Adrian Goldsmith volunteered to crawl out into the darkness.
Gavin let him go.
They built a second fire-a decoy. They put it up the road, and then they built a third down the road.
The third watch came. Ser Gavin began to despair that he would have to add Toby to his butcher’s bill. His brother wasn’t moving, and neither was Father Arnaud.
Ser Gavin started to pray.
Gabriel was not so much unconscious as deep in his palace-by far pleasanter than screaming his lungs out at the pain from his crushed and mangled right leg. Even as it was, a tidal wave of pain would, from time to time, push him out of the aethereal and into the real. Where he would be painfully aware of his loss of blood, of how cold he was, and how little time he had left to live.
He tried to sort the shaman’s memories-those he’d managed to take. His sublimation of his opponent had been too fast and too thorough. And he’d spent the power foolishly. His shields-his emergency spells-had been far too powerful. He could see, now-too late-the error in design that allowed them to seize every scrap of his power, like a tax collector seizing a poor man’s assets.
He replayed the other daemon’s cut at his head. His unprotected head.
I should have died. But I didn’t.
And now-even now-I should probably be dead.
It occurred to him to work out why he was alive. There was a small, constant feed of potentia coming from outside. He could feel it.
It occurred to him-time was a problem in the palaces-that he should try to find Father Arnaud.
To think was to act.
He stepped across into the chaplain’s memory palace and found himself in a darkened chapel. It was beautiful-the lectern was a magnificent bronze of a pregnant Madonna with her hands crossed over her stomach, standing quietly. A magnificent stained-glass rose window rode over him, set-in the freedom of the memory palace-as a three-dimensional rose roof that rose like a cupola of glass. On the window were portrayed scenes from the life of the saviour, but it was too dark to determine what, exactly, they were.
Indeed, it was very dark, and very cold, and Gabriel’s first thought was that the light behind the window was fading.
“Arnaud!” he called.
To think was to find.
Father Arnaud lay in the midst of his place of power, arms out-flung. He smiled at Ser Gabriel.
“Welcome,” he said. “It might have been better if we had been this way when I was alive.”
“Alive?” Gabriel asked.
“My body is passing,” Arnaud said with some humour. “In the real, I have perhaps twenty heartbeats left.”
Gabriel reached for his link, checking, like any veteran magister, for enough ops to heal.
Arnaud smiled. “No. I will heal you. I will give you this last gift. And as I cross the wall and go into the far country, I leave you this. Save them, save them all. In doing so, brother, you will save yourself.” He smiled, again with pure good humour, and Gabriel could see what a handsome young man he had been. “Please accept these gifts.”
Arnaud’s body gave a convulsion, and light flared, and for a moment-an eternal moment-the chapel was bathed in light. The figures of the rose window leapt into life, and a leper was cured, a blind man given his sight, a dead man raised, and a centurion’s servant saved.
“Arnaud!” Gabriel shouted.
But the miracle of light was declining, and in its wake the cold of absolute void, and the dark.
Gabriel wrenched himself clear of the dying man’s palace and
woke.
The pain was gone. Around the fire stood a dozen men and women and every head was turned to him, and they all looked stunned.
His leg was healed.
Gabriel burst into tears. “I don’t want this!” he shrieked.
And then rolled over and put his hands on either side of his chaplain’s helmeted head. But Father Arnaud was a corpse, and wherever he had gone, his face was calm and wore the gentle smile of absolute victory.
When the flare of power lit the aethereal worlds, Thorn was hovering, torn by indecision, balanced on the knife edge between aggression and caution. He’d followed some of the combat; he sensed the Dark Sun’s injury and depletion but he had a healthy fear of the Dark Sun’s reserves and talent. To project himself across the aethereal could be done but was, itself, fraught with peril. And it would expose him, like an army too far from its supplies, to envelopment. It was too new a talent to be trusted. And his dark master was not available for advice or encouragement.
Something passed across the divide between life and death-something mighty.
Is he dead? Thorn whispered into the darkness. Suddenly bold, he cast himself across the abyss.
Gavin was kneeling by his brother. He had not seen his brother cry-not openly-since the other man had been a boy, and it made him feel sick with old feelings of rage and weakness and bullying strength.
But Gabriel’s tears were quick. Almost like a mummer or a vagabond actor at a fair, he raised his head, eyes still full of tears that glittered in the firelight, but his voice was suddenly steady.
“Everyone run,” he said. “Now.”
“Incoming!” shouted Adrian Goldsmith. The squire didn’t sound terrified-he sounded relieved. “It’s Ser Michael!”
Ser Gavin froze.
Something began to form at the edge of the firelight.
“Run,” Gabriel said.
He meant it. Perhaps he leaked ops into his command. But every man and woman at the fire broke and ran into the dark.
Gabriel tried to rise. But he had nothing left-except the trickle of ops that had, against all odds, preserved him.
He sighed. He heard horses on the road, heard voices.
He got to one elbow.
The heavy black shadow became material.
Thorn emerged from the aethereal with a hiss of lost air and bite of incredible cold. He was no longer like a tree. He was now more like a shadow or a pillar of smoke, lit from behind by a red fire. Two eyes glowed high above the captain.
A horse bellowed its fear.
“Ahh!” Thorn intoned. The syllable was full of surprise and satisfaction.
Gabriel lay and swallowed bile.
Then Mag was there. She was a woman of middle height, wearing the cowled hood of a woman pilgrim. She didn’t even have a staff.
In the aethereal, she wielded a pair of scissors made of light, and she reached to cut Thorn’s links to his home and his base of power. Her strike was faster than the flicker of summer lightning, and she did not guard herself, so decisive was she.
Gabriel had time to register the shriek of Thorn’s disappointed rage, and the un-human magister was-gone.
Just for a moment, Mag seemed to tower over the fire like an avenging angel, and then she was just an aging woman in a cowled hood.
She leaned over the captain, who managed a very shaky grin. “I’m not having a good day,” he said.