He turned back to the crowd and walked all the way to the barrier.
'And now I take my Tai and we will face the Garonin once more. That is how I serve my race, giving you more time to face your fate like elves, not frightened humans.
'I am prepared still to lay down my life for you. And that is far more than you will ever deserve in this life or in the next. Tai, we move.'
Chapter 9.
While much of Xetesk still struggled to recover ten years on from the wars that had all but seen the end of life on Balaia, the college itself had been restored to its opulent original state. The very centre of the college, the Circle Seven, six towers set around that of the Lord of the Mount, had escaped largely undamaged. But buildings of great age and importance had been severely battered or, in the case of the library, destroyed altogether.
'The shell is complete but inside the hollowness echoes for all we have lost,' said Denser.
'Very poetic.'
Ilkar did not turn from the balcony. They were stood at the tower's highest point. It was the morning after their abortive first meeting and some tempers had cooled considerably. Beyond the grand marble courtyard, on whose borders the other six mage towers stood, he could see library, Mana Bowl, long rooms, refectory, lecture theatres and the massed buildings of the college administration. All wrapped up in the college walls and all shining with recent paint and polished roof tiles.
Outside the college walls, repairs were still not complete on the city's own defences. Many buildings would never be rebuilt, their stone stripped for use elsewhere. There was poverty in parts of the city. Resentment too but no power with which to act. Smoke from open fires rose into the still sky. To the east, the horizon was obscured by mist.
Rich drapes hung in Denser's meeting room. Fine-spun rugs lay on the stone floor. Paintings and tapestries hung around the circular walls. Cut glass and gold-inlaid jugs sat on trays on the carved wooden table in the centre of the room around which The Raven sat. A bizarre gathering. The bodies of strangers with the shadows of lovers and friends.
'I wonder what the criteria are for making it back here,' said Ilkar 'We rather hoped you might be able to tell us that,' said Sol. He was sitting in between Hirad in his merchant's body and Erienne in her five-year old girl's.
'I'm working on it. The trouble is, this whole thing is so essentially wrong I can barely bring myself to believe what I am seeing and feeling. Indeed that I have the capacity to see and feel at all.'
Ilkar gazed down briefly at the body he inhabited. Its previous soul would never have seen the sort of finery on display in Denser's tower. Ilkar's soul, bursting into the air over Xetesk, drawn there by the presence and strength of Sol and Denser, had sensed the body immediately and he had reached it before others could take it for their own.
It had been lying sprawled in a narrow alley between the walls of two warehouses. From the attitude of the body, Ilkar had assumed the unfortunate youth had fallen while trying to jump between them. It had been an assumption confirmed by the broken neck, arms and ribs.
He had managed to heal the worst wounds but the pain of the fall was everywhere in the body. Still, it was young and strong, not yet twenty by his reckoning. Human though, and that was fundamentally unpleasant. Like putting on a suit of crawling insects.
'I have to say that I don't really understand that,' said Sol. 'I realise you are in strange bodies and that there is pain and confusion. But this is a second chance at life. Why is it so bad? Why does Hirad keep on saying he doesn't want to be here?"
All around the table Ilkar saw the reactions of the dead. And he saw their inability to put their thoughts into words. Hirad looked up at him.
'Go on, Ilks,' he said.
'All right. You see, the trouble is you are using assumptions based on the fact that you are still living. You assume that because of the manner of our deaths we must feel robbed of the life we expected and so would desire a return to finish what we started. Am I right?'
'Something like that,' said Sol.
'Well we don't. I haven't spent a moment regretting being dead. And that isn't a conscious choice; the thought just never occurs.'
'So what is it like being dead, then?' asked Denser. 'It seems you all find it hard to put into words.'
'Well that's because death doesn't conform to anything anyone living thinks it might be,' said Darrick, his new voice rich and full toned.
'Exactly,' said Ilkar. 'There is nothing to see, there is nothing to do in the way you would understand it. But the souls of those you love are always close and there is no risk that you will ever be separated from them. At least, there wasn't. Can you imagine the comfort that brings? We have memories; we communicate but not through speech. We drift, I suppose. Time does not exist. Every moment is both a lifetime and the tiniest spark.
'I know what you're thinking, Denser. It sounds terribly boring. Interminably so. And standing in this skin and breathing the air of Balaia, I can see why you'd think that. But it isn't. It's, well, bliss, I suppose you'd call it. Endless bliss.'
