by Kim Wedlock
All eyes drummed back onto the trembling mage.
Nervously, they waited. Minutes dragged as the fog crept away, the ice melted, the phantasmal lights diminished and the air returned to summer warmth, but, in time, the wooded slopes had finally returned to normality.
But Rathen didn't straighten. He didn't collapse. He didn't exhale in fatigue. Though his task had come to an end and the floating Zi'veyn descended gracefully into his hands, he didn't move.
Their earlier trepidation rose as the relic struck his palm and tumbled to the ground. But as they stared, trying to read his purpose through the shaking of his shoulders, another far more sudden movement ensnared their attention. The haggard old mage had burst furiously to his feet, surrounded by the popping and flashing of small, blinding lights.
It was then that Rathen crumpled, and the mage surged for him, clambering feverishly over the stone that divided them while he landed face-down in the dirt.
The two swordsmen were in motion in a heartbeat. Leaping between them, Garon struck with the flat of his blade, thrusting the crazed assailant back while Petra seized Rathen by the shoulder and dragged him away to safety. His fever was evident upon contact. She cursed none too carefully. "Not again, Rathen," she grunted, setting him down against the furthest tree, "not now..."
The horses bellowed in alarm behind them, and she turned in time to see Garon strike the ground beneath the pressure of a spell. The mage dove for him immediately. And she was too far to help.
Another force of windless power suddenly blasted by, clipping the mage mid-leap, throwing him aside even as Garon braced his sword across himself. Petra spared the briefest glance to its source: the reins of both mounted horses in one hand, the palm of Anthis's right was bared flat towards the mage.
She didn't indulge her shock, gratitude or disgust. "Keep clear of him," she called instead, and left Rathen huddled, burning and shaking, whispering for them all to flee while she leapt towards the rising inquisitor.
The mage scrambled back to his feet with a ghastly convulsion of weeping and whooping while she snatched Garon by the shirt, but as she dragged him away despite his protests, the mage didn't follow. It only alarmed them more.
He began staggering around as if in a daze, clawing his face and clutching his head while the lights popped faster and fire sparked like lightning. The smell of burning wood, cloth and skin began to outweigh that of the forest.
Garon stopped struggling. As another abrupt blast propelled the raving mage deeper among the trees, he and Petra hurried back to Rathen, lifted his limp body between them and carried him to safety while Anthis steered the panicking horses away, keeping his distance on Petra's command.
Mercifully, every back was turned when the explosion came. But the sharp, startled, agonised shriek carried for miles.
Anthis soon dismounted, his hair standing on end from that haunting sound, but he didn't venture far. Aria began to scramble down, but he pushed her back into the saddle. "Stay there," he ordered with an unnatural firmness. She cast her huge, glistening eyes upon him, and though they were filled in that brief moment with protest and fright, she heeded him. Her little knuckles turned white as she clutched the reins even tighter.
Garon cursed as he snatched his hand back from Rathen's forehead. "He's scolding." He looked across the shaking body towards Petra, and noticed immediately a strange colour in her eyes. He knew what it meant. "This has happened before."
Reluctantly, she nodded. "A week ago. He got control of himself in the end, but it didn't last this long. And this time he's exhausted by the Zi'veyn..." They watched him shake and mutter, warning them away on a thin voice. Her jaw tightened. "He wouldn't talk about it afterwards, I don't know what happened. But I don't think there's anything we can do..."
Garon rose. "Get your bolas. Stay with him." He ignored her questioning look and hurried towards the others, whose expectation he also discarded, and retrieved a number of waterskins. Then he approached Eyila, but it was clear in an instant that the girl was still enthralled. But he had to try. "Fever," he said, "do you have anything for a fever?" She looked right through him. "Eyila, listen to me, do you--" A pouch suddenly hung in front of him, extended from the sash hidden beneath her cloak. She looked down slowly, and while there was still a great distance in her eyes, there was also a spark of familiarity. He took it, bowed his thanks, and hurried back, realising only as he returned and opened it that he hadn't a clue what to do with it.
