Erienne watched the elven and Julatsan mages gather around the Heart. Almost two hundred of them in two concentric rings coming no nearer than forty feet. Though she might not be able to feel the warmth of the sun, she could certainly sense the atmosphere. She had never known one so tense around a casting. They should all have been confident. Instead, they feared a dropout of the mana focus, a darkening of the shadow. It would be catastrophic.
Pheone stood next to Dila'heth, the elf relaying the human's instructions. A thought clear as spring water came to Erienne's mind. She probed the Heart of Julatsa. The sight jerked her back to herself. She should not have been able to view the mana with such clarity, almost as if she were Julatsan herself. Another thought. Of course, she was every mage now. Magic was just one element. For her it was no longer split along the lines of college and lore.
Feeling an almost voyeuristic excitement, Erienne tuned back into the Julatsan mana spectrum and watched, expanding her viewpoint to take in the mages congregated around the Heart pit.
The Heart itself exhibited all the signs of a mortally sick organ. It pulsed rather than flowed at its deepest level, sending vibrations into the flow around it. Its energy was low, constricted by the shadow that sought to crush the life from it altogether..
What should have been a brilliant yellow oval, imbuing every Julatsan mage, was in reality a stuttering tarnished teardrop. The desperation to raise the Heart was all too easy to understand. It had to be returned to its exact previous position to stop it deteriorating further. Like a sundial partially hidden in shadow, it had to be moved to where its effect could be maximised. And then enough Julatsan mages had to be trained to build its strength. Pheone had asked her opinion on Geren's theory. She had thought him almost certainly right. That meant raising the Heart was only one step on a long trail back to strength.
Erienne noted with great interest, the effect of the mana flow on the elemental power streams about it. The pure magical force dragged them into similar shapes, upsetting their own rhythm. The free energy of the air and earth around the Heart were weak in its presence and she could feel the solidity of the buildings surrounding the courtyard.
The combination of the elements was so potent. Beguiling almost. She knew she could draw on any of it, all of it. That the failure of all the colleges would not stop her practising magic. She could be the only mage, giving true title to the name of her magic. One.
Erienne clamped down on the thought and felt the pressure of the One entity ease. She fought her breathing back to near normal and refocused, seeing the structure for the raise begin to form.
Like so many core castings, the structure was inherently simple.
To Erienne, it looked like nothing more than an eight-sided splint. Each panel of the splint was linked to those adjacent by cords of pulsating mana and inside it, there were as many links into the Heart itself as there were mages to cast the spell.
All of these links were mirrored by poles of mana on the outside of the splint, one representing each mind. The formation was quick and without error, each mage feeding in as much energy as the next to keep the balance perfect.
When it was done, they paused. Erienne heard Pheone issue a series of quick commands, tidying up a slightly tattered edge here, filling in a striation in one of the splint panels there. When Pheone was finished teasing at the few imperfections, they waited again, all watching the dull-coloured but powerful shape, making sure it was settled.
Now it got tricky. Slowly, on a single command, all the mages tensed their minds in unison, clenching their fists for emphasis and raising their arms gradually as their minds gripped, dragging the Heart upwards, agonisingly slowly. But move it did. Inching upwards, the mages taking the strain.
Erienne sampled their minds, felt the draining effects of the expense of such levels of energy. So much poured in to keep the shape true through the shadow that covered everything they did. She could see the delicacy of their operation. Every mage had to push at precisely the same rate, the balance had to remain perfect. Each was responsible for making sure their rate of input placed no lateral strain on the structure. And where they did, Pheone linked in, cajoling or smoothing, evening the flow. She was a natural.
Erienne felt a twinge in the elemental forces surrounding the Heart and focused in. There, buried deep within the stone of the building that housed the Heart, and that they raised along with this most vital of mana structures, was a mote of darkness.
She could see the mass of the energy from the earth, air and stone spiralling in support, dragged upwards by the intensity of the mana and mimicking the shape of the sheath. But there was a blemish and it was fast infecting the point at the base of the Heart.
She couldn't tell whether it was a coincidence or a direct result of the casting but it was happening all the same. The swallowhole in the elemental energy expanded quickly, soaking up into the Heart, distending its shape fractionally at first but then faster and faster. It was enough to begin a chain reaction, the Heart darkening, deep shadow consuming its already dull colour. And all the time around Erienne, the mages continued to inch the Heart and its surrounds towards the surface.
They seemed oblivious, they were oblivious. The focus was failing and none of them had noticed. For a heartbeat, panic gripped Erienne and she considered trying to absorb die black hole in the elemental energies, cover the vortex that was destroying the focus. But a beat later, she knew she could not. Dark lines pulled and shadows thickened over the surface of Julatsa's Heart.
And still they lifted it, their minds so concentrated on the splint and its coherence, and on the stamina they were having to feed in that the drain on them was escaping their attention. Their minds were linked as one to the construct, their combined force stopping them sensing what any one individual would see instandy.
There was nothing Erienne could do to slow the rate of the shadow's advance. At the base of the Heart, yellow was gone, replaced by grey and darkening every moment.
'Pheone,' she said, her voice loud, pitched to penetrate. 'Release the structure now. The focus is failing.'
'So close,' moaned the mage. 'We can do it.'
The spell had her, like it had them all.
'No,' barked Erienne. 'Trust me, listen to me. Abort the attempt now.'
'Nearly there, we have momentum.'
'Dammit!' spat Erienne. Without thinking, she reached out, harnessing the elemental energies surrounding the splint. They coalesced immediately into a hard edge. In the centre of the splint, darkness was flying along the length of the Heart. When it eclipsed it entirely, the splint would collapse violendy, reversing its energy through every Julatsan mage mind. It would mean the end of the college.
Erienne had no time to think of the short-term pain she was about to cause. She forced her mind to firm the edge still more, feeling the One entity surge painfully within her. Trying so hard to keep the stopper in its power, she whipped the edge through the poles of mana spiking the outside of the splint, releasing mage after mage as she sheered through them.
It was so easy, Julatsan magic so weak and unable to resist. The One edge flashed bright, sucking in the raw mana it freed, Erienne fighting to keep it sharp, imagining with increasing desperation a knife carving through water, up and down.
Quickly, with fewer and fewer mages feeding power into the splint, it began to sag, the Heart falling back down. From its apex, the raising construct unravelled, Erienne scything through the poles while the blackness gorged on the Heart. Abruptly, the spell collapsed and Erienne shut off the edge with the last of her energy. She opened her eyes and tried to pick out Pheone who was standing close by. The mage was blurred to her sight as she swayed on her feet.