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 can. Always up to the point of no return but never further. Tour mind will tell you. Trust your mind. Always trust your mind.
With the words running round her head, Erienne allowed the One power into the construct and held it there while it grew, clinging on with her mind. And all the time, the entity was whispering in her ear that she should feed in more, that to let go would be to win. This was her demon and she could not allow it free rein.
She could see the lines of elemental force all around her bend and reach towards her. The One sucked it in voraciously, using her body as a conduit while she kept iron control of her mind to stop from being washed away. The construct pulsed bright under the power flowing through her. A moan escaped her lips. The mesh glowed and then burst into a fine mist, every minuscule droplet still bound to every other.
She released the spell and it flooded out from her, covering everything around her, floating into the sky and across the ground, behind and in front. It washed past The Raven and it engulfed the
demons moving to attack. She saw its result and knew they would not even know what had happened until the first blow was struck.
The mist soaked into them, penetrating deep into their skins where it simply dissolved the linkage that bound the mana to them. Immediately, Erienne could see the mana sloughing from the demons. Tiny particles glimmering in the mass of energy trails. Undetectable to everyone except her but, if she was right, absolutely deadly.
Dimly, she heard the thump of a sword point on the ground, rhythmic and sure.
Thraun was desperate to run faster. Demons were after him. Swooping low, raking at his back with claws and talons. Biting down on his body, slashing at him with sharpened tails. He wove this way and that, ran through thick vegetation, slewed through streams and leaped hedge and fence to enter the farm lands of Blackthorne.
His howling had brought them on as he had desired but their stench had gripped him and he was afraid. His heart was pounding and there was a shudder along his flanks that threatened the rhythm of his legs.
He dared not look around or up, instead he ploughed on. Men and women, their expressions cold, stared at him. Children with dark eyes pointed or ran. A few animals scattered but they need not have feared him. He was not hunting. He was hunted.
A demon's jaws snapped shut just above his head. He felt a deep chill and sudden pain flared in his ear. The beast climbed high into the sky. In front of him, another dived, arms outstretched, taloned hands grasping. He did not flinch but veered at the last instant as he would from a man holding a weapon. Behind him, the demon screeched its anger.
He was past the last people now and the dwellings he ran by were silent and empty. The streets were deserted and the smell of life was gone from the ground and weak in the air. But ahead he could hear shouting, rising in volume. The sound of weapons clashing and the vibration of feet on packed earth came to him too. He pushed harder and the demons behind him did the same.
Thraun felt a tap at his hind leg and almost lost his balance. He half sprawled but maintained his momentum while the reek of demon filed his head and dragged desperate barks from his throat. From either side
of the road he ran, demons closed in. So many of them, crowding his way. He howled again and ran at them, eyes open, terror pulsing in his neck.
He darted this way and that, slewed almost to a standstill, jumped away, ran headlong. And ever more, those claws and teeth grabbed at him, looking to bring him down.
At the very last, one of the beasts clamped jaws on his back. Thraun tumbled, rolling in the dirt with the demon. The cold fired through his body. He convulsed but his speed carried him on. His vision clouded and he barked again, weaker this time.
The shouts were around him then, the ring of steel harsh and loud. He heard a squeal and the pressure on his back was lifted. He shivered and lay in the dirt while men ran past him to hold a position at the edge of a row of dwellings. One man shouted louder than the rest. His voice was close.
Thraun picked his head up to look round. He could feel the breath ragged in his throat and the cold of the bite ate at his flesh. A human squatted in front of him. Dark-haired, strong, and with the scent of a leader just as he had remembered.
The man looked at him, his frown turning to comprehension. He said something to Thraun but the wolf had no ear for what men said. The man stood, shouted. Other men ran. And then he knelt once again and rubbed warm hands across Thraun's heaving flanks.
He spoke once more but Thraun did not hear him. And deep, deep inside, his humanity prayed that he had done enough.