In the back of his mind he wished the fire spell had been readied when his uncle attacked. He could have burned the old bastard. But there was no way to ready the spell while fighting; battles between wizards were only magical if the two stood off from each other with their shields already set, so that they could take the time to gather their power. Fighting, close in, they did what others did. They bit and clawed and snapped and hit and stabbed.
Callion staggered backward with the hit, but caught his balance and lunged, swinging. Hultif scrambled back out of the way, in the position his uncle had been in instants before. He needed a weapon and he had nothing. For all his scorn of Jayjay's sword and knife, at that moment he wished he were so well armed.
"I…will…be…Master…of…the…Watch," Callion said, punctuating each word with a swing.
Hultif thought he saw one of his uncle's gardening hoes leaning against a tree near the garden clearing. All he had to do was jump the little stream and get it. Just a little stream, though its banks were steep and rock-lined.
He broke and ran, charging away from Callion; he leapt and soared over the banks and slammed face-first into the ground on the other side, tripped by a slightly raised border of stones that he hadn't seen behind his uncle's greenery.
For an instant he was stunned, and he expected to feel the hammer smash down into the back of his skull before he could get to his feet again, but the blow didn't come.
Ignoring his injured arm, he flung himself forward and retrieved the hoe, then turned to face Callion, thinking that he had become the better armed of the two.
He was in time to see the light flicker out in the gate tree, and to see Callion vanish into the white cloak of snow.
Sixty-six
Yemus watched the simulacrums on the table. Matthiall crouched beside him, shaking his head. They'd been stunned when Jay burst out of the gate swinging a sword.
"Why has she not attacked Aidris, though?" Matthiall asked. "And why has Aidris not attacked her? They are, if your scale is right, so near they could almost touch."
"I can't tell what is going on," Yemus admitted. Something had happened that had thrown the whole battle into chaos. The Machnan, who had been winning, were now losing. Their horses had, for some reason, become useless. The animals slipped and staggered. People wandered past each other so close they could have whispered secrets in each others' ears, and yet they gave no sign that they suspected anyone near. The battles that had been engaged continued, but fighters fell and wiped their eyes and if they backed too far away from each other to catch their breath, suddenly acted as if the enemy with whom they had just been fighting had ceased to exist.
"Has someone cursed them with forgetfulness?" Yemus wondered.
"I cannot say. Someone has cursed them with something. They fight only if they fall right into each other. And why do they keep wiping their eyes?"
"It was raining," Yemus told him. "I did not create a simulacrum for the rain because it created a blur in the air that made the figures difficult to see."
"Then is it raining so hard they're blind?"
Yemus pursed his lips, then shrugged. "I can cast a simulacrum for the air to find out if they face a deluge." He tapped a finger on the table and murmured a few words. Suddenly the entire tabletop vanished in a dome of white.
"Snow?" Matthiall frowned. "Awfully early for that."
"It can't be natural."
"No. I shouldn't think so. But neither your people nor mine have the sheer power to control the weather." He growled. "So this comes either from Aidris, who gets her power from death, or from Callion, who has it naturally.
"Remove it. Better we can see what's happening, even if they can't."
Jay was feeling around in the blizzard, poking with her sword. She was headed in the wrong direction. Aidris had cast a light spell and appeared to be using it to try to find her way back to the gate tree, but she had gone right by it and was headed for the wrong tree.
"So Aidris didn't do it," Matthiall said.
"Evidently not."
Suddenly Yemus realized that the simulacrum of Sophie's body was no longer surrounded by black mist. He pointed it out to Matthiall.
"Perhaps something has gone amiss with your casting. Some of these other figures wear their death shrouds. Recast that one."
That seemed reasonable. Yemus blanked out the simulacrum of Sophie and cast another one. It didn't wear the black mist that signified death either. "What in the world…?"
"She isn't moving." No.
"She hasn't moved since she fell there."
"No."
"Perhaps the blanket of snow is interfering with your casting."
The gate tree flared again, and this time an Aregen burst out of it.
"Oh, no," Yemus said. "Callion is there."
The Aregen stopped, rubbed his face vigorously, then tucked his head for a moment. Both men in the Aptogurria felt a trickle of power building in the simulacrum; that sensation indicated that he was preparing to cast a spell.
Callion stood a moment longer; then broke his stance and tipped his head skyward. Waiting.
