Kiara, my love.
I worry because there's been no word from you. I search Crevan's packages, and find only the dull documents that require my signature. Sadly, even my magic can't reach as far as Shekerishet, or I'd ask the ghosts for news of how you fare. I'm worried that you're not well, that the pregnancy has made you sick. And, if the king dare admit it, I'm terribly homesick. Please ease my mind and send just a short letter. Any news from home would be happier than what surrounds me on the battlefield.
I don't dare tell you all I would like to share. We've made gains, but there have been costly setbacks. Ban's been badly wounded. Tarq betrayed us. Progress is slow. Because of the damage to the Flow, magic is more wild and brittle than I've ever seen it. I've never held much with charms and offerings for luck, but if you're so inclined, the men and I would be grateful. Senne tells me all this is to be expected from a siege. I hate this war, and long for it to be over, so that we can all, by the Lady's grace, return home. I await your letters more than you can imagine. Love, Tris
King Martris Drayke of Margolan shivered, wrapping his cloak tightly around him. Outside, the winter wind howled, whipping against the sides of the campaign tent so that a flurry of snow burst from beneath the tent flap. Coalan, the king's valet, added more fuel to the small brazier that struggled to warm the tent. Tris noticed that Coalan was wearing all of the clothing he owned, plus several new pieces he had scrounged from the camp. Even so, his nose and cheeks were red with cold.
"You're sure there were no other packets from Crevan than this?" Tris asked, shaking the pouch for the fifth time, only to find it empty. Coalan shook his head. "Nothing."
Tris sighed. It was cold enough that he needed to warm the ink to keep it from congealing before he could sign the stack of petitions and proclamations his seneschal had sent with the
supply wagon. Most of them were meaningless outside of the court's bureaucracy. Here in the field, early in the third month of a winter siege, little of the pomp and intrigue of court held any meaning. Tris signed the documents and replaced them in the courier pouch along with the sealed letter. "I can hope," Tris murmured.
"Perhaps something was lost when the brigands attacked," Coalan suggested. "I heard that two wagons were destroyed in the fighting."
Tris shook his head. "Doubtful. But thanks for the suggestion." Coalan managed a wan smile. Ban Soterius's nephew was only six years younger than the king. He looked exhausted. Tris glanced toward the still form bundled on a cot near the fire. "How's Ban doing?"
"Sister Fallon says he's not bleeding anymore. That's something. He doesn't have much blood left to lose," Coalan said tiredly. "His fever's down, but the storm isn't helping. It's too damn cold."
"Has he come around?"
Coalan stared at the fire and sighed. "Not yet."
Tris walked over to where Soterius lay. Even without a healer's magic, Tris could see how pale and drawn his friend looked, the aftermath of narrowly escaping an assassin's attack. Tris laid his hand gently on Soterius's forehead and let his summoning magic reach out in the darkness. He did not try to draw on the wild energy of the Flow that surged around them. Instead, he drew from his own life force, a limited but stable supply. He could sense the glow of the blue-white life thread that anchored Soterius's soul. And while that glow burned more brightly than it had the day before, Tris knew that it was far from the strength it should be for Soterius to be out of danger.
"Begging your royal pardon, but you don't look much better than Uncle Ban," Coalan said.
The young man's lifelong friendship with Tris made him the perfect valet-unquestionably
loyal, refreshingly honest and a link to a shared past that could never be reclaimed.
"I know. But we've got to strike Curane again before his people regroup."
"I'm not afraid to take my place on the line," Coalan said, raising his face with a hint of defiance. "I fought before, with Uncle Ban and the troops he raised. I could help protect you when you use your magic."
Tris's smile was sad. "Ban would never forgive me," he said. "Although it may come to that, if we lose more men. Right now, you serve me best by protecting Ban and seeing that he's well tended. You've already done what my soldiers didn't-protect me from an assassin." Coalan blushed. "My honor to do so."
Tris laid a hand on his shoulder. "Then you do me another service, by letting me sleep safely." When the dreams and the visions allow, Tris added silently. Tris turned toward the door. "Right now, I need to meet with Senne and Palinn for the next attacks." "So soon?"
"We don't dare let the blood mages regroup. The damage to the Flow aids them at our expense. Although after the last battle, I'm not sure the Flow isn't a danger to all of us." Four vayash moru guards fell in step beside Tris as he emerged from his tent, leaving two mortals behind to guard his quarters. Tris looked out over the snow-covered plains, dotted with row upon row of tents and rutted by war machines. At the far edge of the camp, torches burned, and Tris could see the silhouette of the large cairn built over their fallen soldiers. He had gone to the siege with over four thousand men at arms. In less than three full months, battle and disease had killed a third of those troops, and the ranks of the injured grew with every battle.
