Tessaya drew his blade and gripped it hard.
'Don't flinch,' he shouted. 'We are the Wesmen. We fear nothing.'
He heard his words shouted back at him and he nodded, a fierce smile cracking his features. He watched the creatures which approached fast, on a wave of cold. The giant one settled onto its tentacles in front of him. It was completely odourless.
'We are the new masters here,' said the creature. 'You will submit to our rule. You will not bear arms and you will offer all your subjects for sacrifice. We will take as we please. It is the way.'
'No one rules the Wesmen. We will fight you and we will prevail.'
Tessaya struck out with his blade. He saw die sword cut deep, he felt the resistance of die creature's flesh, but when he ripped the blade clear the wound healed while he watched. Pain flickered momentarily across its face.
'You cannot fight us,' said the creature. 'You will be the first. Your people will learn to respect us. There is no other way.'
The creature reached out and touched Tessaya above the heart,
gripping. A frown creased its face. It pushed harder. Tessaya stumbled a pace and was pushed back upright by the men behind him.
'What is this?' hissed the creature. 'Your soul is mine. All your souls are mine.'
Tessaya laughed loud and in its face.
'Demons.' He spat on the ground, recollecting the Easterner word from the stories and rumours. 'Do you really know so little? You cannot touch the Wesmen. The Spirits protect our souls.'
'Then we will break the Spirits before we break you.'
'It is a battle you cannot win.'
The demon stared at him for a moment, turned and floated away back to the college. An uneasy calm fell over the Wesmen. Tessaya looked back to the towers of Xetesk.
They were clever, these Xeteskians. The demons were susceptible to magic but stamina for offence was finite and the enemy had overwhelming strength. But they had worked out quickly what it was the demons feared and had set it in front of them as a barrier. And for all their force of numbers, the demons respected it and had backed off.
Whatever the casting was, demons died within it and so remained outside of it. There had been very few times in his life when Tessaya had wished he understood magic but this was one such. He envied the potential it gave them and he was filled with a curious impotence. The fact was that these Easterners could kill the demons, or damage them at the very least, while he with all his passion and strength could not.
The sun was dipping behind the towers before he had seen enough. There came a moment when the barrier had sapped the wills of the demons for the time being and they had turned their minds to the recently enslaved populace. Tessaya had no desire to join them.
'The mages will not die easily or quickly,' he said to his nearest lieutenant. 'Our opportunity for today has passed.'
'And perhaps for ever,' said the warrior.
'There will be other days and the demons fear us,' replied Tessaya. 'But for today, we are finished. Call the tribes. We will withdraw. The city belongs to the demons.'
'Camp at Understone?'
Tessaya nodded. 'But with a forward camp within sight of the
walls. We must not lose touch. Something extraordinary is happen ing. Sound the fall-back.'
Dystran watched the Wesmen go and felt deserted. The ColdRooms deterred the demons for now but he needed his every ally and his erstwhile enemy had surely become one.
They had something, they must have. Because the demons didn't, or more likely couldn't, take their souls. Dystran was damned if he knew what it was. But their departure marked the passing of the last vestige of what could laughingly be described as normality on Balaia.
He wondered what they would do. How far they would go. However far, it would not be enough. Strange. He almost felt sorry for Tessaya. Know it or not, the Wesmen lord's fate and that of all his tribes depended on whether magic survived. Another day, he would have laughed at the paradox. Today, though, he had lost his city and most of his college. His mages and soldiers had died and those that remained were few and scared.
Never mind Tessaya, he had to get his devastated people through just one more day. And then the next.
'Gods, Ranyl, how I need you now.'
But Ranyl, like so many, could not hear him.
Chapter 8
'Ilkar!'
Hirad sat bolt upright in his bed, die sweat pouring from him. He was soaked in it. Just like in the early days of his life on Calaius. But this was nothing to do with acclimatisation. His heart was pounding so hard his throat hurt and he was quivering all over. He rubbed his hands over his face and into his hair. He closed his eyes briefly but the images replayed and he couldn't control his breathing.
With a shiver playing down his back, he swung his legs from the bed and stood on the matting. He heard voices elsewhere in the house and craved their company. In two years he had learned enough elvish to get by. In fact it was a language he enjoyed and these days when Rebraal visited the village, the two of them spoke more in the elf s tongue than Hirad's.
He pulled on a shirt and loose trousers and walked out of what had once been Ilkar's room in his parents' house, heading for the veranda and what he hoped would be friendly faces. Outside in the cool but still humid air deep in the Calaian rainforest, Rebraal and Kild'aar, a distant aunt by some means Hirad couldn't quite understand, were sitting and talking. Drinks steamed gently on a table between them. A fire burned in the pit in front of the house, smoke spiralling into sky that was clouding for more rain.
It was the middle of the night. Out in the rainforest, the noise of life and death went on as it always did. The air smelled of rain and fresh vegetation. Hirad sat on one of the three other swept-back chairs on the veranda, feeling the weave shift to accommodate his broad shoulders.
'I'll get you some tea,' said Kild'aar, levering herself out of her chair and walking slightly stiffly down the steps to the fire pit.
'Your shouting eventually woke you up too, did it?' said Rebraal, a smile touching his lips.
'I'm sorry,' said Hirad.
Rebraal shook his head. 'Tell me. If you want to.'
'I've felt the same thing a few nights but not with this - uh - sorry Rebraal, I don't have the words.' He switched into Balaian. 'This intensity. It's like someone's been battering on the door and now finally they've broken it down.'
Tlkar?' asked Rebraal.
Hirad shrugged. 'Well, yes. Daft I know. I still miss him, you know.'
'What have you seen?'
'Oh, that's hard to say.' Hirad pushed his hand through his hair, feeling the lank braids and the moisture left on his hands. 'I know it's him but I can't quite make him out. His essence, I can feel that so clearly. Everything that made him. And I fill in the smile and those damned ears myself. But he's in trouble. That's why the dream is so bad. I got the feeling he was running but I don't know where. That something was close that scared him. And though I reached out, I couldn't help him. He was always just beyond my grasp and my vision.
'Huh, speaking it makes it sound lame. Not scary at all.'
Kild'aar came back up the steps and handed him a mug of the herb tea that Ilkar had been so fond of. Deprived of coffee for more than a year now since his supply had run out, Hirad had developed a taste for the sweet aromatic teas of the elves. He'd had no choice really. The trade to Balaia had gone. No ships had come from the northern continent for three seasons now. Part of him worried about what that might mean. Most of him was glad they didn't trouble to make the journey. There was only one man on Balaia that Hirad missed and Blackthorne had never relied on trade with the elves so he would be unaffected. And Jevin, the last time he'd seen the elven skipper, had said he preferred not to sail north any more. He didn't say why.