Septern was pale, even for a dead man.
‘Whatever it is the Garonin are doing, it affects the souls of the dead or, rather, the mana surrounding them. The call to the void is strong and painful to resist. But don’t worry; I won’t let you down.’
Densyr let his eye wander out over his city once more. Way to the east, not far from the gate and in the shadow of the machine, he could see a fight going on. Garonin weapons were firing. At who? he wondered. It had to be Auum and his TaiGethen. A shame the elf had taken the wrong path. He would have been a useful ally today.
‘How long will it take you?’ asked Densyr.
‘That is hard to quantify right now. I need to understand the nature of the mana flow and the volume being dragged through the grid. There will inevitably be some risk attached to the shutdown procedure.’
Densyr’s eyes narrowed and he felt a chill anxiety in his gut.
‘Risk?’
‘Well, simply put, if I snap off the flow, two things happen. First, as I said, every ward will trigger because there is no longer a circuit, and hence no way to channel the mana away safely. But second, there will be far more mana in the grid than it was intended to support because of the Garonin action. There could be feedback.’
‘Feedback?’
Densyr’s anxiety had coalesced to dread.
‘Into the Heart. That’s why I have to know the level of the depletion. Because enough mana feeding back into the Heart all at once could, theoretically, destroy it.’
‘Theoretically?’
‘Well this has never been tested, as you can imagine…’
‘Stop blustering. What is your view? And let’s say for the sake of argument that the Garonin are dragging away half of the Heart’s power at any one time.’
Septern shrugged. ‘Theory would become practical reality.’
Ilkar had concentrated like he never had before and yet forming the shape of the spell had still been torturous. The pain in his chest was a constant drain on his concentration and the howling of the void echoed around his head. Yet here it was. An Ilkar’s Defence construct. Conical, formed of a lattice of yellow lines of mana, tightly bound. Slightly modulating but nothing serious, and rotating a little quickly. It would have to do.
With eyes and mind tuned to the mana spectrum, Ilkar could see the ward in front of the door through which The Unknown wanted to go. FlameOrbs would fly from it when it was triggered, he could see that now. On a spread that would cover a hundred men in flesh-dissolving mana fire. Best not to think about it.
‘Are you ready, Ilks? The Garonin will be tapping us on the shoulder if we wait much longer,’ said Hirad.
‘I’m not sure why I bothered,’ said Ilkar. ‘I completely forgot that all you have to do is open your big fat mouth and the FlameOrbs will get sucked right in. Idiot. And yes, I’m ready.’
Ilkar nailed his concentration back down to the spell. He made sure he was standing square in front of the door. He checked again that the spell diameter would cover the spread of the ward. He took a deep breath.
‘Tuck in behind Ilkar, Jonas,’ said The Unknown. ‘Sirendor, behind me.’
Ilkar glanced over his shoulder. Hirad winked at him.
‘You could have chosen a wider body,’ said Hirad. ‘You’re a bit weedy for us all to cower behind.’
‘You know that in all the years I was dead, all I ever dreamed about was being an elven shield for your filthy carcass.’
Hirad laughed. ‘I knew you always loved me best.’
‘All right,’ said Ilkar. ‘On the count of three. I’ll cast and move the spell to the door. Everything else, I leave to your imaginations. One, two, three…’
Ilkar cast. The Defence hung in the air in front of him. Solid, shot through with yellow, rotating gently about its axis. He pushed out his arms slowly. The conical shape lengthened, the flat circle expanded to take in the door and then the entirety of the wall of the building. He could see the pulsing of the ward as the Julatsan casting neared it.
‘Be ready,’ he said, voice distant with effort.
‘For what?’ asked Hirad.
‘To sweep me into an ash bucket if this goes wrong.’
Ilkar crabbed his hands to better grip the spell and thrust it against door and wall. The ward triggered. Blinding blue light flashed across the surface of the Defence. Ilkar leaned his weight against his spell while the FlameOrbs, or whatever fancy name they had these days, formed and crashed into it again and again.
He shuddered. Nausea gripped him. The spell shimmered. Ilkar grunted defiance and forced more strength into the head of his casting. The Defence steadied again. Blue light rippled across its surface, fizzed into the ground and slapped back against the building. Fire leaked around the edges of the spell and lashed at the air and the ground at Ilkar’s feet. Sweat dripped into his eyes.
Ilkar could see the end coming. The effort of dragging in so much unfocused mana told eventually. There was not enough flow to keep the construct steady for long. The sides of the cone wobbled. The lattice unpicked from front to back. Another orb slammed into the cone and the spell collapsed.
‘Down!’ yelled Ilkar.
He angled his hands up. The final orb deflected off the remnants of his spell and arced away into the dawn sky. He followed its lazy movement up until it reached its zenith and began to fall back down.
‘This is not good,’ he said.
The Unknown had seen it too. ‘Up! Up! Get inside. Move it, Raven.’
He picked up Jonas by the back of his collar and charged through the wrecked entrance of the building. Sirendor and Hirad were scrambling to their feet, the barbarian cursing at the pain from his burned foot. But still he stopped to grab Ilkar and help the tired mage up.
The orb fell to the ground on the right-hand side of the street. Hirad and Ilkar dived inside the house, rolling away from the opening and heading for the stairs up which The Unknown was already running. The orb splattered across wall and street, triggering wards all around it.
Flame lashed inside the building, reducing broken timbers to ash and engulfing the stairs in fire. Ilkar dived headlong onto the landing from the top step. A whoosh of heat behind him and a crackling of paint on the walls told him how close he had been to incineration.
The ground heaved beneath them. Great rending sounds of stone on stone, rock smashing into rock and the splintering of wood sounded far too close. Ilkar came back to his feet and grabbed Hirad’s arm, helping him along. The others were ahead, stampeding up another stairway towards the roof. A massive column of stone broke through the floor and carved its way up through the bedrooms on Ilkar’s right.
‘EarthHammer!’ he shouted into the tumult but no one could possibly hear him.
Plaster dust and debris filled the air. The house rocked. Detonations of more columns of stone breaking upwards could be heard surrounding them. Hirad made the stairs and took them three at a time, wounded foot almost forgotten in his desperation to escape. Ilkar was right on his heels, pushing him faster.
Light poured in from above. A great swathe of the roof slipped and fell into the street, showering shattered tiles down on the fleeing Raven. Up ahead, Ilkar saw The Unknown battering down a door with his feet and running into clear sky. The front wall of the house cracked along a jagged horizontal, the upper portion teetering and falling outwards, dragging roof and beam with it.
Ilkar gave Hirad a mighty shove and rolled out of the top door after him. Hands grabbed him, almost lifting him from his feet and running him towards the shuddering building’s edge. He cried out as he left the ground, cycled his legs and landed on the other side in a heap. He turned to watch Hirad make the jump. The barbarian’s poor foot gave way beneath him. He didn’t have the height to clear the balustrade. His hands grabbed at guttering and he disappeared from view.
Behind him, the house crumbled to the ground, sending up clouds of dust that glowed in the blue flame of Xeteskian wards. As the sound of the collapse rolled away, Ilkar could hear Hirad swearing. The Unknown ran to the building’s edge and hauled the barbarian to safety
Ilkar felt someone’s gaze on him. He looked round. A man was standing by him, four wolves at his feet. He recognised those hands as the ones that had helped him escape. Others were there too. A woman and a boy who would bring joy to The Unknown’s heart and, oddly, Brynar, Densyr’s apprentice.
The man with the wolves was smiling. The sun on him projected his shadow onto the wall of a dormer