Petra, however, took it from him immediately and began rolling two of the small, fibrous red balls between her hands. They broke apart in moments and released a miasma that quickly cast a chill in Garon's eyes, reminiscent of mint but for its distinctly sweet fragrance and the lethargy that it induced. He leaned back and shook it off, watching as Petra pressed it against the mage's slick forehead.
"How did you know what to do?" He asked, tempering his surprise.
"I've seen Eyila do it. These are fur beetles. She used them in antiseptic - when we fell in that--"
"I recall."
She smiled apologetically, then chuckled as he shook his head in shame. He glanced up at the pleasant sound, and for a moment, their gazes locked. Until they both looked away.
Slowly, Rathen stopped shaking, his temperature began to drop, and within minutes was sitting up on his own, head in his hands, an empty waterskin at his feet, and Aria clinging closely to his side, her young face warped in grief.
Chapter 28
"What do you mean, 'it's not right'?"
Rathen squirmed beneath the expectant stares and tightened his folded arms. Half an hour had passed yet they'd remained uneasily close to the forest while he'd recovered, and in that time he'd made a rather distressing discovery. Even Eyila, who had slowly returned to her senses, seemed to detect the same thing. She was the only one not looking at him in dismay.
"Well...the spells have stopped--"
"We can see that much," Garon snapped impatiently. "The point?"
"The, uh...the magic is still here." The thickened silence seemed to have suddenly lunged for his throat. He straightened in defence. "The scrolls I'd read, with Anthis's translations and that elf's journal, all said the Zi'veyn suspends the magic in the blood, interrupting and blocking spell-casting. Magic outside of blood - which, I remind you, I managed to target despite the fact that this thing was never designed to do it - has also been suspended and the chains broken. The magic has completely broken down."
"...But?"
"...But it...hasn't gone anywhere. It's as good as raw now, truly, so it's no danger, but it...should have dissipated immediately." Again, silence. "I'm sure it will," he amended hurriedly, "now it's not doing anything, it's just going to take time. The spells haven't been countered, they really have been unravelled, so it is harmless...it's just going to take time to fade away..."
"Right," Garon shook his head. "So, ultimately, there is no problem?"
"Well, no, but...it's just not the result I expected."
"What does it mean?" Anthis asked, frowning between the two mages, both of whom clearly understood more on the matter than he did. "If the magic is still here, doing anything or not, that's still a problem, isn't it? If it should have vanished as soon as you finished--"
"Why didn't you notice this before?"
"Because," he bristled, "this is the first time we've not had to flee immediately after, or been carried off. Now, though, I can feel it. As for what it means, I don't know. There's no order to it, there's no way for it to affect anything on its own, but if it's still here, in whatever state, I can't help feeling like it could still wind up causing trouble - that someone, somehow, could still abuse it. Though I can't fathom how."
"Neither can I," Eyila agreed with a pensive frown. "But I'm also uneasy about it. It should have disappeared."
Rathen sighed deeply in frustration. "We'll work it out."
"What about mages?" He looked inquiringly to Petra. "Well...he didn't seem too pleased when you broke the spells
. How far will that go? Was it just because he was here, or...? I mean," she chuckled nervously, "we're really close to Kulokhar..."
Worried looks were exchanged when neither mage answered.
"What about Owan's message? Did you find anything?" Anthis asked if just to move the matter on, but Rathen's expression became only bleaker.
"Yes. I did."
"And it's not good, I take it?"
"It depends on how you want to look at it. No, magic isn't 'weaving' into the elements, but it is complicating them, to the extent that they have become kind of saturated with it."
"And the difference is...?"
"Weaving is irreversible; saturating is separable."
"I'd have guessed the other way around."
"No - water and cloth, cloth can be dried out; thread and cloth, thread becomes a part of it. But the point is that the saturation makes the elements easier to manipulate magically."
"And the magic is still here..."
