Oh yes, “Father,” Anigrel thought. For the good of the City. Lycaelon might dismiss the idea of an alliance the first time he heard it, but word of more atrocities would soon reach his ears. He would not forget that his beloved son and heir had told him that there were others who might fight Armethalieh’s battles for her.
Soon he would tell Anigrel to invite them in.
THOUGH they saw no more Demons as they headed west and south, by the end of the first sennight of march, the Allied Army had seen just about everything else that the Enemy could field, and the constant clashes were beginning to take their toll.
They never saw the creatures in any great numbers. Vestakia’s dream-visions continued to send the same chilling message—the Enemy was calling all its creatures to itself, now, preparing for one final strike at Armethalieh. And it intended to arrive there in force.
Vestakia could even tell them where the Demon army was. Its course paralleled their own, several hundred miles to the south, since They had been forced to detour around the Elven Lands instead of fighting Their way through the reborn Land-wards after the arrival of the Starry Hunt. Its presence was a constant source of misery for her, and at first Kellen had feared that the Demons would attempt to raid the army to kidnap her, since they had been hunting her to return her to her father all her life.
But when days passed without an attack, he realized They were holding off from a combination of cowardice and arrogance. Cowardice, because the army had so swiftly killed the last two of Their kind that had come. Arrogance, because They knew they would face the Allied Army at Armethalieh, and They were certain of victory then.
Still, what the army did encounter was daunting enough.
Coldwarg—not the gigantic packs that Jermayan had reported seeing in the northern Elven Lands, but small groups of a dozen or so. Dangerous enough, but they could be killed, especially with enough defenders.
The serpentmarae were easier to destroy than the Coldwarg. Not nearly as hardy as the Coldwarg, they could often be run down by the Centaurs and speared to death.
The army had also been attacked one night as it was making camp by a band of what Isinwen had later told Kellen were Ice Trolls—squat blue-skinned creatures that went naked even in the cold. They used a kind of throwing-stick to launch arrows. They were fast as a running horse, and deadly foes, far stronger than Elves, their skin as tough as boiled leather. They had accounted for more than a few casualties in the camp, but again, they were only a few dozen against a force of thousands, and it was impossible for their small band to defeat Redhelwar’s army.
But each pinprick attack, each delay, sapped the army’s spirit.
Far more disheartening was the growing stream of refugees—more each day—that the army on its march encountered heading in the opposite direction. Winter—especially this winter—was no time for travel—yet with the Demon Army on the move, every village and smallholding within miles of its path had but one thought: Get away. They had packed everything they could—sometimes it was no more than the clothes on their backs—and were heading eastward toward the Elven Lands, hoping for refuge there.
Many of them did not make it. Riasen and Nithariel and the other scouting parties reported the discovery of body after frozen body in the snow.
Fear is doing the Demons’ work for Them, Kellen thought in anger. If this goes on much longer, there will be no one left alive to save.
But it was the living who truly tore his heart out, for there was nothing the army could do for them. They had no supplies to spare—not food, nor blankets, nor medicine, nor even heating charcoal. These were not fighters who could be absorbed into the Army’s ranks—even if there were weapons and armor to be found for them, not to mention supplies to feed them. These were cowed terrified farmers and laborers. There was nothing at all the Army could do but promise them that there was refuge farther east. They could have stripped their supplies train bare and not made a dent in the needs of the ragged, starving people they encountered, only destroyed themselves before they met the Enemy they were going to fight.
And They know it, Kellen brooded.
It was one more aspect of the War of the Spirit that was the real battlefield upon which this conflict was being fought. The Enemy wanted them to give up—to despair—long before the time came to raise their swords upon the battlefield. Each bloody meaningless death in a minor pointless skirmish, each child left to freeze in a snowbank, fueled the Demons’ power and sapped the Allies’ will to fight, and both sides knew it.
And there was nothing the Allied Army could do about it.
