going to get messy up here soon. Are you going to be able to fight?"
Davian didn't respond for a moment, staring out over the plains as if he could see something the others couldn't. Then he shook his head slightly as if to clear it. "There's no point me trying to use Essence - there aren't enough sources
nearby, and even if there were, I'd be bound by the Tenets as soon as I drew enough to be useful. I might be able to use kan, though." He bit his lip. "I could use a sword, too, if there are any spare."
Wirr gave him a sceptical look. "A sword? Dav, we can find one for you, but... is there really any point?"
Davian hesitated, then glanced across at Aelric.
"Aelric. I will understand if you don't want me to, but... may I Read you? If you let me, I can access your memories, relive some of your training. I don't think it will give me anywhere near your level of ability, unfortunately - I've read that physical skills don't translate very well due to the bodies being different - but even just knowing some of the basics would help."
Aelric stared at Davian, wide-eyed, for a long few moments. He licked his lips, looking nervous, and Wirr felt sure he was going to refuse.
Then he sighed. "That's all you'll see?"
"Yes," Davian assured him.
Aelric gave a slow nod. "Anything I can do to help."
Davian inclined his head gratefully, then stepped forward. He touched Aelric lightly on the forehead and closed his eyes, standing like that for several seconds. Wirr and Dezia looked on with silent curiosity. As far as Wirr could see, there was nothing to indicate anything unusual was happening.
After a few more moments Davian opened his eyes again, stepping back. "Thank-you."
"That's all?" Aelric rubbed his forehead where Davian's hand had been, looking uneasy. "I didn't feel anything."
"That's all," said Davian with a smile.
Wirr stared at his friend, fascinated. "Did it work?"
Davian shrugged. "I should get myself a sword... after that, I suppose we'll know soon enough."
Wirr went to help Davian secure a weapon; by the time they returned to Aelric and Dezia sunset was vanishing into dusk, leaving only a slowly fading glow and plunging the flat plains that approached Ilin Tora into a deep murk.
They had been standing there for less than a minute when Wirr spotted a flicker of movement in the distance. A few moments later, a horn blasted from somewhere down the wall.
"Here they come," muttered Aelric.
A mass of glinting black resolved itself from the gloom that covered the plains, moving faster than Wirr would have believed possible as it surged forward into the narrow pass. It was hard to tell in the fading light, but Wirr thought there were a couple of hundred men rushing into the enclosed space below - three hundred at most.
"Where are the rest of them?" he wondered aloud, nerves making his voice tight.
Aelric shook his head. "This is just the first wave. They know that having more than two hundred men in here at once is a waste of energy."
Wirr didn't respond, chewing at his lip as Dezia walked forward to join the other Andarran archers at the front of the wall. The order to draw rang out, and Dezia notched an arrow, her actions deliberate and her hands steady. Wirr couldn't help but admire her composure.
Then the Blind were in range and arrows were raining down upon them. Wirr's heart sank as he watched the men below rush onward, unfazed. The archers fired again, and again, but it didn't seem to matter. Wirr didn't see a single enemy soldier falter, let alone fall.
The oncoming black mass hit the wall like a wave as the last of the light faded from the sky.
The next few minutes passed in chaos.
All along the First Shield, screams rang out as attackers started appearing like wraiths along the battlements, reaching over with preternatural speed and strength to pull soldiers over the wall and to their deaths. They were little more than black shadows, silent, appearing from nowhere and vanishing behind the parapet again within moments.
Wirr had already begun retreating when a darker shape against the night sky shifted in the corner of his eye. Davian leapt forward, blade whipping out; there was no sound except that of metal on metal, but his sword met solid resistance and the owner of the armour was sent flying backward into the darkness.
“They’re not using ladders,” Davian warned Wirr. “You should get further back. They could be coming up anywhere.”
“How is that possible?” asked Wirr.
“It has to be the armour,” interjected Dezia, who had also retreated a little, but was still smoothly firing off arrows whenever she caught sight of movement. She allowed herself a quick glance along the battlements. “It must allow them to climb the wall somehow.”
Wirr followed her gaze. There were plenty of men crowding along the parapet, but already it seemed as though the Andarran front line was thinning. Replacements were being ushered up the stairs at the back, but Wirr could already see the futility of it. The Blind might be heavily outnumbered, but each attacker was going to be worth too many defenders.
"It's blocking kan, too," added Davian grimly, his sword lashing out at another Shadow. His movements didn't look anywhere near as assured as Aelric's, but Wirr could tell Davian knew how to handle a blade now. "I can't push it past those El-cursed helmets."
