The floor of the cave was covered in dried leaves. Stacks of wood, metal bowls and plates and four big water butts stood to the left. Woven dried-grass matting was pulled from its position to the right and spread across the floor to provide comfort from the cold stone. Jatha's men set their lanterns in carved hollows in the rock walls, illuminating ragged edges and shelves which jutted into the cave above their heads, and gently swaying strands of liana which grew from above. It was damp and chill, the smells of mould and rot mixing into an unpleasant cocktail for the nose, but at least it was safe.
The centre of the cave was dominated by a shallow pit in which Jatha's men expertly laid and lit a fire, the smoke disappearing through the porous ceiling. Heat spread quickly outwards and soon the party began to relax, stretching tired limbs and leaning back on the matting, forming it into surprisingly comfortable bedding.
'Choul,' said Jatha, opening his arms wide to indicate the cave. Hirad nodded.
'Choul,' he repeated. Jatha and his men had taken the area opposite the stairs and were readying food. Dried meats and root vegetables appeared from backpacks and sacks, and metal stands held pots of water over the fire.
In the space in front of the stairs, Thraun bolted the stove together. Nothing would get in the way of The Raven's coffee and The Raven themselves gathered around it, a familiar sight in unfamiliar surroundings.
That left Styliann and his six Protectors to sit against the wall to the right of the fire, quiet, contemplative but changed somehow. The former Lord of the Mount, with a brief word to Cil, walked to The Raven, a sheaf of papers in his hand.
'We have much to do,' he said.
'Yes,' said Hirad. 'There's coffee to be drunk, food to be eaten and The Raven to talk. Alone. Then you four can start your work.'
Styliann stared down at Hirad, his lips thinning. 'Have we not moved beyond our petty parochialities?'
Hirad's expression was blank. 'I've no idea,' he returned. 'All I know is you're holding us up. During a job, we talk each night, review and plan. It is The Raven's way.'
'Yes and I would hate to get in the way of your precious rules,' spat Styliann. 'After all, all we have to do is save two dimensions.'
Hirad regarded him coolly, shaking his head. But before he could speak, Denser's weary voice filled the cave.
'Styliann, for the Gods' sake, please sit down before he trots out his "that's the reason we're still alive" speech.'
Ilkar laughed aloud, the sound echoing from the walls. Hirad glared at him. Styliann shrugged and returned to his Protectors.
'Thanks for backing me up,' muttered the barbarian.
Ilkar smiled. 'Some day, Hirad, I'll follow up our chat about sensitivity with one about tact.'
The glorious smell of rich stew slowly replaced those of the mould and rot, and quiet dominated the travellers. Jatha's men communicated in gesture and what appeared to be a highly developed telepathy, leaving the clanking of plates and spoons, the crackling of the fire and the shifting of tired limbs as the only sounds.
After their short meeting, The Raven drank coffee in silence. There hadn't been much to say though all of them had been comforted by the feeling of normality it brought them.
Later, with the fires stoked for warmth and the bowls, plates and spits stowed back next to the water butts, the quartet of mages examined the texts and papers brought from Xetesk and Julatsa.
For hours, all that could be heard was the turning of pages and the odd sigh or heavily indrawn breath. Occasionally, though little of the text was in lore script, one or other would need help translating certain terms or phrases, and hurried whispering would fill the chamber.
Initially intrigued, Jatha and his men had stared intently at the Balaians but the interest soon waned and, as the time drew on, most slept but for the two guards who sat just under the ground covering, at the top of the stairs.
Hirad leant against a wall, The Unknown next to him, legs stretched out in front of them. Idle talk had fallen to nothing and Thraun, who hadn't said a word since they descended into the Choul, remained lost in his own thoughts.
Eventually, the mages had read everything and, resupplied with coffee, placed the texts in a pile between them and began to talk.
'Styliann, how long have you known this information was in Xetesk?' asked Erienne.
'From the start. The only reason for my silence was the trouble I discovered I was going to have liberating them from the College.'
