‘Ready,’ said Jonas.
Diera nodded again and put her hands under Hirad’s backside to lift him onto her chest.
‘Put him on your back, Mother,’ said Jonas. ‘He’ll be better protected that way.’
‘Hirad?’ asked Diera.
The boy shrugged and climbed up on Diera’s back. She put her arms under his thighs.
‘Thank you, Jonas.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Densyr. ‘Jonas up front with me. We’ll shield your mother.’
Jonas kept pace with him. They hurried down the corridor, a long, narrow space that inclined very slightly along its length. As they approached the end, Densyr heard a sound from ahead and brought them to a sliding stop. Footsteps, heavy and deliberate.
‘Be ready,’ he said.
Jonas clutched his sword in both hands. The point tapped on the ground. Densyr could not suppress a smile.
‘Sol used to wait until we could see them at least,’ he said.
‘It helps the nerves,’ said Jonas.
‘For us too.’
Round the corner came a figure, carrying another in his arms. Densyr sagged with relief and ran towards them.
‘Suarav. Dear Gods above, man, how are you still alive?’
Suarav’s face crumpled. Tears streaked down the dirt encasing his face. His shoulders shook. The head of the man in his arms fell outwards. Brynar. Behind him, Diera gasped.
‘Hide your head, Hirad. Do it now.’
The whole of Brynar’s left leg beneath the knee was gone. Ripped away by some huge force. Blood still dripped from the stump.
‘Help him,’ managed Suarav. ‘He fought so well.’
‘Put him down,’ said Densyr. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do for him now.’
Suarav shook his head. ‘Don’t say that. So many of them out there. We held them. He deserves to live. He—’
Suarav’s body juddered and blew sideways, slamming into the opposite wall of the corridor. White tears thudded into his body, ripping him and the dead Brynar into smoking pieces. Diera screamed. Densyr swore. More footsteps. Powerful and rhythmic. Two men at least, possibly three.
‘I’m ready to cast. Jonas . . . Jonas, no!’
‘Jonas!’ shrieked Diera.
The boy had heard neither of them. He had run to the end of the corridor and was waiting just away from the turning, sword cocked back. Densyr could see his body heaving and the tremble in his legs. Densyr began moving towards him, his spell itching to be cast. It shouldn’t feel like that.
A Garonin soldier appeared at the corridor entrance, stooping to squeeze his frame into the confined space. Jonas hesitated, looking up at the eight-foot-tall figure hunched under the low ceiling. But not for long. With a cry, he swung his sword round and up. The blade sheared through armour at the waist. The Garonin howled in agony and fell back.
Densyr made the end of the corridor and cast his Defence spell down it. Two more Garonin stood there. White tears played over the blue-washed barrier. Densyr could feel every impact through his arms. He clung on to the casting, finding it hard to concentrate.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked himself.
By him, Jonas was staring at the blood on his sword. He was shivering.
‘I killed someone,’ he said, his voice tiny.
‘And though I shouldn’t say it, your father would have been proud of you. Just check your moves with me first next time, eh?’
The answer to Densyr’s first question became obvious. The walls all around them and throughout the catacombs glowed deep blue and trembled. Densyr pushed hard at his casting, forcing the Garonin back along the corridor.
‘Time to leave. And quickly.’
There was beauty in the way it all folded back, thought Dystran. A certain symmetry of which Septern himself would have been proud. The lines of the ward grid had gathered together when he had let go the entry point between Heart and casting. The place where he should have set his mind to keep the opposing forces at bay was now empty. There was more he could do, however, and do it he did.
Dystran imagined himself humming as he did his work. His mother used to hum when she was cooking so it seemed the right thing to be doing. Dystran did not want to let the small chance that the energies within the grid would dissipate come to fruition. So he directed the mana flow back along the grid lines, using his failing mind to force them into the shape of a rope with individual fibres spiralling together.
And when that was thick enough, for his own amusement he gave the shape of this focused mana an arrowhead. Feedback. The most terrifying force any casting mage would ever face. But at this moment, Dystran’s last on this Earth, it was simply stupendous in its simplicity and its power.
The arrowhead slammed into the gentle pulsing hourglass of the Heart’s mana. There really could be only one outcome. He hoped Densyr escaped it. That would somehow be just.
For Dystran the world turned a fiery blue and then to utter dark.
Densyr gathered every ounce of strength in his mind and pushed. The Garonin were shoved straight into the hub room and flattened against the wall to one side of the stairway. Surely there were many hundreds more enemy up the stairs but that was a chance they’d have to take.
Densyr held the spell a few moments more.
‘Got to ask you to do something, Jonas,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Jonas. ‘I’ll take left.’
‘Good lad. Don’t think about it. Only consider what they have forced your father to do. Don’t let them take any more of your family.’
Jonas nodded, a grim expression on his young face. The sight of it angered Densyr more than anything he had seen these past days. He gave the Ilkar’s Defence another shove, batting the heads of the Garonin against the wall one more time.
‘Dropping on three,’ he said. ‘One, two . . . three! Defence down.’
The two of them rushed the stunned Garonin. Densyr dragged a dagger from his boot sheath, reached up and rammed it into the neck of his target. Beside him, Jonas gave a wavering call and stabbed his man through the stomach. His blade ran straight through and screeched against the wall.
‘And now it’s time to run.’
Densyr ran for the stairs up to the ruined tower complex. He had not got two steps before he felt the air being sucked out of his lungs. A wind howled down the stairs, a mana gale that blasted through his mind. Behind him Sol’s family couldn’t feel it at all. He screamed and clamped his hands to the sides of his head, dropping to his knees and tumbling back.
He felt hands about him, trying to help him. All around them the blue in the walls had faded to a crisp white and frost bulged out, thick and grabbing. Ice fingers probed into millennia-old stone. The catacombs gave a death rattle. A complete silence fell.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Diera.
‘The Heart is about to stop beating,’ said Densyr.
There were footsteps on the stairs. Densyr swore. Hirad screeched and clutched hard at Diera’s neck. Four Garonin pounded into the hub room. Densyr wasn’t ready. He had no spell prepared. His head was thumping as loud as the enemy boots. Jonas rushed in, yelling at them to leave his mother alone. A Garonin arm came round. The back of the soldier’s hand clattered into Jonas’s chest, sending him sprawling.
Diera and Hirad both shrieked Jonas’s name. Garonin weapons trained on Densyr. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. From his left two shadows whipped by. He heard a Garonin shout. There was a howl and then the crunchy of fang on flesh and bone. A weapon was fired, dust and stone fell from the ceiling. Densyr dared to look.
Both wolves had attacked from a side passageway. Two Garonin were down. The other two trying to beat the wolves back. Jonas stormed past him and hacked his sword into an exposed back. Densyr, impelled to action, freed his dagger again. He paced forward. The one free Garonin reared back, a wolf snarling and snapping in his arms. The soldier roared with the effort.