"No - well, yes, it is, but that isn't a concern in this case because it's not in any organised form anymore so it's not interacting with anything. As far as the danger from affected earth, wind and rain are concerned, it's as good as gone. Cloth only gets wet when you combine the two, when they interact, not when they're just next to each other."
"But it means that mages could change it." They looked down at Aria, who even now remained protectively close to her father as she peered back in worry. "And they could use it as a weapon, couldn't they?"
"Yes," he smiled regretfully, stroking her soft curls, "they could - but not by just anyone. They'd have to truly understand magic, which narrows down the risk even in the Order."
"But it could also mean that my people and I have difficulty if the elements don't react to our casting as they usually do," Eyila mused in concern. "Results could be violent. Or imperceptible. And Salus doesn't seem to be 'just anyone', either." She cast a severely thoughtful look across them all and found that Rathen had already come to the same conclusion.
He sighed heavily. "Potentially, he could use it to his advantage if he has the right guidance. If he were to...link up the chasms or something like that."
"That's absurd," Petra scoffed.
"My point is that it could become a problem." His gaze passed by chance over Garon, who he discovered had fixed him with hard eyes. He straightened beneath the rigidity.
"Are you sure?" The inquisitor asked concisely. "You've only tried once--"
"Garon, if I had never seen the magic before, fine, I would have a lot to pick apart. But now, there's little left to discover. This is the situation, the bare-faced truth of it."
"Everything is increasingly in Salus's favour," Petra groaned hopelessly. "Can we really stop him? Is there really any chance at all?"
"Yes." Again, all attention dropped to Aria, and she stared back at them with such ardent conviction in her young eyes that she managed to inspire a small flicker of courage in each of their hearts. "There has to be."
Garon, to everyone's surprise, spared a brief chuckle as he nodded his agreement. "There has to be."
Anthis, however, sighed with a weary smile. "As if we needed any more reason to remove it. Or 'suspend' it." He looked up from the relic he'd been turning over obsessively while they spoke. "But I suppose it makes no difference. On we go."
The end of the matter drew in sharply when a sudden gasp set them all on alert, and the immediate ring of steel from the swordsmen hiked their agitation. But as the lone woman appeared hurrying towards them through the trees, recognition set in and half of them relaxed, while Aria simply beamed. Her gasp, it seemed, had been in excitement. Clearly their nerves were frayed.
But so, it seemed, were the woman's. Her expression a twisted grimace of dismay, her pace as she stormed towards them on impossibly light feet didn't slow as she neared. She greeted them with an equally abrupt demand to leave, and continued past without even a backward glance.
Rathen frowned after her. "Elle?" But she didn't respond beyond a hurried gesture. Duly, with the others close behind him, he grabbed Aria's hand, retrieved their horse and rushed after her over the side of the wooded slope and down into the neighbouring riverbed. It was there in the damp mud that she finally stopped and turned, scrutinising the surrounding ridges.
He moved close and dropped his voice, searching for whatever had alarmed her. "What is it?" She silenced him sharply, and for another long moment, they waited anxiously for her attention to finally fall upon them.
"You shouldn't be here."
"You're one to talk. What's happened? Were you followed?"
She smiled suddenly. "Don't be a fool, sweetheart. It's you who is being followed. But I have information that can't wait." Uneasily, they gathered closer. "I know how he intends to move Turunda."
Everyone had turned white by the time she'd finished her brief explanation. Rathen in particular was like a sheet. "But," he swallowed, squeezing down his anxious tremor and controlling his blood as best he could, "you don't know where?"
"No. The borders. That's the best I can give you."
"He'll be using ruins." Anthis's musing tone earned him unanimous confused glances, but while it seemed that the impact of her words had missed him, he'd simply distanced himself in favour of a clear head. His brow furrowed as though he were merely pondering a translation upon a weathered old stone. "There are chasms all over the place but the magic is at its strongest in the ruins. The chasms are probably widest there." She confirmed that with a nod. "As for borders, there are a number of ruins in the mountains. There are bound to be chasms there, too." She nodded once more. Anthis sighed heavily and cast an abstract look towards Rathen. "'Someone could abuse it'?"
