“Where are you going?” he cried.
“Up above,” Teyrnon shouted, sweat streaming down his face, his voice raw. “The fighting’s too congested. If I try to throw a power bolt I’ll hit as many of our own men as theirs. And Barak is hopelessly vulnerable when he has to source my magic.”
Barak was weeping with frustration, Paul saw. They reached the slope and charged upward. At the top, a line of lios alfar stood, scanning the stretch of the battle. Mounted auberei waited beside them, ready to race down with word for the High King and his captains.
“What’s happening?” Paul gasped to the nearest of the lios, as he dismounted and spun to look.
But it was Loren Silvercloak, striding forward, who answered him. “Too finely balanced,” he said, his lined features grim. “We’re being held to a standstill, and time is on their side. Aileron has ordered the Dwarves to drive east, toward the Dalrei and the lios alfar. He’s going to try to hold the western flank and half of the center alone.”
“Can he?” Teyrnon asked.
Loren shook his head. “For a time. Not forever. And see, the swans are telling Galadan everything we do.”
Down below, Paul could see that the Wolflord had withdrawn to a cleared space toward the rear of the army of the Dark. He was in his mortal shape again, and every moment another of the hideous black swans would descend from the uncontested reaches of the air to give him tidings and carry away instructions.
Beside Paul, Barak began to curse, a stream of heartfelt, anguished invective. Below, to their left, a flash of light caught Paul’s eye. It was Arthur, the King Spear gleaming in his hand, guiding his magnificent raithen all along the line of battle on the western flank, driving back the legions of Maugrim with the incandescent flame of his presence, shaping a respite for the beleaguered men of Brennin wherever he went. The Warrior in the last battle at Camlann. The battle he had not been meant to see. And would not have seen, had not Diarmuid intervened.
Behind Paul the embers of the pyre still glowed, and ashes drifted in the morning sun. Paul looked up: no longer morning, he realized. Beyond the circling swans the sun had reached its zenith and was starting down.
He jogged back toward the south. In a cleared space a handful of people, Kim and Jaelle among them, were doing the best they could for the wounded that the auberei were bringing up the ridge in frightening numbers.
Kim’s face was streaked with blood and sweat. He knelt beside her. “I’m useless down there,” he said quickly. “What can I do?”
“You too?” she answered, her grey eyes shadowed with pain. “Pass me those bandages. Behind you. Yes.” She took the cloths and began wrapping the leg wound of one of the Dwarves.
“What do you mean?” Paul asked.
Kim cut the bandage with a blade and fastened it as tightly as she could. She stood up and moved on, without answering. Paul followed. A young Dalrei, no more than sixteen, lay in breathless agony, an axe wound in his side. Kim looked down on him with despair.
“Teyrnon!” Paul shouted.
The mage and his source hurried toward them. Teyrnon took one look at the wounded boy, glanced briefly at Barak, and then knelt beside the Dalrei. Barak closed his eyes and Teyrnon placed his hand over the jagged wound. He spoke, under his breath, half a dozen words, and as he did the wound slowly closed itself.
When he was done, though, Barak almost fell, fatigue etched into his features. Teyrnon stood up quickly and steadied his source.
“I can’t do much more of this,” the mage said grimly, looking closely at Barak.
“Yes, you can!” Barak snapped, glaring. “Who else, Seer? Who else needs us?”
“Go to Jaelle,” Kim said tonelessly. “She’ll show you the ones who are worst off. Do what you can, but try not to exhaust yourself. You two are all we have in the way of magic.”
Teyrnon nodded tersely and strode off to where Paul could see the High Priestess, the sleeves of her white gown pushed back, kneeling beside the figure of a crumpled lios alfar.
Paul turned back to Kim. “Your own magic?” he said, pointing to the dulled Warstone. “What’s happened?”
For a moment she hesitated; then she quickly told him the story of what had happened by Calor Diman. “I rejected it,” she concluded flatly. “And now the swans have the sky to themselves, and the Baelrath is totally dead. I feel sick, Paul.”
So did he. But he masked it and pulled her to him in a hard embrace. He felt her trembling against his body.
Paul said, “No one here or anywhere else has done as much as you. And we don’t know if what you did was wrong—would you have gotten to the Dwarves in time if you’d used the ring to bind the creature in the Lake? It isn’t over, Kim, it’s a long way from over.”
From not far off they heard a grunt of pain. Four of the auberei set down a stretcher they’d been carrying. On it, bleeding from half a dozen new wounds, lay Mabon of Rhoden. Loren Silvercloak and a white-faced Sharra of Cathal hurried to the side of the fallen Duke.
Paul didn’t know where to look. All around them lay the dying and the dead. Below, on the plain of battle, the forces of the Dark seemed scarcely to have diminished. Within himself the pulsebeat of Mórnir seemed to faint as ever, agonizingly far. A hint of something but not a promise; an awareness, but not power.
He cursed, as Barak had done, helplessly.
Kim looked at him, and after a moment she said, in a strange voice, “I just realized something. You’re hating yourself for not being able to use your power in battle. You don’t have a power of war, though, Paul. We should have realized that before. I’m that kind of power, or I was, until last night. You’re something else.”
He heard a truth, but the bitterness wouldn’t leave him. “Wonderful,” he snapped. “Makes me awfully useful, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe,” was all she said. But there was a quiet speculation in her eyes that calmed him.
“Where’s Jen?” he asked.
She pointed. He looked over and saw that Jennifer, too, was dealing with the wounded as best she could. At the moment she had just risen from someone’s side to walk a step or two north, looking down over the battlefield. He could only see her in profile, but as he gazed at her Paul realized that he had never seen a woman look as she did then, as if taking the pain of all the worlds onto herself. In the manner of a Queen.
He never, ever, knew what made him look up.
To see a black swan diving. Soundlessly, a terror against the sky, razored claws extended straight for Jennifer. Black Avaia, putrescent death in the air, returning to claim her victim for a second time.
Paul screamed a warning at the top of his voice and launched himself in a frantic sprint over the distance between. The swan was a black projectile hurtling down with annihilating speed. Jennifer turned at his cry and looked up. She saw, and did not flinch. She grappled bravely for the slim blade they’d given her. Paul ran as he’d never run before in all his life. A sob escaped him. Too far! He was too far away. He tried, reached for speed, for more, for something. A meaty stench filled the air. A shrieking sound of triumph. Jennifer lifted her blade. Twenty feet away, Paul stumbled, fell, heard himself screaming her name, glimpsed the raking teeth of the swan—
And saw Avaia, ten feet above Jennifer’s head, smashed into a crumple of feathers by a red comet in the sky. A living comet that had somehow materialized, blindingly swift, to intersect her path. A horn like a blade exploded into Avaia’s breast. A bright sword smote at her head. The black swan screamed, in pain and terror so strident they heard it on the plain below.