They could not split the army to go to the aid of the refugees, giving them safe escort back to the Elven Borders.
They could not give up their supplies to feed them.
From the very beginning Their strategy had been to fragment the Allies and the army, to reduce the Forces of the Light to a scattered handful of tiny, easily-disposed-of groups. No matter how subtle the trap, the Allies could not afford to let that happen. Not now, when their greatest—perhaps their last—battle lay just ahead.
But it was the hardest thing Kellen had ever done, or helped to do. Not only to ride past people in need, day by day, but to watch his friends wasting away before his eyes.
Cilarnen was the worst, because Kellen dared not think about Vestakia at all. She spent much of her time with Shalkan, guarded by the Unicorn Knights, drawing strength from Shalkan’s presence and steadfast love.
He hoped Shalkan was telling her how wise and brave and beautiful she was.
Cilarnen …
He only hoped that Cilarnen would die.
Not because he hated Cilarnen. In the past weeks, he had come to like him very much—admire him, in fact. Cilarnen had given up far more than Kellen had in Armethalieh to fight for what he believed was right. And Cilarnen still loved Armethalieh and the High Magick—so much that he was willing to fight them, for them.
If Cilarnen—one of the most privileged of Armethalieh’s citizens, with the most to lose by thinking for himself—could throw off the City’s brainwashing, that meant there was hope for everyone who still lived there.
But what Cilarnen was doing to work the High Magick now was horribly dangerous. He was the first to admit that he didn’t entirely understand it, and that what he did understand of it he was doing entirely wrong, without the years of training and preparation he should have had. The High Magick was not a toy to be played with, and in the end, what Cilarnen was doing could do worse than kill him.
It could burn out his Magegift forever, beyond any hope of repair.
For someone like Cilarnen, to live without magick would be worse than death.
And so they rode onward, each day bringing them closer to the City.
SHE could hardly tell the difference between waking and sleeping any longer.
The only time she was truly certain she was in the world any longer was in the early evening and morning, when she watched Cilarnen and the Unicorn Knights dancing over the snow.
They were beautiful, floating like stars.
She could feel their love.
“Tell him that I love him,” she had begged Shalkan, crying because she was so very tired.
“You know that I can’t,” the unicorn had answered, gently nuzzling his soft muzzle against her cheek. “Dry your tears, Vestakia. He mustn’t see you like this.”
She knew that. She was the daughter of a Wildmage. Her mother had paid the ultimate price so that Vestakia could live. So that the Prince of Shadow Mountain could not claim his prize.
He would not have her now.
She would not destroy the weapon the Wild Magic had forged against him.
And so, each day, she soothed her burning eyes with snow compresses, and went with Idalia to Redhelwar’s tent before the army began to move for the day. And there she told them what she had dreamed in the night.
Troop strengths. Dispositions. The details of raids on the surrounding countryside, if she knew them. Whe
re They were, what They were doing, what They planned.
Always now, when she moved, she seemed to feel the rustle of great wings at her back.
“WE shall dispense with the regular order of business today,” Lycaelon Tavadon said. He glanced around the Council Chamber, at the six High Mages seated with him.
Lorins, Ganaret, Nagid, Dagan, Harith. All that remained of the old Council.
And Anigrel. His beloved son. The man who would save them all.
Harith, as always, his ally. Ganaret, always willing to endorse any project that involved exalting the Mageborn. Nagid, only interested in his own comfort at any expense. Lorins, a clever and ambitious man, had become one of Anigrel’s strongest supporters. Dagan … well, Dagan was on the verge of becoming Unsound. Anigrel had said so.
It might well be time for Dagan to retire into private life. The Council had never functioned so effectively as it had these past few moonturns. It would function even more efficiently with six than with seven.
“Lord High Mage?” Anigrel said. “What is your will?”
Lycaelon liked that. No argument about the proper forms. Perizel had always argued.
