With a surge of wild power that brought a half-dozen lightning strikes down on the Belltower of the Temple itself, the Gate collapsed -
Then again the unexpected; the Gate-energy, instead of dissipating back into the air and ground, flared up, and surged back down the one conduit left to it. The force-line that had tied it into Vanyel. Savil Saw it - but not in time to stop it.
Vanyel screamed in agony, convulsing, clutching the pillar as the released power arced back into him - and from him, a second, weaker arc leapt to Tylendel.
Tylendel jerked into sudden alertness - and uttered the most painful cry of despair Savil had ever heard; it was a cry that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.
She pivoted and grabbed for him as quickly as she could as Vanyel collapsed in a moaning heap at the foot of the pillar.
But it was too late. No longer held in deceptive docility by his shock, he dodged her outstretched hand. She saw his face in another of the lightning flashes; his eyes were all pupil, his face a twisted mask of nothing but pain. He looked frantically about him with those terrible eyes that held no sanity at all, dodged her again, and then dashed past her into the tangled trees of the Grove.
Jaysen gave chase; Savil limped after both of them. Lightning was striking so often overhead now that the sky was almost as bright as day. She tried to use the line of their shared magic to get at Tylendel's mind as she ran, hoping to bring him back to her, but stumbled in shock and fell when she touched his thoughts. There was nothing to get a hold on - the boy was a chaotic, aching void of grief and loneliness. It was so empty, so unhuman, that for a moment she could only crouch in the cold, dry grass and listen to her overworked heart beat in panic. It took every ounce of discipline she had to get her own mind back under control after touching that terrible, all-consuming sorrow.
Belatedly she thought of Vanyel. If anyone could reach Tylendel, surely he could.
She lurched painfully to her feet and stumbled back toward the Temple. In the lightning flashes she could make out the younger boy staggering blindly out of the Temple, clutching himself as if he were freezing - saw him stumble and fall on his shoulder, without trying to save himself.
Then she saw Tylendel dart out of the tree-shadows to her right and race past her, past his fallen lover, and back into the Temple itself.
And her heart went cold with a sudden premonition of disaster.
She forced her exhausted legs into a stumbling parody of a run, but she wasn't fast enough.
Just as she reached the place where Vanyel lay, panting and moaning in pain, she saw his head snap up as if in response to a call only he could hear. He seemed to be looking up at the Tower that held the Death Bell. She heard him cry out something unintelligible, and followed his horror-stricken glance -
- and saw Tylendel poised against the lighting-filled sky, arms spread as if to fly -
- and saw him leap -
He seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if he had somehow mastered flight.
But only a moment; in the next heartbeat he was falling, falling - she couldn't tell if the scream she heard was hers, or Vanyel's or both. It wasn't Tylendels; his eyes were closed, and his mouth twisted and jaw clenched in a rictus of pure grief.
She felt the impact of his body with the unforgiving ground as if it had been her own body that had fallen -
- and the scream ended.
Jaysen stopped dead beside her, frozen in mid-step.
She whimpered in the back of her throat, and Jaysen walked slowly to the crumpled thing lying on the ground, not twenty paces from where she now stood. He went to his knees beside it, then looked up, and she saw him shake his head slowly, confirming what she already knew.
And at that moment, the Death Bell began solemnly tolling.
She stumbled to Jaysen's side, each step costing her more in pain than she had felt in a lifetime of sacrifice to Queen and Circle. She went heavily to her knees, and gathered up the limp, pitiable body to her breast.
She held him, cradling him against her shoulder, gently rocking a little as if she held a small child. Tears coursed silently down her face to mingle with the rain that was pouring from the sky; it seemed that the whole world echoed her grief. Jaysen knelt beside her, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking with sobs, as the Companions gathered about them and the Death Bell tolled above them.
It was only when the rest of the Heralds arrived to take their burden from them that they thought of Vanyel, and sent someone to look for him.
But the boy was gone.
Nine
Vanyel stumbled through the pouring, frigid rain. He was half-blinded with grief, with no hope of finding comfort anywhere in this world. There was nothing left for him - nothing.
He's dead - oh, gods, he's dead, and it's all my fault -
His whole body seemed to be on fire, a slow, smoldering pain that was burning away at him from the inside the way the ice of his dream had chilled him.
There was no reason to fight ice or fire anymore. Let either or both eat him, he couldn't care.
Rain pounded him, hail struck like slung stones. His head reeled and pounded with his pulse. He hurt, but he welcomed the pain.
