Shattered Hopes

by Ulff Lehmann

  “Well, then, here I come.”

  For a moment longer, Ealisaid held her breath. Anxious, expecting the magic to play tricks on her mind, she waited. Then, when it became obvious she had not reappeared in solid rock, not even the smallest part of her, she exhaled and opened her eyes.

  Into darkness.

  There was no light, not even the magelight she had been told of during her training. In the past century, after the destruction, the floating balls of illumination must have gone out. Ealisaid stood, and let her other senses explore her surroundings. No humidity, that was good. This part of the Citadel had not been breached. A slight, warm breeze carried with it the dry smell of… dust? She wasn’t certain.

  Would spiritform be of use to her, she wondered, thrust out of her body, and was jolted back the same instant. Too surprised to notice the pain for a heartbeat, she whimpered when fresh air rushed into her lungs.

  When feeling had returned, Ealisaid moved her hand in a slight gesture, summoning a magelight.

  The air before her flickered for a few breaths, the globe partially formed, and then shattered, its shards, strangely physical, cut into her skin, drawing blood. Within her mind, when she could suppress the screaming headache, she heard a stern voice: “No castings in this chamber, keep it clear at all times.”

  So spiritform was magic, she realized when her head stopped throbbing. Not that this insight helped.

  Without magic she was truly blind inside this room, and blindly she began to crawl in the direction she faced, one hand outstretched to avoid crashing into a wall with her already tormented skull.

  The chamber wasn’t big and she reached a wall in a matter of heartbeats. Next, feeling her way along the stone until, a few bumps and bruised toes later, she found the exit. Groping fingers detected the locking mechanism, and she opened the door. At least partially.

  About a quarter of the way through, the portal became stuck. Now the dust that had been missing from her point of arrival billowed up. Ealisaid sneezed.

  The echo reverberated; in this dark void it sounded as if half a dozen women were sneezing simultaneously. Judging the condition of the corridor beyond—according to the layout she remembered it was the main corridor that led to the study rooms and the library—was difficult at best. The obstacle blocking the door was a far better indicator but, now that she could at least put her hand outside, summoning a magelight should be simple.

  It was, and moments later she saw the destruction Kildanor had spoken of was far more complete than she had dared to imagine. Massive chunks of rock lay haphazardly strewn across the floor, broken off the ceiling, which now looked like a ruined maw, teeth gaping. What the other side, her left, looked like was impossible to tell.

  Could she squeeze through the opening?

  Maybe it was best to first try and push her way clear. Releasing all the pent-up frustration, how Duasonh made her feel when he once again demanded the impossible, the suspicion and fear she saw daily in the eyes of the servants, Ealisaid rammed her shoulder against the door. She felt a slight shake of the stone blocking her way and pushed again. There! The door moved, maybe an inch, she couldn’t be certain. All that strain on her body might play tricks on her mind. Another push. Now she felt the rock beyond swaying, as if her muscles were all she needed to move through this mess.

  Something in her shoulder popped, she felt pain lance through her side. Already drenched with sweat, Ealisaid put her back against the door and heaved one final time. The obstruction tumbled away, the door swung open, and she finally saw the entirety of the destruction. Sinking down to the floor, she ignored the billowing stone dust as best she could and took controlled breaths. Already she felt exhausted, and this was only the first of what might be many obstacles. Still, a tiny spark of accomplishment glowed inside her; she had done a massive undertaking without the use of magic. Culain would be proud of her, though her back and shoulder were less so.

  With a grunt Ealisaid leaned against the door. Physical work was so… well… physical and exhausting on top of it. She envied those people who did nothing else and pitied them at the same time for being unable to merely want things to happen and see them actually coming into existence as desired. Compared to pushing a boulder out of the way, summoning water was simple. The words left her lips even before she had finished the thought, and her hands automatically went through the motions. A full water skin appeared in her lap.

  A few mouthfuls later, her energy somewhat restored, she stood again. Picking her way amidst the rubble was slow; she had to shift her weight so as not to dislodge some piece of rock that would send a whole pile of stone cascading down on her. She placed her feet carefully, always paying attention to possible avalanche areas. The way to the left looked more comfortable, but the debris-strewn corridor to the right led to the library.

  A few yards away from the arrival chamber, she came across the first skeleton. It lay half buried beneath a big chunk of stone, the lower portion of its body ground to dust. It must have been a painful death for even though muscles and tendons were long gone, the arched position of spine and claw-like fingers showed the way this person had drawn his last breath. It was a Wizard; she saw the tattered remains of a cloak still held by the phoenix clasp. There was no point in lingering; the dead wouldn’t teach her what she needed to know, and no matter how much this person had suffered, he or she had already been weighed in Lliania’s Scales. “Hope you have more fun whatever you are,” she whispered and continued.

  She came upon two more skeletons. Falling stones had not buried this pair, but the cause of their deaths was just as obvious. They lay on the floor, hands still wrapped around each other’s throats. What astonished her, though, was that the fingers of the one at the bottom looked more like steel claws than actual bone digits. Was magic capable of altering one’s physique as well?

