The Raven Collection

by James Barclay

  Yet every day, they must know they risked mages dying. It could be that they were not as numerous as he assumed but he wasn’t sure that would make enough of a difference. Gods drowning, but they no longer even sacrificed city people in front of them to make them surrender.

  Something in the demons’ plans meant that keeping all the college cores where they were, helpless but alive, was the right way to go. It was a change in strategy from the constant attacks of seasons gone by. Now it was like they were waiting. But for what?

  There had to be information and knowledge buried somewhere.

  ‘Where are Suarav and Chandyr? Where’s Sharyr?’

  ‘All in the banqueting hall, my Lord.’ A sad irony at breakfast time.

  ‘Good. Take me there.’

  It was time for another raid on the library.

  Pheone took her shift like they all did. And every moment outside the college grounds was terrifying. It tore at her gut and tripped up her heartbeat. It gnawed at her belief and concentration. The knowledge of what she was doing was what kept her focused. It was the only thing that could.

  She slipped out of the tunnel entrance and into the heart of the city. It was a tunnel they had dug without the aid of magic and because they would otherwise starve, so tight was the ring of demons around them. She had ordered another dug too. One day, the demons would find this one. They found everything eventually.

  And to think that Julatsa should consider itself fortunate. When the demons had flooded Balaia, they had been given warning. A panicked Communion from a Dordovan mage had been picked up by Pheone’s spectrum analysts. It had been cut off abruptly but had brought them precious hours to prepare. Mages had been called back into the college grounds. The grain store was cleared and the contents moved. City guardsmen were invited to leave their perimeters and beats. Livestock had been driven into the courtyard.

  It was a time when Pheone had found her heart to be unyielding. They had assessed quickly how many souls they could shelter and had taken them from the streets. Whole families where they could. Smiths, builders and healers too. No sentimentality. It was only about survival.

  They had plotted the ColdRoom coverage, ensuring wells and stores were well protected, and had withdrawn everyone they wanted behind the repaired college gates. The council had pleaded with her to let them in as panic had gripped the city riding on rumour and hearsay. The mayor had promised them the wealth of Julatsa for personal salvation. They had threatened to storm the gates but they didn’t have the strength. Julatsa’s mages were backed by Al-Arynaar swords, bows and magic.

  She would for ever recall the last words she spoke to the mayor before the gates were sealed with WardLocks.

  ‘Your money means nothing as does your word. Much as the life of every elf and mage in this college meant nothing to you when Xetesk invaded. Where was your loyalty then? We asked for your help. You refused. Reap what you sow.’

  And thus she had condemned him to a life of servitude or, if he was lucky, a quick death. She felt no pity for him or his council of cowards. But for those innocents they could not take, she had wept hard. For them, the curse of magic had surely struck its final and most devastating blow and unleashed on them an enemy they could not combat.

  Mages were their only hope but mages across Balaia were struggling merely to survive; those that were left. It was a cruel irony that Julatsa, once just hours from extinction was, a few days later given the information she had gleaned, surely the most powerful college.

  Julatsa boasted almost one hundred and eighty mages, Al-Arynaar and current Julatsans, and almost two hundred of the elven warriors had also still been in the college when the demons attacked. They were still so strong in mind and body. Truly amazing people. So determined, so resolute. They kept the college going through the earliest and darkest days. They hunted, they fought and they survived. It simply did not occur to them that they might be beaten.

  The demons were wary of them too, which was the one ray of real hope they could work on. Elven souls couldn’t be taken by mere touch. Dila’heth said their god of the dead, Shorth, protected them.

  Whatever it was, it meant that the elves chose to travel without ColdRoom spells when they foraged. And humans like Pheone simply had to trust them when it was their turn to provide mage back-up. She knew how effective they were but their tactics still couldn’t assuage her base fear.

