Yfandes fidgeted, her bridle - bells chiming, her hooves making a deeper ringing on the hard paving of the road. :Hurry,: she urged, her own Mindvoice dense with fear. :Please. He'll die, they'll die - there's another Companion, she's nearly gone mad, she can't speak -:
: 'Fandes, don't interrupt. I'm working as fast as I can, but if I don't pull power now, I won't have anything when we need it.: The raw power was beginning to fill him, fill all the echoing emptiness. Natural, slow recovery had not been able to do this! He was going to have to wait until the achingly empty reservoirs of power within him were full again before he could spin a shield this complicated, though at this rate it wasn't going to take long. Besides, he was all too likely to need power. If everything went to hell and he had to Gate out of here -
Gods. It's like - eating sunlight, breathing rainbows, drinking wind - Force poured into him, wild and untamed, and for the first time in months he felt complete and revived. There was nothing this strong anywhere near Forst Reach.
No mystery now why the Mavelans wanted Lineas, not with this kind of power running through Highjorune going untapped and unused. He could almost pity the mage- lords. It must be like living next to people who mined up precious gems with their copper, and threw the gems out with the tailings, but wouldn't let you in to glean them. Got to hurry this. We're running out of time.
Cautiously he pulled at the power, until it responded, flowing faster into him.
That's it. Now I make it mine.
He tapped into the wild power he'd taken; learned it, tamed it to his hand.
He was sweating now; both with effort and impatience. Gods, this takes too much time, but I can't afford any surprises.
Slowly, carefully, he began to spin the energy out into threads, visible only to his Othersight, making a cocoon of the threads that would absorb sound within it, and send the eyes that lit upon it to looking elsewhere. Layer on layer, thread on delicate thread, this was a spell that required absolute concentration and attention, for the slightest defect would mean a place where the eye could catch and hold, where sound could leak out. Yfandes stood like a statue of ice in the moonlight, no longer fidgeting.
Finally, with a sigh of relief, he completed.the web. He replaced what he had spent, then cut off his connection to the mother-stream.
His arms hurt, but he had the feeling that more was going to hurt than his arms before this was over.
:Go!: he told Yfandes, who leaped off into the dark, heading for the open city gates ahead of them.
He grabbed for the reins and pommel as she shot forward, a white arrow speeding toward a target only she knew.
:'Fandes! Where are we going?:
:The palace!:
The streets wound crazily round about, with no sense and no pattern; some were illuminated by torches and lanterns, some only by the moon. They sped from dark to light to dark again, Yfandes' hooves sliding on the slippery cobbles. They splashed through puddles of water and less pleasant liquids. He could hear her hooves, oddly muffled, beneath him; and both intriguing scents and noisome, foul stenches that met his nose only to be snatched away before he could recognize them. There were people about; street cleaners, beggars, whores, drunks, others he couldn't identify. The spell held; the eyes of the townsfolk they passed slid past the two of them with no interest whatsoever.
:The first Companion, the young one - I can't even reach him now, he's too crazed, Van, he's so frightened!: Yfandes was not particularly coherent herself; stress was distorting her mind-voice into a wash of emotion through which it was hard to pick up words. :The second one - she's - her Chosen - she can't bear what he's doing, she's shutting everything out :
Vanyel clung to the pommel and balanced out sideways a bit as Yfandes rounded a corner, hindquarters skewing as her hooves slipped a little. This 'second one”-she was probably the Companion with Randale's envoy. But what could a Herald be doing that would stress his Companion to the point of breakdown?
Vanyel didn't have long to wait to discover the answer; they entered a zone of wider streets and enormous residences; homes of the noble and rich. The streets were near daylight - bright with cressets and lanterns of scentless oils. The palace can't be far, he thought, and just as he finished the thought, they pounded around a corner and into a huge square, then down a broad avenue. At the end of that processional avenue was a huge structure, half fortress, half fantasy, looming above the city, a black eagle mantling above her nest against the setting moon. And at the eagle's feet, an egg of light-the main courtyard, brightly lit. Vanyel banished the spell of unsight as they thundered in the gilded gates.
The dark-charcoal palace walls cupped the courtyard on three sides, the wall they'd just passed beneath forming the fourth. There must have been a hundred lanterns burning.
