Please, begged the dreamer. I’ll give you anything you want.
What could you possibly give me that would be worth my children’s future?
Your life! I can reset this, return you to the way you were, the god answered.
The way I was before the void took root in my heart? I asked, suddenly curious.
No. The way you were just after that. If you’re careful you can live a long life, longer than any man has before. Even if you last a thousand years it will be better than forcing me to start anew, said the god.
I could last much longer than that, I warned. Don’t underestimate me.
Even so, it will be better. You cannot imagine how long it took to create you.
I pondered that idea for a time, while the planes of dimensional force continued to slowly stretch toward me.
Hurry, said the god. Time is still moving. I cannot stop it completely!
Then I have an answer for you, I said.
Chapter 47
Karen appeared outside the mountainside cottage with George and carefully eased Elaine’s remains onto the grass. The vegetation seemed uncommonly vibrant in contrast to Elaine’s pale, blood-streaked skin. She sat there with George for several minutes, her arms around his shoulders. He didn’t move or speak, nor did his shoulders move to indicate he was crying. He was simply there, his heart as empty and lifeless as his sister’s body.
She looked up in surprise when two figures emerged from the house, Lady Rose and Myra. “How are you here?” she nearly shouted, her question meant equally for both of them. She had last seen Rose in the clearing, miles from where they were now, and she had taken Myra there to assist the others only a short time previously.
Rose answered first, “I have no idea, though I suppose it must have been Mordecai’s doing. One minute I was there, trying to keep still, the next I was here.”
Myra appeared embarrassed. “It was at Matthew’s insistence. He didn’t want me to go personally. The one you took with you was a spell-twin.” Then her eyes took in what was on the ground beside Karen and George. Rose caught her shoulders as Myra stumbled.
“What happened?” asked Rose, her voice commanding.
Karen felt guilty answering. Even the simple act of trying to keep her voice calm while she recited what she had witnessed felt like a betrayal of her friend. Both George and Myra remained silent while she recounted what had happened, but Rose’s body seemed to grow tenser.
When she finished, Rose asked, “Who was the man who you said saved you?”
“The one that appeared at the beginning, when Sir Cyhan fired the crossbow. He fought with Cyhan and nearly killed him. Then he fought with Gram and Alyssa. They had already made peace when he helped me,” explained Karen. Then she added, “He had Gram’s symbol on his breastplate.”
“Symbol?” asked Myra, slightly confused.
But Rose had already understood. “You mean his arms, the heraldic device that Gram has on his shield?”
Karen nodded. “Yes.”
Rose’s voice was taut as she phrased her next question. “Did they say who he was? Did Gram recognize him?”
“No, they didn’t say his name,” said Karen, “but Gram called him his father. That part didn’t make sense, though. I thought Gram’s dad had passed on or something. Isn’t he your husband?”
“Take me there,” ordered Rose, stepping forward and grabbing Karen’s wrist in an iron grip. When the younger woman hesitated, she snapped, “Now!”
Before they could go, Carissa stepped out behind them. She had been listening from inside the door. “Wait. Take me too.”
Reflexively, Rose started to respond, “It’s too dang…”
“The world might be ending,” said Carissa. “And I can’t even remember his face.”
Rose already agreed; in fact, she had stopped her words before Carissa had even begun to speak. She nodded to Carissa and then looked back at Karen. “Take us both—please.”
***
Matthew’s mind was clear in a way that only ever came to him when he was working on something that required all of his attention. The enchantment he had crafted was a thing of unbelievable complexity, but at its smallest level it was a repeating pattern, a pattern he understood. Most of the energy required for it had been invested during its creation, otherwise they would never have had time to use it when his father appeared.
Theoretically, like most use-activated enchantments, virtually all of the aythar could have been put into it during creation, so that the user would only need trigger it with a thought or word, but he hadn’t had the time to perfect and polish his design. The edges of the cube didn’t match up properly, which made the construct more like six separate enchantments, with twelve incongruous interfaces where each side met the others.
Given another year he might have found a way to match everything perfectly, probably with the help of more of Myra’s ever-useful spellbeasts, but lacking that there had only been one solution. He and the others, Lynaralla, Irene, and Conall, would serve as living conduits, acting as the mortar that would hold the cube together. Since there were twelve interfaces, each of them would manage three. The four of them were linked mind-to-mind, giving Matt absolute control of their gifts, since he was the only one that truly understood the workings of the enchantment and they would need perfect coordination to balance the immense forces stored within the matrix.
Despite his pretense at confidence, he had been wracked by doubts, and when the black pillar of flame had appeared, he had felt a moment of pure panic. Deep down he knew their effort would fail; it had to fail. The theory was sound, but even though the others all seemed to think that dimensional planes were something that could effortlessly separate and divide people or matter, he knew it wasn’t that simple. Transporting something, even through a dimensional interface, required energy. The amount was relatively small compared to the size or mass of the thing moved, but it wasn’t insignificant.
The thing that appeared between them, his father, was a mass of aythar and negative void energy so dense that it defied description. The cage that they had prepared contained several celiors worth of aythar, but if it didn’t meet the minimum amount required by the almost immeasurable thing that stood between them, the cage would fail.