'But have you studied them before?' she pressed.
'Not like this, I am ashamed to say. They've been in the locked vaults.'
'And what do you think?'
'Hold on,' interrupted Ilkar. 'We'll get nowhere voicing random opinion. Let's identify the task and try to solve it piece by piece. All right?' The others nodded, a smile playing across Styliann's lips.
'Ever the diplomat, Ilkar,' he said.
Ilkar shrugged. 'We just don't have the time to waste. Now, who wants to outline the problem?'
'All right,' said Erienne. 'We have an unbounded rip linking two dimensions and drawing power from interdimensional space to grow at an exponential rate. We believe that because it was formed through conventional magic, it can be closed by the same method. However, there is no lore-defined spell for dismantling such a rip and we are left with having to piece together what will effectively be an untested best-guess from the fragments of Septern's writings we have here and our own small knowledge. The risks are unbelievable, success is uncertain and the power needed is unknown. How does that sound?'
'You've been framing that for some time, haven't you, my love?' said Denser, drawing a hand through her hair. Ilkar chuckled, more at the sparkle in Denser's eye than at his words. This was the old Denser and he was very glad to have him back. He wondered on the change in the Xeteskian and knew Erienne had much to do with it though he suspected much of the strength had lain trapped within the man all the time. All it had needed was freeing.
'I think it's a very accurate summation,' said Styliann. 'Now if you will allow, Raven mages, I believe the first part of the puzzle to be determining whether we can construct a mana shape capable of forming a linkage with interdimensional space. Because if we can't affect it in the region of the rip, we can't hope to sew the sky back together, to use slightly emotive language.'
Ilkar looked at him. 'Sew. Sew.' He leaned forward and shuffled through the pile of texts. 'Septern used that very word to describe something to do with bounded gateways. Here we are.' He grabbed a slim leather-bound volume they had found in Julatsa and leafed through it, his eyes scanning quickly. 'Listen to this. It's part of a student lecture script on thought process. "It isn't enough to simply understand the theory of a mana construct when dealing with dimensional forces. One must attempt to build into that shape, a flavour of an earth-bound activity, something mundane and every day that can keep your thoughts focused during not merely formation, but deployment.
' "You must realise that interdimensional forces affect mana in very different ways than Balaian space does. A spell you cast to tame or mould its power will develop what can only be described as a mind of its own and a shape you have fashioned to, say, open a bounded gateway, can quickly run out of your control. So, how to remain focused and in control? Think through your action and, as I said, link it to something ordinary. For instance, to take on the bounded gateway example, the deployment of the spell takes the material of Balaian space, the material of the target dimension and pulls them together before fixing them to one another.
' "So, focus one, imagine pulling two pieces of cloth together. And to fasten them? Why not sewing? We have all seen people sew cloth so build that into your thought processes as you form your mana shape." ' Ilkar passed the book to Denser. 'He goes on to describe a practical casting the students have to do but the meaning is clear. What are we doing but darning a hole in the air of this dimension and our own and cutting the one from the other to close the corridor?'
Styliann nodded. 'Thoughts, Denser?'
'I think that's all very well but I don't recall reading anything about how you build your needle and thread into the construct. I can imagine it might introduce instability.'
'It might well but we're still getting ahead of ourselves,' said Erienne. 'That piece we all read concerning basic construct theory is incomplete. We have no idea whether what we build will have the power to link to the edges of the rip. Septern, after all, was standing right next to where he cast. We have a range of God knows how far.'
Another nod from Styliann. 'It is a point well made but one we don't need to concern ourselves with. The DimensionConnect spell we used at Understone Pass had a range element which I understand very well. The four of us have enough strength between us to cast a linkage construct. Only just, I suspect, but enough.'
'We have to be sure,' said Ilkar.
'It will become clear, Ilkar,' said Styliann. 'Now, to introduce Denser's needle and thread into the construct.'
From his position next to The Unknown, Hirad yawned and stretched. It was going to be a long night.
