T will never forget why Will died. This is different. This is for speed, not stealth. You know that.'
'You're sure?'
Thraun gripped Hirad's shoulders. 'I'll be fine. Just bring my stuff and be there to call me back.' He stripped off his breeches and handed them over. 'Now get going and don't look back.'
'Come on, Hirad,' said The Unknown. 'Let's get on with it.'
Hirad nodded and The Raven formed up into a combat line adapted for the shapechanger's absence. The elves were to provide forward protection and warning, the Protectors remained on board ship, their souls being saved for the battles to come. Erienne and Denser were to prepare nothing unless they were attacked. It was two hours on foot to Blackthorne. A long time in a country occupied by demons.
It was a land Hirad had travelled so often but a land he hardly recognised now. The grass still grew in its multiple hues of green and yellow. The budding new trees swayed in the breeze and wild
flowers decked the gently rolling land in glorious colours. But under his feet and to his senses it was alien. For a moment he couldn't place why, but slowly he began to understand.
None of the ambience of life was present. Where he had heard gulls on the open water, here the birds were silent. Only the breeze ruffled the undergrowth, while rodents kept themselves hidden. The distant echo of bleating or lowing was absent. And it was chill. Not right for the time of year and somehow malevolent. It was as if the seasons had become confused and let the vegetation burst into spring verdancy while the wildlife struggled to awaken from hibernation.
The answer came to him then and it fired his determination afresh. Balaia's soul was failing.
The Raven kept up a fast walk behind the all-seeing shield of the elves jogging ahead. Concealment was poindess, it wouldn't necessarily get them there safe since the demons didn't work just by sight. Speed just might.
Ahead of them, the land rolled up a slow incline bereft of anything but gorse, coarse shrub and loose shale. Blackthorne lay on the extremities of a flood plain that ran south to the southern ocean, dry itself because beneath the soil the foundation rock was porous, drawing water far underground. The town would be hidden until the last mile of travel but, even so, distant smoke smudged the otherwise perfect sky. The tiny circling black dots had to be demons.
Hirad shuddered. Behind him, something moved quickly through the undergrowth. Not breaking his stride, Hirad looked round. The dark, lithe shape of Thraun approached, loping easily in the bracken. His face was alert, his muzzle light-striped and long, he sampled the air, tongue hanging between powerful jaws.
The wolf paced by Hirad, looking up into his eyes.
'I'll be there for you, Thraun,' he said. 'Just be careful.'
Satisfied, Thraun ran away into the brush.
Thraun could taste the dying of the land. It pervaded his every sense, growing stronger with every pace that he left The Raven behind. The rotting assaulted his nose, the crushing of life he could feel on his tongue and see through his eyes. The prey wasn't there. No spoor, no trail. Gone into hiding or disappeared for ever.
Thraun ran on, sampling what was left. The vegetation, unburdened by demon conquest, was alive and growing strong. Towards Blackthorne, the scent of wood smoke and human was on the air. It was gentle compared with the sick odour of the demons. They were the life after decay, the feeling after death and the dark that shattered the pack.
It was passed down through the generations. The fear. Thraun tried to shut it from his mind. He padded swiftly across the land, his wolven senses alert, that part of his brain that retained his humanity driving him towards his goal. His memories would dim quickly but the image of the human he needed was clear in his mind. Tall, strong. A leader with the scent of courage on him. Thraun would not mistake him.
At the periphery of his hearing, Thraun caught calls high in the morning sky. He hunkered down beneath a stand of gorse and scanned above. Demons. Flying west towards The Raven. He growled. They had smelled prey. Thraun felt an urge to protect The Raven, the pack. But his mind still retained the reason why he now lay so close to the human dwellings and it spurred him on more strongly.
He broke cover at a dead run, howling at the sky.
A mile from Blackthorne and the elves saw the demons' circling pattern change and come at them. Initially thirty, cascading from the heights and flying low to the ground. Rebraal barked out a warning.
'Time to put all those theories to the test,' said Hirad. 'You up for this, Erienne?'
'I guess we'll find out, won't we?' she replied, tension edging her voice. 'We'll protect you,' said Hirad. 'Just relax, you know you can do it.'
'Easy for you to say,' she replied through a half-smile.
'Remember we have to keep moving forwards,' said The Unknown. 'We can't afford to get bogged down here, not when we're so close.'
The elves moved back into the pre-arranged fighting line. Auum and Duele flanked The Raven's left, Evunn and Rebraal right. They had dispensed with their classic uneven chevron formation this time. The line that approached the enemy was a shallow concave curve
with The Unknown at its focal point. Behind the curve, the four mages ranged, elves flanking their Raven colleagues.
Erienne could barely control her heart rate. They were relying on her like never before. Without her, only mages could kill. It wouldn't be enough. The demons were coming in low and fast. She could hear the beat of wings and their harsh calls.
Fighting to concentrate on the move, she unstoppered the power of the One and felt it surge through her body and into her mind. The sensation was terrifying. In two years of Cleress's tutelage she had learned to control the well of power that surged around her body, but barely. And even now, the level of control her mind could exert when she released the energy to cast was minimal in the scale of One magic understanding.
Her sense of that which she contained was highly tuned. She understood very well the consequences of her failure to fully control it. What had been done could not be undone. The One was within her. She had no choice but to accept it.
She still considered the entity an enemy to be suppressed lest it should overwhelm her. Cleress had done little to disabuse her of that notion. Merely saying she would learn over time to work with what she had, not fight it for control.
But time had run out. And now the dam that Erienne had built in her mind to contain the power in her body was breached. She couldn't afford to fail.
The One flooded her senses, dimming her sight and hearing. The Unknown said something about being encircled but she didn't catch it before the full majesty of Balaia's energies was laid out before her. She staggered and almost fell, her feet and legs numb, but she was held up.
She saw the raw strong energy of the bedrock pulsing through the ground; the fluxing, capricious trails of the air thickened by wind and sun; the wisps from coarse grass; the complex auras of The Raven and elves around her; and everywhere, the scattered motes that were mana. Searching the sky, she found the demons. They resolved from a cloud of muddled elements into individual powerful forms. Lattices of life with none of the gentle modulation of man or elf, and meshed firm by hard mana.
It was just as Cleress had described and the theory of the spell, like
any One casting, was simplicity itself. In the myriad streams of energy she could sense about her, natural linkages were everywhere, binding the elements together. She could see the arrays that gathered mana to the demons in the natural shield that made them invulnerable to anything but magic. All she had to do was disrupt the process and scatter the mana back to its natural random state.
Erienne paused for a beat, feeling the swell of the One through her body. She drew it to her, holding it tight inside while she built the construct. In her mind's eye, it formed. As with her Dordovan magic, she drew mana strands into the order she required, a fine-meshed net of pulsing deep brown magical energy. That was the easy part. Now she had to feed in exactly the right amount of One power to let the spell live. Cleress's words came back to her then and she fancied she could feel the presence of the ancient Al-Drechar in her mind once more though distance surely precluded that now as the frail elf s powers weakened.
Tou cannot calculate this. It is not a mana casting, just a mana construct. Mana alone will not power it, the One makes it live. Tou must believe, you must trust and you must feel. Be one with it, let it take you as far as you
