‘How?’ she whispered.
‘Does it matter?’
The Shadowdreamer came to a stop, and despite her cuts she flung up her hands, attempting to cast spells. It was difficult, for she was weak, and did not seem able to force them out. A series of tiny fireballs, small as fireflies, issued from her fingertips and glided slowly towards the dark lord. He chuckled and, with his free hand, batted them away lazily as if they were nothing but bugs. Others that met his black cloak slid down like dollops of honey, igniting the ends of loose threads, which sizzled briefly.
‘I make you an offer, mage,’ said the Dreamer, his voice harsh and grating. He flung Harren in front of him, and the boy looked up to Teliah with sad, scared eyes.
‘Don’t hurt him!’ she cried, then felt the reassuring touch of the man on her shoulder.
‘You have a choice,’ said the Shadowdreamer. ‘Your death, inevitable as it is, could be made useful to me.’
He made a gesture and, from out of the void scampered a lizard-like thing, sleek and scarlet-skinned.
‘Cast your legacy spell upon this creature,’ the Dreamer said, ‘building upon its already-shape. If you do me this favour, your brother will not be harmed – this I promise you.’
Teliah stared at the lizard, which cocked its head at her, a sharp tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.
‘Why?’ she managed. Her vision swam and it was hard to think. Blood continued to pulse from her veins.
‘It is but a fancy that would please me,’ said the Dreamer. ‘Mind you not the why. Simply know that if you do what I ask, your brother’s safety is assured.’
Beside her the man stroked hair back from her face. She turned to look at him, finding comfort in his kind eyes.
‘I don’t think we can trust him,’ she said, and he smiled sadly at her.
‘I will be here still,’ he said. ‘I will make sure the Dreamer holds to his promise.’
Teliah knew he was telling the truth. She didn’t know how, she just did – the way she knew things in dreams sometimes, for no reason.
‘Will you stay with me?’ she asked.
‘Yes. But now you must hurry. The Dreamer’s promise will not bind him if you don’t fulfil your part of the bargain. Time is short.’
With dull despair she felt her grip on life waning. She turned her eyes to little Harren, crouching on the ground between them. He smiled at her reassuringly. Perhaps she could not save herself, but she could still save him.
As her soul lifted from her body, breaking free of mortal confines, she diverted a stream of life-force towards the lizard-thing, wrapping it tightly. Energy sparkled and changed from light to something else, then solidified, scarlet, an extra layer that left the lizard larger.
As she separated completely from her body, the void around them fell away, and she saw where she had really been.
The great hall of Holdwith Academy had been cleared of tables. Rows of slumbering lightfists, her fellow students and teachers, were spread out on either side of her body, stood over by shadow mages keeping them asleep. Her body was slumped against the man, her dream companion, who held her head in his hands. She could see no sign of any wounds on her wrists. He looked up at her departing spirit, the same calmness in his black eyes, and she knew that it was he who had killed her, he who had tricked her. Some distance away, at the far end of the hall on a clear patch of floor, the lizard-thing ran about, snapping at the edge of some invisible perimeter. Near it stood a Black Goblin, his arms crossed and fangs bared.
What did they do here? What did they hope to achieve?
Anger passed through her as she rose, but she could not resist the pull of Arkus’s Well …and then the light took her, on to whatever came next.
Tyrellan watched as, at the other end of the hall, Losara rose from the girl and moved on to the next sleeping mage. It gave him great satisfaction to be here, to witness this event, to be finally striking blows against the enemy. All his years of waiting were beginning to bear fruit.
He would not have thought it possible to believe any more that Losara was blessed, yet he found this belief reinforced despite himself. To be able to convince a departing soul, which no longer had any earthly tie, to do his bidding at exactly the right moment of separation from life was a singular skill indeed. Then again, he was the Shadowdreamer, so what province was more his than the minds of the sleeping? Tyrellan had never really thought about the title before, but now it seemed more appropriate than ever.
Not every attempt to cajole a sleeping mage to help them had resulted in success, of course, but Losara seemed to be getting better at it, and there were plenty to spare. Really, they had only just begun.
He watched the shadowmander racing about, impressed with how much it had already grown. It was now some four hand spans long, and each time it grew, so did the distance it could travel from him. It now seemed to meet with resistance about twenty paces away, something like double the distance the butterfly had been able to travel. It did pose a problem, though, for the mander was, as always, bent on destroying anything it could that was born of light. There had already been one messy incident when it had come too close to a sleeping mage. As he watched it now, stalking back and forth, he knew it wanted nothing more than to scurry up to the other end of the hall and wreak carnage amongst those lying there. Commendable, of course – that was the purpose they’d built it for – but as the creature grew and its area of influence expanded, Tyrellan needed to move further and further away. Would there come a point when they were too far away for the Dreamer to target the mander with a legacy?
Reinforcements had arrived from their main army, and it galled him that he could not move freely around Holdwith to oversee them. Word had arrived that the Throne was moving his own enormous army towards them, and though it came slowly, progress here was also slow. As the mander grew larger, Tyrellan knew that each legacy ‘building block’ would become less noticeable. Losara seemed to be finding some kind of pace to his work, but it was still only about two mages an hour.
Roma was present in the fort, and had set about making it ready to defend if needed. It was good to have another capable commander present, yet Tyrellan could not help but wonder at the way events were turning. He was being shaped into a tool, a mooring for the shadowmander. If it grew as large as Losara envisaged, there was no way he would ever be able to live his life as he once had. Forever tied to an enormous and indestructible beast, his days of slipping quietly through shadows were over. Would he even be able to enter Skygrip again? It had been his home for many years, yet he knew he could no longer walk through its corridors – this creature was now too large to fit inside.
Home , he thought derisively. Nothing but a sentimental state of mind.
It wasn’t any notion of home that bothered him, however. What did he care for home, he who had murdered his family and abandoned their farm to squatters or the elements, without a care for which it turned out to be? It was practicality that he would lose, the freedom to come and go as he pleased; it would mean the loss of all subtlety.
If this enterprise results in victory, any forbearance is worthwhile , he told himself.
Another curious shimmering descended on the mander, solidifying into its ‘flesh’ and making it grow again – less discernibly this time, as expected. It was an instantaneous change, Tyrellan had noted – unlike when that mage bitch Elessa had cast the first legacy on him. The butterfly had taken months to appear, only ‘hatching’ on his birthday. He had originally thought the waiting period was a part of the spell, but now he realised she had done it deliberately, had been mocking him, making him live with a ‘cocoon’ inside him, instead of just casting the butterfly straight off and being done with it. Would she still be laughing, now that her petty revenge was leading to the construction of the greatest weapon the shadow had ever possessed?