The consequences of that would be so immediate and catastrophic that Matt figured he probably wouldn’t even have time to appreciate his own death. Neither would the rest of the world, in all likelihood. Their universe would probably last longer, perhaps a day or two, and then it and the other dimensions would discover a similar fate.
No pressure.
Reaching out through the link, Matthew assumed control of his siblings, becoming a being with four minds, four brains—four perspectives. As one, they uttered the words to bring the golden cage to life, and almost as quickly things began to spin out of control.
It was too much for them.
Lynaralla’s emittance, the amount of aythar she could reliably channel, was too low to handle three sides. The effort would burn her to ash within a span of seconds. Conall and Irene were both strong enough, but were slightly out of balance, and the pressure that created made Lynaralla’s problem even worse. To stop the impending collapse, he shifted one of Lynaralla’s sides to Conall.
That postponed the immediate risk of failure as Lynaralla’s load dropped beneath what she could handle, but it created an imbalance in the structure, and a harmonic resonance began to grow that would eventually shake the cube—and by extension, them—apart. To balance it he needed to shift control of a fourth side to either Irene or himself.
Irene was strong enough, but she was in the wrong position. Conall was directly opposite Matt, along a diagonal, so the best option was for him to take it. With a thought, he shifted one of Irene’s sides to himself and the resonance faded. Now he and Conall each had four, Lynaralla held two, close to her limit, and Irene had two, which was an easy task for her.
Minutes passed as the construct stabilized and the
final activation energy, supplied by the four Illeniel mages, filled in the gaps. It was going to work, and with that realization Matthew felt a wave of guilt sweep over him. They were killing their father, and some of them hadn’t known what he was asking them to do.
Irene’s thoughts rose from the depths of their communal mind, We’re not stupid.
Even I figured it out, said Conall. We’re family. Don’t try to take all the blame. We’re all in this with you.
Lynaralla’s response was the equivalent of a mental nod.
Matthew’s face tightened as he felt their support. He had been stupid. Remembering his father’s favorite motto, he felt tears forming in his eyes—in their eyes. I love you Dad, but stupid dies today.
At the same time, the pain of their efforts began to grow. He and Conall probably wouldn’t be good for much for a few days afterward; Lynaralla too, in all probability. With a final surge, the enchantment was complete. He felt a burning pain shoot through him, and then the world went black.
All four of them collapsed, and the link between their minds dissolved. The golden cube was gone, and there was no sign of the black pillar of flame that had been at its center. Matthew and Lynaralla were unconscious, and Conall was nearly so. Irene felt her cheeks begin to sting as she lifted her head from the ground.
The sky was almost dark as a towering brown maelstrom of earth and wind roared nearby, and Irene realized the stinging was because its edge was almost upon her. In the center of the storm, her magesight revealed a powerful wizard, one as strong as Tyrion or one of her siblings, but she didn’t recognize the aythar.
At the same time, she became aware of the others around her. Gram, Alyssa, Chad, Karen, Rose, and even Carissa were there, along with another, a man she didn’t recognize, though he was too big to forget. They knelt, close to the ground, trying to shield themselves and one another from the scouring wind. Meanwhile, above them, the dragons were tumbling through the sky, driven by currents of air too powerful for even their wings to counter.
Conall started to pass her, an aythar shield forming over his armor, but Irene put a hand on his arm. “This is too much. You’re half-dead already.”
Frustrated by the truth, Conall met her eyes. “We have to do something. She’ll kill all of us otherwise.”
“Shield the others,” she told him. “I’ve still got some fight in me.”
Conall nodded and used his power to drag Matt and Lynaralla’s bodies closer, then joined the others, kneeling beside them as he formed a shallow hemisphere of force above their heads.
Irene faced the storm, then slipped one hand into her skirt pocket and withdrew what appeared to be a small stylus. She spoke a word and it grew, becoming a full staff in her hands. She placed the butt of the staff against the ground to brace herself, and then she reached out to the wind with her power.
For a moment, nothing happened, but then the winds began to slow noticeably, and the storm began to exhibit strange currents and eddies as parts of it slowed and others sped up. At the center of the storm, Brigid snarled and redoubled her efforts. She already had the advantage and she knew it. It was harder to stop a storm than to start one, and yet, as the seconds ticked past her grip on the wind began to slip.
Outside the storm, Irene stood, implacable. Her will was inexorable, for she had her father’s power and her mother’s stubbornness. She fought the heavens, pitting herself against the incredible momentum of the air itself, and even with Brigid urging it on, she wrestled it to a standstill.
Abruptly, Brigid stopped, releasing her grip on the air. For a long moment the world seemed to hold its breath, and then the sand and soil that had been suspended began to fall, spreading outward and covering the entire valley in a choking cloud of soil and churning air. The sun vanished, obscured by the dust, and everywhere there was darkness. Then she began to run.
Irene’s magesight saw her coming, but she wasn’t afraid. She had already proven her mastery. Lifting her staff, she pointed one end toward the woman she couldn’t yet see and unleashed a channeled blast of pure destruction. Though Brigid dodged to one side, it still struck her, skimming across her enchanted shield and knocking her sideways. But she didn’t stop. Rolling back to her feet, she came on anyway.
