Then they had surrounded and captured every apprentice mage except Vena. They fired the buildings to drive anyone hiding into the open and had eliminated any that were not young and Mage-Talented.
The entire proceedings had taken place in an atmosphere of cold efficiency.
There were no excesses, other than slaughter, not even rape-and that had struck Vena as eerily like the dispassionate extermination of vermin.
Afterward, though, the bodies of both sides had been stripped of everything useful and anything that might identify them. There had still been no rapine, no physical abuse of the apprentices; they had been tied at the wrists and hobbled at the ankles, herded into carts, and taken away. Vena had stayed in the tree for a full night, waiting for the attackers to return, then she had climbed down to wander dazedly through the ruins.
Vena had no idea why the wizard had done this-but the kidnapping of the apprentices told her all she needed to know.
He had taken them to use, to augment his own powers. To seduce, subvert, or otherwise bend the girls to his will.
They had to be rescued. Not only for their own sakes and that of the Sisterhood, but because if he succeeded, his power would be magnified.
Considerably. Quite enough to make him a major factor in the world.
A man who sought to increase his power in such a fashion must not be permitted to succeed in his attempt.
He had to be stopped.
Right. He had to be stopped.
By an old, crippled woman, and a half-trained girl. this was a task that would require a fighter of the highest skills, and a mage the equal of Heshain. A healthy mage, one who could ride and climb and run away, if she had to.
But there was a way. If Vena, a young and healthy girl, could be endowed with all her skills, she might well be able to pull off that rescue. One person could frequently achieve things that an army could not. One person, with all the abilities of both a mage of some strength-perhaps even the superior of Heshain-and a fighter trained by the very best, would have advantages no group could boast. that was their only hope. So she had sent Vena out, ostensibly to hunt for herbs she needed. In actuality, it was to get her out of the way. She was about to attempt something she had only seen done once. And that had not been with one of her bespelled swords.
She took the hidden sword, the one with the spells of all four seasons sealed to it, out of its hiding place under the floor of the forge. She heated the forge, placed it in the fire while she wrought one last spell-half magic, and half a desperate prayer to the Twain.
Then, when the blade was white-hot, with fire and magic, she wedged it into a clamp on the side of the forge, point outward-And ran her body onto it.
Pain seared her with a white-hot agony so great it quickly stopped being 'pain' and became something else.
Then it stopped being even that, and what Elspeth felt in memory was worse than pain, though totally unfamiliar. It was not a sensation like anything Elspeth had ever experienced. It was a sense of wrenching dislocation, disorientation-Then, nothing at all. Literally. No sight, sound, sense of any kind.
If she hadn't had some feeling that this was all just a memory she was re-experiencing, she'd have panicked. And still, if she had any choice at all, she never. ever wanted to encounter anything like this again.
It was the most truly, profoundly horrifying experience she had ever had.
A touch. Connection. Feelings. sensations flooded back, all of them so sharp-edged and clear they seemed half-raw. Grief. Someone was weeping. vena. It was Vena's senses she was sharing. The spell had worked! She was now one with the sword, with all of her abilities as mage and as fighter, and everything she had ever learned, intact.
Experimentally, she exerted a bit of control, moving Vena's hand as if it had been her own. The girl plucked at her tunic, and it felt to her as if it was her own hand she was controlling. Good; not only was her knowledge intact, but her ability to use it. She need only have the girl release control of her body, and an untrained girl would be a master swordswoman.
Vena sobbed helplessly, uncontrollably. After the first rush of elation, it occurred to her that she had probably better tell the child she wasn't dead.
Or not exactly, anyway.