Sixty-seven
she felt nothing and more nothing and the darkness seemed that it would never end
and then smothering soaking poisonous cold so solid so complete so real the cold became lead that encased her limbs and shoved down on her chest and refused her the air that was her birthright
frozen stiff arms and legs and the utter utter silence of flesh without the rush of blood the surge of air the pulsing pounding dance of the heart the million tiny noises that were life she was dead
dead
hopelessly eternally dead but now with her living soul encased in dead flesh dead and they had tried had tried and fought and struggled but she had been too long dead and now frozen she had no hope
and then sweet single thud like a drumstick on a lone drum, one heartbeat
long silence, the drummer alone and without rhythm and without response, the drummer had played his note but the rest of the band hadn't come, he was alone on the field alone and now he would give up
another beat
and a silence
and then, quicker, another
and another
and she felt the burning in her chest that was the body begging for air and she breathed in breathed in through a blanket of frozen something but the air still came she filled her lungs with it and
held it
held it
drew in more and held it until it hurt and still she breathed in and when the burning grew unbearable she let her breath
out
with
a
rush that was ecstasy and triumph and promise
and she felt the fire start deep inside of her, and felt it spread as warm blood began to stir again in her veins
And she twitched her fingers.
And they moved when she demanded that they move.
She shrugged shoulders and bent knees and curled herself forward into a sitting position.
Alive, she thought. My God. I'm alive.
She realized she was beyond just feeling. She could think again.
My name is Sophie.
I'm in a lot of trouble.
I need to find a place to hide until I figure out what is going on.
Sixty-eight
No battle plan survived the moment of engagement, Jayjay told herself. But the plan was supposed to at least get you to the battle before it fell apart.
She couldn't find Aidris anywhere, and she had the feeling that stumbling around through the blizzard, poking her sword into every dark shape she thought she saw, especially when those shapes turned out to be trees, was not sound tactics. But she didn't know what else to do. She hadn't counted on the ferocity of the blizzard, or the cold so bitter that her hand felt like it had frozen to the hilt of her sword. She hadn't counted on getting soaked through from the icy rain, or on her eyelashes sticking together. She had counted on Hultif's fires, a
nd she could see none of those. Where summer had reigned only moments before, now winter locked in everything.
She couldn't get back through the gate, either, even assuming she could find the right tree. She was trapped, and she was freezing, and she was furious. Only an idiot would end up dying of exposure in the middle of summer because of her own moronic plan.
I should have just jumped out at her, Jay thought. She would have killed me but she would have died, too.
The snow began to thin, and a single warm tendril of air curled past her. For a moment she was grateful, but then she considered the larger implications of a break in the weather. First there had been no blast of fire, and now the snowstorm was dying. Something had happened to Hultif, hadn't it?
And that meant she was completely alone in dealing with Aidris Akalan. No magical backup. No diversions. No fire spells.
Aidris still didn't know she was in the woods. If the storm died and she hadn't found cover, she would lose the element of surprise, and the element of surprise was the only thing she had left. She fumbled around until she found a tree, and then she crouched beside it.
The blizzard continued to lose its power. She started being able to make out trunks between the increasingly large, wet flakes. The pounding of the tiny hailstones stopped and with them, the hissing that had been so overpowering she had ceased to hear it. With its absence, she heard fighting again.
Fewer flakes, and more rain, and the rain warmer against her skin. Maybe she wouldn't die of exposure after all. She heard Aidris before she saw her.
"The snow has hidden the damnable corpse! How am I to find the right tree again if I can't find the body?"
Two warrags were sniffing around on the white-blanketed ground fifty yards away, obviously looking for Sophie, while Aidris kicked at the snow around the base of each tree. Jay kept in a crouch, scooted around until a tree blocked the three of them from her sight, then ran forward, still crouched down. She didn't like the fact that Aidris was trying to use her best friend's body as a landmark. She wished she had her father's old Browning twelve-gauge over-and-under. Two slugs from that would solve all of Aidris's problems nice and fast, and a lot of other people's problems, too.
She didn't have the over-and-under. She had a sword, and a dagger, no backup, and no more cover from the weather. The snow turned into rain.
Line from a Dan Fogelberg song, she thought, annoyed with herself for the errant thought. How come I never met somebody at a checkout stand?
But she'd met somebody in a dungeon, and while that probably wouldn't have made for a chart-topping song, it would have made for a good life. She believed it would have.
It can't now, she thought. The game's all over now. She lined herself up behind cover and moved to the next tree, staying low and keeping quiet.
You're going to die for what you did, bitch, she thought. You hurt a hell of a lot of people, and you killed my best friend, and maybe I can't save the whole world, but I can light my one little candle before your friends take me out.
She smiled grimly. That's it. My contribution to life. My single real accomplishment. Not my books, not the novel I never got around to or never had the guts to try, not the kids I wanted but never had. The only thing I will ever have done that made a difference will have been this.
That sucks.
Sixty-nine
The warrags couldn't find the body, and Aidris couldn't find the body. The rain was washing away the snow and the Machnan wizard's corpse should have been exposed and visible.
It wasn't.
Aidris didn't think the warrags had dragged it off to eat it. She could still hear the sounds of fighting; they weren't stupid enough to stop for a snack in the middle of a battle.
She thought she knew what had happened. The gate had opened twice at the height of the snowstorm. She'd felt it, though she hadn't been able to see it. She expected an attack, but when one hadn't been forthcoming, she'd thought perhaps the people she and her army had trapped inside the Aregen domain had summoned the snowstorm for cover so that they could escape.
