Denser sighed and Ciryn looked up, frowning, her finger propping open a scroll, her teeth irritating at her bottom lip.
'Master Denser?'
'Sorry, but I can't make any sense of this.'
'But I'm afraid I think I can,' said the diviner.
'Why afraid?'
'Because you are the child's father. I'll write down the piece I have translated,' said Ciryn.
'No, just tell me,' said Denser.
'Oh. All right.' She took in a deep breath. T don't think it's a shielding, I think that was the wrong interpretation. But it's a way of bringing a One Mage from Night undamaged.'
'How?' A chance to really help his daughter was there for him to grasp.
'By the father opening his mind to the storm and surrounding his
child with the power of his mind, so showing the light the mage needs to complete Awakening.'
Denser felt suddenly cold. 'But that would mean I would d-'
'Be irrevocably changed, yes.'
The Circle Seven had taken Denser's words in complete silence the following mid-morning. Deep under the Tower of the Lord of the Mount in the Laryon Chamber, they had granted him unwilling audience then sat transfixed as he recounted recent events in Dor-dover, spoken of Erienne's letter and the work he and Ciryn had completed the night before.
The Circle Seven, Xetesk's Tower Masters, chaired by Dystran, the fortunate incumbent of the Mount, had been expecting more pressure for research. What they heard was a cry for help and the raising of the spectre of a threat from another College.
'How long since her disappearance?' asked Ranyl, an ageing master, hairless and hunched but still vital in his magic.
'More than sixty days.' There was a hiss of indrawn breath.
'And you still hope to find her,' said Dystran. His tenure had aged his young face, his eyes looked heavy and his black hair was shot through with grey.
'Yes,' said Denser firmly. 'There seems little doubt who she has gone to.'
Dystran chuckled. 'Indeed, but we are now entering the realm of myth and blind belief. And we have no idea where these one-magic mages of yours live, should they turn out to be real.'
'You should read more,' responded Denser. Tlkar says there's significant evidence that they're on or near Calaius and that's backed up, albeit tenuously, by the leads we found in Dordover.'
'So what do you want of us?' Dystran regarded Denser over steepled fingers, affecting a pose of studied contemplation. Denser almost laughed. This Lord of the Mount was a ridiculous figure who had done nothing but engender political instability since his surprise tenure had begun more than five years before. A bigger surprise was that he remained alive. Ranyl was doubtless the architect of his continued survival. Denser wandered how long it would be before the old man made his move.
'I need Xetesk to keep Dordover away. Their intentions are clear enough and we can't let them take Lyanna back, or worse.'
Dystran's eyes flashed fanatically cold. 'Oh we'll keep Dordover away, all right. We can't have them meddle any further with the natural order. And you clearly understand your role. It's certainly fortunate we've delayed implementation of the volunteer release plan your Unknown Warrior so desires, isn't it?'
Denser shuddered. The Protectors would be marching again. The Unknown wasn't going to like it.
Selik rode with a guard of eight Black Wings, his journey from Dordover to Arlen pausing in the ruins of Denebre. He wanted to show his men what it was they were fighting for. Not that they were wavering. It just never hurt to reinforce beliefs.
But what he saw didn't merely do that, it added a whole new dimension. And for Selik personally, it set his anger raging afresh and brought an ache to his dead eye. The nine men rode slowly around the edges of the once beautiful lakeside town. They couldn't even get to what had been the centre; chasms in the earth blocked their way.
And perhaps that was fortunate. The stench of death was everywhere. Above the wind, the buzzing of myriad flies was a warning to keep away and everywhere they looked, rats scurried. Disease would be running into the rivers and soaking into the ground. Selik hated to think about the state of the poor innocents lying dead and unburied.
He could imagine all too easily the panic that had engulfed the town. As the earth heaved and buildings plunged, people would have abandoned everything that was dear to them. Their homes, their possessions. Their families. The air would have been filled with the screams of the terrified and the wounded and dying. Dust would have clogged lungs, chips of stone and glass would have slashed faces and hands; and everywhere they ran, the people of Denebre would have encountered the ground at their feet tearing itself apart, swallowing them whole or ripping their bodies to shreds.
Looking across the ruins it was hard to imagine the life that had been there so recently. Not one building was left standing. On the opposite side of the town, the castle was rubble. Selik could make
out parts of the keep, piles of tottering stone and snapped timbers suggested where the walls might have been. But the outer structures were gone. A gash seventy yards wide had driven through the centre of the courtyard in front of the keep and taken it all down.
Nearer to where they sat, mute, the Black Wings couldn't make out a single road or where the marketplace had stood. Debris littered the ground, great boulders and shelves of earth had thrust from below and, here and there, a ragged piece of cloth or the smashed remnants of furniture were all that signified the life that had been so brutally snuffed out.
Selik was amazed that anyone had survived and indeed only a handful had, taking their story to Pontois or Lystern, some south to Erskan. But who was to say it wouldn't happen again in any of tiiose places?
Selik turned to his men, taking in their disbelieving expressions and the hands over their mouths to keep out the worst of the smell that drifted by on the breeze.
'This is why we fight magic,' he said. 'This is why we are right. Magic caused all of this, never forget that. It is a force of evil and we are the only ones who can see it. The rest of the world is blind.'
But not for long, he thought. The destruction across Balaia had to change the perceptions of its people. They would demand more control. The mages couldn't be trusted to keep their power benign and innocents were dying in their hundreds and thousands, taken by forces they couldn't understand.
The worst of it was that she was behind it all. The bitch had given birth to the abomination whose mind was destroying the land. All in the cause of greater power, of domination. Selik seethed and as he put his heels to his mount and spurred it on southwards, leaving Denebre to rot, he began to imagine the pain he would cause her before he allowed her to die. Justice for the righteous. Agonising death for the mage.
The rain was falling hard on the Balan Mountains when Ilkar and The Unknown Warrior arrived late one evening, tired and hungry, eleven days after parting company with Denser. It was a bleak and cold night following a chill and sunless day. The rain had fallen incessantly and the pair had ridden into the teeth of a biting wind,
every part of their bodies soaked despite cloaks and leather. Bemoaning the sharp change in the weather from the sun and warmth of Julatsa, Ilkar was walking his horse and wishing fervently he was caressing Pheone's body when a movement in the rocks above caught his eye.
'Unknown-' he began, but with a shriek, a huge shadow tore through the clouds, sweeping low over them. Ilkar's horse reared and bolted, the elf making no attempt to hold on to the reins. The Unknown was pitched from his, landing in a heap on the ground, a flurry of hooves narrowly missing his head as his mount followed Ilkar's in a desperate attempt to escape.