“We got here as fast as we could,” he said.
“Your timing was perfect.” Alexander shook his hand. “How are your men and horses? Can you ride?”
“We can. I have nine more horses than men. Your animals look in need of rest.” Erik was all business.
Before Alexander could answer, Isabel crashed into her brother and gave him a big hug. “I was so worried when you ran into that ambush,” she said. “I’m sorry they killed so many of your Rangers, but I’m grateful you’re all right.”
“Me too, on both counts.” He looked off toward the enemy. “Looks like they’ve stopped to regroup. We should be on our way.”
“Agreed,” Alexander said. “Isabel, can you see who’s coming in the distance? I can’t tell if it’s just stragglers or more men.”
She looked through Slyder’s eyes and inhaled sharply. “It’s that giant-sized man and Wizard Rangle with a group of soldiers from Headwater.”
Alexander nodded to himself, rubbing his shoulder. “This is getting a bit old. Sooner or later we’re going to have to stop running and make a stand.”
“Can we do that from a more defensible position?” Anatoly asked pointedly.
Alexander gave him a look and a grin, “Wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
One of Erik’s men brought a fresh horse for Alexander and they mounted up. The enemy didn’t try to give chase. Instead they regrouped and consolidated their forces, giving Alexander the time he needed to get to the base of Blackstone Keep.
Chapter 53
It was unlike any mountain he’d ever seen. It jutted abruptly from the grassland in a dull black granite wall and rose nearly straight up from the floor of the plain into the sky. The place radiated power. Alexander could see the magic permeating it and flowing through its ancient foundation.
Erik led them around the base of the artificial mountain to the only road leading up to the entrance. The steeply rising road was only twenty feet wide and had little in the way of a railing. They guided their horses slowly and steadily in single file close to the inside wall. The road wrapped around the enormous base of the mountain once, then again, rising many thousands of feet over the plain below before turning onto a spur that led to a much smaller peak jutting up from the side of the central mountain. The road continued around the smaller peak, wrapping around it again and again, winding steeply toward the top.
They reached the top of the second peak by midafternoon. The view of the plain all around was spectacular. The plateau of the central city in New Ruatha could be seen clearly in the distance. The mountains to the north were visible as well and the southern horizon was tinted green from the Great Forest.
The top of the secondary peak was a square platform, easily a thousand feet across and enclosed on all sides with a four-foot-high stone wall carved out of the black granite of the mountain itself. The road led onto the platform in the middle of the south side. Blackstone Keep loomed over them to the east. The only other exit from the platform appeared to be through an archway on the east side facing the Keep, but there was no bridge.
Alexander stood looking at the archway, which led to an abutment of stone that stretched out just ten feet over a chasm that fell two thousand feet to the road below. The abutment ended abruptly in cleanly cut stone as though it was meant to end there. The chasm was easily five hundred feet across. He could see another arched opening leading into an open area of the Keep beyond, but without wings he had no hope of getting there.
Yet he could also vaguely see a bridge even though it wasn’t really there. An aura of magic ran across the empty sky like a ribbon of color almost too faint to see, even with his magical vision. The more he looked, the more certain he became, although the span had no substance. It was not in this world but some other—a place that occupied the same space yet did not exist here at all.
Anatoly stood on the edge of the abutment looking down.
“Quite a defense.”
Lucky agreed. “The old stories tell of the vanishing bridge of Blackstone Keep. The Keep Master is supposed to command the bridge into and out of this world. In one state it’s as solid as stone and in the other it doesn’t even exist. The secret of such a powerful constructed spell has been lost since the fall of the Reishi.”
Erik ran up. “I’ve secured the platform and posted sentries. The enemy is approaching in greater numbers. Looks like more than a hundred. At their present pace they’ll be here by dark.” He gave the report in crisp statements of fact without any emotion or judgment. “Might be a tough fight if we get cornered up here.”
“We won’t. Cedric wouldn’t have sent me here without a way in.” Alexander looked around at the stonework of the arch and abutment. It was the same dull black granite that the rest of the keep was made of. It looked just like the stone in his ring. “I just have to find it,” he said absently.
Alexander searched meticulously. He ran his hand over every square inch of the arch that he could reach. He looked at the stonework in the vicinity with methodical care. He expected to find some mechanism to operate the bridge but found none. As the afternoon wore on, he began to feel doubts. Reports of the enemy progress came to him every hour, each one chipping away at his certainty. He was sure that Mage Cedric’s ring was the key. The note had said as much, but it hadn’t given any detail or instruction that could help him and time was running out. Once the enemy reached the road, the only choices left to him were to find a way across the bridge or to stand and fight.
When the report came that the enemy had reached the road, he started to worry that he’d doomed himself and his friends. He’d looked for a physical mechanism for hours but found nothing. When all avenues of inquiry failed, he decided that the only path left to him was magic. Perhaps that was the key. The ring and the Keep were the products of magic; maybe magic was necessary to unlock them. As he thought about it, he felt more certain that his theory was right but he had no idea how to make it work.