“You will all have seen the latest report from Barrowmede. Another of our villages lost to the work of the Wildmage menace. We dare not allow them to continue their destruction of our lands.”
Ganaret raised his hand for permission to speak.
“Lord Ganaret?” Lycaelon said graciously.
“With respect, Lord Arch-Mage, what spells are we to set to stop them? No Mage who has gone forth from the walls has ever returned.”
Lycaelon smiled. “An excellent point, Lord Ganaret. I do not propose to send our Mages against this devious foe. I propose an alliance, between Armethalieh and another ancient foe of the Wildmages. Even now this enemy fights them on their own ground. With the Council’s gracious approval, I shall invite them to come here, so that a formal treaty can be sealed between us, and together we can destroy our mutual foe.”
“But who are these people?” Lord Harith asked. “Why have we not heard of them before now?”
“With your permission, Lord Harith, I will tell you all I have learned,” Anigrel said modestly. For the next several minutes he told the High Council very much the same things he had told Lord Lycaelon—of a hidden race, strong in Magery, who, seeing Armethalieh about to go down to defeat at the hands of their ancient, hated enemy, had ended their millennia of cloistered isolation to attack their mutual foe.
“And now they will come here, to join their power to ours, if we will only ask them. Together we will have the strength to defeat the Wildmages for all time. I ask you, Mages of the High Council. Will you do it—for Armethalieh, and the Light?”
“I call the vote,” Lycaelon said.
It was unanimous, of course.
It always was, these days.
Their new allies were to be asked to come.
Lord Anigrel said that they called themselves The Enlightened.
Sixteen
The Battle for Armethalieh
THEY MOVED OVER the land like a plague of darkness, and in their wake, nothing lived, and nothing grew.
They moved slowly, but Savilla did not mind. After the recent setback in the Room of the Obsidian Spire, the destruction around her was balm to her senses. Soon every slight, every humiliation of the last thousand—ten thousand—years would be repaid a hundredfold.
From every corner of her shadowy empire, she had recalled her ancient servants—the Ice Trolls, the Frost Giants, the bestial dwerro. They marched now beneath her banners, just as it had been in the days of old, protected by the shimmering veils of Darkmagery through which the army moved. Far above the army, the giant white forms of Deathwings soared. Around them, Coldwarg darted in and out, searching for anything they might devour, and the towering Shadewalk-ers ranged farther still, herding terrified victims into the army’s path.
It was a glorious sight.
Far afield, the Elves, too, marched toward Armethalieh, thinking they would save it.
They did not know that even now, their pathetic attempts at succor were a part of her plan.
Let them reach Armethalieh.
Let them show themselves to the Mage-men of the Golden City.
Her pet had already sent word that the Mage-men intended to offer an alliance, but an alliance was no part of her plan. She wanted an utter capitulation. The sight of an army of their most hated foes ringing their treasured city should provide that. They would rush to open their gates to her then, doing whatever they had to, to make it possible for her to enter.
Or … better yet.
Let them come out to her.
Since the Starry Hunt had come back into the world, her darkest enchantments had lost much of their potency. It was only temporary, but it was one more insult that she intended to repay in full measure as soon as she had brought He Who Is into the world.
As soon as she had obtained a suitable sacrifice. A sacrifice of ultimate purity and power, offered up at a time and place that would not simply open a door between the worlds.
But would rend the veil between them asunder forever.
And then …
She could devote herself entirely to pleasure.
Her gaze fell upon the form of Prince Zyperis, where he soared over the marching column of subject races and Lesser Endarkened that marched beneath her banners.
Yes.
One of her greatest pleasures—soon, and for thousands of years to come—would be in schooling her son and lover to ultimate obedience. She had been forced to allow him far too much freedom while she was occupied with other, far more pressing matters.
Soon it would be time to call him to heel.
“THEY intend to make a Great Sacrifice at Kindling.”
Vestakia’s words were no more than a whisper.
It was the morning strategy meeting in Redhelwar’s tent.