He turned to look at the brooding outline of Lochlanimar, dark against the sunset. The outer wall was broken in many places, scorched by fire and pounded by trebuchets, catapults and magic. The tower on one corner was collapsed in a heap of rubble. Lochlanimar's defenders still posed enough of a threat that a direct assault was likely to be a disaster. Time was running out, Tris knew. For him and for Curane. And nothing's worse than an enemy with his back to the wall.
Now, the army mobilized for battle just days after tending its wounded from the last encounter. Tris scanned the ranks. Without fresh troops, victory would depend on cunning. Since Margolan's tattered army had no more soldiers to send without risking the palace and the northern roads, cleverness would have to do.
"Is everything in place?" Tris hailed General Senne, who inclined his head in deference on Tris's approach.
"Preparations are nearly complete, Your Majesty," Senne said. General Palinn hurried over, and with him, Tris recognized Sister Fallon. "The pulse strategy-you can do it?"
Senne motioned for Tris to follow him. "Here's the weapon I told you about." Tris looked down at the contraption and frowned. Mounted on a crank, a three-sided pyramid covered with hollow tubes sat at the front of a massive bow on a solid, heavy cart. Tris looked down the line at dozens of the devices.
"Wivvers is my best engineer," Senne said with pride. "The man's a genius. You really should consider giving him a title when this is all said and done. He came up with these to treble our archer fire. We'll have three ranks of longbows, each firing in sequence for a steady hail. But we don't have enough archers to maintain that fire on all sides. Each machine," Senne said, laying a hand proudly on the contraption, "can fire off three rounds of two dozen arrows. Any soldier can operate it, so long as he can aim. It's not magic," Senne said with a sly smile. "But it's close."
Behind the rows of archers, drummer-and -pipers in armor prepared to raise a war chant to strike fear into the besieged village. This night, the drumming would not end until the battle was over. Two staggered rows of trebuchets ringed Curane's fortress, salvaged from the pieces that survived the last battle. Soldiers stood ready to relay rocks and battle debris into the slings of the trebuchets to keep up a steady barrage.
"The mages are in place," Sister Fallon reported. "We have one on each side to help you in the frontal assault. The mages each have hourglasses, timed for the half-candlemark. They're instructed to pulse clockwise, then counterclockwise, then front-to-back and side-to- side. We'll strike with the element we best control-land, water or air. Or in your case-the spirits. The vayash moru are in place, ready to strike when you give the signal." "I've summoned the ghosts of our own battle dead, and ghosts from the crypts below the fortress," Tris said. "There've also been quite a few defectors from among the spirits of those killed by Curane's plague inside the walls. If the mages can strike against the wardings, the vayash moru and the ghosts will break through and cause whatever damage they can before the wardings can be raised once more."
"In theory," Fallon said, meeting Tris's eyes, "that should keep Curane's people hopping while our folks get a break."
"In theory," Tris said. "The mages know to avoid the Flow?"
Fallon nodded. "That's the tricky part. If we're pulling on our own personal reserves, none of us can last long. We might not burn up in the Flow, but we could burn out quickly and be useless for days-or dead."
Tris nodded. "Agreed. Then the pulse will have to work." Fallon nodded in farewell and moved quickly to take her place. This time, Tris opted for the bed of a horse-drawn cart rather than a platform, to keep his position easily mobile and less quickly targeted.
He looked to Senne. "Give the word."
At Senne's signal, the pipes and drums erupted in a fearsome racket, with a wild rhythm of chant and drumbeat that echoed from the walls of Lochlanimar. Torches flared into brightness, illuminating the plain. The first hail of arrows filled the night sky, blotting out the moon. In ranks among the archers, shield bearers carried large, rectangular shields, raising them to provide cover for the archers against the returning volley of arrows from the keep's defenders.
The second and third round of arrows launched, and down the line, Tris could hear the creaking of the trebuchets as they were winched back into position, and the thud of their release, each sending rocks and huge, solid balls of ice into the air, to crash a few moments later against the beleaguered walls.
Tris cleared his mind, letting his generals see to the physical needs of battle. Carefully drawing on his own power without touching the raging torrent of the Flow's power, Tris could see three warded places in the front quadrant of the castle. To counter the wardings, his magic would require surgical precision, not great blasts of power, to avoid drawing on the Flow for support. Tris took a deep breath and let his power stretch out, concentrating his effort and his magic in a focused burst against the weakest of the charms. It was badly set, and the warding shattered under the assault.
