This kind of climb was nothing to a Tayledras. As Elspeth dashed into the doors below him, his hand reached the balcony itself, and he pulled himself up and over the railing.
And just as he burst into the ravaged room, he felt the unmistakable shivering in the power-currents of someone building a Gate nearby....
They had all studied the plans of Ancar's palace until they could have walked the place blindfolded. Elspeth remembered a stair going right up into the hallway above, just inside the main doors. The place was deserted; everyone had either gone off to fight the fires or fled in terror when the mage-battle began. She ran up the stairs two at a time, and as she reached the top and the corridor that it led to, she heard the sound of a fight on the other side of the second door along the corridor.
She didn't stop to think; she just gathered power and blasted, disintegrating the door and running through the hole while the dust was still raining down.
And she stumbled to a halt as she hit something that felt like a web, a net that closed around her in a heartbeat and held her immobile.
But her eyes still worked, and the very first thing she saw, by the white light of pure power, was the man that had pulled Hulda inside.
The man, who bore a distinctive device on his tunic - Dear gods - the Emperor's envoy! -
- was building a Gate! He already had the framework up. He wasn't even using a real door as his anchor, he was simply building the thing in midair!
How much of what's happened has been his doing?
Darkwind knelt on the floor, beside the shattered doors to the balcony, cringing beneath his shields as Hulda rained blow after fiery blow down on him. So far, Hulda hadn't even noticed her. The hinged splinters of the balcony doors slammed against the wall, as the rainless mage-storm raged outside, whitening the room in flashes from the lightning. Thunder roared, drowning out any other sounds, and smoke crept in the window from the fires outside.
Elspeth fought the bonds that held her, frantically seeking a weak spot.
Suddenly, the darkness in the Gate brightened - and became a hole in the air, a hole leading to a brightly-lit room somewhere, filled with furnishings in a sinuous style Elspeth had never seen before.
The man turned toward Hulda. "Are you coming?" he snarled. "Or are you enjoying yourself too much to leave?"
Elspeth realized his lips had not moved with his words. He had projected them in open Mindspeech so strong that anyone, Gifted or not, would have Heard him. As his attention wavered for a moment, split between the Gate and Hulda, so did the bonds holding her. She freed one hand, and shook a knife from her sleeve down into it - her old, reliable, predictable, material knives. No pottery to hurl this time....
As Hulda turned to answer him, Elspeth cast the knife, knowing that if the envoy went down, the Gate would go with him.
He was not expecting a physical attack; the knife caught him in the throat. It buried itself to the hilt. Blood spurted from a severed artery, a fountain of ebony-red in the hellish white light. The envoy's face convulsed; both hands clutched at his throat. He staggered backward, across the threshold, and through the Gate itself.
The Gate collapsed as he fell through it.
The bonds holding her faded away. And now Hulda saw her.
There was no recognition in Hulda's eyes, but there was plenty of pure rage.
Elspeth readied a mage-bolt of her own, but Hulda was faster. And Hulda was trapped, with nowhere to escape to; Darkwind was between her and the balcony, Elspeth was between her and the hallway. So she fought with all the desperate strength of any cornered creature, and with the stores of energy she had drained from the land of Hardorn for all these past years....
She was an Adept, easily the equivalent of Falconsbane - and she was not handicapped by having an agent in her own mind, or by a disintegrating personality.
Within moments, Elspeth knew with rising panic that stole her breath that she was in trouble, trying to hold eroded shields against a barrage of mage winds, each of them geared to a specific energy, that began to eat their way down through her protections. They circled her in a whirlwind that caught up papers, bits of wood, shattered glass, and other debris, pelting her with physical as well as magical weapons.
But panic made her mind clearer, and a sudden memory matched the whirlwind. Firesong - the lesson -
She spun her shields until they mated with the whirlwinds; then reached through them, and began to absorb the energies of the attack into her own. But the instant Hulda realized that she had found a counter, the woman set the winds on Darkwind, and attacked Elspeth with -
Demons!
Creatures of shadow and teeth boiled up from the floor, and a hundred taloned hands reached for her. Fear sent arcs of cold down her limbs. Elspeth backpedaled and came up against the wall; for a moment, she was lost in panic. She had no counter to this -
Panicked, until in the next heartbeat, she remembered that these might be illusions. Illusions vanished if challenged! She pulled her sword, forgotten until now, and swung.
The "demons" vanished without a sound. Hulda then flung a wall of fire at her. Her confidence increased. This she could handle! Perhaps Hulda was not so formidable after all!
She countered it by absorbing it - took another step toward the woman -
And then Hulda recognized her. "You! The Brat!"
"The Adept," Elspeth screamed back defiantly. "Your better, bitch!"
Hulda's reply was drowned out by another thunderclap; there was a trace of real fear in her eyes, and her face was like a stone mask. Elspeth laughed hysterically. Hulda was afraid! Afraid of her! They could take the bitch, they could!