His name was Aeb but it was the only mark of individuality he had. He did not consider himself singular in any way, not when he was singly assigned and not when, as now, he stood with all of his brothers. He could feel every one of them who readied to defend the house as he had been directed by his Given, the mage Styliann. The reasons were unimportant, the order was everything.
Aeb was a powerful man who dimly remembered his calling at the age of twenty-three. Garbed, as they all were, in heavy black leather and chain armour, stiff boots and ebony mask, carrying both sword and battle axe, he watched his segment of the land in front of him with complete calm. It was a calm that no non-Protector would have felt, because the horizon was full of Wesmen.
The Protectors had watched the approach of the enemy army for several hours, first through the thoughts of a dozen scouts and latterly through every eye as the force from Julatsa moved into position, encircling them at a distance of around one hundred and fifty yards. But as the day waned towards a warm dusk, Aeb sampled the feelings of his brothers, none of whom thought an attack would come before dawn.
'We will stand down in turn,' Aeb thought, the message passing instantly among the Protectors. He looked left and right, the ruins of the house at his back. From all parts of the defensive formation that left no gap to attack the building, brothers took three paces back and walked to a series of laid and lit cook-fires beside which fuel, food and water stood ready for use. The Protectors would stand down a third at a time for four hours or until the threat changed the order and they all came to ready again. At no time would there be an opportunity for surprise attack by the Wesmen. The night time was dangerous but more so for the Wesmen. They needed light by which to fight effectively; the Protectors did not.
Feelings, thoughts and ordered statements from his brothers moved through Aeb's mind, all of them filtered in the part of his mind just behind his battle consciousness. At any time, he knew everything that they saw and heard, he felt every spark of their bodies as they breathed, he knew every weakness, every muscle that pained them, and every injury that they had sustained. Damaged brothers were protected on weak fronts by those most suited to the task. None would be lost through lack of preparation.
The only fragment of concern that played across the soul-consciousness was that Cil and the five who had travelled with the Given could not be felt though their souls still remained in the tank. It was as if they were dormant somehow. Alive but not one with the brethren. The whole would be made stronger on their return.
'The lost can still not be felt,' signalled Ayl, a brother who had been detailed to search the souls of the six for signs of re-awakening.
'Yet they still live,' came a response. 'When you return to stand ready, think of them no more in the battle.'
Aeb let his eyes rove over the massing ranks of the enemy. Sampling the thoughts of others, he estimated there were around ten and a half thousand of them, all hardened fighters and men who had been victorious over magic and soldier alike. They would believe in their strength and their ability to sweep the small force facing them away.
The Protectors could not allow that to happen. Their Given relied upon them. As did the One who knew them but was no longer among them. Aeb let his thoughts for the man, Sol, drift out to his brothers and felt a strong urge to protect form around him.
There would be no failure.
Chapter 30.
Lord Senedai ordered the halt to make camp and give his men a rest after three days' hard march. A rest and a chance to align the spirits for the battle to come. There was no rush to attack the men surrounding the ruins of the house that had become an icon for all the evils of magic in the minds of all Wesmen. Many of the warriors now sitting around their standards and fires would never have believed they would arrive here. The Spirits had brought them and the Spirits would have to give them the strength to win. The Shamen, though disarmed of their destructive magic, found themselves the centre of respect and attention for every tribe.
Senedai should have been supremely confident. Those defending the mansion were surrounded. They had nowhere to go and they were outnumbered by about twenty to one. Dawn would herald a slaughter and, following it, the chase to catch The Raven, wherever it took them. They would be caught, so ending The Raven's desperate attempt to bring mythical aid and, as a bonus, remove them from the war.
That was what he had told his Captains and any of his warriors as he swaggered past, his smile the brutal expression of a Tribal Lord in complete command.