'Good job, Ilks,' said Hirad, and he was not alone in having a mist of tears in his eyes.
Denser was frowning. 'But you cannot see, hear, feel, taste or smell. There is no colour. There is no music. How can it be bliss?'
'That's exactly what Darrick was saying,' said Ren, her young voice chirpy and bright. 'You cannot apply the joys you experience as a living person to your existence after death. There is no comparison, barring the deepest feelings of love, friendship and intimacy. '
'You'll have to take our word for it,' said Hirad. 'It's not just enough, it's everything.'
'Coming from you, that is some statement,' said Sol. 'So how do we get you home? Presumably ridding ourselves of our latest enemy would be a good start.'
Silence inside the meeting room. The Raven dead could not look at him.
'Did Hirad not tell you?' said Ilkar, his voice quiet, the pain in his body intensifying. Heat was flooding him and the gale of the void threatened suddenly to sweep him away, such was the despair that surged over him. 'You cannot beat them.'
'He did say that but we are not bound to believe him,' said Denser.
'And even if you could, the land of the dead lies ruined. There is no going back.'
The words, like ice on Ilkar's tongue, rolled over the room.
'You're stuck here?' said Sol.
'Oh great,' muttered Diera. 'Mouldering Raven has-beens cluttering up my inn.'
'That would be the least of our concerns,' said Sol sharply.
Ilkar winced at the expression on Diera's face.
'He's right, Lady Unknown,' said Hirad. 'Our souls no longer have a place to rest.'
'So what?'
'So where do you think yours will go if you die?'
Diera put her head in her hands. 'You know, I've seen and heard a lot in my time. Being married to The Unknown Warrior and the first, albeit reluctant, king of Balaia means I can't get away from it. But this is too much. And I'm worried that I'm starting to believe you, like my daft husband and the Lord of the Mount do. So I'm going. Home. To open up.' She shot a glance at Sol. 'Let me know what hare-brained scheme you end up with. Meanwhile I'm going to spend some time with our boys.'
Diera got up to leave, ignoring the hand that Sol put out towards her. Hirad pushed himself from his chair and opened the door for her.
'It is us,' he said. 'Just look at our shadows and say you don't recognise them.'
Diera gazed at him. 'This is Xetesk, city of magic, home of the Dark College as was. You think this couldn't be some spell? Give me some credit, won't you?'
'Keep your boys close, Diera,' said Hirad. 'Be ready.'
'You know we named the youngest after the real Hirad Coldheart. There was a man we could all love. You? I don't know what you think you are.'
Hirad's face cracked into a huge grin when the door had closed.
'You've got a boy called Hirad, Unknown?'
Sol nodded, the beginnings of a smile on his careworn face. 'We have.'
'Hirad.' The barbarian's eyes sparkled. 'Not Ilkar, then. Or Sirendor, or Darrick. Hirad.'
'All right, Coldheart, we get it.' Ilkar felt his mood lift despite himself.
'Never mind, Ilks. Perhaps if they have a few more and are really scraping about for a name, yours might surface like a bloated corpse in Korina Bay.'
'Can we concentrate on what we are here to discuss?' said Ilkar. 'I don't know about you but every breath I take is shot full of needles, or so it feels. What happened to Hirad and me last night should also be concentrating our minds, don't you think?'
'It's the knowledge that my name will live on in a younger generation that I find so gratifying.'
'If we are to believe you, Hirad, there is to be no living on,' growled Sol.
Hirad sobered. 'We cannot let any of our names go to dust.'
'That is what I invited you all up here to avoid,' said Denser. 'And we have got nowhere fast. So why don't you, any of you, tell me what you know about whoever it is that is coming here to do whatever it is they're planning to do. Because I, for one, do not wish my soul to be casting around for a resting place when I die.'
'It's worse than that, my love,' said Erienne, the little girl's voice dripping with weary experience. 'We think that any souls unable to reach their birthplace are already lost in the void between dimensions, and that is an eternal screaming purgatory no one should have to suffer.'
'So talk to us,' said Sol.
'We can't tell you about their strengths, weaknesses, modes of attack and goals,' said Darrick. 'It doesn't work like that. Where we've come from there is nothing but certain knowledge and intense feeling. So all we know is, they have destroyed the dead dimension and they are here now and will do the same to Balaia. So everyone who wants to live and everyone who wants to die in peace has to leave because there is no point in trying to fight. This much we know.'