“Lucky, is it possible that this ring is activated by magic?” he asked.
Lucky nodded slowly at the question. “Yes, it’s even probable. Mage Cedric would have wanted to make sure that only a wizard could access the Keep.”
“So how do I use my magic to make it work?”
“That I cannot tell you,” Lucky said. “Some items have activation spells while others simply require a connection to the firmament and a wizard’s will directed into the item.”
Alexander frowned. “I doubt it requires a spell. If it did, Cedric would have left it for me with the ring.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly, then sat down cross-legged on the abutment of the bridge, facing the Keep.
He started with the breathing exercises he’d learned in Glen Morillian, slowly relaxing his body and clearing his mind. He tried to focus on nothing, as he had in the past when he’d experienced clairvoyance, but he was too distracted by the urgent need of the current situation. He needed to gain control over his own thoughts and direct his mind and feelings if he was going to have any chance of making a connection with the firmament, let alone activate the power of the ring. He just couldn’t seem to drive the thoughts of the advancing enemy from his mind. The more he tried the more insistent the thoughts became. He opened his eyes and brought his attention back to the moment, trying to clear his head before starting the process again.
Again he was plagued with worry about the enemy and his desperate need for urgency. The more he struggled to focus his mind away from those thoughts, the more difficult it became to push them out of his consciousness. Finally, he stood up with a feeling of hopelessness and anxiety.
He looked around to see his worried friends all watching him. The burden settled on him once again. Lives were in his hands. Their futures depended on him.
Erik approached the edge of the abutment carefully and looked down. “The enemy has reached the spur. They’ll be here in half an hour.”
Again his report was without emotion but Alexander could see the concern on his face
. There were more than a hundred men and he could just make out the oversized frame of the giant with them. That probably meant Rangle was with them as well and might even mean Jataan P’Tal was there, too.
Alexander knew that even with over fifty Rangers and the high ground they would not survive this fight. He felt the first hint of panic start to push against his mind from the darkness of his imagination. The future of the world rested squarely on his shoulders. If he failed here, nothing else would matter. His panic threatened to step out of the darkness and make itself known, but he pushed it away with an effort of will.
Isabel took his hand and gently turned him away from the chasm below. She looked him straight in the eye with her clear, intelligent green eyes and he found something he’d momentarily lost.
He found faith.
“Alexander, I believe in you. You can do this.” She held him with her gaze until the shadow of doubt faded from his golden-brown eyes. For a moment, there was nothing else except the two of them. In that moment, he felt peace and clarity. He nodded with a smile of gratitude, turned back to face the Keep and sat down.
This time he didn’t fight against the thought of the coming enemy. Instead he started with that thought and faced it fully before releasing it from his awareness. Once he’d accepted the truth of it without fear or worry, it faded away. He cleared the field of his mind with gentle firmness, looking at each thought that came to him with complete acceptance and awareness before dismissing it with the knowledge that he had seen it and it required no further attention. Soon he was in the state of empty-mindedness where thoughts did not intrude. He was an observer in his own mind.
Then he was drifting on the firmament. His awareness expanded beyond his body and filled the whole of the world. All things became a part of his awareness and yet no one thing was clear enough to see with certainty. The past was a shadow of the present moment, no longer possessing substance and yet fixed and permanent. The future was a potential, a collection of probabilities and possibilities that may yet come to pass. The moment of now was an impossibly vast number of thoughts, feelings, and happenings, all jumbled together in his mind. He had no location, no identity, and no point of focus. He was everywhere at once and yet nowhere. He focused on his awareness and drew it closer to his physical body without returning to it.
After a moment of struggle, the whole of the world rushed past as his focus narrowed and shrank to the place just above and behind the arch he was sitting under. He could see the Rangers posted all around. Erik was making ready for battle. Anatoly was walking with him, inspecting their preparations. Isabel and Abigail sat behind him on their packs, looking both anxious and slightly worried.
He heard a shout from the forward scout that the enemy was near. With focused will he moved his point of awareness around in front of his body and directed his attention toward the ring. He could see the aura of its magic only faintly, like it was dormant and waiting. With the equivalent of a mental shrug, he thrust his awareness into it. In the distance he heard the first sounds of battle across the large square platform.
He found a place of stillness within the ring. At first, it was very dark but even through the darkness he could discern form and purpose all around him. Slowly, he began to see. It was like watching the lights of a city wink into existence from a hilltop as the light of day fades. He watched the ring slowly come alive and found to his surprise that his mind did not inhabit the ring but the Keep itself. In this place they were one and the same. He sent his awareness out through the enormous Keep. For just a moment he was almost lost in his own curiosity. There were so many rooms and so many things of interest. He wanted to examine them all, but in the faraway distance he could hear the sounds of battle growing closer.
He redoubled his effort and directed his focus with ruthless precision to the bridge. Once his mind was there, it was such a simple thing—without effort he willed the bridge to become real. It came into existence with a slight shimmer and then solidified as though it had been built of immovable stone and had stood in this place for all these years.
