The Senserii were loading the boats and organising a simple breakfast soup of root vegetables, guarana and bright-smelling herbs. The students were awake and most of them were out of their hammocks and gathered near the cook fire. The first one to see him started visibly, shuffling back into his friends before tugging the shirt of the nearest. The desultory conversation ceased, smothered by a sense of unease.
Oh brilliant. You’ve got them right in the palm of your hand now.
Takaar hissed then covered it with a smile.
‘If my appearance surprises you, then you must brace yourselves for greater shocks to come. I have awoken this day and the knowledge you must possess is within me. I will bestow it upon you. The path will not be easy. Some of you may fail. But for those who succeed, your names will resonate through the millennia.’
Takaar walked towards them, his arms open and welcoming. But they did not respond with the beatific smiles he had anticipated. No matter. Instead, they bunched a little closer together and looked to the leader within their midst. He moved to the front of the group. Takaar blessed him with a nod of approval. A talented young ula with an odd name… what was it? Ah, yes, Drech.
‘My Lord Takaar, I’m… confused. We’re confused.’
‘All will become clear, my student.’
Drech’s smile was halting. ‘Yes, of course. But are we now to learn the way of the TaiGethen? Your camouflage…’
‘Ha! Yes.’ Takaar clapped his hands. ‘You are right to think that way because, at its heart, an understanding of magic is a combat as keen as any TaiGethen blade.’
‘Surely we have already understood-’
‘You have understood nothing!’ spat Takaar, feeling their fear and bewilderment as food in his gut. ‘You do not know why the shield failed at Aryndeneth. I do. You do not know why our magic cannot match that of the humans. I do. And I can teach you, but it will be a fight. I have won that fight-’ Takaar smiled and allowed himself an expression of superiority ‘-but I am TaiGethen.’
Drech looked round at his peers and none of them possessed the spark of understanding. Takaar huffed and his frustration began to grow. His tormentor was chuckling. Takaar tried to ignore him.
‘Surely we are travelling to become, as you explained, the teachers of the new Il-Aryn,’ said Drech. ‘We can already help them to an awareness of the power within them, teach them about shapes and stamina. Where does combat fit in?’
‘You have opened the door but you cannot hold back the flood,’ said Takaar. ‘The power you have flowing through you will destroy you unless you learn to control it.’
‘We do control it,’ said Drech. ‘We harness and direct it.’
‘Really?’ Takaar scratched his chin. ‘Then let me educate you in your utter weakness in those areas.’
Drech’s eyes widened. Takaar strode forward until he was a single pace from the young adept. He opened his arms.
‘What would you have me do?’ asked Drech.
‘Attack me,’ said Takaar. ‘Use your quickest and most powerful casting. You can make flame on your hands can you not? Aim it at my face. Melt my camouflage, burn my skin.’
‘I cannot-’
‘Cast, or turn back to Aryndeneth now and live with your shame. I will tolerate neither disobedience nor cowardice.’
Drech met Takaar’s stare and Takaar saw courage and fury there. Perfect. Drech’s eyes unfocused briefly and his hands shot forward, flame wreathing and encasing them. Fire surged out, and Takaar opened his mouth. He inhaled the flame, feeling the fuel that created it surge through his veins. He changed its nature, using the core of his body, and exhaled a hurricane.
Cloaks were blown over faces, loose debris was cast into the air and the soup cauldron rocked violently on its makeshift tripod, steadied at the last moment by a Senseri. Drech was blown back into his fellows and they fell in an untidy sprawl on the soaked ground.
Takaar folded his arms and waited for the students to untangle themselves, stand and brush loose mud from their clothes. He could see that Drech was furious.
‘Humiliation should not sit well with any of you,’ said Takaar. ‘Do not accept it and do not allow those feelings to be repeated. Learn this. An elf who can saw wood cannot call himself a carpenter. All you have done is taste the magic, and all you can do with it is make constructs of paper. Until the energies of Ix are part of your soul, twined around your bones and running in your blood, you will never be in control.
‘You will not be just weak, you will be in danger from a surge of energy which could rip your mind apart. So you must learn to drink the energy, be one with it and accept it as an integral part of you, your mind and your body. It has to be you. Or it will consume you.’
Takaar watched them fighting whether to believe him or not. Drech, he could see, had shaken off his humiliation and was staring at Takaar with undisguised awe and desire, not for him but for the knowledge he possessed. Now that was what Takaar had expected to see in his students.
‘I want to feel what you feel,’ said Drech.
But Takaar could see he had not yet convinced all his fellows and Takaar wanted them all.
‘I don’t want anyone with me who does not believe in me. I won’t stop any of you running back to Aryndeneth, to Onelle’s bosom. She, unlike you, has always been at one with the Il-Aryn. And she, unlike you, will not die screaming one day because she has already contained the flood of magic in her mind. Without me, you cannot hope to contain it yourselves.
‘It really is your choice. Come, learn from me and teach the new generation in your turn. Or go back home and wait to die.’
You really are a total bastard, aren’t you?
‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
Chapter 18
Man’s magic can cure ills, it can burn the flesh from bones and it can shout louder than a falling mountain. But it cannot confer faith, and thus men remain essentially weak.
Auum, Arch of the TaiGethen
The stew was not sitting well with Hynd. Or perhaps it was that he’d just been bawled out by Lockesh for daring to suggest the rank and file were given a little information, like how long this torture would go on. It had taken him a whole day’s march to pluck up the courage to request an audience, and the early end to the march had seen his stomach do an uncomfortable flip.
Jeral had made him eat first, probably so he could taunt him about his meeting for as long as possible. And to bore him rigid with his endless litany of complaints, complaints he had never taken to his generals. Hynd had let it all roll over him while he watched the barge repairs progress.
By the time he’d been summoned, his guts were gurgling and thumping away as if he’d had a hard night drinking the worst spirits the elves could dredge out of their revolting vegetable roots. The toasting his ears had received had taken his mind off it for a while but now, on his way back to Jeral via the outlying pickets to ‘clear his mind of stupidity while he checked every ward on the perimeter’, he was experiencing sharp pains he put down to an upcoming bout of violent wind.
The first disabling cramp struck him while he was restructuring a badly designed alarm ward that would have triggered when anything larger than a hare crossed its threshold. He was already crouching, so when the pain defeated his balance he didn’t have far to fall.
Hynd grunted and clutched his stomach. The cramp went on, grinding away at his innards, bringing bile to his throat and sweat to his face. Hynd tried to force himself back to his feet despite the pain. A few yards away the guards at the picket were tending to one of their own who was writhing on the ground.
Hynd dropped back to all fours and vomited. Green and brown sludge spattered across the leaf litter and he almost passed out. He just managed to stay conscious, rolling on to his back away from the vomit and heaving in a breath of humid, close air. He could hear someone calling out but it seemed to come from a great distance.