"You haven’t really recovered, have you?" the woman said. "Will you be able to do what you need here?"
"It’s nothing difficult," Rennyn replied, running her fingers through her hair, the bandages catching at strands. She’d be able to rid herself of them soon, but it was true that sleep hadn’t balanced the physical toll.
Peering past the Sentene mage, she saw they’d stopped in a well-established encampment. The group she’d been travelling with had joined up with an equal number who’d gone ahead to the rough location she’d named. "How solid is this plan to build a shield to contain the Eferum-Get?"
"With time to prepare a properly constructed circle it seems workable. Just because we usually build them to keep things out rather than in doesn’t mean the principle alters. And we have plans to create something rather special here – it should hold even another Azrenel. The incursion is due at dawn, yes? How long before you’re able to pinpoint the exact location?"
"I’ll do that now."
They were a few hours east of Asentyr, on a road trailing over gorse-studded hills notable only for sheep and a cold wind. It wouldn’t be long before the sun set. Rennyn climbed out of the coach and glanced over the encampment, ignoring the expectant interest directed back at her. Ten pair of Sentene, five members of the Hand, and an impressive number of Ferumguard. Captain Illuma had called this a war, and Rennyn found herself with troops, not quite at her command, but following her lead.
Absurd to resent it. But she recognised that feeling as a gloss over underlying worry. She didn’t want to work with the Sentene, and certainly not the Kellian. Not because she feared they would run her through, but because they seemed so dutiful. Loyal servants of the kingdom, ready to spend their lives for its protection.
Unhappy with her thoughts, Rennyn took one of her bags from the coach and slid the ring attached to Solace’s focus over her finger. Already the pull was there, so she followed it, trailed at a discreet distance by an escort of five. Up the hill, not all the way to the crest, but a long walk. When she stopped she stood on a patch of grass like all the grass about it.
"I can’t predict the width," she said.
"It is enough to have a starting point," said the senior representative of the Hand, a man she vaguely recalled being named Barton or Martin. He stepped forward, gazing eagerly at the ground. "A priceless opportunity, not only for our defence but to study a breach in formation. Katznien, have this space cleared and flattened while it’s still light."
The Ferumguard accompanying him signalled, and the camp below stirred. Battle lines would be drawn.
"They’ll have prepared a meal, if you’re hungry," said Lieutenant Danress, who appeared to have been assigned the particular duty of ushering Rennyn about.
Rennyn shook her head and walked a short way up the hill. "I’ll go in now," she said, finding a jutting rock which was suitable for her purposes. "I’m trying to gauge how much she’s grown in power." She gestured, shearing off the top of the rock so she had a flat surface to work with, then began marking out her circle with swift strokes.
"Can I ask you a question?" Lieutenant Danress asked, when Rennyn had finished and was checking for errors. The woman had opened the front of her cloak so that Rennyn could see her face, and her apologetic smile. "We’ve been instructed not to antagonise you with constant interrogation, to simply observe as much as possible, but I’m too curious not to ask. Ignore me if you don’t want to answer."
"You’d need to ask either way," Rennyn said, amused by the idea of them being ordered not to irritate her.
"Why is your focus black? I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. And, well, it’s smaller than mine, but I’m nowhere near as…as obscenely powerful as you."
"How many times have you summoned?"
Danress lifted her focus on its chain. "Twice." There was a hint of pride in her voice, understandable because the stone was large for only two summonings. Rennyn drew her own focus free of her collar and considered it. Certainly smaller.
"Two hundred and eighty-five," she said.
There was a clatter from further down the slope. One of the Sentene had dropped an iron bar which was apparently part of the plan for a shield. "Kellian have such sharp hearing," Rennyn murmured wryly. The one called Faille had been sitting outside the infirmary window listening to Seb chat to the girl from Falk. Not that Seb was likely to say anything too revealing. And every one of the Kellian at the breach site had looked up when she’d answered Danress' question.
"It was an experiment in summoning," she explained. "I was following the debate on what the dark layer separating multiple focuses is. The layer always appears, no matter how much power you succeed in summoning. I decided to build it up by tiny degrees, rather like a pearl. It’s certainly slower, but less dangerous. I would say the result is purer."
"Quality over quantity." Danress looked thoroughly disconcerted. "Have you truly been in the Eferum that many times?"
"Every morning for six months, at one time." Rennyn was still watching the reaction of the Kellian, who were now gazing up at her, openly listening. "My father made me stop summoning more than once a month because it does things to you, the Eferum. Like not being able to go out in the sun, or eat cooked things."
Satisfied that her sigils were correctly drawn, Rennyn moved to the centre of her circle and poured power into the sigils until they took her away from her audience. The chill quickly sapped any annoyance she felt at the transparency of Danress' ingenuous approach, and she turned her attention to her appearance, checking that her presence was properly cloaked.
This very basic precaution had become less of a rote exercise, though she could see no unusual activity nearby. The Eferum was vast and black and very quiet. Not wasting any time, she slipped free one sheet of paper from the small pile she’d brought with her, a casting which would measure the force of any movement of the Efera. Like most paper-wrought castings, the power she put into it burned the sheet to ash.
The shield the Sentene were constructing was very visible, blazing with such power it blotted out the moving motes around it. Rennyn shook her head, and closed her hand around Solace’s focus. Hard to guess how the Eferum-Get would react to that, but if they broke away from the breach then she was at risk, for she would need to drop the cloak during the attunement. Usually not such a dangerous thing, but if such a mass of Eferum-Get were loose in the vicinity, the chance of an encounter was much higher.
Her divination was reacting to changes in the currents about her, so she gripped the focus tightly and, forewarned, only pressed her lips together when a stream of moving shadows rushed toward the breach. No possibility of coincidence: they had to be working with Solace. Wasting no time, she made the attunement at the first possible moment, then immediately stepped back into the world.
It was a cold, wet dawn. The sun was a hint on the horizon, a wan ghost compared to the light coruscating around the shield. Inside was a tangle of claw and wing and dark flanks, all pressed together in a writhing mass. Any touch of the walls confining them produced a burning flash, and outside the fiery glow of the shield were the scorch marks of a larger circle. Slowly, it was compressing.
The stench was stomach-turning. Rennyn stared for a long moment, then began walking at an angle down the hill toward the camp below, keeping well away from that circle of extinction. The faintest tread behind her warned her that she wasn’t alone. One of the Kellian, scarcely visible in the light, and soon joined by Lieutenant Danress. Persistent irritants, though they at least had the sense to keep silent. Few Eferum-Get had more than an animal intelligence, and the vast majority were predators that considered humans an excellent meal. But they were screaming, these monsters. Screaming as they burned.