Then, breakthrough.
And his body spasmed, convulsed, his mouth going open in a silent scream.
This was worse than anything he could have imagined. He felt as if he were being struck by bolt after bolt of lightning, a torrent of energy that somehow went on and on and on, searing its way through him.
His hands were burning. Holding the keystone was like clutching red-hot metal fresh from the forge, and there was no respite, no mercy. He could smell the pork-like scent of his cooking flesh, could feel blood running down his wrists as blisters swelled up and burst, and then, in a thunderclap of agony, the fire was everywhere, coursing through his veins with every beat of his heart.
Kellen howled unashamedly, great wracking sobs of hopeless agony. And he held on. Perhaps it was stubbornness, but he had always been stubborn. And he would not give the Demons this victory.
Then came a single thought, emerging through the fire and the pain.
I’m going to die.
He realized at that moment that this was the price of the spell, the rest of the cost. It must be. A Wildmage’s life, Idalia must have known when she created the spell that the price of casting it would be the life of the one who triggered it. His life. Kellen felt a flash of pride in his sister at keeping the painful secret so well.
But he would have to consent. No Wildmage could give up that which belonged to another—not without turning to the Dark.
She had known the price of the magic, but she could only have hoped he would pay it. Well, he wasn’t going to let her down. He would be everything she had hoped. And if he had been an uncouth barbarian to the Elves of Sentarshadeen, at least he would be an uncouth barbarian whose name would live on in their legends forever.
If that’s the price, he shouted silently to the Powers, then I will pay it! I wish I didn’t have to, but I swear I pay it willingly and without reservation!
But more than ever, having surrendered his life, he yearned to keep it. To see the sun again, to feel the gentle summer wind, to walk through the forest or drink a cup of morning tea. But all those things had their price, and so did keeping them. And some prices were too high to pay. The price of his life would be the destruction of all those things, soon or late. The price of keeping his life would be victory for the Endarkened.
No. Never!
My life for the destruction of the Barrier. A fair bargain. Done. Done!
Then the pain was too great for thought.
Abruptly the obelisk began to swell, its stark lines distorting as if the malign power it contained was backing up inside it, filling it beyond its capacity. Its swelling carried him upward; he collapsed against its surface, clinging to the keystone, and still it swelled. Now the stone was a baneful pus-yellow color, nearly spherical. Kellen lay upon its surface , unable to preserve the thought of anything beyond the need to maintain the link.
The whole cairn shook like a tree in a windstorm.
The toxic light flared lightning-bright.
And for Kellen, there was sudden darkness and a release from all pain.
—«♦«♦»♦»—
THEN, of course, there was a return to life, and pain. And since the latter meant that he still had the former, it was less unwelcome than it might have been. And through the pain, the faces of Vestakia and Jermayan—so they had survived!
It had all been worth it then. Only afterward did it occur to him that the compounded trouble he had fallen back into might make him begin to regret that return to life…
—«♦«♦»♦»—
IT had taken them only a sennight to travel from Sentarshadeen—easternmost of the Nine Cities—into the heart of the Lost Lands to face the power of Shadow Mountain.
The return trip took longer, though at least nobody was trying to kill them this time. That did not mean, however, that the journey was less trying. If anything, it was physically harder.
To begin with, it was raining—although rain, Kellen reflected grimly, wearily, was a mild word to apply to the water that had been falling from the sky nonstop for the last moonturn.
It was just a good thing that Elven armor didn’t—couldn’t—rust.
Jermayan, of course, didn’t mind the rain at all. But the Elven lands had been suffering under the effects of a deadly spell-inflicted drought for almost a year. Kellen had only spent a few days in Sentarshadeen before heading north toward the Barrier, and even what little he’d seen of the Elves’ desperate attempts to save their city and the forest surrounding it had been enough to daunt him. How much more terrifying must it have been for an Elven Knight, one of the land’s protectors, to watch everything he loved wither and die for sennight upon sennight, knowing there was nothing he could do about it?
No wonder Jermayan welcomed the rain.
Vestakia didn’t seem to mind the weather all that much either. But then, Vestakia had spent her entire life living nearly alone in a little shepherd’s hut in the wildest part of the Lost Lands, with only a few goats for company. A little rain—or even a lot of rain—probably didn’t bother her too much.
But it felt increasingly like torture to Kellen. For one thing, he still wasn’t all that used to uncontrolled weather. He’d grown up in the Mage-City of Armethalieh, where everything—including the weather—was governed by the rule of the High Mages. He’d never actually seen rain until he’d been Banished by the High Council for his possession of the three Books of Wildmagery—and his Banishment hadn’t been that long ago. He’d never had to stand out in the rain in his life.
