The Raven and the three wolves ran from the door, taking a hard right turn away from the arcs of wards that were reducing Xetesk to rubble. Above them, Sol saw the shape of Brynar rise into the sky, struggling under the weight of his charge.
The heat from the countless fires raging in their wake washed over them in waves. Sol coughed, a spasm fled down his back and into his hip. He stumbled into a wall and would have fallen but for Thraun’s grasp on his arm. Sol could see the stone apron that sat in front of the college gates. It looked distant.
He set off after Ilkar. Thraun’s wolves were already way ahead, giving some comfort that Brynar had been right about the wards. But still, with every step, the thought of tripping something instantly fatal played on the mind. Behind him the noise of detonation and collapse was deafening. It rang straight through his head and set his feet vibrating in his boots.
Sol counted the paces he ran between each new set of explosions. Blue auras flashed in his vision and stark shadows played on the walls ahead and to the sides of him. Eight paces. It kept his feet one in front of the other if nothing else. A leaden fatigue was beginning to settle on him. The pain in his back was soaring with every jarring step he took. His hip protested. He was losing ground to the rest of them.
‘Stupid old man,’ he said to himself.
Six paces. The jolt through the ground took his balance and sent him sprawling. Sol turned onto his back and saw the house they’d descended through disappear, consumed by mana fire, stonework reduced to shards by God’s Eyes and EarthHammer.
Too close. Way too close. He scrambled back to his feet and pushed himself on. He was limping badly, the pain shooting into his jaw and up into his skull. Four paces. The wave of heat scorched the back of his head and his clothes began to smoulder gently.
Sol ran out of the street and into the open of the apron. Two paces. The last buildings bordering the apron teetered as EarthHammers thrust through them. Sol gave himself one last push. He was gasping for breath, could barely put his right leg down and his lower back was losing blood way too fast.
The detonations were right behind him. The borders of the stone apron exploded under the pressure of a Jalyr’s Sun that formed and burst at ground level. Sol felt the heat and the fire in the moments before the wind plucked him from his feet and hurled him across the apron. He landed, slid and thumped into the walls of the college.
The last ward arc had triggered and the sound of detonations rolled away across the city. The reverberations carried on and on. As an encore, weakened buildings tumbled, strewing stone, timber and tile.
Sol rolled onto his front. He didn’t even have the energy to look and see if he was on fire. He didn’t think so but he could smell his own flesh.
‘Dramatic. I’ll give you that,’ said Ilkar from somewhere nearby.
Sol turned his head. There was a gap in the wall. Ilkar, Thraun and Brynar stood in it, the latter looking very anxious and casting repeated glances behind him.
‘Everyone’s looking over the walls at the moment, but it won’t last long.’
‘Can someone help me up?’ asked Sol. ‘Presumably, we’ve been seen.’
‘Yes, but not all the way into the postern gate,’ said Brynar. ‘Please hurry.’
‘How’s Hirad?’
‘Alive, Sol, but that’s about it,’ said Thraun.
‘Well then, let’s make this count.’
Sol, helped by Ilkar, climbed slowly and painfully to his feet. He took one last look east. Obscured by dust and fire, the city was gone. The only question was how long it would take for the Garonin to regroup and attack the college itself.
‘Come on, Raven. A day standing with you and death seems a blessing.’
Chapter 29
The panic spread through the western side of the city almost as fast as the explosions from the east. Auum, Miirt and Ghaal ran hard through the periphery of the populous zone, ignoring the shouts of guards and patrols, knowing that in the maze of narrow, deprived alleys, little could be done to stop them.
At the outset the population of Xetesk had crowded onto the streets in huge expectation. The first set of wards had been greeted with cheering. The second set as well. But very quickly the mood had darkened. This was a city of magic. Plenty enough knew that the repetition and speed of the triggering of wards was not what was intended. Either a massive invasion force was pushing through the kill zone or something had gone badly wrong.
By the time the TaiGethen had steered back towards the walls of the college, ordinary folk and a good number wearing the livery of the college guard were making their hurried way to the west gates and out onto open ground. Auum only hoped they weren’t too late. The Garonin were creatures of habit and marched in straight lines everywhere they went, but even they would eventually realise that another path existed. And then stopping the exodus, to herd, corral and massacre the people, would be relatively simple.
Auum led his Tai into the lee of the western walls of the college. The explosives display to the east had turned every head. The barrier before them was some fifty feet high, dark and imposing. But Ghaal merely smiled.
‘Smooth walls and beautifully repeated stonework,’ he said. ‘Old concrete and moss. My trusted friends.’
He reached up with both hands, set his feet into a crack at about hip level and began to climb, his brother and sister following his every move.
Densyr was weeping with the effort. He could easily imagine himself standing between two forces desperate to pull apart and release the power contained within while he held on to each one with every mote of strength that he had. And he wouldn’t be able to hold on forever.
He could feel Septern with him. The master mage was weak but his mind still clung on, and would do for as long as his soul could do the same in his borrowed body. Septern’s grid had come under extraordinary pressure but some sections remained undamaged by their efforts to pull the plug on the Garonin attempt to drag mana direct from Xetesk’s Heart.
Densyr, his own heart flailing and his temples pounding, relaxed enough to be able to look about him in the mana spectrum. The Heart had returned to something like normal balance. The hourglass shape of mana encasing the Heart was no longer distorted like a glass-blower’s nightmare. There were wild pulses within it but the depletion had been halted, with Densyr acting as the door wedged firmly into the frame.
Still, the remains of the grid, particularly at its periphery, were a disaster waiting to happen. What had been a tightly bound structure built on lines of energy criss-crossing in arcs, horizontals and verticals to join each and every ward together, had become a fractured mess.
Loose lines whipped and spat with the remnants of mana within them seeking a place to earth themselves. The entire security of the arc lines was gone, ripped to shreds by the feedback of mana along the grid itself. Eighty per cent of the wards had detonated when they had been torn asunder. Densyr shuddered to think what had happened to the eastern side of his city. The remaining parts of the grid were all active, and that was some relief should the Garonin still pursue their plan to march east to west without deviation.
Unfortunately, it seemed to Densyr that he would be unable to abandon his position. The grid was so unstable that to remove himself, and probably Septern too, from their buffering duties would allow the flailing mana lines to reconnect to the Heart so closing the circuit once more and feeding back the remaining mana. It might only be twenty per cent active, but there was enough power there to do serious damage. Destruction? Only Septern could tell.
‘Did we win?’ asked Septern.
Through the haze of the mana spectrum Densyr could see him slumped in his chair, eyelids fluttering.
‘That depends on your point of view.’
‘Where are the enemy?’
‘I can see no sign of them in the spectrum. But that means little, I suspect. We’ve surely given them a bloody nose and pause for thought.’