  The other skeleton provided the answer; it appeared as if the collarbones of this one had elongated and sprouted an interlaced grid to protect the windpipe. She couldn’t discern the actual causes of death in the brief time she studied them.

  The ruined corridor was the first true reminder of what had happened shortly after Ealisaid had entered hibernation. The Heir-War was obviously a very apt choice of words, but she could think of another: The Brother’s War. Not that it mattered. At least not to those who had killed and been killed in this senseless struggle for supremacy. Then again, wasn’t every war, in the end, meaningless?

  She saw another score of skeletons lying underneath the rubble before she reached a part of the corridor that was completely blocked off by fallen rocks. With a resigned sigh she put the water skin to her lips and drank, looking forlornly at the wall of debris. As she swallowed another mouthful, something occurred to her. None of the corpses she had seen was armored! Each and every one of those who had died here was a Wizard, which meant that the victors had never set foot into the library!

  Excitedly, she plugged the skin again, let it drop on its string and thrust into the spiritworld.

  Passing through the debris was easy, now that the only thing surrounding her was insubstantial smoke. Pushing back her excitement—she didn’t know if she could teleport into the space beyond and might very well have to move the rubble—Ealisaid took her time to inspect the wall. Her focus was on those spots that looked easier to shift, places where huge boulders had piled atop each other, leaving pockets of emptiness underneath smaller pebbles. Not only did she discover two or three of those, but also another handful of skeletons buried by the avalanche.

  When the lay of the wall was well in her mind, she moved farther down the corridor. To her surprise the damage beyond the barrier was less than that on her body’s side. As she sped down the passage, hope surged that she would actually find the library intact.

  She couldn’t believe her luck as she passed another, low wall of debris. Before her lay the Phoenix Wizards’ magical library, untouched by the ravages that had laid low the corridor leading toward it. Now, she took her time
committing to mind a spot to which she could teleport. Then, when the position was clear in her mind, she thrust back into her body and immediately went through the motions and words necessary for the translocation spell.

  A moment later, she stood in exactly the spot she had memorized; the magelight right above her head had traveled with her. “Whoever managed to protect this place, I thank you,” she whispered then took a closer look around.

  She had spent the few times she had actually visited in one of the reading rooms set aside for students such as her, the books delivered to desks by merely thinking of them. She had never seen its entirety. Now that she did, her awe almost let her forget the reason that she had come here in the first place.

  To call the shelves big would have been an understatement of about the same magnitude as calling a leper a little ill. The massive wooden frames were anchored into the ceiling, a good score yards or so above her, and every layer, arranged in straight lines that ran by the dozen in one direction, was laden with books, scrolls, and folios. There were so many shelves she could not see the other end of the room.

  Enchanted by the sight of the vast amount of knowledge before her, Ealisaid almost felt like an apprentice Wizard again, and before she realized what she was doing, she had strolled down one passage, gazing at the bulging shelves. Where did all this knowledge come from? Were all the scrolls and books related to spellcasting, or was some part of it dedicated to history, literature, what one normally expected in a library? She was still marveling at the mass of collected books, when she came across another corpse.

  The sight immediately brought back the reality of where and when she was, and why she was here in the first place. “Dunthiochagh, one hundred years of hibernation, Chanastardh invading, siege, battlespells,” she muttered, forcibly reminding herself of her mission. She was about to turn away from the corpse when she noticed something odd. This was no skeleton. Yes, it was an empty husk, but the remains of this one had dried out, leaving behind a mummy. The twig-thin hands were still clasped around a dagger protruding from its chest, its face trapped in an eternal snarl. Another wizard, she again noted the phoenix clasp.

  This one’s killer lay a few yards down the passage, its body intact from the neck downward. The head, however, was gone, and the shreds of mummified skin and sinew at the top of its neck were the only witnesses of the retaliation spell its victim had sent after it. In her mind she carefully kept to the neutral ‘it’, unwilling to consider that these dead had once been friends, colleagues, mentors.

  How did one go about this place in search of something specific? She had seen no plaques marking the individual passages, and she doubted her fellow Wizards would have wandered the corridors of knowledge, skimming every bloody tome just to get to the correct one. In the reading rooms they had merely thought of a specific subject and a moment later the volumes covering the desired topic appeared—provided nobody else was perusing them at the time, of course.

  There had to be an index.

  Again, she moved on. Strolling through the hall, her mind wandered to the time of her apprenticeship. It hadn’t been that long ago. At least to her. She had been fifteen when her magical talents had started to take a leap forward. Until then the only way it showed had been an occasional premonition, a change of weather, a skillet falling, uncommon things, rare in occurrence and minor in importance. It was something that had astounded her parents, but never scared or bothered them.

  Her parents. They must have been dead for at least eighty years. To her, the then young woman, they had been ancient already, but now that she thought of them she regretted never being able to say good-bye. They had been proud of her, once she had finally been accepted into Phoenix Citadel. The Shadow Peaks had been her home for about four years, and when she inherited the house from a distant relative she had moved there. In her last year of study then, being highly gifted as the wizards had told her, no one had had a problem with her studying at her own pace.

  She realized with a pang of regret, this gift had, in hindsight, cost her a family. In more than one way.