Again, everyone's blood drained. Petra's voice trickled out in a horrified whisper. "And by removing the effects, we've just made it safer to approach..."
"Will he still be able to push the magic if the chains are broken, though? If all he's doing is casting near it to exacerbate it and then steering the reaction--" The historian's eyes widened in sudden realisation, kindling a green spark of hope. "Tha-that mage back there - nothing happened when he...well, nothing happened! The forest didn't collapse or catch fire - so casting around it shouldn't affect it! Surely, remaining or not, that magic won't be a problem now?"
"You'd think not," Rathen managed, attempting to push aside his dread as Anthis had, "but he has an elf instructing him. But what kind of instruction has he had?"
Taliel shook her head. A breeze passed as a unified sigh.
Garon, however, straightened stoically. "It doesn't matter. This is our only course of action. How long do we have?"
She held his level gaze, but Rathen saw her captivating copper-ringed eyes dim by the slightest degree. His heart sank. He knew what she was going to say even before the perceptive inquisitor could work it out. He turned away hopelessly. "He's already begun. Halen, Ausokh and Dustwatch. He lost control and the chasms snaked away on both attempts, but he did, ultimately, succeed."
Her words seemed to ring in the air. Heavy, dreadful, and yet they were as slow as feathers to settle. No one moved.
Until Rathen kicked violently at the damp mud, loosing a brief, furious roar. Everyone flinched, but even as their hearts pounded and eyes frantically searched the ridges, no one chastised him. Though Petra did prepare to reach for her bolas.
"What can we do?" Anthis finally dared as the air defeated Rathen's cry, looking around at the mage's back as he fell still and visibly seethed. "Can the Zi'veyn stop that much?"
"If you don't know," Taliel replied, "no one does. But the damage has already been done."
"Well, he's only one man; he can't possibly get to every area at once."
"No, and Doana has him distracted at the moment. And the elf hasn't been back, but there's no knowing when that will change."
"How," again they flinched at the incredulous voice as Rathen spun back towards them, "could he possibly have achieved this?!"
Taliel was the only one t
o face into his fury, and she spoke smoothly, untouched. "He's bypassed the learning. The elf has...meddled somehow, planted the information or cleared the clutter in his mind so he can get to it, as far as he says. I don't know - but the fact is that he can use his magic now, though not with the best of them; he knows how, but he lacks the experience and application."
"And how long will it be before he gains that, too?!"
She held his challenge. Only when Eyila spoke up did she look away, her musical voice capturing their full attention, as it so often did.
"We need to block the magic along the borders. Or suspend it."
"If we hit his targets, we'll be back in his sights."
"Well apparently we're already being followed again," Rathen snapped bitterly.
"It's the only way."
"It will rile him up even more."
"A thought," Anthis stepped in, "can we not draw the land back together? Seal up the chasms? If the magic is making the elements--"
"I don't have the power for that!"
"But Salus does?"
"With precise help and elven guidance, yes," he hissed, "he probably does."
"Then, if you had the same--"
"Which I don't."
Eyila mumbled quietly in thought. "...Then we need..."
"...Yes?"
She hesitated under the impatient stares. "The...elves. We need the elves' help. Of course."
Anthis's bemused frown lingered, while Rathen rejected the suggestion before she'd even finished. "Absolutely not. Even if Eizariin could be contacted, I wouldn't trust his help. Anthis only had a couple of hours with him - that's not enough to know anyone's allegiance."
"Then what do you suggest?"
He merely stared back at the historian while he searched for an answer. Taliel spoke before he could discover one, her eyes once again scrutinising the hills.
"There's more: he's beginning to trap areas like these - ruins and anywhere else known to be awash with magic. He's also establishing surveillance spells in towns, cities and crossroads - they're already in Kulokhar, Pelas and Stoke Rass."