But now, standing alone, the doubts began to assail him in a way they never had when he stood before the gates of the College. And he found himself wondering whether the eight thousand he had left to marshal Julatsa, guard its prisoners and tend its wounded, weren't the lucky ones. They saw themselves as denied the chance of more glory, almost of being dishonoured. Senedai half-wished he had stayed with them as was his right as a victorious Lord. Julatsa was his city for all time.
He stood at the edge of the Wesmen encampment, beyond his furthest guards, and looked towards the ruins. There, one of his doubts was manifest. There were four hundred and seventy-six of them. He had ordered a tracking scout to count them the day before. All in identical armour and carrying identical weaponry. All powerful and all in those dread masks. And now all standing.
Silent, unmoving.
Senedai shuddered and glanced behind him to make sure nobody had seen him. There was something deeply disturbing about their stillness, their ramrod straight stance and their hands clasped in front of them. Only their heads betrayed any movement at all as they watched the massing of the Wesmen forces. They would be formidable opponents and Senedai was absolutely sure that they wouldn't stand and wait when he ordered his archers to fire. That was his best chance of forcing a weakness in their formation yet the thought of them running towards him, despite their light numbers, worried him. Still, like everything else, it would wait until dawn tomorrow.
He turned his back on the mansion and in the dying red glow cast by the setting sun, imagined the mark over Parve. The Hole in the Sky. The young mage had blabbered endlessly about dragons pouring through it to consume them all and Senedai wasn't confident enough in their non-existence to disbelieve him. That was, after all, why he was here and why Lord Tessaya had ordered him, at all costs, to destroy the manse ruin through to its foundations and chase The Raven to their deaths. Tessaya understood there was a gateway there. To another place. He had been quite specific about Senedai's responsibilities.
Another shudder and Senedai walked toward his tent. The whole place smacked of magic and evil. It made his skin crawl. Perhaps Tessaya would arrive before he had to attack alone.
The Barons Blackthorne and Gresse, with General Darrick, rode slowly through the wreckage of Understone with a close guard of thirty cavalry, though all three men knew instantly that no guard was necessary. The army had continued its march east towards Korina, giving Understone Pass itself a wide berth but expecting and encountering no resistance as it joined the main trail. The men they were chasing had not headed west to their homeland.
Trotting through the burned gates of the freshly built and burned stockade, under the empty gaze of a pair of torched watch-towers, Darrick had seen the first splash of red and had turned to his men, saying: 'Keep what you see here to yourselves. It will not be pretty.'
And now, pulling to a stop in the centre of the town, or what they guessed to be the centre, his words rang so hollow. Not pretty. The magnitude of his understatement would have made him laugh but laughter would have been the ultimate insult.
Darrick thought he had seen everything during his years of soldiering. Warfare was an ugly business. He had witnessed horses' hooves crushing men's skulls as they lay crying for help. He had seen young men clutching at their stomachs, entrails spilling between their fingers as their wide eyes sought hope in the faces of their friends. He had seen limbs struck from healthy bodies, jaws hacked away, eyes pierced by arrows and axes jutting from the heads of men who still walked, too shocked even to register they were dead.
He had seen the horrific burns from fire and cold that magic could bring at the whisper of a word and, more recently, he had seen the terrible devastation of water flooding Understone Pass, leaving torn and beaten bodies folded into cracks in the rock.
But always there had been a certain justification. War was an engagement both sides entered into in the knowledge of its likely outcome in terms of suffering.
Here in Understone, though, it was quite, quite different.
Blackthorne Town had been destroyed but its natives had long since fled to the countryside or joined the Baron's army. The same choice had not been granted the inhabitants of Understone and their slaughter had been utterly deliberate.
Darrick shook his head. It didn't add up. He knew Tessaya's mind and this wasn't his way. The Wesmen had fortified Understone considerably, if the scorched ruins were anything to go by. A stockade had all but encircled the town, studded with armoured watch-towers. Pits and trenches had been dug outside the wooden walls and strong points had been placed in tactically perfect defensive positions throughout the town itself. Tessaya had been planning for a long occupation.
