It was too late. Surprised, already off-center from the lunge which had missed its target, Leeana’s lifting foot unbalanced him completely. He hit the ground with bone-crushing force, crying out as something shattered in his right shoulder. Slivers of anguish rocketed through him, and he shook his head groggily, dragging himself up as high as his knees. He had to get back on his feet, he had to Something flashed over his head. A kneecap rammed into his shoulder blades like a maul, and his left hand clawed uselessly at his suddenly blood-slick throat as the war maid garrotte bit deep. He gurgled, twisting frantically, and Leeana Hanathafressa crossed her wrists behind his head, set her shoulders, and twisted with all her strength.
The last sound Cassan Axehammer ever heard was the crunching snap of his own neck.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Varnaythus stared into his gramerhain, jaw tight while echoes of disbelief reverberated deep in his eyes.
Impossible. Everything had gone perfectly- perfectly! — and that bastard Tellian had turned it around on him anyway. After all his years of effort, his plans, the risks he’d run-after he’d gotten every piece into position despite all the obstacles and every one of his Lady’s demands-all of it had been torn apart by the last minute interference of one miserable mage, a mangy pack of war maids, one minor lord warden…and a single meddling wind rider who seemed to be almost as hard to kill as her never to be sufficiently accursed husband! It couldn’t have happened, yet it had.
Disbelief turned into crackling fury as a tall, slim, redhaired young woman and a huge chestnut courser cantered up to the smoking ruins of a hunting lodge. The young woman slid from the saddle, crossed to where her father stood beside the King of the Sothoii and dropped something round at Markhos’ feet. The King rolled the round object to one side with the toe of his boot, and Cassan Axehammer’s dead, astounded eyes stared up at the monarch he’d tried to murder.
“ Bitch! ” the wizard hissed, all the years of wasted effort that severed head represented crashing through him in a torrent of rage, and his hand twitched towards the carved-bone wand lying on the desk before him.
“Would that be wise?” a quiet voice asked, and Varnaythus’ head swiveled. Sahrdohr met his gaze and shrugged ever so slightly. “It’s your decision, but as soon as we activate the kairsalhain, everyone in Norfressa will know exactly who was behind all this. Or every mage-and Wencit-will, at any rate, and even with Her orders, the Council won’t like that.”
Varnaythus glared, but even as he did, he knew his anger wasn’t truly-or shouldn’t be, at any rate-directed at the magister. Sahrdohr simply happened to be close enough to serve as a focus, and Varnaythus forced himself to leash his temper. It wasn’t easy, under the circumstances, but no one could attain the rank of master wizard without learning how to govern his own passions.
“Point,” he said after a moment, his voice sharp, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. Then he turned back to his own gramerhain.
Arm Shahana’s image glowed with the silver-shot blue of Lillinara, and a fresh lava flow of anger rippled through him as he watched her lay hands upon Markhos Silveraxe. The glowing blue corona ran down her arms to her hands, lapping about the King, and Varnaythus could actually see his wound closing. Somehow the healing of that wound-the wound which was the visible proof of how close they’d come to hurling the Kingdom of the Sothoii into civil war and destruction-actually helped him throttle the fuming embers of his rage.
He inhaled again, more naturally, and gave himself a shake. It was because watching her heal Markhos put everything back into focus, he decided. It punctuated the failure of Athnar’s assassins-and Cassan-and forced him to consider everything afresh, with all the hard-earned dispassion he’d learned in his long, ambitious life.
They’d moved everyone out of the ruins of the hunting lodge as the last of the flames gnawed away at the remaining fuel, but they hadn’t gone very far. Nor would they, with so many wounded men. Shahana would heal the worst hurt, but a single arm of Lillinara wasn’t going to be able to heal very many of them, and moving injured men over Sothoii roads would be an agonizing ordeal for the wounded. Messengers had been sent galloping off to Balthar and Sothofalas, and he was certain additional armsmen and healers would swarm towards Chergor as soon as those messengers reached their destinations. Eventually, of course, Markhos would retire either to Balthar or to his capital, but no Sothoii king would leave a field where so many had fallen in his defense until he’d personally seen all the survivors properly cared for. That meant Markhos would be anchored to the vicinity of the burned hunting lodge for at least the next day or two, and all he really needed to be was within a half-mile or so.
The kairsalhain Varnaythus had carefully planted under the hearth in the main lodge was undoubtedly buried under collapsed, charred timbers and masonry, but the most intense mortal fire would scarcely affect the stone. It was formed of the same crystal as his gramerhain, fused in the heart of a working beside which the most powerful lightning bolt was but a weak and pallid thing. And, like his gramerhain, it had come from the working with an affinity for the art. It was sensitized, attuned to the art-no larger than a child’s thumb, yet capable of focusing and storing workings that could have destroyed a city the size of Trofrolantha itself. Yet that was only one of its possible functions. Kairsalhains could be-and often were-used as repositories for such spells, as well as…more subtle ones, but they could also be used as beacons, anchors, or keys.
Varnaythus was still uncertain exactly how the mage wind-walking talent functioned, but it was clearly different from the spells of teleportation available to a wizard, for a wind-walker could travel to places he’d never been, never even seen, if he made the journey in short enough stages. A wizard couldn’t. The art needed a focus, an aiming point, and (also unlike wind walkers) it cost a wizard dearly in gathered power and concentration to teleport himself over long distances even with a focus; trying to transport anyone else at the same time drove the cost upward exponentially. Almost anything could be used as a focus at need, as long as the wizard had prepared it properly before he or someone else deposited it at his intended destination, but kairsalhain was best, because it could be charged before it was placed. The wizard could draw upon the energy stored in the stone rather than expending freshly gathered (and sometimes…unruly) power, which let him arrive undrained, with his command of the art unimpaired-not a minor consideration when colleagues who wished one ill might be awaiting one’s arrival.
There were other advantages to using kairsalhains, of course. A wizard’s wards created a shielded area into which no teleportation spell could reach, for example. But if he’d placed a kairsalhain within it and properly attuned it to the individual idiosyncrasies of his wards, he or an ally with the correct words of command could still pass directly through them without difficulty and without the need to lower those wards and expose himself to someone else’s attack. And teleportation spells weren’t the only workings a kairsalhain could store.
Like the one under the heat-cracked hearth of a burned hunting lodge.
He touched his wand again, stroking it lightly, feeling the power quivering against his palm. He had only to speak the word of command here in his working chamber, and hundreds of leagues away that stone would awaken in a blast of heat and fury like the very kiss of Carnadosa. The crater would be almost a mile across. The forest around the lodge would be flattened, splintered, turned into a roaring inferno that burned for days. And Markhos and Tellian and Arm Shahana and Leeana Hanathafressa would be wiped from the surface of the earth as if they had never existed.