And on the Wildmages who controlled them.
Once again unwelcome worries intruded into Kellen's mind. Why hadn't Idalia told him about the Great War, and the dragons, and why the City had outlawed the Wild Magic and invented the High Magick to take its place? Why hadn't she explained to him what he was going to be facing? She'd told him everything else—except the most important thing: that he was riding off to face an ancient enemy that had a lot of experience in corrupting Wildmages and turning them to its own purposes.
Had she thought ignorance would protect him? Had she thought Jermayan wouldn't tell him the truth? Maybe he wouldn't have, if Kellen hadn't turned out to be a Knight-Mage. Maybe she'd kept it from him for his own protection. Maybe the fact that Kellen now knew the truth was going to make things go wrong somehow.
Or maybe she counted on Jermayan to tell me the truth; counted on me being brave enough to face it. She had put plenty of challenges in his path before, and reckoned on his being able to meet them.
But she could so easily be wrong. She didn't know him! Not really. She didn't know how often he failed or messed things up.
He couldn't afford to worry about things like this—it was too late to change things, and he couldn't unlearn what he knew—but somehow he couldn't stop himself from constantly poking at the problem, as if it were a sore tooth. The whole thing was just too big and too complicated, made worse by the fact that the more he learned about the Demons, the more formidable an enemy they seemed to be. No matter how much confidence Jermayan seemed to have in Kellen's emerging powers as a Knight-Mage and Wildmage, Kellen didn't have the same confidence, not down where it counted. He knew how many mistakes he'd already made in seventeen short years of life, and now, with so many lives resting on him making all the right choices, he didn't feel any smarter than he had when his choices didn't matter to anybody but him. He'd already almost gotten Jermayan killed once.
All it took was one wrong move.
Just one.
THOUGH Jermayan had been reluctant to talk about Shadow Mountain and the Great War initially, as they rode that day through lands he could have never seen—for Kellen now knew that Jermayan, old as he was from Kellen's standpoint, had been born centuries after the War was over—the Elven Knight spoke of those ancient events as if he had indeed been present at that last great battle between the forces of Life and those of Darkness.
So vivid were his descriptions as he pointed out the landmarks of the conflict that had shaped Kellen's world that it almost began to seem to Kellen as well that he could see the armies marshaled upon the battlefield: humans, Elves, and Centaurs in their gleaming armor, the swift and terrible unicorn cavalry, their bright horns flashing in the sunlight. Overhead, dragons wheeled and soared in the sky, their scales glittering radiantly—red and green, gold and blue and black—and the air seethed with elemental forces, as sylphs and salamanders awaited the bidding of their comrades and allies.
And arrayed against them, the terrible forces of the Endarkened and their slaves: the Darkmages, the duergar and goblins and trolls, protected from the sunlight fatal to their kind by the magic of the Endarkened—a protection that might be withdrawn at any moment, should the Endarkened need their power for other things.
'Across that valley—there—in the distance—is a place once called The Field of Sorrows. I do not know if it has a name now. There, the army of Countess Karissa of Avoret was utterly destroyed.' Jermayan's eyes were shadowed with sorrow, as if the tragedy had taken place a decade ago, instead of millennia. 'Ten thousand warriors, the flower of human pride and knighthood, were gathered there to do battle, and not one of them escaped alive. It was the first great human loss of the War… you had underestimated the barbarity of the enemy you faced until then, I think, and thought they would fight by the civilized code of human men. But they gave no quarter, slaughtering the wounded, those who had surrendered, the servants and children who rode with the army… all. Not even the supply oxen were left alive, and when our army arrived, too late to aid you, the battlefield was a lake of blood too vast to sink into the earth.'
Kellen blinked, trying to picture it and failing utterly. It was just too horrible to get his mind wrapped around. And this was the enemy they would have to confront!
'When the Count came and saw the place where his daughter had died, he swore that he would not rest until the power of the Endarkened was broken forever and the treachery that had slain his daughter was avenged; that if he must defy Death himself to allow this to come to pass, he would find a way. He was a great Wildmage; how his story ends, the histories do not say, but it was through his tireless efforts that the human kingdoms fought at our side staunchly through all the dark days of the War, though the Endarkened tried constantly to make a separate treaty of peace with you. They would willingly have promised you anything to withdraw from battle, knowing that they would turn on you later once they had achieved victory over us.'
How many humans failed to listen to the Count, Kellen wondered. How many thought that a separate peace could be achieved, and been betrayed? There must have been some, or the rest would never have known that Demonic promises were lies.
'But here is a happier tale, if any story from those days can be said to be a happy one,' Jermayan went on, pointing into the far distance. 'See there, that mountain pass?'
Kellen strained his vision—he suspected Elven eyesight was better than human—and in the distance he could just barely make out a notch between two mountains that might be the pass Jermayan spoke of.
'That is Vel-al-Amion, where The Seven held back the entire army of the Endarkened for three days, until Cirandeiron Istemion and King Damek could arrive. Their names have been lost to history, and so they would have