Now, though, she decided that for whatever reason, someone had come out, taken the corpse, and gone back in again.
She was going to have to find the gate tree the hard way.
"Guard me," she said, and three warrags took up their positions around her.
She didn't know how much time she had left. She could tell from the sound that the battle had intensified. Her army would only be able to help her after it had defeated the attackers. And perhaps some of the attackers would break through the lines to her guard and her. She needed to be through the gate before they could reach her. She needed to be able to drain whatever strength she could from the Aregen domain, and the soon-to-be dead people hiding in it.
She pulled her protective spells in tight and, holding her arms straight in front of her, chanted in a low, rhythmic monotone. As she chanted, she felt the shape of the area's magic grow around her. Her Kin and her Kin-hera, a bright bolt of something that felt Aregen and enormously powerful, the tree. Yes. She let the feel flow through her fingertips and she turned until the current was strongest. She followed it, moving slowly, chanting, taking her time; she was peripherally aware that her guard stalked at her sides and at her back, wary and waiting for trouble. She was peripherally aware of the fighting, of tension in the air, of something waiting to happen. But she kept chanting and kept moving until her fingers touched the right tree. She stopped chanting, released the spell, and all feelings of magic died.
And then, without expending any effort, she felt the surge of power again, but this time from off to one side. The signature of the magic, after all the centuries that she'd dealt with it, was unmistakable.
Her Watchers were returning.
They did not come with a wind, nor with the rustling of leaves. They did not howl or shriek or growl as they were wont to do most times. Instead they came in silence, their power unmistakable and inescapable. They swirled around her for a moment, silent, not touching her, a cloud of deadly fireflies that she was able to contain only because she had summoned them to blood and held them with blood.
She waited, not letting them find any fear in her.
They coalesced at last into the shape of her face. "We have decided," they said with a single voice that sounded much like hers.
"Decided."
"Yes. We did not know what we wanted, but now we have decided."
"I tell you what you can have," she said. "You don't tell me what you want."
"Have you forgotten your oath?"
Aidris couldn't be certain that she heard anger in the voice; it wasn't the voice of a real creature, after all, but only a construct. Still, she thought she felt anger.
"Have you forgotten that you were to bring me Matthiall and the hearts of his two wizards?"
"That has all changed."
"Has it?" Aidris recalled her intermittent anxiety that she had done something wrong in dealing with the Watchers, but she still could not recall what it might have been. The anxiety returned. If things had changed, she had done something careless, she thought. Something very small, and seemingly irrelevant. Something I said that I shouldn't have said, or something I shouldn't have said that I did.
She waited since there seemed to be nothing else to do.
"We have decided what we want."
"What do you want?"
"We want the blood of everything in this place. Now."
"That's ridiculous. If you hunt judiciously, you will hunt here forever. If you destroy everything at once, you will starve."
"No. We will go home. You will starve. But because this is what we want, you will give it to us, or we will devour you and still we will go home."
"What has given you the idea that I would let you do this?"
"This was your oath." For an instant the Watchers were silent. Then her own voice in her own tones said back to her, "Enough! I'll give you his blood. I said I would, didn't I? Have I ever broken a promise to you? I
'll give you anything you want—I swear it. But don't bother me with that. Go now, and bring him to me quickly. And bring the hearts of the wizards he stole from me."
She caught and held her mistakes. Her first mistake had been to deal with the Watchers in an emotional state. Her second and third mistakes had come from the first, and they were unrecoverable. She had sworn to give the Watchers something without making the reward conditional on their successful completion of her task. And she had offered to give them something she couldn't afford to give.
So I could die now, or I can let them devour the world and die soon.
Let the world burn, she thought. If I can't have Glenraven, no one will.
"Take everything," she said. "I give you leave."
Seventy
Jay heard Aidris say, "Take everything," and then she saw something she couldn't believe. Sophie walked out from behind a tree, and said, "Take me first."
The firefly swarm enveloped her instantly, without warning. "No, Sophie," Jay shouted, but her shout wouldn't have mattered. Aidris had recognized Sophie, and she started to scream in that same instant.
And Sophie began to glow, but the spots of fire under her skin died out as quickly as they arose. The swarm that surrounded her began to hum with agitation, as if it were a swarm of bees disturbed by a boy with a stick. Aidris was standing there screaming and the three warrags, who had heard her condemn them to death, had fled, and Jay ran forward to attack.
The swarm lifted off of Sophie, who stood there unscathed. It thrashed and circled and raged, no longer one coherent entity but a thousand angry voices all shrieking at the same time. Aidris was frozen, staring from it to Sophie and back.
The buzzing and howling died down quickly and the firefly lights reformed into a face. "We cannot take her. She is multitudes, and the multitudes rebuild as we destroy. We cannot have everything in this world, so you have broken bond with us." The face began to disintegrate into its component parts, and as the face came apart, the voice became voices and the voices shrieked.
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01] Page 31