They passed the Border - guard station, vaulting the twin gates that barred the road, Valdemar and Lineas sides, as lightly as leaves on the wind. The Linean Guard was actually leaning on the gatepost, lounging beneath a lantern, his face a startlingly pale blur above his dark uniform. He looked directly at them, and Vanyel felt him yawn as they leaped the gate. Then he was lost in the dark behind as they raced on. Vanyel did not look back, but set the spell to break the moment they were out of sight. He would cloak his own passing; he would not leave the Border to spell-mazed guardians.
He spent no more magical energies in such spells; he didn't particularly care if the common folk of Lineas saw them. They were familiar enough with the uniform of the Heralds. If any Lineans saw him, they would assume, reasonably enough, that he'd been properly dealt with at the Border and belonged here.
Yfandes raced on, through pocket-sized villages in tiny, sheltered river-hollows, even through a larger town or two. All were as dark as places long abandoned. Finally, in the dead hours of the night, the time when death and birth lie closest, they came to Highjorune.
Most of the city was as dead and dark as the villages, but not all; no city slept the night through. More and stronger magic would be required to get them to their goal - whatever it was-without being stopped. Vanyel reached, seeking node-energy to use to pass the city gates as they had the Border, and recoiled a little in surprise.
For a place so adamantly against mages and their Gifts, Highjorune was crawling with mage-energy. It lay on the intersection of three - five - seven lines of force, none of them trivial, all flowing to meet at a node beneath it, liquid rainbows humming the random songs of power, strong enough for even new-made Adepts to use, provided they had the sensitivity to detect them-though the node where they met would be too wild, too strong for any but an experienced Adept.
:Yfandes, stop a bit.:
Yfandes obeyed. He raised his hands, preparing to spin out a true spell of illusion and sound - dampening; taking the power directly from the closest stream, bracing himself for the shock as his mind met the flow of energy.
The city gate was too well-guarded and well-lit, and the city itself too crowded with people to chance the kind of spell he'd worked on the Border Guards. He wanted to hurry the spell, but knew he didn't dare. Careful - he told himself. This is Savil's area of expertise, not yours. Rush it, and you could lose it.
Yfandes fidgeted, her bridle - bells chiming, her hooves making a deeper ringing on the hard paving of the road. :Hurry,: she urged, her own Mindvoice dense with fear. :Please. He'll die, they'll die - there's another Companion, she's nearly gone mad, she can't speak -:
: 'Fandes, don't interrupt. I'm working as fast as I can, but if I don't pull power now, I won't have anything when we need it.: The raw power was beginning to fill him, fill all the echoing emptiness. Natural, slow recovery had not been able to do this! He was going to have to wait until the achingly empty reservoirs of power within him were full again before he could spin a shield this complicated, though at this rate it wasn't going to take long. Besides, he was all too likely to need power. If everything went to hell and he had to Gate out of here -
Gods. It's like - eating sunlight, breathing rainbows, drinking wind - Force poured into him, wild and untamed, and for the first time in months he felt complete and revived. There was nothing this strong anywhere near Forst Reach.
No mystery now why the Mavelans wanted Lineas, not with this kind of power running through Highjorune going untapped and unused. He could almost pity the mage-lords. It must be like living next to people who mined up precious gems with their copper, and threw the gems out with the tailings, but wouldn't let you in to glean them. Got to hurry this. We're running out of time.
Cautiously he pulled at the power, until it responded, flowing faster into him.
That's it. Now I make it mine.
He tapped into the wild power he'd taken; learned it, tamed it to his hand.
He was sweating now; both with effort and impatience. Gods, this takes too much time, but I can't afford any surprises.
Slowly, carefully, he began to spin the energy out into threads, visible only to his Othersight, making a cocoon of the threads that would absorb sound within it, and send the eyes that lit upon it to looking elsewhere. Layer on layer, thread on delicate thread, this was a spell that required absolute concentration and attention, for the slightest defect would mean a place where the eye could catch and hold, where sound could leak out. Yfandes stood like a statue of ice in the moonlight, no longer fidgeting.
Finally, with a sigh of relief, he completed.the web. He replaced what he had spent, then cut off his connection to the mother-stream.
His arms hurt, but he had the feeling that more was going to hurt than his arms before this was over.
:Go!: he told Yfandes, who leaped off into the dark, heading for the open city gates ahead of them.
He grabbed for the reins and pommel as she shot forward, a white arrow speeding toward a target only she knew.
:'Fandes! Where are we going?:
:The palace!:
The streets wound crazily round about, with no sense and no pattern; some were illuminated by torches and lanterns, some only by the moon. They sped from dark to light to dark again, Yfandes' hooves sliding on the slippery cobbles. They splashed through puddles of water and less pleasant liquids. He could hear her hooves, oddly muffled, beneath him; and both intriguing scents and noisome, foul stenches that met his nose only to be snatched away before he could recognize them. There were people about; street cleaners, beggars, whores, drunks, others he couldn't identify. The spell held; the eyes of the townsfolk they passed slid past the two of them with no interest whatsoever.
:The first Companion, the young one - I can't even reach him now, he's too crazed, Van, he's so frightened!: Yfandes was not particularly coherent herself; stress was distorting her mind-voice into a wash of emotion through which it was hard to pick up words. :The second one - she's - her Chosen - she can't bear what he's doing, she's shutting everything out :
Vanyel clung to the pommel and balanced out sideways a bit as Yfandes rounded a corner, hindquarters skewing as her hooves slipped a little. This "second one”-she was probably the Companion with Randale's envoy. But what could a Herald be doing that would stress his Companion to the point of breakdown?
Vanyel didn't have long to wait to discover the answer; they entered a zone of wider streets and enormous residences; homes of the noble and rich. The streets were near daylight - bright with cressets and lanterns of scentless oils. The palace can't be far, he thought, and just as he finished the thought, they pounded around a corner and into a huge square, then down a broad avenue. At the end of that processional avenue was a huge structure, half fortress, half fantasy, looming above the city, a black eagle mantling above her nest against the setting moon. And at the eagle's feet, an egg of light-the main courtyard, brightly lit. Vanyel banished the spell of unsight as they thundered in the gilded gates.