Sol rolled onto his front. He didn’t even have the energy to look and see if he was on fire. He didn’t think so but he could smell his own flesh.
‘Dramatic. I’ll give you that,’ said Ilkar from somewhere nearby.
Sol turned his head. There was a gap in the wall. Ilkar, Thraun and Brynar stood in it, the latter looking very anxious and casting repeated glances behind him.
‘Everyone’s looking over the walls at the moment, but it won’t last long.’
‘Can someone help me up?’ asked Sol. ‘Presumably, we’ve been seen.’
‘Yes, but not all the way into the postern gate,’ said Brynar. ‘Please hurry.’
‘How’s Hirad?’
‘Alive, Sol, but that’s about it,’ said Thraun.
‘Well then, let’s make this count.’
Sol, helped by Ilkar, climbed slowly and painfully to his feet. He took one last look east. Obscured by dust and fire, the city was gone. The only question was how long it would take for the Garonin to regroup and attack the college itself.
‘Come on, Raven. A day standing with you and death seems a blessing.’
Chapter 29
The panic spread through the western side of the city almost as fast as the explosions from the east. Auum, Miirt and Ghaal ran hard through the periphery of the populous zone, ignoring the shouts of guards and patrols, knowing that in the maze of narrow, deprived alleys, little could be done to stop them.
At the outset the population of Xetesk had crowded onto the streets in huge expectation. The first set of wards had been greeted with cheering. The second set as well. But very quickly the mood had darkened. This was a city of magic. Plenty enough knew that the repetition and speed of the triggering of wards was not what was intended. Either a massive invasion force was pushing through the kill zone or something had gone badly wrong.
By the time the TaiGethen had steered back towards the walls of the college, ordinary folk and a good number wearing the livery of the college guard were making their hurried way to the west gates and out onto open ground. Auum only hoped they weren’t too late. The Garonin were creatures of habit and marched in straight lines everywhere they went, but even they would eventually realise that another path existed. And then stopping the exodus, to herd, corral and massacre the people, would be relatively simple.
Auum led his Tai into the lee of the western walls of the college. The explosives display to the east had turned every head. The barrier before them was some fifty feet high, dark and imposing. But Ghaal merely smiled.
‘Smooth walls and beautifully repeated stonework,’ he said. ‘Old concrete and moss. My trusted friends.’
He reached up with both hands, set his feet into a crack at about hip level and began to climb, his brother and sister following his every move.
Densyr was weeping with the effort. He could easily imagine himself standing between two forces desperate to pull apart and release the power contained within while he held on to each one with every mote of strength that he had. And he wouldn’t be able to hold on forever.
He could feel Septern with him. The master mage was weak but his mind still clung on, and would do for as long as his soul could do the same in his borrowed body. Septern’s grid had come under extraordinary pressure but some sections remained undamaged by their efforts to pull the plug on the Garonin attempt to drag mana direct from Xetesk’s Heart.
Densyr, his own heart flailing and his temples pounding, relaxed enough to be able to look about him in the mana spectrum. The Heart had returned to something like normal balance. The hourglass shape of mana encasing the Heart was no longer distorted like a glass-blower’s nightmare. There were wild pulses within it but the depletion had been halted, with Densyr acting as the door wedged firmly into the frame.
Still, the remains of the grid, particularly at its periphery, were a disaster waiting to happen. What had been a tightly bound structure built on lines of energy criss-crossing in arcs, horizontals and verticals to join each and every ward together, had become a fractured mess.
Loose lines whipped and spat with the remnants of mana within them seeking a place to earth themselves. The entire security of the arc lines was gone, ripped to shreds by the feedback of mana along the grid itself. Eighty per cent of the wards had detonated when they had been torn asunder. Densyr shuddered to think what had happened to the eastern side of his city. The remaining parts of the grid were all active, and that was some relief should the Garonin still pursue their plan to march east to west without deviation.
Unfortunately, it seemed to Densyr that he would be unable to abandon his position. The grid was so unstable that to remove himself, and probably Septern too, from their buffering duties would allow the flailing mana lines to reconnect to the Heart so closing the circuit once more and feeding back the remaining mana. It might only be twenty per cent active, but there was enough power there to do serious damage. Destruction? Only Septern could tell.
‘Did we win?’ asked Septern.
Through the haze of the mana spectrum Densyr could see him slumped in his chair, eyelids fluttering.
‘That depends on your point of view.’
‘Where are the enemy?’
‘I can see no sign of them in the spectrum. But that means little, I suspect. We’ve surely given them a bloody nose and pause for thought.’
Septern chuckled. ‘And now you want me to work out a way to unpick the rest of the grid safely.’
‘It isn’t that I don’t enjoy standing between these two unruly forces, it’s just that I have other duties today.’
‘You are a strong mage, young Densyr. I am not surprised you were entrusted with Dawnthief.’
Densyr felt a warmth radiating through him, calming the forces pummelling him from the outside.
‘I am flattered,’ he said. ‘But let’s raise a glass to ourselves when we’re out of this. I’m tired. You must be exhausted.’
‘I can take the pressure now,’ said Septern. ‘Release yourself. Let me work.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘We’ll find out.’ Another dry chuckle. ‘Just don’t go far.’
Densyr disengaged himself from the point between Heart and grid, feeling Septern take the strain. Densyr sagged back into his chair. The roar of unsuppressed mana faded but there was no peace. He became immediately aware of a low unsettling noise from behind him, to the west. And of angry shouts coming from below, inside the college.
‘Sing if you need me, Septern,’ he said, pushing himself to his feet.
Densyr had to cling on to the arms of his chair just for a moment while the blood rushed away from his head, threatening to black him out. When it cleared, he walked to his balcony doors, took a deep breath and threw them open.
Ten years of rebuilding and pride, wiped out in the time it took to boil a cauldron of water. Densyr felt physically sick. In his mind’s eye he had seen rubble and dust but nothing could have prepared him for this. A few half walls were standing beyond the college gates but aside from that nothing remained of the entire eastern section of the city. On an arc that stretched for four miles left to right and three miles in depth, everything was gone.
‘Who needs the Garonin when we have such means at our disposal? ’ he whispered.
Fires still raged in hundreds of places. The yellow flame of burning wood mixed with the harsh dark blue flame of mana gorging itself on any material with which it came into contact. Those flailing strands of the grid, easily identifiable now, spewing out their energy, adding final insult to the crime that had been committed on Xetesk. The Wesmen had come and been beaten off. The demons had done such awful damage. Yet no enemy had managed quite the complete desolation that Densyr and Septern had been forced to perpetrate to save . . .