Redhelwar’s tent was always the last thing to be packed, being bundled onto its wagon when the rest of the army was already starting to move. The meeting was the last thing held each morning—after Cilarnen had gotten in his hour or so of practice with the Unicorn Knights.
Cilarnen no longer spent his nights in spellcraft and meditation; in an army on the move, it was simply impossible, and he was devoting every minute he had to perfecting the spell that he and the Unicorn Knights would cast at Armethalieh. The only one who was not a part of that spell was Shalkan; once again, Shalkan’s own Mageprice set him apart.
In the moments Cilarnen could spare from working with the Unicorn Knights, he assembled the cantrips that would serve him best in the field, and—Kellen supposed—snatched an hour or two of sleep here and there, in Anganil’s saddle as often as not.
He looked as if he were dying of fever.
TODAY they had reached the edge of the Delfier Valley.
Armethalieh itself was only a few days away. Less, really, for the edge of the High Mage’s weather-spells was just ahead. They would cross them in a mile or so.
Behind them, the landscape still labored under deep winter and heavy snow. Ahead, at the valley’s westernmost entrance, there was less than a foot of snow upon the ground. Ancaladar had flown over the Delfier Valley yesterday—the Bounds did not keep anyone out as the Elven Landwards or the City-Wards did; they simply marked the edge of where spells of the High Magick could be cast—and said that everywhere he flew it was the same. Only the lightest dusting of snow covered the ground.
Here, the course of the Demons’ raids could be plainly seen. Ancaladar and Jermayan had reported seeing the burnt-out remains of several villages on their overflight. They could not name the villages that had been destroyed. Even Cilarnen could not do that. A proper young High Mage’s knowledge of geography stopped at the City Walls, and Cilarnen knew more of the geography of the Elven Lands than he did of the Delfier Valley just a few miles from the city where he had been born and raised.
Without Jermayan’s magic to shield the
m, he and Ancaladar had not dared approach Armethalieh closely, though Ancaladar was willing to risk such a flight tonight. The High Mages would be awake, and active, but their attention would be elsewhere. A black dragon against a black sky, flying quickly, would not be seen. And Ancaladar was still capable of seeing far more things than a human could.
“‘A Great Sacrifice,’” Idalia echoed, puzzled.
“He has just learned of it,” Vestakia said. “He is very … I am not sure what. She means to make it at a Place of Power somewhere near Armethalieh. He spies on Her. When She has made this Sacrifice She has spoken of, not even the Starry Hunt can keep He Who Is out of the world.”
Kellen looked at the others—Idalia, Jermayan, Cilarnen—inquiringly. Among them they represented—or had represented, in Jermayan’s case—all the forms of magic that existed in the world, and so represented a sort of informal Council-Within-a-Council in Redhelwar’s army. Everyone knew that the battle that would be joined—in only a few days, now at most—would be fought more with magic than with swords and lances, and High Mages and Wildmages had the best idea of the form a battle of magic would take.
“Well,” Idalia said slowly, “I suppose it isn’t hard to guess where She means to do it. There’s one of the old Places of Power in the Delfier Valley—a Shrine, like the one in the north where I summoned the Starry Hunt. The one in the Delfier Valley belongs to Men, but unfortunately for us, all the Shrines are completely neutral. Anyone can use them, and for any purpose, even a bad one. I’m not entirely certain where it is exactly, though I could find it if I had to; it’s been forgotten for longer than the walls of the City have stood.”
“Kindling is only a day or two away,” Kellen said slowly. “That doesn’t give us much time. But what’s a ‘Great Sacrifice’? Is it something you do? Or something you have?”
“It’s—I’m not sure,” Cilarnen said. “But if I had to guess from what’s in my old books—and from the look on your face, I’d better—it would be a person. Someone who symbolizes the Land Itself. And considering what we know about Them and how Their magic works, I’d say it would be a blood sacrifice.”
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