He looked past her, and instantly the stillness was gone, shattered. Fifteen, perhaps twenty of the Ygrathens were up on the summit. More were coming. And some of them did have bows. He saw an arrow fly, to be embedded in one of the shields around the wizards. There was a sound of quick footsteps ascending the slope to his left. No time to speak, even if he could have. They were here to die if they had to, it had always been possible. There was a reason why they had come. There was a dream, a prayer, a tune his father had taught him as a child. He held his left hand tightly to his wound and turned from Alais, stumbling forward, gripping his sword, to meet the next man scrambling up the ridge.
A mild day, the sun in and out of the clouds pushed swiftly along by the breeze. In the morning they had walked in the meadows north of the castle gathering flowers, armfuls of them. Irises, anemones, bluebells. The sejoia trees were just coming into flower now this far south; they left the white blossoms for later in the season.
They were back in Castle Borso drinking mahgoti tea just past midday when Elena abruptly made a small, frightened sound. She stood up rigidly straight, her hands clutching at her head. Her tea spilled unregarded, staining the Quileian carpet.
Alienor quickly laid her own cup down. ‘It has come?’ she said. ‘The summons? Elena, what can I do?’
Elena shook her head. She could scarcely hear the other woman’s words. There was a clearer, harder, more compelling voice in her head. Something that had never happened before, not even on the Ember Nights. But Baerd had been right, her stranger who had come to them out of darkness and changed the shape of the Ember wars.
He had returned to the village late in the day that followed, after his friends had come down from the pass and ridden west. He had spoken to Donar and Mattio and to Carenna and Elena and said that what the Night Walkers shared had to be a kind of magic, if not the same as wizardry. Their bodies changed in the Ember Nights, they walked under a green moon through lands that were not there by the light of day, they wielded swords of growing corn that altered under their hands. They were wedded in their own fashion, he had said, to the magic of the Palm.
And Donar had agreed that this was so. So Baerd had told them, carefully, what his purpose was, and that of his friends, and he’d asked Elena to come to Castle Borso until summer’s end. In case, he’d said, in case it was possible for their power to be tapped in this cause.
Would they do this? There would be danger. He had asked it diffidently, but there had been no hesitation in Elena as she looked into his eyes and answered that she would. Nor in the others when they agreed. He had come to them in their own need. They owed him at least this much, and more. And they too were living through tyranny in their own land. His cause in the daylight was their own.
Elena di Certando? Are you there? Are you in the castle?
She didn’t know this mind-voice, but within its clarity she could sense a desperation; there seemed to be chaos all around him.
Yes. Yes, I am. I’m here. What . . . what must I do?
I don’t believe it! A second voice joined them, deeper, as imperative. Erlein, you have reached her!
Is Baerd there? she asked, a little desperately herself. The sudden link was dizzying, and the sense of tumult all around; she swayed, almost fell. She reached out and put both her hands on the high back of a chair. The room in Castle Borso was beginning to fade for her. Had Alienor spoken now she would not have even heard.
He is, the first man said quickly. He is here with us and we have terrible need of help. We are at war! Can you link to your friends? To the others? We will help you. Please! Reach for them!
She had never tried such a thing, not by daylight nor even under the green moon of the Ember Nights. She had never known anything like this wizards’ link, but she felt their power resting in her, and she knew where Mattio would be, and Donar; and Carenna would be at home with her newest child. She closed her eyes and reached out for the three of them, straining to focus her mind on the forge, the mill, Carenna’s house in the village. To focus, and then to call. To summon.
Elena, what . . . ? Mattio. She had him.
Join me! she sent quickly. The wizards are here. There is war.
He asked no more questions. She could feel his steadying presence in her mind as the wizards helped her open to him. She registered his own sudden, disoriented shock at the link to the other men. Two of them, no three, there was a third one there as well.
Elena, has it come? Have they sent? Donar in her mind, seizing at truth like a weapon to his hand.
I am here, love! Carenna’s mind-voice, quick and bright, exactly the same as her speech. Elena, what must we do?
Hold to each other and open to us! the deep presence of the second wizard was there to answer. We may now have a chance. There is danger, I will not lie, but if we hold together—for once in this peninsula—we may yet break through! Come, join us, we must forge our minds into a shield. I am Sandre d’Astibar and I never died. Come to us now!
Elena opened her mind to him, and reached out. And in that moment she felt as though her own body was entirely gone, as if she were no more than a conduit,