Now. Go. Along the Plains of Spirit, Tris sent the order to the waiting ghosts. Without the extra power of the Flow, Tris couldn't spare the extra magic to make the ghosts visible. Those that could show themselves in their own power winked into sight as other revenants began to wail, adding an eerie descant to the sound of the war pipes. Poltergeists assaulted the soldiers on the walls from behind, as vayash moru easily dodged the arrows to pick off hapless guards like large birds of prey.
Curane's forces had watched the battle preparations from within their walls. They were ready. Catapults sent rocks and shrapnel flying back through the hail of arrows. Tris heard a rumble from the eastern end of the castle, where Fallon's land magic tumbled the rocks from a portion of the outer wall. The battle raged on, and the magic shifted. From the west, Vira's water magic swirled deep snow into icy spikes and hurled them toward the guards, as deadly and accurate as the arrows. More time passed, and Tris heard a sound like thunder as Beyral's land magic focused a tremor within the walls, sending a portion of the building to the ground with a crash.
Tris felt the blood magic rising even as the Flow seemed to awaken, bucking and heaving along the paths of power. In the last battle, such an upheaval killed one of the mages and badly injured the rest. Then, Tris and the others had been drawing on the Flow's energy, vulnerable when that power suddenly rose against them. Now, without that link, Tris felt the power surge painfully along the channels of magic, but distantly, without the power to cripple or kill.
The Flow was wilder than ever, and Tris knew why. A mighty surge of blood magic broke from all four corners of Lochlanimar at once. The fabric of the night seemed to open up like a curtain ripped top to bottom, and through that gap from the blackness of the Abyss poured a dozen creatures that were the stuff of nightmares. Tall as a man, but misshapen, with corpse-gray skin, the creatures looked about with bulbous heads hung with sharp-toothed, lantern jaws. The things hit the ground running, ripping into the front line of soldiers with long clawed arms. The pikemen held their ground against the beasts, valiantly trying to guard the longbowmen, who kept up their assault as the wail of the pipes was lost among the screams of soldiers and the howls of the beasts.
"Light the arrows!" Tris shouted, and realized that his voice was lost amid the fray. Gathering his magic, he sent a burst of fire along the volley of arrows just sprung from their bows, turning them into flaming missiles. Down the line, the archers adjusted their aim and torch men lit the batting wrapped behind the arrowheads. Tris could hear the creaking and groaning of the trebuchets as they shifted behind him. Then, bright as comets, fiery balls launched through the air, over the heads of the archers, to land not against the castle walls but among the attacking beasts.
The line held, as the fire drove back the beasts and well-aimed flaming missiles found their mark. But even as the flames held one enemy at bay, Tris felt the Flow stir again, and a second surge of blood magic swelled and burst.
With the sound of an explosion, the newly built cairn behind the camp burst open. Rising from the rows in which their bodies had been buried, the corpses of fallen Margolan soldiers lurched to their feet. The corpses staggered forward toward the camp. Some, missing limbs, dragged themselves through the snow. A cry went up from the rear guard as the troops reacted in horror.
"Hold your positions! Remain firing!" Tris could hear Palinn, Senne and Rallan shouting down the line. At Senne's word, two ranks of the rear guard turned, charging back into the camp.
"These are not your comrades," Tris could hear Senne bellowing above the fray. "Those
bastards are using your comrades' bodies as weapons. Your friends are dead. Help their bodies rest in peace!"
Tris struggled against the horror of the sight to find his center. Like the corpses from the moat-blood magic, not true spirit magic, he thought. Puppets, not reanimated dead. He set his jaw, angered by the desecration. Strike the puppet master, and the strings will be cut. Tris closed his eyes and sent his magic along the Plains of Spirit. You wished to serve. Now is the time, he called to the spirits of the soldiers lost in battle. He drew more heavily on his own power and lent the spirits the energy to make themselves seen and solid enough to fight. The spirits of the dead men raised a battle cry as they leapt forward, cutting down their own lifeless bodies. Tris felt their emotions surge across his link with them. Unlike their mortal comrades, there was no fear. Anger surged hot at the enemy's use of their bodies as weapons against their own side. While even the most intrepid of Tris's mortal soldiers hesitated at the thought of hacking down the bodies of their dead brothers-in-arms, the ghost fighters lunged into combat. Their swords, given power by Tris's magic, cut through the rotting corpses and the frozen bodies, which fell like severed marionettes. Carried on the current of their rage, Tris turned his magic to find the source of the abomination. He could feel the Flow undulating around them like a wild sea, waves of power rising and falling like a storm. Tris drew more heavily on his own power, knowing that he could not sustain the draw for long. He found the trail of magic that led him back from the vanquished corpses, and prepared to answer it with a blast of his own. The night around him opened once again. Before Tris could shift his magic, overwhelming force pulled him in as the sky closed behind him.