  There were six elves with her. Five warriors and one mage, all whispering through the silent street towards the immaculate and high-yielding farm land that had been created on the city’s borders. At one time they had developed a conscience about stealing this food. But when the reprisals for doing so had ceased and it became clear that they were as good as being catered for, that guilt ebbed quickly away.

  The paradox of course was that demons still guarded the farm land. They were happy to exact revenge for attempted theft if they could while apparently conceding the necessity for over-supply because theft was often successful. And for their part, the elves were happy to take them on if the need arose.

  ‘We all have our demons,’ Dila’heth had said. ‘But you have named yours and they are real as well as being that dark part of the psyche we all harbour. Of course they have power over you. They are your nemesis. It is not so with the elves. Our association was never so close. Never myth made real.

  ‘For you they are the descent. Everything your mothers and your priests warned you about. For us they are a powerful adversary but in the end just an alternate race. They have a place in our legends but that is because they threaten Shorth’s children, not the living.’

  ‘You’re saying the reason we’re vulnerable is a difference in perspective? ’ she’d asked.

  ‘State of mind and belief are powerful. The touch of a demon can kill you. It cannot kill us unless our will is broken. Shorth protects us but our souls are bonded into our faith and our race. It makes us strong. You are individuals so you are vulnerable.

  ‘Humans have never really understood what binds a people. It is a shame for you that the demons do.’

  Creeping through gently waving stalks of spring crops, it was hard to disagree with her. The elves had an intuitive understanding of each other. They barely needed to speak or gesture. But she remained ultimately unconvinced of Dila’s reasoning. She, like all elves, held her faith up as the reason for every circumstance. Pheone considered their greater resistance to a demon’s touch was their innate link to mana.

  Ahead of her, the elves had stopped moving. Lost in her thoughts, Pheone almost stumbled into the warrior in front of her. He turned and placed a finger on his lips, then pointed to his eyes and out across the fields to the livestock barns. Darkened for camouflage, shapes moved against the walls. Demons. Dila’heth had made it seem such a dramatic name but it was what they were. To humans at least.

  The raiding party crouched low in the field, out of sight unless they were overflown.

  ‘They are few,’ said Kineen, the leader of the group. ‘It is a chance.’

  ‘A chance for what?’ whispered Pheone.

  ‘To take breeding pairs,’ said Kineen. ‘We need more livestock.’

  Pheone paused, hearing the leaves wave about her head. Ahead, a cow lowed.

  ‘Couldn’t we have had this discussion before we left?’ she asked.

  ‘To what purpose? There could be no decision until now. We know you will support us.’

  ‘You want to steal livestock?’ A nod. ‘And drive them back down the tunnel without killing them and without the demons finding the entrance?’

  Kineen managed a brief smile. ‘The animals will not be conscious for the way back. We will deal with that. Four demons are circling the barn. We need to take them all together but we won’t have much time between casting and more arriving. You will have to be quick.’

  Pheone blew out her cheeks. Her heart was crashing in her chest and sweat was beading at her hairline. She felt a shiver in her limbs. She only hoped that when the time came, sh
e could muster up the concentration to cast.

  ‘Just tell me what you want me to cast.’

  Another smile from Kineen. ‘Good. And Pheone. Run when we tell you and don’t look back.’

  The five warriors fanned out into the field, keeping below the line of the crop. Pheone and the other mage, Afen’erei, moved in behind them. Neither prepared yet. The mana spectrum had to be kept quiet until the last possible moment. After a few yards, the two archers split off left, increasing their pace, hurrying for one end of the barn.

  Pheone could just about make out the demons now. Four of them, a little smaller than man-size with wings and tails. Their vein-run skin writhed. Every inch the archetypal figures of nightmare. It was the shape most had adopted on arrival in Julatsa. She presumed they found it easier to control their human flock that way.

  ‘Hit them when they clear the barn to your right,’ said Afen’erei.

  ‘Got you.’

  ‘IceWind and DeathHail are best. Something quick to cast.’