  As she passed a row of books, she wondered again if it wouldn’t have been better had she died alongside her fellow Wizards and thus not suffered this loneliness, but she knew this was not true. There was Culain, though she wasn’t sure what she really felt for him. She despised the other Wizards for their greed and shortsightedness, and for the destruction of the once mighty and wise order she had wanted to belong to so desperately.

  Now she was the last of them. The last of the Phoenix Wizards. Not a particularly precious thought to be the last, but she was. She was the last of her kind. Maybe it was for the better. Maybe, now with Ysold who already was so strong, she could reintroduce a more compassionate take on magic. What could be done to prevent others—kings, barons, anyone who lusted for power—from using magic as just another weapon?

  Sighing, Ealisaid focused on her surroundings. She had crossed half of the immense library, lost in memories. The present, she realized, as she came to a stop in front of an immense oak table laden with a huge tome, was what she had to focus on. Now was when she lived, not in the past. This was how old people felt when they’d survived everyone they knew, she realized glumly.

  Beyond the table, stood a corpse unlike any she had seen before. Mummified, yes, but there was something definitely disturbing about his pose, arms stretched high as if to ward off something. It looked as if the flesh had not shrunk like it had on the other bodies. The more Ealisaid scrutinized the corpse, the more she realized that there was literally only skin and bones left. Where the other dead had looked more like dried prunes, this one looked like a canvas tightly draped over too big a frame. She recalled Drangar Ralgon’s gaunt figure, a reminder of what forcing magic could do. Had this person sacrificed his life to keep the library intact? Absentmindedly she touched the thing’s shoulder. It crumbled to dust.

  Shocked, she jumped backward, bumped into the table, and sprawled across the book on its top. The tome didn’t move.

  “This better be it,” she whispered, surprise and horror still thick in her voice. Had she found the index? It only made sense; the table was at the library’s center. What else could it be? Her fingers traced the outline of a dragon on the book’s cover, a fierce creature of fire, as sagely as any scholar. They still lived, beyond the Veil of Fire, even more devious than the elves, and far more powerful, yet even they had chosen solitude. The book’s spine was unadorned, made of the same black leather it was wrapped in. No title, no author engraved into the cover. The library’s index. Her hand slid to the edge of the book, fingers clasping its rim, and pulled. Nothing happened.

  An irritated frown creased her forehead as she tugged again. Nothing. “Oh great,” she cursed. “All this way for nothing. Now I have to search for battle magic.”

  Suddenly the book glowed, causing her to jump back. Then, the cover opened and pages began to flick, first slowly but increasing in speed with every page until the blur of paper made her blink. A voice-activated index, she cursed her own stupidity. She should have considered her fellows’ laziness. In fact, now that she thought about it, it was the only reasonable thing to do, with so many books around it was impossible to search any index for the tomes needed.

  The book halted its quick movement for a moment, as if waiting for something. Ealisaid glanced at the pages that now lay open before her and smiled a little. Then a sudden movement to her right caused her to jump back in surprise yet again. A quill and inkpot together with a sheet of finest white paper appeared on the table next to the book. “Lazy bastards,” she chuckled, watching for any more sudden, erratic movements. It lay in front of her, waiting for her to start her notes, or so it seemed. She glanced at the open pages, a triumphant smile illuminating her face. Neatly written were the titles of books that contained battlespells.

  CHAPTER 41

  Twenty-eighth of Chill 1475 K.C.

  “Have you heard?” Kildanor asked the moment he passed the threshold into
Cumaill Duasonh’s study.

  He must have caught the Baron at an inopportune moment, for his friend looked up blearily from the pile of papers his head was resting on. Cumaill looked tired, only half-awake really, he had fallen asleep while studying some trouble or other regarding supplies and the state of his city. Not that Kildanor’s news would ease the man’s worries. “You need to stop barging in here like you owned the place,” Duasonh said, not trying to hide his yawn.

  “Úistan Cahill has assembled his little warband and we will leave with the noon gong,” the Chosen said, knowing full well this information would get his friend’s attention.

  Cumaill straightened instantly, wide-awake and glowering. “What?” he snarled. “He can’t leave just yet!”

  “Why’s that?” Kildanor had been busy practicing to leave his body and moving in spiritform. Out of touch with current happenings, he felt confused.

  “Talked to Garinad yesterday,” Cumaill said.

  “So Ealisaid has found a way to communicate through the spiritworld? That’s why she didn’t react to my calls.” Returning to his body was the easier part. Making his mind grasp the idea of floating through fog had been trying and several times yesterday he had attempted to get Ealisaid’s help, the servants always returning with the same message that the lady was unavailable.

  “No, the Wizardess”—the Baron stressed the title, most likely to remind him of the woman’s status—“didn’t, she’s off to find battlemagic. Left yesterday.” Another, extended yawn. “It’s the girl, that apprentice of hers.”

  Was it wise to let a learner have an apprentice? He had asked the question before, and already knew Duasonh’s reply, so he didn’t bother to question such wisdom again. Cumaill was probably right when he said that such talent had best be supervised, and there were no teachers other than Ealisaid available.