Aeron leaned over the fallen elf, openly weeping. "Fineghal, I don't know what to do."
"Nor do I, Aeron. This sorcery is . . . beyond my comprehension. But you have learned both . . . the elven and the human ways of magic. I think that you have it within you to understand . . . and destroy this evil." Fineghal coughed raggedly, drawing a deep gasp that bubbled in the back of his throat. "Telemachon would have known ... what to do," he whispered. "He was a great diviner. I believe ... he saw this day coming."
"Telemachon is dead," Aeron said.
"His work may not be," Fineghal said. "Go now ... before your barrier fails. You cannot fall. . . ."
"I won't leave you!"
"My spirit ... is passing, Aeron. If you perish . . . my death will have been for nothing. Please . .. flee while you can."
"You're not going to die," Aeron stated, determination in his voice. He bent down and tenderly cradled Fineghal in his arms, struggling to his feet. "You've taught me something of the old healing songs. All I need is a little time to ready them-"
"After a thousand springs ... it seems ironic . . . that I cannot spare you that," Fineghal said with a faint smile. "Farewell, Aeron." The light faded from the elven lord's eyes and his fingers slipped from Aeron's grasp.
Aeron dropped to his knees in shock. Outside his gray wall, the angry peasants and laborers waited in silence, watching for some break in his impervious defenses.
Beside him, Eriale knelt and reached down to disentangle his arms. "Come on, Aeron. We've got to get out of here."
Dully, he nodded. He reached down and took Fineghal's pouch of spell-tokens, and then stood again. "Oriseus is going to pay for this," he said. Then he led her out into the night.
Seventeen
For the rest of that night and most of the next day, Aeron and Eriale pressed on, stopping only when exhaustion forced them to. Aeron's spirit was empty, and his heart ached as if it had been filled with cold ashes. Kestrel's death still seemed unreal to him, an awful mistake of some kind. Now Fineghal was gone as well, a noble spirit whose death seemed senseless. One by one, every person he'd ever learned from had been taken from him, with the sole exception of Oriseus, and Aeron didn't like to think of what the High Conjuror might intend for him. He could only keep his horse's feet on the road leading north, and lose himself in the dull rhythm of the ride.
Eriale matched Aeron's own silence. Grief set her face in a forlorn stare, and the endless mist and rain beat her hair into a dark, wet hood, so that she looked like a lost child. Aeron knew that he should send her back to Saden before evil befell her too, but he didn't have the strength. Lost in her own sorrow as she was, it still comforted him to know that she rode beside him. If he needed any reason to continue on, any incentive to confront the failures of his past, Eriale provided it. For her sake he had to carry on.
Late in the afternoon after their flight, they came to the road that sliced northwest from the ruins of Luthcheq to Soorenar and the great city of Cimbar beyond. They turned west, riding more carefully-they were traveling into the heartlands of Chessenta, the broad belt of townlands and terraced hills that ran from Akanax to Cimbar, and the relative safety of the desolate hinterlands was gone.
Near sunset, they left the road and camped in a dense copse a few hundred yards to one side, building a small fire and drying out their traveling clothes as best they could. "How much farther is it to Cimbar?" Eriale asked over a cold and cheerless meal of trail rations.
"I'm not sure. I traveled by sea when I was here before," Aeron replied. It raised his spirits a little to break the silence. "I think we'll reach Soorenar by late in the afternoon. After that, it's another two days to Cimbar."
Eriale nodded. "Have you thought about what you'll do when we get there?"
He closed his eyes, shaking his head. "No. I haven't even thought about it, with-"
"I know. I haven't been myself lately, either. I didn't know Fineghal as well as you, but he was one of the noblest souls I've ever met." She smiled softly. "The world's a sadder place without him."
"And Kestrel."
"And Father, too." She set a tin cup on a stone by the fire, dropping a handful of coffee grounds into the water. Aeron was struck by the severe lines of her face, the weariness in her gestures. Eriale was too young to have so many cares. "So? What will we do?" she asked.
"I don't know," Aeron replied. "I'll need to get to the chamber of the Shadow Stone, examine it closely, see how the spell works. Maybe I can determine how to stop it."
"Won't that be dangerous? Could it be guarded?"
Aeron shrugged. "It might be. Then again, the stone seemed capable of protecting itself."
"That's not what I meant. Wouldn't Oriseus be careful to protect the stone, to make sure that no one tampered with what he was doing?" Eriale stirred the coffee with a stick. "If Oriseus's got any sense at all, he'll guard his work to make sure no one interferes."
"He might not need to, Eriale," Aeron said. "Oriseus's spell may be unbreakable. Even if he knew I was coming back to Cimbar to stop him, he might not care."