But now… well, there wasn’t anything like a roof for leagues and leagues, probably. Even when they stopped to rest, they never really got out of the rain. The most they could manage was to drape some canvas over themselves, or, if they were lucky, find a half-cave, or shelter under a tree.
To add to his misery, he was still suffering from the injuries he had gotten in his battle to break the Barrier-spell. He’d been so sure that his life would be the price of the spell that awakening afterward had been a shock. After all, every kind of magic required payment, and the first lesson the Wildmage learned was that each spell of the Wild Magic came with a cost, both in the personal energy of the caster, and in the form of a task the Wildmage must perform.
But in this case, it seemed his willingness to sacrifice his life had been enough. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the cost had been his willingness to live and endure.
If you can call this living, he thought, as he rode along behind the others in the direction of home. His injuries had been so severe that it had been a sennight before he’d been able to ride at all, and his burned hands were so heavily bandaged that he couldn’t possibly wear his armored gauntlets, much less hold a sword. Any protecting that was going to be done was going to have to be done by Jermayan, and maybe Shalkan, and possibly Vestakia; he was strictly along as baggage.
He had become so used to pain that now he could hardly remember a time when he had lived without it as a constant presence. And underneath the pain was fear, fear he never openly expressed, but was constantly with him. The fear of what was underneath those bandages.
He would much rather dwell on the minor misery of the rain.
His heavy hooded oiled-wool cloak was soaked through. His heavy silk sur-coat was wet. The unending rain had managed to make it through both of those layers and even through the tiny joins and chinks in the delicately-jointed Elven armor that he wore, soaking the padding beneath.
It wasn’t that he was cold—he wasn’t, even with winter coming on. All the layers he wore saw to that. But he’d never felt so soggy in his life.
He rested the heels of his hands—wrapped in goatskin mittens to keep the bandages dry, and medicated to the point where the pain was only a dull nagging—against the front of his saddle, gazing around himself at the transformed landscape. Everything looked so different now! On the outward trip, they’d been navigating mostly by his Wildmage intuition to find the direction of the Barrier; his sister Idalia, who was a much stronger Wildmage, hadn’t been able to locate it by scrying, and until he and Jermayan had linked up with Vestakia, they’d had no way of sensing it directly. So for the first part of the trip, they’d been traveling mostly by guess… and through a far different countryside than this.
The rain had changed everything about the landscape that had once been so parched and barren. There were lakes where none had been before, meadows had become impassable swamps, trickling streams had become rivers, and all the landmarks he’d memorized on the outward trip were gone. On their return passage, they’d had to rely on Jermayan’s familiarity with the Elven lands and Valdien’s and Shalkan’s instincts to find them a route that wasn’t underwater or under mud.
“Are we there yet?” he muttered under his breath.
“Sooner than you think,” Shalkan answered.
Kellen sighed. He hadn’t thought Shalkan would be able to hear him over the sound of the rain. But by now, he should know better than to underestimate the keenness of the unicorn’s hearing.
“How long?” he asked.
“Less than an hour. We’ve already passed the first scouts from Sentarshadeen. They’ve probably gone back to warn the welcoming party to be ready to greet us.” The unicorn’s voice was bland, but Kellen’s stomach clenched in a tight knot of tension. He’d lost all track of how long they’d been traveling, and hadn’t had any idea they were so close. Now the aching of his body was joined by the clenching of his gut. They had gone out a party of three. They were returning a party of four. And one of the four was not going to be welcomed with open arms by the Elves.
“Does he know?” Kellen asked. He nodded to where Jermayan rode on Valdien, with Vestakia—thoroughly bundled up, of course—sitting behind him on the destrier’s saddle. At the end of a long tether, the cream-colored pack mule ambled along behind Valdien, every inch of her covered with the black mud splashed up from the road. At least once they were back in Sentarshadeen it would be someone else’s job to try to get her—and Valdien—clean.
“He saw them, I imagine,” Shalkan said, without adding the obvious: that naturally Jermayan would recognize exactly where he was, even if Kellen didn’t. And that Elven senses were much keener than Kellen’s. Especially now, when most of Kellen’s awareness was wrapped in pain.
Almost home—at least, as much home as Sentarshadeen was. Dry, out of the rain, and a chance to sleep in a proper bed again. And most of all, a proper Healer to deal with his hands and anything else that was wrong with him. Kellen tried to look forward to those things.