"Wonderful," said Aelric, already a little out of breath. He flinched back as another blade slashed out from the black. "We're not going to last an hour if we can't see them. I take it neither of you can do anything about that?"
Wirr hesitated, then closed his eyes, tapping his Reserve. Focused inward. Cautiously, he drew from the pool of molten light, then... twisted it. Condensed it, made it brighter, as he'd done countless times before.
Nothing happened.
"El-cursed Tenets," he muttered. He issued a frustrated shake of the head to Aelric as the other man backed away from the edge of the wall for a moment, giving Wirr a questioning glance. "It's still trying to use Essence with the intent to cause harm to non-Gifted."
Things passed in a blur after that. Wirr was reluctant to leave his friends, but he knew he was needed elsewhere; soon enough he had joined the Gifted from Tol Shen, healing those soldiers who were still able to stagger away from the front lines. Wirr was the strongest of the group, and he threw himself into the work. It was all he could do to concentrate, to block out the screams of the injured, the scent of men soiling themselves, and the hot, sticky feel of blood.
Finally, though, his Reserve began to empty, and he looked up to see the Andarran line was dangerously thin, threatening to break. Even as he did so, a horn rang out with two quick blasts. The signal to fall back, abandon the First Shield.
He headed for the stairs, numb as he glanced back to see black-clad soldiers pouring over the parapet, dispatching anyone too slow to retreat.
They were losing.
***
Asha stared up at the Second Shield in horror, stomach churning as the screams of the dying echoed around the pass.
She glanced behind her at the long line of Shadows that followed in her wake, suddenly uncertain. Were they too late? Word of the Blind's sooner-than-expected attack had only reached them an hour ago; though she'd done her best to organise the Shadows quickly, she could see that the First Shield had already fallen.
She stared for a moment longer, then drew a deep, steadying breath and grabbed the arm of the nearest soldier. "Where's General Parathe?"
The man blinked at her in surprise, his gaze shifting over her shoulder to take in the small army of Shadows behind her. "I'm not sure if -"
"Just tell me," said Asha, putting as much cool anger into her tone as she could manage.
The soldier blanched, then gestured towards the top of the wall.
Asha gave a sharp nod. She turned to Gaell, an older Shadow who had helped her distribute the Vessels to everyone else.
"Keep everyone here. I'll see where they want us," she told him.
Gaell nodded, turning to let the others know as Asha hurried off. Several soldiers paused to give her curious looks as she shouldered her way towards the Second Shield, but none moved to stop her.
Asha climbed the stairs two at a time, quickly spotting General Parathe once she was at the top. She was about to head towards him when there was motion to her left, and a
blue cloak suddenly stood in her way.
"What do you think you're doing up here?" the young Administrator asked, his tone grim.
"I'm here to help," Asha replied, staring the man in the eye. "I just need to speak to the general. Please let me past."
The Administrator stared at her in disbelief for a few moments.
"Nonsense. Get off the wall," he sneered eventually. "You're only going to get in the -"
Asha gestured, a small movement. She'd managed to practice a little with the ring today, knew enough to control its strength now. And there wasn't time for this.
The Administrator stumbled backward as if shoved hard in the chest, tripping and sliding several feet before coming to a sprawling halt.
Asha walked past, ignoring the startled stares from those around her who had seen what had happened.
"General Parathe," she called when she was within hearing range.
The general looked up, frowning a little when he saw who it was, but waving her through the cordon of men surrounding him.
"Ashalia, isn't it," said Parathe, examining her with undisguised curiosity. "The Athian Representative."
Asha nodded. "I'm not here in that capacity right now, I'm afraid," she said. "But I do have a hundred Shadows with me, and we all have Vessels that can be used as weapons. Just tell me how we can help."
The general stared at her for a few moments in silence.
"Do you now," he said softly, a flicker of hope in his weary eyes. "Anything that can get rid of this El-cursed darkness?"
Asha nodded; there were a few Vessels that would create plenty of light, even if that wasn't their primary purpose. "Some that can heal people, too," she said, noting a wounded man being carried down the stairs.
Parathe nodded slowly, staring out into the darkness towards the First Shield.
"Send a few of them up," he said. "Let's see what you can do."
Asha nodded, exhaling in relief and hastening back to find the others. The presence of the Shadows had already caused a small stir on the ground, but thankfully the soldiers there had too many other concerns already to have become confrontational. Soon she was hurrying back up to Parathe with a small group of Shadows in tow, and the general quickly allocated them to various points along the wall.
The Shadow Of What Was Lost (Book 1) Page 63