Eriale's eyes flashed. "Listen, Aeron. If you can't undo Oriseus's work, then there's no hope for any of us, and there's no sense making any plans at all. We might as well go home and wait to see what the world's like when he's finished with it.
"Since we both know that we're not going to turn around and go back to Maerchlin, let's assume that you'll be able to find some way to reverse the spell. And if we assume that's true, we'd better also assume that Oriseus knows it, and that he'll take steps to make sure that no one can upset his work." She held his eyes, cold determination in her face. "I am not going to let you give up on this before we see what we're up against, Aeron."
He flinched, but refused to look away. "All right. I don't think we'll have anything to worry about until we reach the college grounds. The city's far too big, with thousands upon thousands of people and places to hide. But the college sits on the acropolis, surrounded by the university and the Sceptanar's palace, and everyone inside knows who is supposed to be there. That's where we have to worry."
"Why can't you walk right in? There's no law against it. You have every right to be there if you wish," Eriale said.
Aeron shook his head. "That might be true, but why ask for trouble? Oriseus is Sceptanar now; he'll command hundreds of soldiers in the immediate vicinity. If he is inclined to make sure that I can't undo his design, there's no one in Cimbar who can defy his authority."
"Do you know a spell that would let us creep in without detection?" Eriale asked.
He thought for a long moment before shaking his head. "There are wards around the college to defeat magic like that," Aeron said, "and I'm certain Oriseus would have added to them."
He warmed his hands, watching his coffee beginning to boil. There was just too much he didn't know. Did any factions oppose Oriseus's rule? The demagogues of Cimbar's Mob had railed against the reign of the previous Sceptanar, albeit to little effect. Were there any masters within the college who still opposed Oriseus? How many of Oriseus's disciples were at the college, and how many had been sent out into Chessenta, like Crow? Any scrying spell he cast might be noticed and investigated. Suddenly Aeron laughed at himself with a sharp and bitter bark.
"What? What is it?" Eriale asked, sitting up straight.
"The problem with being a mage," Aeron said, "is that you try to figure out how to do everything with magic." He gingerly retrieved his cup from its place by the fire, blowing on the hot coffee. "I know four or five spells that could have warmed this coffee or conjured it up out of nothing. But this campfire and a few old grounds will do just as well."
"You have an idea?"
Aeron smiled at her, a long-hidden lightness in his heart surfacing after months of care. He reached down and scratched Baillegh behind the ears. "I think I do," he said.
* * * * *
They reached Cimbar two days later.
From the busy street end that faced the main gate, the college seemed unchanged from Aeron's days as a student. The weathered brick buildings still stood in the same quadrangle, wreathed by ivy and watching over the city below with blank, dark windows. Aeron and Eriale strolled down the center of the street, two passers-by in the crowd, turning left toward the harbor to skirt the college walls.
Aeron glanced over at Eriale and repressed a smile. "You're staring again."
"I've never seen anything like Cimbar. I'd heard that this was a great city, but I never understood what that meant until I saw it for myself. It's wonderful and terrible at the same time." Eriale's face fell. "What a tragedy that the capital is so full of hate and feuding these days."
Aeron snorted. "I wonder if the Shadow Stone's presence had anything to do with it all. The fall of Unther's empire, the shattering of Chessenta, the rise of the Mob, the ambitions of lords like Oriseus ..." His voice trailed away as they came to the place he'd been looking for, a steep escarpment where the street dropped the last fifty feet to the wharves while the rocky mass of the acropolis began its climb up to the point on which the broken pyramid sat. Briars and tough, coarse-barked whitelock trees clung to the slope, masking the college wall behind a band of untended foliage. Aeron glanced up and down the street-no one seemed to be looking their way. He grasped Eriale's arm and pulled her into the undergrowth. They burrowed into the thicket, scrambling up out of sight of the street and pausing just under the crumbling brick wall. Baillegh followed, her silver tail high.
"Did you do this often when you were a student here?" Eriale asked with a note of disapproval.
"No. I didn't get out much, but all the students knew about it." Aeron cocked his ear, listening. "I don't hear anyone nearby. Go ahead and change."
From his satchel, he pulled out a simple black skirt and blouse with black piping and passed it over to Eriale, then studiously turned away and watched the wall while she wriggled out of her tunic and into the servant's garb.
After a moment, she tossed the satchel back. "Your turn." Aeron listened again, then peeled off his own breeches and shirt in order to don a matching outfit. It had taken a couple of hours of shopping in the trade districts of New Cimbar to find clothes close to what they wanted, and another hour to have a few minor modifications made to make them match the college livery exactly, but Aeron thought it worth the wait. When he finished, he stuffed his own clothes back into the satchel and concealed it under a pile of dead leaves.