Tris fell through total darkness. He landed hard enough to knock the breath out of him, and bit back a cry of pain as his left arm snapped with the force of the fall. Well, that answers whether or not I'm here in body or in spirit. The question is: Where? Before he could adjust his wardings, unbearable pain washed over him, burning along every nerve like fire. Tris stiffened and arched, fighting back a scream as he formed the counterspell. In the instant's reprieve it afforded him, his wardings rose around him, and he climbed warily to his feet. "Show yourselves!"
Torchlight flared around a circular chamber. Three red-robed figures stood facing him, one
to the front and one at each side. Their faces were lost in shadow. At each figure's throat glowed a fire-lit gem.
Avatars, Tris thought. Just like I fought in the Citadel during my training. Each a conduit for its master's power. I'll bet the chamber isn't real, either. If they've pulled me into the Nether and projected themselves, they've got to be burning energy fast. Still, it's three to one. To his mage senses, the chamber stank of blood magic. Tris could feel the power of a death warding and knew it was set to his life force. No way out alive. Tris struck first, sending a barrage of mage lightning streaking from his fingers at the opponent to his right. The lightning bounced off the mage's shields. From his left, a wave of fire enveloped him, straining his wardings. An answering barrage of red lightning added to the onslaught, and Tris could feel the drain of dangerous magic against his wardings as the third mage sent a blast of power Tris knew was spelled to kill. His shields held – barely.
Before he could respond, the blood magic surged again, and for an instant his shields wavered, enough that pain shot through him as if his head might burst, almost sufficient to black him out. Strong magic sent another wave of fire, and this time, it burned along his skin and caught at his clothes and hair, blistering instantly. He struggled to raise his shields as another blast of power slammed against him like a body blow, hard enough that his vision swam. Wave after wave of power hit him, driving him to his knees as blows pounded like sledgehammers.
Tris pulled hard from his life force to send more power to his wardings, snapping them back into place. The battle outside had already taken a toll on his reserves. He sent a blast of energy back along the channels of power, focusing his attention on the tormentor in front of him, the author of the pain spell. His lips moved as he chanted the counterspell, reversing the blast that had been meant for him. He added to it, so that the magic seared along the path of power in the avatar's glowing gem, outside the Nether chamber, back to the blood mage himself. Sweating with the effort, struggling against a blinding reaction headache, Tris kept his focus until the magic felled his opponent in a blur of fear and pain. And in that instant, Tris knew what he had to do. Lady of the Four Faces, forgive me.
Around them, the Flow had become a storm. Not far beyond the dark walls of the place between realms where they fought, Tris could feel the Flow's power rising and falling like an angry
sea. Whipped to gale strength by the blood magic that imprisoned him, the Flow seemed to be howling in rage.
Tris dove down through the link with the blood mage until he found the mage's thin blue life thread. Knowing the other two opponents would counterstrike at any second, Tris spoke the words of binding that twined his own life thread with the downed mage's and pulled hard. He heard a piercing scream that crossed between the outside world and the Nether. There was a wrenching lurch, and Tris felt the mage's life force pull free of the man's body, felt the soul tear loose of its moorings, and let himself draw in the life energy that was rapidly dimming from the severed thread. Strengthened, Tris let his wardings fall. Simultaneously, he struck both left and right, concentrating his power on the amulets at the avatars' throats. His magic sought one goal: the life force of the mages. Tris envisioned himself grasping the glowing threads in each hand, closing his fists around them and ripping them free with all his might. The screams of the dying mages echoed in his mind as he drew their life energy to him, strengthening his own failing glow. Still, the death warding held.
Tris took a deep breath. He focused on the glow of his own life thread, grown stronger now with the stolen energy. And then, he drew that glow into pure spirit, watching as his body fell to the ground and the thread within winked out.
The wild winds of the Flow howled around Tris. Time meant nothing. The old tales told of creation, when Nameless and Her horde rode across the winds of chaos, cleaving light from darkness. Buffeted in the storm of the Flow, Tris felt that primordial chaos close around him, as if the energies of all eight Aspects of the Lady were voices on the storm, calling him to rest or judgment. The Flow mirrored his own pain and fear. In the darkness, the death warding fell.