Denser kneaded the bridge of his nose, feeling a weight of frustration beginning to build.
'At the risk of repeating myself, go where?'
'I think that should be self-evident,' said Ilkar. 'Out of this dimension. Out of every known dimension, come to that.'
Denser threw up his hands. Sol held up a hand to still his protest.
'Even if that's possible, it doesn't help you much, does it? Where will you go?'
A short silence followed Sol's question. Hirad shrugged. Sirendor looked blank.
'We don't know,' said Ilkar. 'We hope to find another place to rest but we don't know. We aren't here for us. We're here for you, to try and save you. Stop you dying and being lost to the void. Believe me, you want to avoid that.'
'I'm not getting this,' said Denser. 'You've told us that the dead dimension is gone, but that to save us we should all leave for somewhere . . . else, right? So what happens when we die in this wonderful new home of ours? Where do our souls go?'
'We have to believe that a dimension beyond those we know will bring with it a new dimension for the dead,' said Ilkar. 'The theory is that the elves enjoy a different resting place now to that which they had in their home of millennia past.'
'Theory.'
'Yes, Denser, but it represents the only chance for all of us. The living and the dead.'
'And that is just plain ridiculous. Look . . .' Denser paused, seeing the expressions on all their faces. 'I really appreciate your passion and your belief but you're all a decade out of date. So much has happened here in the last ten years. So much strength has been built by so few but it is so solid. There is no more conflict here. Not with the Wesmen, not between colleges or barons. We can't afford it, the demons took so very many of us.
'We have worked together to make sure no one can threaten us again and we will not run away because our departed loved ones tell us we must on the basis of old information.'
'But it won't help you when you die!' shouted Hirad. 'Why aren't you listening to us?'
'Because I have to believe that if we defeat this enemy then your resting place, our resting place, will become, I don't know the right word . . . viable again. I don't see we have another choice,' said Denser, hanging on to his temper.
'We have just offered you one,' said Erienne quietly.
Denser's eyes pricked and he looked down at his wife. Now a five-year-old. He felt a surge of frustration. He sighed.
'But you don't know how to get us there,' he said gently, trying hard not to adopt a patronising tone. He reached out a hand to stroke her hair but pulled it back. 'I need to have proof or I have no option but to stand and fight. Evacuating the continent is not a realistic option.'
'How can you be getting this so wrong?' asked Erienne.
'At least tell us you're sending messengers to the colleges and Calaius,' said Darrick. 'Letting the powers know there is a threat.'
Denser smiled. 'And there you are, adding example to my argument. We are in constant contact with Lystern, Julatsa and Calaius. We have delegates in the Wesman Heartlands and can speak with every baron and lord, and with the Mayor of Korina, at very short notice.'
'How?' asked Ilkar.
'I'll show you later. But right now I need you to trust that we have not been idle. We can and will repel this enemy. We have new spells and have enhanced those that already existed. Together, the Balaian people are strong. And you have our reluctant king to thank for all that.'
All eyes turned to Sol, whose face remained impassive. 'And yet I worry, Denser. Exaggeration has never been part of The Raven. This power, whoever it is, is strong enough to have destroyed the dead dimension, something the demons were unable to do. So while I share your confidence in our new-found strength, I think we must also plan for defeat.'
Ilkar nodded. 'At least that.'
Denser shrugged. 'But our main focus must be on repelling the enemy. Not running to our so far unnamed haven.'
'And we will face them as far from our cities as we can,' said Sol. 'We will identify their positions and we will go to meet them.'
Hirad sighed. 'I urge you not to. All you'll get is bloodshed, not enough of it theirs. And you will lose so many souls to the void.'
'You know it is something we have to do, don't you?' said Sol.
'I had hoped to persuade you otherwise.'
'We must attempt to secure our lands,' said Denser. 'Just to run is unthinkable, disastrous.'
'We must fight. We will not meekly surrender Balaia to anyone.'
'And, who knows, while you hold on to that belief, Unknown, perhaps there is a chance,' said Darrick. 'But we, the dead, do not see it, though we will stand by you.'
'Why?' asked Denser. 'If you believe it such a lost cause.'
'We don't have a choice,' said Erienne. 'Our souls were brought back here by the strength of our bonds to you in life. We cannot be parted from you by such a distance. The pain is too great and our souls would not be able to hang on to these bodies. Think about it, my love. What you intend involves us whether we like it or not. Don't force us to throw away what life we have.'