'Not helpless,' gasped Septern. 'Hero.'
Into Densyr's eyes sprang unforeseen tears. He closed them and entered Septern's failing construct.
Sol, with Hirad slipping ever nearer towards death in his arms, ran headlong at the next intersection. His hip protested, his back was bleeding again and his arms screamed for relief. But behind them the rattle of explosion and demolition grew louder, the space between each set of wards firing grew shorter and the surge and shake beneath their feet grew more violent.
Already, the dust clogged their lungs and threatened their vision ahead. Loose roof tiles slipped and crashed underfoot. Balustrades wobbled. Every landing point was a shuddering accident waiting to happen.
'Hang on, Hirad,' said Sol. 'That soul of yours has never given up on anything. Don't you dare start now.'
Sirendor hit the edge of the building and leapt into space, circling his arms and coming down for a slithered landing on the sloping tiles across the alleyway. He turned as soon as he'd stopped and stood a little to the left of Thraun.
'Six feet maximum,' he called. 'We're ready.'
'Sorry for the jolt, Hirad. Over soon.'
Sol ran harder and faster, the dead weight of Hirad a terrible drain on balance and strength. He leaned his body forward, caught the very edge of the building and pushed off with everything he had. He tried to work his body a little more upright as he flew but time was so short. He was falling fast. Too fast.
Sol sought forward with his left leg and prayed. His foot snagged the edge of the building's balustrade. Sirendor snaked out an arm and gripped his collar. Thraun's arms took the weight of Hirad. Sol blew out his cheeks, steadied and stepped off the balustrade.
'Next up, not so easy,' said Thraun.
Sol looked behind them. The Garonin were in temporary disarray. Up in the sky, the machine was being forced higher and higher as the mana energy blasted upwards. Of the soldiers on the ground, there was nothing. Not a sign. A small mercy. A quicker, surer death was stampeding towards them.
'We have to try. Go, go.'
Thraun carried Hirad. His younger body was stout in the arm and chest and Sol was blowing badly. They ran up the slope of the roof, over the apex and slid down the other side. The air was full of the sound of explosions and the cloying drab of dust and smoke. Heat billowed around them as intense as dragon fire.
The next roof was flat and held an ornamental garden and fish pond. The carp in the pond all floated belly up. The water was steaming. The Raven tore across it, shadowed by wolves running along the roofs of adjacent buildings. Another flat roof ended in a gap of twelve feet.
'No way,' said Ilkar. 'Don't even attempt it.'
'What do you expect me to do, leave him here to burn?' Sol beckoned Thraun over and held out his arms to receive his old friend.
'No,' snapped Ilkar. 'I don't know. But this is suicide. I mean, we need you to commit suicide but not here and not now.'
'So bloody comforting,' muttered Sol.
Explosions blew apart the roof of the building they had just left. All three ducked reflexively as splinters of stone rattled the tiles at their backs.
'We can't stay here,' said Thraun. 'I will jump.'
'You won't make it. None of us can make it.' Ilkar looked around desperately. 'We have to risk the ground.'
'We won't get ten yards. The wards go from here to the apron.' Sol's fists clenched in frustration. 'Which way did the ClawBound go? And my wife and son?'
Thraun gestured away across the street. 'Easy. ClawBound jumps. Ropes are fixed. People cross. ClawBound retrieves ropes.'
'And never mind the stragglers,' said Ilkar.
'Well they got that bit right,' said Sol. His sigh was lost in another detonation. Smoke billowed up from the alley they'd crossed. 'Hirad's last chance. Any ideas.'
There was nothing. The street was too wide to jump, the ground was covered in traps none of them could see and they had no rope, no focused mage and now no hope at all.
'Drop him and go,' barked a voice from directly above their heads.
'Brynar. What are you doing here?' asked Sol.
'My bit,' he said. 'Hurry. Get down to the street and run. I'll take Hirad.'
'The street?'
'Trust me, Sol. The wards are triggering out to in. I've been into the spectrum to see what Densyr is doing. Nothing is active ahead-' Detonations, very close. A whoosh of flame and a grinding of stone. 'It's all behind you. Run. Please.'
'Bless you, Brynar. Thraun, put Hirad down.'
'How do we get down?' Panic edged Ilkar's voice.
There was a skylight in the roof. Sol jumped straight through it, covering his face. He landed on timbers about eight feet below.
'Come on!'
The building shook to its foundations. Sol saw Ilkar at the shattered skylight, Thraun shadowing him. He turned and ran to a wide stair that led down to a second level. He leaned against the wall with the building shaking enough to cast ornaments from their stands, shudder a table across the floor below him and bring down plaster-work in lumps.
'Up the bloody stairs, down the bloody stairs. Make up your mind, Unknown,' grumbled Ilkar, stamping down the stairs behind him and overtaking him on the way to the final flight.
'Where are you going?'
'Ahead of you. If Brynar is wrong, best it's a dead elf that catches it rather than a live king we want to make into a dead king later on.'
Sol found a smile on his face as he hurdled a low table. He felt a spear of pain through his old hip wound and took the last stairs one at a time. Thraun was right behind him, his wolves anxious to be outside.
'And for a moment I thought your action truly selfless.'
Ilkar pulled open the front door on a scene of dust and crumbling stonework not thirty yards to their left.
'Wrong word. I put the "elf" in selfish, old friend.'
'That is a joke worth dying to avoid,' said Sol.
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.'
Septern chuckled. 'And now you want me to work out a way to unpick the rest of the grid safely.'
'It isn't that I don't enjoy standing between these two unruly forces, it's just that I have other duties today.'
'You are a strong mage, young Densyr. I am not surprised you were entrusted with Dawnthief.'
Densyr felt a warmth radiating through him, calming the forces pummelling him from the outside.
'I am flattered,' he said. 'But let's raise a glass to ourselves when we're out of this. I'm tired. You must be exhausted.'
'I can take the pressure now,' said Septern. 'Release yourself. Let me work.'
'Are you sure?'
'We'll find out.' Another dry chuckle. 'Just don't go far.'
Densyr disengaged himself from the point between Heart and grid, feeling Septern take the strain. Densyr sagged back into his chair. The roar of unsuppressed mana faded but there was no peace. He became immediately aware of a low unsettling noise from behind him, to the west. And of angry shouts coming from below, inside the college.
'Sing if you need me, Septern,' he said, pushing himself to his feet.
Densyr had to cling on to the arms of his chair just for a moment while the blood rushed away from his head, threatening to black him out. When it cleared, he walked to his balcony doors, took a deep breath and threw them open.
Ten years of rebuilding and pride, wiped out in the time it took to boil a cauldron of water. Densyr felt physically sick. In his mind's eye he had seen rubble and dust but nothing could have prepared him for this. A few half walls were standing beyond the college gates but aside from that nothing remained of the entire eastern section of the city. On an arc that stretched for four miles left to right and three miles in depth, everything was gone.
'Who needs the Garonin when we have such means at our disposal? ' he whispered.