The night ripped open, and the light of a starry sky was blinding. With the last of his power, Tris sent his waning spirit back to the limp and battered body that tumbled from the rift between realms. Gasping for breath, he landed hard on his broken arm. Pain flared so strongly that he thought the tormentor's spell had followed him. He lay face down, his heart pounding, senses on full alert. Footsteps sounded near him, and his power lashed out reflexively, sending a torrent of fire in the direction of the sound. If I've been pulled within Lochlanimar, Goddess help me. I can't hold them all off, but I can take them with me. He mustered the power that remained within his grasp for one final salvo.
Powerful shielding glowed brightly around him before he could strike. A voice sounded with compulsion in his mind. "Safe. Home."
Tris fought the shielding and the voice. His blood was high for the fight; his magic reacted for survival. The shielding shattered. As he spoke the words of power, a crush of spirits enveloped him, pressing from every direction, absorbing the brunt of the magic. Charged with the power of a Summoner, the magic burned, and Tris heard the ghosts' screams as they threw themselves as a barrier between his wild magic and those beyond the circle. "Safe. Home." The voice-no, voices-sounded again in his mind, with a compulsion that he no longer had the energy to fight. Wardings snapped up around him once more and the press of spirits was a cacophony within his mind. Completely spent, he knew that his life thread was flickering dangerously. If this is a trick, if I've been captured, it's over. We've lost.
"Let me through the warding." "It's too dangerous." "Let me in!"
"We don't know if he's sane." "Dammit, let me in!"
The voices were distant, too garbled to identify, as if he were listening through water. Tris still lay where he had fallen, acutely aware that his heartbeat was growing more erratic by the moment. He felt the wardings waver, just long enough for someone to step inside, and then they snapped back into place, but whether the wardings formed a prison or a haven, he did not know. Whoever was inside did not move closer.
"Tris?" A voice sounded at a distance. "It's me. Coalan. You don't have to fight anymore. You're safe. You're home. The vayash moru have been trying to send that to you, but they can't get through. Fallon doesn't dare drop the shields until you give us a sign. Please, Tris. You're hurt bad."
Tris let his body relax, willing the fighting energy to drain out of him. He opened his fists and turned them palm up in a gesture of surrender. As the wardings fell, Tris heard bootsteps rushing toward him. Coalan was the first to reach him, and gentled him onto his back. Fallon knelt next to him. Around them, Tris could hear the thud of the trebuchets and the zip of arrows.
"Can we get him off the field?" Tris struggled to place the voice. Trefor, one of the vayash
moru who had brought back Soterius from the caves, joined them.
"Not alive," Fallon said. Already, Tris could feel Fallon's healing magic warring with the pain. The pain was winning. "We don't have a choice. There isn't time to move him. Cover us." "Done, m'lady."
"Sweet Lady of Darkness," Coalan breathed. "Where did they take him? How did he get burned like that?"
"If he wakes up, you can ask him. Will you let me draw from you? He's dying." "Yes. Yes. Take my life if you need to." "I hope that won't be necessary."
Tris faded in and out of consciousness as Fallon worked. Around him, the spirits of the dead kept vigil, and beyond them, faint but much too close, Tris could hear the soulsong of the Lady. The touch of snow against his burned and blistered skin was agonizing. His broken left arm had bent under him when he had fallen. The channels of magic felt too painful for the slightest mental touch, and the throbbing in his head pulsed with the beat of his heart. "Stay with us." Trefor's voice sounded in his mind, and Tris knew that for the vayash moru to be able to use compulsion, his own shielding must be totally spent. The voice was an anchor in the darkness.
If I die now, my soul is forfeit, Tris thought. I used my power to steal from the life force of another. Forbidden. Unforgivable. "Stay with us."
Finally, Fallon sighed and lifted her hands from the healing. "That's all I can do out here. Let's get him behind the lines."
Tris groaned as Trefor lifted him from the ground. The vayash moru moved with immortal speed and the rush of air across Tris's skin felt like a hail of broken glass. When they reached his tent, Trefor did his best to make Tris comfortable on his cot, and stood guard until Fallon and Coalan arrived, breathless, minutes later. "Will he live?" It was Coalan's voice.
"If he makes it through the night, he should be all right. It's not the injuries-although Goddess knows, they don't help. He's badly drained. The energy you gave me helped. I'll need more to sustain him, and I don't dare draw further from you." "Shall I ask for volunteers?"
"Send me whoever can be spared from the fight. Mind that they're not sick or injured. I don't
know how many I'll need."
"Done."
"If you have no more need of me, I should return to the lines," Trefor said. "Yes. Of course. Thank you."
When they were gone, Fallon leaned close to Tris's ear. "Don't you dare let go, Tris. Do you hear me? Hang on. I'll do my best to ease the pain. Just don't let go."