But Hulda evidently decided that if she was doomed, she would take her enemies with her.
Hulda reached out with her powers in a thrust that knocked Elspeth back into the wall again, and with great shudders of power that shook her body as they shook the walls, she began to tear the building down around them.
The walls and ceiling screamed with the shrieks of tortured stone and wood. Elspeth dodged a falling chandelier that brought a quarter of the ceiling down with it -
- just in time to see Darkwind falling beneath the outer wall, going down under a cascade of stone and burning wall-maps that buried him completely in an instant.
"No!" she screamed, reaching for him with mind, heart, and powers, forgetting her own peril -
Only to receive, not an answer, but a flood of energy. Energy that felt - final, as if it was all he had.
Her heart convulsed, but her body acted.
She shook her arm and felt her other knife fall into her hand. She screamed again, a wordless howl of rage and anguish; invested every last bit of power in the second knife - and threw it.
The knife cut through the air and ripped through Hulda's shields.
Hulda collapsed in a boneless heap, her howling winds collapsing at the same instant, leaving behind an echoing silence filled only by thunder, and the crunch of an occasional brick falling. A glittering knife-hilt shone from her left eye socket.
She was dead, but she had taken Darkwind with her.
Elspeth turned and stared at the heap of broken stones, her throat choked with grief so all-consuming that she could not think, could not even weep. She stumbled a step or two toward the pile -
And Vree came winging in out of the darkness, through the gaping, broken wall. He landed beside the stones, and hopped over to them - to the only part of Darkwind that she could see, his hand. He nibbled the fingers, as if to try to coax life into them, and Elspeth's grief overflowed into scalding tears that blurred her vision. Her throat closed, and she sobbed, then moaned with pain.
He was gone. She was alone. Hulda had won, after all. His loss was an ache that would never be healed.
:Damn...bird.:A whisper in her mind.
What?
:Elspeth...ashke:
Grief turned to hysterical joy, all in a heartbeat. He was alive!
She shook her head, frantically wiping
at her eyes to clear them, then ran to the pile of stones and began to pull them off of him. Vree hopped excitedly beside her, making odd creaking sounds, as she managed to clear his head and shoulders of debris.
He looked terrible; bruised and bleeding from a dozen small cuts, and she trembled to think how many bones might be broken. But he was alive!
:Gods.:He opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them :I feel...awful. Like...a wall...just fell on me.:
Her heart overflowing, she resumed pulling stones from his body, ignoring splitting nails and sharp edges that cut her hands, thankful that the winds had snuffed out the earlier fires. Finally she came to a thick slab of wood - a strategic map, showing invasion plans. A map of Valdemar.
It had protected Darkwind from the heaviest of the stones, prevented his lungs and ribs from being crushed. Paint flaked from the board as she twisted it free of him, and troop-counters fell like rain from the "Losses" box she found propping up one end of it. She kept having to shake her head to clear her eyes of tears as she pulled debris away from him, trying to figure out how badly he had been hurt.
:Wait. Check Gwena....:he began, his thoughts coming to her from a haze of generalized pain.
:No need,: Gwena said weakly :I'm going to live. And there's no one down here to bother me while I decide if I still want to. No bones broken, I don't think - some burns, and bruises that go to the bone. Keep him from fading, I'll call Cymry. And you send Vree for him, in case I can't reach him!:
Although that was somewhat confused, Elspeth had no trouble figuring out which "he" Gwena meant :Vree,: she said intently, turning to the falcon, concentrating on trying to impress him with her urgency :Vree, we need Skif. Find Skif. Bring him here quickly!:
Vree bobbed his head once, then nibbled Darkwind's finger, spread his wings, and flapped heavily off into the darkness again.
:He 's...a horrible night flyer, ashke. Hope he doesn't hit anything.:
"Just stay with me," she said aloud, fiercely, starting with that hand to check for broken bones, since it was the piece of him least likely to cause problems if she accidentally moved it. Or held it. "Don't pass out on me."
:I'II try.:
"Stop that!" she snapped, still rubbing away tears. "Stay awake, stop fading! Or - or I'll tell you Hawkbrother jokes! How many Hawkbrothers does it take for a mating circle?"
:No...not that...anything but that.:
"Only one, but he has to be flexible!"
:I'm doomed.:
When Skif arrived, he brought Nyara and Need with him, and his expression betrayed his relief at finding the situation nowhere near as desperate as he had feared from Gwena's weak Mindcall. He told Elspeth that he'd seen worse injuries than Darkwind's out in the field, when miners or builders had been trapped under collapsing walls. Darkwind would not only live, he would do so with all organs and limbs intact....
That gave her some measure of comfort and calmed her shattered nerves a little. And although at some point she would be mad with impatience to hear his side of the story, and the confrontation with Falconsbane, at the moment there was enough on her plate to worry about. They still had to get out of here.