But something had radically and appallingly changed his thinking. Every building had been burned to its foundations, stone had been knocked from stone and all that the Wesmen themselves had built lay in splinters and ashen piles. And everywhere, everywhere were strewn the bodies. It had been a ritual massacre, each man taken to a particular place in the town after it had been burned, and murdered, throat cut, eyes put out and stomach split, the corpse spread-eagled towards the rising sun.
There had to be more than three hundred of them. Understone garrison soldiers and those of the four-College force. Some, Darrick recognised, others he counted among respected colleagues. They had been dead for a day and the clouds of flies filled the air with an evil hum while the carrion birds and animals waited for the riders to leave them to their unexpected feast. The stench of putrefaction was rising.
'What, by all the Gods watching us, has happened here?' Gresse's voice was a hoarse whisper. He slid from his horse to stand reverently on the ground. The rest of the riders followed suit.
'It's a warning,' said one of the cavalry, echoing Darrick's own reaction. 'They want us to fear them.'
'No,' said Blackthorne. 'And it is they who are scared.'
'You've seen this sort of thing before?' asked Gresse, his expression disbelieving.
Blackthorne shook his head. 'It is documented in the Blackthorne library, or rather, was. Don't forget, we have been in the front line against the Wesmen before.'
'So what drove Tessaya to do this?' asked Darrick.
'The burning, I think, is just to stop anyone else benefiting from what he had built and I expect the pass to be very heavily defended now. The sacrifices, because that is what they are, are something else entirely.
'When the Wesmen go into battle, their Shamen call upon their spirits to align behind them and bless them to give them strength. But when they fear an enemy is stronger than they are, they sacrifice enemies to ward off the evil they think is chasing them. These poor bastards are victims of a Shamen ritual and they are laid facing the rising sun because the Wesmen say the dawn brings sight to the eyes of the gods of their enemies and what they see will take their courage.' He shrugged.
'They're scared of us?' Gresse frowned.
'I don't think so, not us,' said Darrick. 'Something has scared Tessaya very badly to cause him to abandon his plans. He is normally a very careful man. He must believe the invasion could fail and wherever he has gone, he must believe it critical to his campaign.'
'And wherever he goes, his lackeys will follow,' said Gresse grimly.
'Yes,' said Blackthorne. 'It looks as if we now chase the lynch pin and not merely a strut.'
Darrick pursed his lips. 'But before that, all these men must be given the honour of a pyre.'
'Time is of the essence,' said Blackthorne a little sharply. 'These men would not thank us if their murderers eluded us while we burned their bodies.'
Darrick regarded him bleakly. 'And catch Tessaya we will. We have eight thousand men marching east. Join them and send back my cavalry. We will see these men are accorded the respect they deserve. We will catch you before nightfall.'
'I apologise, General,' said Blackthorne. 'My words were not intended to-'
Darrick waved a hand. 'I understand, Baron, and my respect for you is undimmed. But I cannot leave my men to fester where they lie in this grotesque slaughterhouse. You would feel the same.'
Blackthorne raised a smile and remounted his horse. 'I would indeed, General. You are a good man. Please, take your time.'
'Time is something of which we have very little. But for us, at least, it has not run out.'
The Raven, with their escorts and the Xeteskian contingent, left the Choul well before dawn. The mages had talked long into the night, Hirad hearing their low tones as he moved in and out of a strangely broken sleep. And when they had been woken by Jatha, he felt tired and irritable and saw his mood reflected in the eyes of all of his friends and Styliann.
Though the sun had not breached the plain, which was still cast in shadow, there was enough light in the sky to see by and nothing but tall grass in every direction. Indeed the semi-darkness was comforting in its way and Hirad experienced a feeling of safety that he knew to be false. Though they could hide themselves in the dark from other humans, neither Jatha's people, nor dragons, had any trouble piercing the gloom. All that travelling at night would do would be to put The Raven at a further disadvantage. He said as much to The Unknown who simply nodded as if he had suspected exactly that.