  Pheone nodded. She’d have preferred to crush them with a ForceCone but they couldn’t risk the barn collapsing under the pressure.

  The three sword elves were running now, feet silent over the ground. They broke cover at the instant the first arrows struck the demons, deflecting their attention. The fact that the shafts couldn’t kill didn’t stop wounds hurting and the demons wailed in pain, shaft after shaft thudding home. They had not gathered themselves to attack before the warriors were on them.

  Swords swept from scabbards and the blows rained in. Pheone saw it all in a kind of detached awe. The relentless motion, the speed of the strike. All to a purpose. Swords bit into heads and arms, sliced through wing membrane. Feet thudded into gut, groin and temple. Disorientating, temporarily disabling. The demons had practically no reply. They lashed out with claws and tails or tried to bite. But the ferocity of the elves made mockery of their slight numerical advantage.

  Only one made it into the air at all, to be brought down with arrows crippling critical wing muscle. The onslaught was quick but could it possibly be quick enough? Already, Pheone could hear the hoots of alarm that meant the cries of the attacked had been heard.

  ‘Prepare now,’ said Afen. ‘No sense in delay. They are coming.’

  Pheone dragged herself into the mana spectrum. It was unadorned by any casting barring the mass of activity that signified the ColdRoom lattice. She brought together the shape for IceWind, a flowing sheet of interlaced mana strands, glowing yellow with captured energy, just waiting for release when it would tatter in the face of its targets.

  Almost at once, the hoots became howls and the hunt was on for those casting magic. The warriors responded, driving demons out of the shadow of the barn and into a pool of moonlight.

  ‘Break!’ called Kineen. ‘Cast.’

  IceWind tore away from Pheone’s fingers, mingling with the slivers of DeathHail cast by Afen’erei. The effect was at once hideous and incredibly satisfying. Where Afen’s spell gouged strips of flesh from the demons, Pheone’s IceWind ignited the loose mana so freed, feeding on it as a FlameOrb did on human flesh, gorging, consuming.

  The demons screamed, their voices like those of infants in agony, tearing at Pheone’s heart and dashing her concentration. The IceWind ceased but the damage had been done. Again, a solitary demon took to the air but it was little more than a mass of pure blue flame, bubbling a few feet up and crashing back to earth, wing beating feebly at the ground.

  ‘Go!’ shouted Kineen. His warriors and archers ran for the barn doors. ‘Pheone, retreat.’

  ‘No.’ She felt alive, vindicated. In two years, these were her first victims among the thousands that occupied her city and she found herself hungry for more. ‘I’ll defend you.’

  ‘They can outrun you,’ said Afen. ‘But not us.’

  Pheone looked to her left. Shadows climbed thick into the sky. Far right, she heard the pounding of feet in scrub. It was no time for heroics.

  ‘Don’t get caught,’ she said, turning and running back into the field of spring crop, retracing her steps back into the city.

  Behind her the yellow bloom of a spell lit the sky and a flat crack spoke of a FlameOrb detonating. More screams of dying children, this time further out of the city, away from the barn. Pheone smiled. A diversion.

  The part-focused mana from the castings brought the demons to it, searching for the prized life force that only a mage possessed. Pheone ran harder, her ears playing games with her mind. She fancied she could hear a gravel-laden voice calling her name but it could have been the breeze through the crops. Wings beat close to her head though it could have been wind-echo.

  She was alone and unguarded in this demon-run city of the walking dead. She broke through the crops and into the streets, trying to keep her footfalls quiet and maintain her speed. But all she produced was a dry slapping that sounded like a herald of her passage.

  Pheone slowed, ducked into heavy shadow and stopped, breathing hard. She heard no sounds of pursuit. The howling of enraged demons was distant but she knew she couldn’t relax. She studied the silent buildings while she caught her breath. No one lived here any more. The demons had herded everyone they’d kept alive into the centre of the city, where they were penned and housed like animals.

