Rising into the pale blue sky to the north, seemingly all too close, was the tower. While the tower seemed to shudder, it did not move. I forged more links, some to the stream, some to the trees, others to whatever might take those thin unseen image-wires.
The base of the tower exploded, with huge chunks of stone spinning outward. The sound was so great that there was no sound at all, only a tremendous sense of pressure that enfolded me and my shields. Fragments of stone crashed into my shields.
I could feel myself being hurled backward, then rolling downhill.
Blackness surrounded me . . . but not for all that long. Then I was looking upward, if at an angle from the base of a oak, toward where the tower had been. Dust had settled out of the sky onto a pile of rubble. Absently, I noted that all the damage to the tower and terrace appeared to have been to the south. There were a few gashes on the stonework of the south wing of the chateau, but little more. The terrace walls and the lower section of the staircase had partly collapsed as well.
My back and legs felt numb, but they seemed to work as I worked my way into a sitting, and then a standing position. As I half expected, my entire skull throbbed, and my vision blurred, with whitish stars flashing before my eyes intermittently.
Suddenly I was chilled to the bone, and my entire body began to shiver. I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other as I started back toward the wall and the western part of the stream where I’d entered the estate.
One step, then another, and a third.
Abruptly hard rain began to fall, except that it wasn’t rain, but tiny droplets of frozen water, an ice rain, and I realized that I was still holding the telescope. I fumbled it inside my cloak and inside my waistcoat, not wanting to leave it behind. At that thought I almost laughed.
I’d just imaged a disaster, a certain indication of an imager, and I was worried about leaving a telescope behind?
As I tried to move faster, I began to hear again, and the loudest sound was that of the guard dogs howling, but it wasn’t the baying of dogs seeking a quarry. It was a different howl, one almost of fear. I could but hope that they remained in their kennel and fearful for a time longer.
By now the sun had dropped behind the hill to the south, and I could hear cries and voices from the terrace, women’s cries mostly. I hurried onward, my boots crunching on what seemed to be icy sand, and I realized that I was fully exposed to anyone who looked my way, because I had no shields, and there were no trees and no bushes near me, just a form of icy dust that did not quite swirl under my unsteady boots. From what I could tell, no one had looked my way, or if they had, they hadn’t raised an alarm.
As I neared the gap in the walls where the stream left the grounds, I knew I could not re image the bridge I’d used to enter. I’d just have to take my chances with the stream. I was having enough difficulty walking and could not even raise minimal shields as I staggered down toward the pair of walls flanking the stream. When I got there, I realized I didn’t have to worry about a bridge. The stream was frozen solid.
I did have to worry about the ice, though. I slipped and fell twice-hard-before I struggled to my feet outside the wall. Walking uphill toward the mare was hard, but the ground underfoot outside the wall was not icy or slippery.
Even so, it took much of my remaining strength to clamber up into the saddle, and my entire body continued to shake as the mare began to walk back uphill, southward through the twilight toward L’Excelsis. The ride back to NordEste Design was precarious, not because the mare was fractious, but because I could barely manage to stay in the saddle.
How long it took, I didn’t know, only that it was late twilight when I turned the mare into the open courtyard gate of NordEste Design. I must have taken half a quint to cover the last fifty yards to the stable. That was the way it felt.
Seliora had appeared from somewhere and was standing beside the mare. She helped me down. Her face seemed to move nearer and then away.
“Done . . .” I managed.
Then darkness, not that of twilight or night, but another kind, dropped over me like instant sunset.
I woke up stretched out in a bed in an unfamiliar chamber. Seliora was sitting beside me, her face pinched in worry. That I could see even though she appeared blurred.
Seliora bent forward. She held a tall glass of amber liquid. “It’s lager. I know you like wine better, but Mother says the lager will help you regain your strength sooner.”
Weak as I was, I wasn’t about to argue as she helped me sit up and I began to drink. Some of the fuzziness in my sight diminished by the time I’d finished the lager, and I didn’t feel as though I’d topple over if pushed by the slightest of breezes. I also recognized the chamber. It was the room where I’d changed into exercise clothes when I’d first gone in the wagon to study the Ryel estate.
Seliora tendered something like a sweet cake. “Eat this.”
Whatever it was, it also helped within moments, and I began to think I might actually recover.
“I was so worried,” she finally said. “It got later and later, and darker and darker.”
“It’s over.” I didn’t have anything that Master Dichartyn would have called proof, only a solid inner certainty.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she finally asked.
“I can, and I will, but would you mind if we included your mother and grandmother? I’d rather not go through it twice, and they should know.”
Seliora smiled, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for asking.” She studied me. “You have some color. You were shivering and shuddering. You were as pale as ice.”
“I felt like ice.”
“Can you walk? Grandmama is waiting in the plaques room across the hall. I’ll get Mama.”
“I’m tired, but I’ll be all right.”
Still, Seliora stood right beside me as I got up, but I wasn’t nearly as unsteady as I’d been on the endless walk from beneath the fallen tower to the mare. She didn’t have to summon her mother. Betara was already in the plaques room, quietly talking to Diestra. Both stopped and watched as we entered.
“You’re feeling better?” asked Betara.
“He couldn’t have felt much worse,” Seliora said dryly. “The lager helped a great deal.”
The four of us sat around the plaques table. I waited.
“We have been worried,” Grandmama Diestra said, absently shuffling the plaques with a dexterity I envied, and that bespoke long familiarity with plaques. “Seliora and Betara should have told you that we . . . arranged for friends to watch your family and Seliora at all times. What they have not told you is that there were three assassins waiting outside the anomen after the services for your brother. They disposed of two, but did not know about the third because he was concealed atop a water tower on a nearby building. They saw him fire, then topple over. When they reached his body, his face was swollen and disfigured. He had a look of horror frozen there.” She looked to me. “That was your doing?”
“Yes. I had shields around Seliora, and my father, mother, sister, and brother. When the bullets struck, I tried to image caustic back at the shooter. The shots stopped, but I didn’t know whether the shooter had run off or whether I’d been successful.”
“Now . . . you know,” Diestra said. “Our friends took care of the bodies. That makes some nine in all this week. Since all were bravos for hire, that is likely to make your duties with the Patrol somewhat less risky. Or the duties of some patrollers less dangerous, and the innocents of L’Excelsis subject to less killing.”