It spoke well of Pharadon’s character, and to the quality of being enlightened, that he was willing to risk death to minimise the death and destruction caused in retrieving the Cup. Gill found himself in quiet admiration.
“Stay close to dal Ruisseau Noir,” Gill said to Val. “I’d have you with me, but he’ll need the help. You understand?”
Val nodded.
“Don’t worry. Dal Ruisseau Noir’s a Banneret of the White. I’m sure you’ll be in safe hands. Just keep your wits about you and don’t try to be a hero.”
The lad gave a forced smile and didn’t say anything. He looked more nervous than he had before the dragons, but Gill knew that was often the way of it. Your first battle, you don’t know what to expect. You’re too ignorant to be afraid. Once you’ve seen all that death and misery, had a taste of it, that changes. Your second battle, you’re scared witless. You’ve seen friends you’ve known since childhood die in the mud, holding their guts in their hands and calling for their mothers, and you know it could just as easily be you this time.
It was the best argument for being a farmer or a merchant that he could think of. There was an academy full of headstrong young men who’d sneer at that attitude—Gill had been one of them, once upon a time—but he wondered how many of them still would in a decade, after they’d seen some of what it meant to be a banneret and a soldier.
“Where’s this safe house of yours?” Gill said to dal Ruisseau Noir.
“Better you don’t know,” he said. “If you get captured…”
“Of course,” Gill said. “I’m new to this type of thing.”
Dal Ruisseau Noir gave him a sympathetic smile. “I don’t think any of us expected ever having to do anything like this.”
“Can’t say I did,” Gill said. He peered into the passageway to take a look at Solène’s progress. She was standing with her back to him, staring at the steel barrier. He wondered if she had given up and was simply making a show of things. It was a big ask of her. Powerful or not, she’d only been learning to properly wield that talent for a short time. He felt bad putting so much pressure on her, but he reckoned the circumstances justified it.
Solène stared at the steel, feeling daunted. Surrounded by rock, she had access to far less magical energy than she’d had only a few paces back. The Fount is such a curious thing, she thought, knowing that she was distracting herself from doing something people claimed could not be done.
Magic was no longer something she feared the way she once had. She knew its dangers were ever-present, but since encountering the storm surge of Fount energy at the temple, she had come to realise that even at its most potent, raging force, it was usually completely benign. It was a dichotomy that she’d never have been able to wrap her head around had she not experienced it firsthand.
The thought that she found most unsettling was that she was doing this in plain view of two Intelligenciers. While she was not especially worried about them, the experience brought on an odd feeling, like stealing in front of a watchman, or picking her nose as a child in front of her father, after he’d just told her to stop.
She cast a furtive glance back down the tunnel; the men standing there abruptly turned around, as though caught in the act of trying to sneak a glimpse of her doing magic. It made her want to laugh.
Turning her mind to her problem, Solène studied the door. It was an incredibly thick barrier and there wasn’t much Fount present for her to draw on. It felt similar to the way the Fount was choked off by the rock surrounding the archive beneath the cathedral. Although she could see glowing blue tendrils of Fount energy tease around the entrance to the tunnel, very little made it in.
She stared at the lightly rusted steel and chewed on her lip before realising she was looking at the problem from completely the wrong side. She’d allowed one aspect to dominate her thinking to the exclusion of the other possibilities, and chastised herself before walking outside.
“Is there a problem?” Gill said.
“No, just considering the options,” she said.
“We really need to get a move on,” said dal Ruisseau Noir. “We can’t spend too long here or we’ll be seen. Do your thing, and please do it quickly.”
Solène smiled. “Last time I checked, incitement to do magic was as serious a crime as the doing itself. Being seen isn’t the only thing you have to worry about now.”
Dal Ruisseau Noir smiled, nodded, and mimed tipping a hat he was not wearing.
“You might want to step back a pace or two.” She took a deep breath. Out in the open, there was Fount aplenty, and she could still see the barrier. She focussed her thoughts and pushed everything else—the magnitude of the challenge, the Intelligenciers watching, the task that awaited them once she’d bored through—out of her head. She couldn’t simply wish the barrier away—she needed to decide on an approach that would work, and shape the magic to that end. A blow large enough to smash through would likely bring down half the cliff, and perhaps a section of the palace. Even if it didn’t, it would alert everyone in the city, possibly the whole county.
She needed to be more subtle. She didn’t know of any magical way to drill through a barrier. It was too complex an idea to shape without instruction, or a huge amount of incremental experimentation to get right. Then it occurred to her: all metal melts.
The idea of heating the steel wasn’t difficult to hold in her mind—it was no different from the process of creating a flame or a light. It was only the power required that was different. Very different. She channelled the Fount through herself, drawing in the raw, formless energy and converting it to the shape of her desire.
Something inside the tunnel started to glow, illuminating the dark maw of the entrance. It grew ever brighter, until it felt like she was staring at the sun. Hot air billowed out, at first a warm caress, then a constant blast of roasting heat. All the while she fought to hold on to one single thought—the focus of the magic she desired.
This was among the most powerful magics she had shaped. It was not the most complicated—healing would always take that accolade—but the sheer energy she was using was tremendous, daunting. The intense heat and light made it so hard. Solène wanted to shut her eyes, to step away, but knew she couldn’t. Even acknowledging the discomfort was straying into dangerous territory, so she shut it out.
She forced herself to ignore the searing heat and blinding brightness, until finally she felt the resistance to her magic give way. Solène released the Fount, and then her focus. The relief was tremendous, and she took a step to steady herself. She felt drained and light-headed, and as though she’d been standing in a gale-force wind, but took satisfaction in her success. Even a few weeks earlier, she wouldn’t have been able to shape so powerful a piece of magic. She also knew that had she tried, the effort would certainly have killed her.
“The way is clear,” she said.
He’d shied away from the overpowering heat and light, until it all ended abruptly. Gill walked up to Solène as she staggered sideways one step.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Fine,” she said. “A little tired, but that’s to be expected.”
Gill looked into the tunnel and saw a large oval hole in the metal plate; the edges were melted and smeared like warm butter. A stream of hardened metal on the ground looked like it had been flowing toward the entrance to the passageway, but had cooled back to solid before it had gotten far.