When he opened his eyes and snapped back into his body, he felt a faint and unbroken connection to the Keep like it had become an extension of his body, a part of his mind. His awareness of the place was complete even though he didn’t understand much of what he could now see. He sat looking at the solid bridge with a feeling of satisfaction for just a moment until an arrow passed over his shoulder and bounced on the bridge once before sailing out into the open sky. He spun to his feet and saw a pitched battle taking place before him. The enemy was advancing with the giant in the middle of the fray. When Alexander saw Rangle step up on a rock wall and start casting a spell, he called out.
“Retreat! Across the bridge! Quickly!”
No one had seen the bridge come into existence because they’d been too busy fighting for their lives.
Alexander snatched up his bow and sent an arrow at Rangle. He missed but came close enough to disrupt the spell and convince the fire wizard to take cover.
What followed was a fighting retreat. The bridge was twenty feet wide and five hundred feet long without any railing or even a curb. The first squad of Rangers peeled away from the formation on Erik’s command and raced past Alexander in single file. Abigail and Lucky trailed behind them. Anatoly came next with Jack and Isabel close behind him. He slowed his approach just enough to pull Alexander up onto his horse, then raced across the thin ribbon of black stone.
Alexander felt like he was charging across the sky itself. An arrow glanced off his back and tore his shirt. Once again he silently thanked Kelvin for the gift that had saved his life every day he had worn it.
They reached the other side, and Alexander dismounted quickly to turn with his bow and give cover to the rest of the retreating Rangers. Some of the enemy soldiers were armed with crossbows but hadn’t had time to reload after their initial attack.
The bridge ended in another archway made of the same black stone as the rest of the Keep. On either side, the arch flowed into a four-foot-high, one-foot-thick stone wall that ran across the west end of a grassy paddock cut into the side of the mountain. The paddock was easily two hundred feet across and three hundred feet from the bridge to the stone wall at the back. The grassy field ended abruptly with sheer stone walls rising high above on three sides.
Alexander looked up and saw a number of bridges spanning across at different levels and noticed several arched hallways leading from the paddock at ground level. The long-ruined remnants of stable fences and a few buildings where horses had been housed long ago were scattered around the empty field. The simple wooden structures were now little more than mounds of rotted wood overgrown with grass and weeds.
He took a position just to the right of the arch behind the cover of the low wall. Isabel and Abigail lined up next to him with bows at the ready. Chase ordered the Rangers who’d already made it across to take positions along the wall as well.
The bridge looked so small and insubstantial. The remaining Rangers of Erik’s company retreated in haste with a force easily numbering fifty men pursuing like wolves chasing a wounded deer; they had the smell of blood and they wanted their kill. Alexander knew their recklessness would be their end. For a fleeting moment he almost felt sorry for the men who were about to die by his command but the feeling was quickly replaced with a righteous anger.
Abigail loosed an arrow at the pursuing enemy. It arched gracefully over the heads of Erik and his men and killed the first enemy soldier charging across the bridge. He tumbled off the back of his horse and crashed onto the bridge just in front of the horse behind him, causing that horse to stumble as its rider pulled his reins hard to the right. The horse tried to regain its footing but veered off too sharply and wasn’t able to stop before its front feet slipped over the edge of the bridge and it pitched forward into the sky.
The rest of the enemy slowed to avoid becoming entangled with the dead man, which gave Erik and his men greater distance from them. A
lexander surveyed the scene. The soldiers from Headwater were charging across with abandon, but on the other side he could see the giant, Rangle, and Truss with a handful of other men still standing safely on the bridge abutment just under the far arch. Alexander frowned. He was hoping to get them, too.
He waited. Abigail killed another with a clean shot. The enemy tried to raise their shields when they saw the first volley from the Rangers come their way but it was no use. Erik crossed under the arch and into the paddock. He was the last of the Rangers. All that remained on the bridge were enemy. It looked like forty men or more. After all this time, it almost seemed too easy to Alexander. He watched a dozen arrows reach the apex of their path toward the enemy and then raised his hand to Chase.
“Cease fire.”
Chase looked a bit confused but obeyed the command and ordered his men to hold.
Alexander reached into the ring with his mind. Now that he’d established a connection, it was as if the ring, or more accurately, the Keep, was an extension of his own body. He could feel the span of the bridge with his mind. It was as easy as scratching an itch on his face. He willed the bridge into its place outside of this world. There was a moment of hesitation, like the Keep was asking if he was sure, then with a flicker, it faded from existence, leaving the enemy two thousand feet up in the empty sky. Alexander felt a twinge of guilt for the horses as they plunged to their deaths.
The enemy tumbled through the air, screaming until they were too far away to be heard anymore. Alexander looked across at Rangle and watched the Wizard send a bubble of liquid fire streaking across the chasm. It was too late to retreat. Abigail tried to burst it with an arrow but missed. The bubble came right for the top of the stone arch. When it hit, the angry orange-red liquid fire within would burst forth, showering everyone with droplets of death and pain.
Thinblade Page 49