They laid Need down beside Darkwind with his hand on the hilt - she complaining the whole time that she had done enough Healing for one day - and carefully lifted the last of the stones from Darkwind's back and legs. By the time they finished, people were drifting back into the palace, and coming to stare curiously at the wreckage in the room.
But Elspeth and Darkwind still wore their purloined uniforms, and when Elspeth turned and barked "Out!" at the onlookers, they quickly found something else to do.
They limped their way out of the building without being stopped, carrying Darkwind on the map that had saved him, using it as a stretcher. Skif did pause long enough to look down at Hulda and make a tsfang sound.
"A knife," he sighed. "How - predictable."
She thought about hitting him, but she was just too weary - mentally, emotionally, and physically.
He reached down for the offending object, cleaning it on his none-too-clean sleeve and handed it back to her. "Where's the other one?" he asked, as she slipped it into her arm sheath and pulled her sleeve back down over it.
"In the throat of the Eastern Envoy - who is, I suppose, back in his Master's domain," she replied. "He was building a Gate, I got him with the knife, and he fell through it."
Another curious onlooker peeked in the door but vanished before she could even snarl at him.
"Falling dead, with a knife bearing the crest of Valdemar on the pommel-nut," he said dryly. "Very subtle, Elspeth. Couldn't you have sent a more direct message to the Emperor? Like, perhaps, 'Your father won the Horse Faire. Your mother tracks rabbits by scent. Love and kisses, Elspeth of Valdemar.'"
A bit of the ceiling dropped, breaking the silence, followed by the sound of someone picking his way across the floor upstairs. She growled at him, at the end of her patience. "I didn't exactly have much choice," she pointed out. "And if we're going to get out of here before someone names us the assassins of the King, we'd better move now!"
"A good point," he acknowledged, and picked up his end of the board holding Darkwind. "Need - Gwena's rather handicapped at the moment. I don't suppose - "
:Gods. Can't you people do anything for yourselves?:
"We are not Healers," Nyara pointed out sweetly. "You are."
:Right. Bring logic into this.:Elspeth could have sworn that the sword sighed :All right. Bring on the horses.:
:I am not - :Gwena snapped, :a horse!:
Skif helped Darkwind up into Cymry's saddle. Gwena's worst injuries were mostly to muscle, and easily within Need's purview; Darkwind's to bone, which took several days to Heal, and the best Need could do was set them and hold them in place. With Gwena Healed enough to carry her own weight, Elspeth elected to put Darkwind on Cymry's back and walk, with her on one side, steadying him, and Nyara on the other.
"I'll catch up with you," Skif told them. "You get back to the carnival and warn everyone that - let's see - " He thought quickly. "Falconsbane and Hulda tried to kill Ancar; he got both of them, but not before they called up a demon that mashed him to a pulp. Anyway, tell them all that, and tell them it's going to be hell around here when everyone realizes all three top people are gone. They may want to get out."
"They may want to stay and loot," Elspeth pointed out, tilting her head at the number of people trickling out of the palace carrying things - and the growing stream going in, unhindered by threat of fire, lightning, or remaining guards.
He shrugged. "Doesn't bother me; they'll just be getting back some of what Ancar's been taking, indirectly. There's just a few things of Ancar's I want to make sure don't survive."
Elspeth looked at him curiously, one hand on Darkwind's leg, supporting him. "What, documents? How could you know where - " Then she shook her head. "Never mind. I don't want to know how you know. We'll get ourselves ready for fast travel and meet you at the camp."
Cymry started forward, through what was left of the main gates. Gwena limped along behind.
Skif took himself into the palace.
By the time he slipped back out of the doors, there were people looting already - running through the hall, grabbing whatever they could carry, and dashing back out again. Most of those people wore the uniforms of Ancar's Elite Guard, which didn't surprise him in the least. None of them offered any kind of hindrance to him, once they saw he wasn't carrying any choice bits of loot. And every once in a while, he saw one of the political prisoners or kidnapped girls he'd just freed from the dungeons making for the city, some bauble or valuable in hand.
Behind him, one room and all its contents were burning merrily. One more small fire among the other three or four started by the lightning, anyone would assume. It was likely that looters would add to those fires before the night was over.
He stopped long enough at the royal stables to steal a pair of strong, fast horses, and a small carriage; they'd n
eed both for An'desha and Darkwind. Some of the stable hands seemed to have had the same idea, for the really fine horseflesh and the royal carriages were all gone. As an afterthought, he stopped long enough in the courtyard to pitch a kind of souvenir into the back of the wagon he'd appropriated - the map that had saved Darkwind. He thought Elspeth would like to have it.
And as he passed through the gates, he was already making plans for the fastest route out, one that passed through the fewest number of towns that might hold garrisons. Getting to the border was going to be tricky.
Getting across was going to be even more fun....
Maybe we ought to see if old Firesong has one more trick in him. Or maybe Elspeth? A Gate into Valdemar would be damned useful about now....
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