But as Firesong turned his attention back to the circle, he realized he knew what that look in Karal's eyes was.
It was the look of someone who knows he is about to die, but whose faith is certain and confirmed and who is no longer afraid of the prospect. "Fey," some called it.
Perhaps, as Stefen bid him farewell in the mountains of the North, Vanyel had looked that way.…
But it was too late now to do anything about it. The last few moments were trickling away.
"Raise your shields!" he shouted, his throat tight, as he brought up his own. To Mage-Sight, each of them now stood within a glowing sphere of rainbow light, and as he had somehow divined, each point on the compass rose glowed as well. The light radiating from each of them reflected from the angled patterns outlined in the stone. It looked as though, if they survived this, he wouldn't owe anyone his silk.
"Link shields!" he cried out, before his throat closed too much to speak. There was a moment of faltering, then all of the shields formed into a thick ring of light surrounding Karal and the waist-high pyramid in the center. The young man closed his eyes and placed his hands carefully on two of the sides, fitting his fingers into the depressions placed there for that purpose.
But once again, as Firesong had guessed, older magics were activated by the energies of their shields. The design on the floor began to glow, sending up eight arms of light that pulled the shields with them, until they all met in a point, making a cone of radiance that echoed the conical shape of the walls around them. Instead of being merely ringed with shielding, Karal was encased in it, and the energy that he would release would be funneled straight up by the shields.
Precisely as it needed to be, to keep any harm from coming to the Plains outside.
Silverfox and Lo'isha watched anxiously; Firesong knew that the shaman would be able to see the energies they had raised, but the expression on Silverfox's face suggested that he, too, saw them, which meant that they were powerful enough even for non-mages to see. That meant he had been right; Urtho had built a mechanism of amplification into the design of the floor.
But there was no chance to gloat over this triumph of instinct and artistry over intellect and reason. It was time. He knew that, as if he were a water-clock and the last drop had just fallen.
"Karal, now!" he shouted, and Karal's face spasmed as his fingers closed convulsively on the trigger points of the device.
The center of the design exploded soundlessly into power. Karal was somewhere in the midst of all that—more power than any Heartstone, more power than Firesong had ever seen in his life, power that made Aya shriek and flee into the next room, that was so bright the shaman and Silverfox shouted and hid their eyes.
Somewhere in the heart of that inferno of energy, Karal struggled to hold it, to transmute it—he struggled—
And Firesong felt him failing. Not failing to hold, but failing in his grasp on the world, on himself, on his life. He was thinning, vanishing, evaporating in a little microcosm of his incandescent God. In a moment, he would be lost, and if anyone dared try to help him, the circle would break and they would all perish.
Over my dead body! Anger finally penetrated his drug-born and aloof indifference. Though—if instinct failed him, it might well be just that—
"Everybody! On my count, take human-sized steps forward, follow your compass point!" he shouted into the roaring silence. "One! Two! Three!"
The circle contracted around Karal, tightening in on him, and having the effect of focusing the energy he controlled as the rays' edges flanged and flared.
"Four! Five! Six!" They were all within touching range now, if they had all had hands. But that was not yet what Firesong's instincts cried out for.
"Seven! Eight!" They were practically on top of Karal now—the pyramid was gone, completely, and Karal was as transparent as one of the Avatars, his head thrown back, his mouth open in a silent cry, surrounded and encased in a pillar of white-hot, ice-cold fire.
"Nine!" He reached out and seized one of Karal's arms—without prompting, each of the others did the same, except for Florian, who touched the young man's breast with his nose, and Altra, who reared up on hind legs and placed both paws in the middle of his back.
The light!
It flared up in his face the moment they all touched Karal, he closed his eyes, but it scorched through his eyelids and flung him physically back! He felt his hand discorporate, turning into vapor—he lost his grip on Karal's arm, and felt himself tossed backward through the air, to land against the wall and slide bonelessly and helplessly to the floor.
It was over.
He couldn't see; couldn't hear.
They had won—but they had lost Karal.
Firesong fell back into darkness as profound as the explosion of light, and all feeble remaining awareness left him.
Firesong wasn't unconscious for very long, but it was certainly the first time in his life that he had been knocked out by magic—and the searing pain in his head told him just what price he had paid for tampering with such powers. He wouldn't be able to light a candle for the next week until he healed—and the next day or so was going to be pure hell. But with a shiver of glee, he realized he was alive.
He couldn't move for a moment; couldn't even think past the pain except for that tangle of elation and grief. We did it—I shouldn't have done that, he might have been all right if I hadn't told everyone to close in, it's my fault—
And—oh, gods, but who else had they lost? He forced himself to roll over and sit up, forced his eyes to open, but they were watering so heavily he couldn't see. He wiped at them frantically with his sleeve, as Aya scuttled back into the room and settled against his side, crooning.
"What in the name of Kal'enel happened?" he heard the shaman croak.
But the voice that answered was not Silverfox—nor anyone else who had been in the circle.
"I haven't a clue," Karal said, in a weak whisper. "I don't remember anything but pressing those ten trigger points."
Firesong managed to get his eyes clear, and to his utter astonishment, they confirmed what his ears had told him.
Lo'isha and Silverfox were bent over Karal, helping him to sit up. There didn't seem to be much of him inside those black robes of his—he looked as if he'd been undergoing a thirty-day Vision-Quest fast. Both of the others were handling him gingerly, as if they felt he was fragile glass.
Well, Firesong wasn't feeling any too sturdy himself at the moment....
But before he got a chance to build up even the faintest feeling of resentment, help arrived, pouring in through the tiny doorway, in the form of black-clad Shin'a'in Sword-Sworn who quickly and efficiently gathered them all up and carried them bodily out through the tunnel and up into the scarlet light of the setting sun. He let his body stay limp, simply cargo.
The sunset was a crimson light enhanced a bit with a coruscating rainbow of mage-energy, covering the bowl of the sky, slowly fading as the day itself faded.