Irene sent several more blasts at her opponent, but none managed to stop her. She felt a seed of doubt creep into her heart as the strange and feral mage got ever closer. How can her shield be so strong when I was able to overpower her storm? she wondered.
A strange feeling swept over her, and Irene ducked to one side as a razor-sharp chain swept through the air where her head had been a second before. She couldn’t see or feel it with her magesight, and if her eyes hadn’t seen the shadow as it passed over her, she wouldn’t have known why she had ducked.
Then Brigid was upon her, and in the dim light Irene saw why her attacks had been useless, for Brigid’s body was covered in a tattooed enchantment. She leapt at Irene like a wild animal, arms outstretched, but instead of claws, her arms were sheathed in pure destructive power.
Irene dropped her staff and did the only thing she could; she brought up both her palms and sent a broad shockwave of power forth, blasting Brigid backward to give her some space. In the dark part of her mind, beneath conscious thought, her brain was calculating, and the answers it was giving her weren’t good. Her enemy was very nearly as strong as she was, and her body was covered in tattooed enchantments. That meant there was very little chance Irene’s magic could break her defense directly.
At the same time, Brigid’s blade-like arms were also enhanced by her tattoos, making them quite capable of cutting through Irene’s simple shields. In fact, her shields were a liability, for if they were broken, Irene’s ability to continue would be destroyed. She dropped them and dodged to the left as another unseen attack from the chain threatened to put an abrupt end to her.
She was essentially fighting two opponents, and she didn’t have much of a chance against either of them. The chain kept coming, completely ignoring her attempts to wrangle it with her power, while Brigid was rapidly approaching from behind. She’d have been dead already if it weren’t for the strange sixth sense that kept warning her of unexpected attacks.
Fear found her then, and it felt as though her insides were trying to escape by themselves. But despite it, or maybe because of it, Irene refused to give up. To avoid both attacks, she formed a spear-shaped cone of power beneath her feet and then drove herself downward, letting the ground itself serve as her shield.
She knew it was a foolish move, but it had been her only option. A mage as powerful as Brigid could simply wait above, using her power and the mass of the earth itself to smother her, but that would be a slow process, and Irene was betting that the insane woman wouldn’t want to wait.
Robbed of her prey, Brigid let forth a guttural growl of frustration, and then in her eagerness for the kill, she began to user her power to rip the earth apart so she could dig down to reach her tenacious enemy. She discovered her mistake too late, as Irene sent her power upward to encase her body, dragging her down into the torn soil.
A fierce tug of war ensued, as the two women’s wills battled for supremacy. Brigid fought to lift herself back up, while Irene pulled her down, threatening to bury her in the ground. Eventually a stalemate was reached, with only Brigid’s head and shoulders above the ground, while the rest of her body was trapped by the ground and Irene’s power. She couldn’t free herself, and Irene’s strength threatened to crush her if she didn’t continue to resist its iron grip.
Meanwhile, Irene was twenty feet down, holding her breath and painfully aware of the fact that she didn’t have long to live. She needed to crush Brigid quickly, for she was running out of air, but no matter how she pressed, the insane wizardess above her refused to give up.
A ray of hope shone in Irene’s heart as she felt Brigid’s will seem to weaken, but then she discovered why. Through the soil she felt the chain moving, inching toward her as Brigid directed it to worm
its way deeper. Whether the chain would reach her first or she blacked out from lack of air was an open question, but it was clear she had lost.
But that didn’t mean she would quit trying. Irene prepared to reverse her efforts. A sudden change in the direction of her power would send Brigid skyward and allow her to free herself from the ground.
Hold her, Rennie. Just a minute longer!
It was Conall. He had released his shield over the others, and though his power was exhausted, he still had his sword. Irene could feel him above her as he ran across the torn ground. Brigid’s chain reversed itself, struggling to reach the surface in time to defend her, but it was too late. Brigid fought to turn her own power against Conall as well, but Irene kept her pinned, smothering the wild woman’s aythar with her own.
And then Conall was there, and his golden blade struck the raven-haired woman’s head from her shoulders. It was over.
Irene’s heart was pounding by the time she broke free and could draw breath again. Resting on the dirty ground, she looked at Conall and then realized they were alone. “Where is everyone?”
Conall smiled back, then let his head fall forward to rest between his knees. “Karen took them to the house, although Gram and his father put up a lot of argument. I thought you had her at first,” he said. “But that girl was worse than Tyrion.” After a second, he gave her an apologetic look. “You were still stronger though, Rennie.”
She shook her head. “That wasn’t what mattered. She probably could have killed me or you, but that’s the difference, isn’t it? She wasn’t fighting just me. She was fighting us.”
Her brother blushed, embarrassed. “I didn’t do much. It was all you.”
“You did enough,” she countered.
Chapter 48
Dorian was pacing back and forth, full of pent-up frustration, and Gram and Alyssa weren’t much better. Watching them, Rose felt sure they would wear out the floor. “Would you stop it?” she complained.
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