  A hand clamped across her mouth. She felt breath on her neck. She tried to struggle and scream but she was held tight. She let herself relax, made herself think. Kineen’s face came into view and she all but wept. He released her.

  ‘Bad place to stop,’ he said. ‘They are closer than you think.’

  ‘Gods burning, you almost frightened me to death,’ she managed, relieved and angry.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said and set off towards the tunnel entrance and safety. ‘I couldn’t risk you screaming.’

  She followed him, nodding. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘They have taken other routes to split the pursuit. We have four lambs, four piglets. A good raid.’

  Pheone smiled, feeling safe though she ought not to. Only she was safe enough here, wasn’t she? Here in a quiet empty back street the demons never travelled; as much as inside the college where they never attacked but just watched. No. Waited.

  She caught up with Kineen. ‘Why don’t they attack the college any more?’

  ‘They fear us.’

  ‘Yes but that’s not all of it, is it?’

  Kineen glanced across at her. A few more turns and they were home. ‘It is why we fight them out here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To keep that for which they wait as distant as we can.’

  Deep inside the crypts of Dordover, the last remaining bastion of college resistance huddled. Barely two dozen were left now. The onslaught had been relentless. They hadn’t been able to replenish stamina outside the ColdRooms when the demons had found all their borders and they had too little strength to cure all the afflicted when disease had struck. Dysentery had stolen their best mages once it had taken their ability to heal themselves and now the demons were coming after what was left. They could sense the weakening. The ColdRooms were not secure, the casters were weak and the swordsmen barely had the muscle to raise their blades.

  Vuldaroq, a shadow of the obese bulk he had been two years before, listened to the battering on the doors of the outer crypts. They had fled here the night before and had nothing with them. The Heart of the college was below them and they could no longer reach it.

  He dragged himself to his feet and looked around the chill, lantern-lit chamber.

  ‘They will be here soon,’ he said. ‘They must not take any of our souls.’

  A swordsman, Marn, turned to him. ‘The college must survive,’ he said. ‘Even if none live here until the demons are defeated. We cannot let our light fail.’

  Vuldaroq managed a smile. ‘That you still have hope makes you the strongest among us, my friend.’

  ‘Not for myself, my Lord Vuldaroq, but for you and the mages we still have.’ He ges
tured about him. ‘We have been talking, the non-mages I mean. If you all have the stamina left for one more casting, there is a chance you can escape.’

  Vuldaroq shook his head. He was tired. The bluster and arrogance he had carried were long since gone and he had developed an unflinching loyalty to those who had fought the demons so bravely though their efforts were ultimately to end in failure.

  ‘We will take our lives here, leave them nothing to leech from us,’ he said. ‘It is as we agreed, Marn. We will die together.’

  ‘No,’ said Marn. ‘It is you they want, you they prize. We can get you out.’

  ‘How? We are trapped.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord, but not yet quite helpless.’

  Vuldaroq listened on and the spark of chance warmed his heart once more.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Unknown!’

  Hirad’s shout shattered the peace of Herendeneth, setting birds to flight and scattering the cattle in the yard behind the house. He pounded up the track from the landing, not even noticing the swaying trees to either side that flanked the path with such grace. All he could see was the man he hadn’t laid eyes on for well over a year. It was a great sight.

  The big man was dressed in light linens, his shaven head hidden from the sun under a tied-back cloth. The smile on his face was broad and his bulk almost blocked out his wife and child standing a little way behind him.

  Hirad hurtled into his embrace, rocking him back a step. The two old friends spun each other around, the barbarian kissing him on the cheek before stepping back.

  ‘Surprised?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone elven native,’ said The Unknown. ‘It’s wonderful to see you looking so well. Still off the wine?’

  Hirad wrinkled his nose. ‘They have something almost as good. Made from some tree sap or other.’ He blew. ‘Very sweet, very powerful.’

  ‘So not wine at all then. Got some young stuff you should try.’