“I don’t want you to go.”
“How can I stay?” she said. “As your mistress? Or would I see you day after day, pretending that I don’t love you?”
“You deserve more than that.”
He struggled to find something else to say, but no words came to him. Erin’s face, pale and radiant in the gloom, made Gaelin’s heart ache. She looked down and held his hand tighter. “I’ll have to leave, then,” she said.
“That day’s not here yet.”
“No, it’s not. But if I wait a few weeks, a few months, maybe a year or two, how much harder will it be?” Erin looked up into his face, but Gaelin couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know if I could stay away from you, knowing that you’re somewhere nearby.” Her eyes softened for a moment, then she stood abruptly and stalked away, shrugging Gaelin’s cloak from her shoulders. He watched her leave, and bowed his head.
At that moment, Seriene struck Bannier’s trap. A brilliant flare of light seared Gaelin’s eyes, leaving colored spots in his sight for a long moment. He blinked his eyes clear, drawing his sword by instinct and whirling to face the black stones in the heart of the hollow. The great column of dark energy seethed and crackled, a leaping pillar of noxious flame that pierced the blank sky like a steel rapier. Not only was it visible again, it was blindingly bright, a beacon that cast weird, dancing shadows over the entire hilltop. Gaelin gaped in awe. The light would be visible for dozens of miles, a beacon that shouted their position to anyone – or anything – nearby.
The column flickered, as a dark band of matter rose along its length, then streaked outward along one of the faint ley lines, arrowing off to the west. A signal to Bannier, he realized.
Seriene lay huddled outside the circle, a frail white doll discarded on the ground. Black energy danced and snapped in cold, lightless arcs all around her. Swallowing his amazement, Gaelin cautiously stepped closer, even though the roaring of the energy hammered at him with tangible force.
“Seriene!” he called. “Seriene! What did you do? How do we stop it?” But his voice was drowned by the shrieking storm of darkness that spouted from the ancient stones. He took another cautious step closer, and then his feet froze to the earth as he saw the true nature of Bannier’s defense.
The unhealthy light of the raging magic was too bright to look at directly, bright enough to throw surging shadows from the dark outlines of the old standing stones. Each of the seven rune-carved pillars was joined to a pool of darkness, and, as Gaelin looked on in horror, the shadows opened. From impenetrable depths of darkness, nightmarish shapes were rising, mist-cloaked wraiths with baleful eyes that exhaled streamers of cold vapor as their hungry maws yawned wide.
The pervasive chill of the Shadow World suddenly became much more acute, as if the shadow things gathered and focused the twisted energies of the place. Gaelin’s heart labored in his chest, trying to pump blood that was growing sluggish.
The first of the shadow creatures stepped free of its prison beneath the earth and silently advanced on Seriene.
Whatever the shadow creatures were, Gaelin suspected that mere swords would not deter them. He prayed Seriene was only stunned and would know of a way to dismiss them.
With a gasp that seared his nose and throat with cold, he broke free of his paralysis and scrambled down the shallow slope to Seriene’s side. He arrived a step ahead of the shadow thing and launched a desperate assault of slashes and cuts, hoping to keep it at bay.
The creature roiled and flowed like living darkness, slithering away from the sword blows just as a patch of shadow might retreat from the advance of a man carrying a torch. As soon as the sword passed, its body returned to its former shape. With inhuman swiftness, it lunged forward and slashed its icy talons across Gaelin’s chest, scoring his breastplate with four long, frosted furrows and sending a tremor of aching cold through his body. He stumbled back, giving ground to the monster’s attack. Around him, he could make out the dim cries of his guards engaging the shadow thing’s companions.
Ducking beneath a wild slash, he leaned forward and ran his sword clean through the shadow’s center of mass, a strike it was unable to completely avoid. There was a curious tugging or resistance on the blade, as if he’d just stabbed a pool of water, and his hand was stung by a searing wave of cold that raced up the sword’s hilt. The creature recoiled as if wounded, and Gaelin followed with a second sword thrust that passed directly between its baleful red eyes. This time, there was a little more resistance, and with a soft, hateful hiss the thing discorporated, dissolving into an inky black vapor that dissipated to the ground. “Aim for their eyes!” he cried.
“They’re most vulnerable there!”
He glanced about, trying to get a sense of what was going on. All around him, men cursed and screamed as they fought the shadow monsters. Bull held one at bay with wild, twohanded sweeps of his sword, keeping the creature on the defensive as it deftly avoided the singing blade. Afew feet away, Erin cast a dazzling spell of light that blew a creature into nothingness.
But more were rising from the shadows beneath the standing stones, and already several of Gaelin’s men were down. He growled a curse, not knowing what to do.
“Gaelin, help me.” He looked down in surprise and saw Seriene struggling to stand. He reached down and hauled her to her feet. The princess looked weak and frail, and Gaelin could feel her entire body shaking in cold or exhaustion, but there was fire and fight in her eyes. “You’ll never defeat them all,” she coughed. “They’ll keep coming until they overwhelm you.”
“What do we do?” he shouted.
“Help me finish the spell,” she replied. “When I seal the source, they will vanish.” She pointed at the monoliths across the clearing. “I’ve prepared barriers for all the stones save one.”
He nodded, and half-carried her over to the place she indicated.
Even as he set her down, another of the shadow creatures flowed forward and launched itself at him. Gaelin slashed at it desperately, hoping to keep it away from Seriene.
The entity took advantage of his distraction and sank its freezing talons into his left forearm. With a great cry, he wrenched free and brought his sword down on its head, striking it down, but his arm now hung limp and useless by his side, numbed by the creature’s touch. He tried to shrug it off, but now two more of the monsters were sidling forward, preparing to attack. “Seriene! You’d better hurry!” he called.
Behind him, Seriene chanted the end of her spell, kneeling to scribe a pattern in the ground with her fingertip. She risked a glance up from her work, and found a free moment to snap, “Gaelin, hold them off! I’m almost done.”
Gaelin gave a couple of steps to the shadow things, menacing them with his sword. One flowed smoothly to his right, drawing his point away, while the other quickly slithered around him to the left, trying to get at Seriene. He had only a moment to make up his mind. With a yell, he turned his back on the creature menacing him and struck across his body at the monster that rushed at the princess. His blade caught the creature in the center of its torso, and it disintegrated into the mists and darkness from which it had come. But, before he could return his attention to the other foe, talons of searing cold raked at his face and throat as the creature leapt on his back.
Screaming, Gaelin staggered to his knees, flailing wildly with his sword. The monster’s shadowy claws seemed to pass right through his armor, leaving white patches of frost where the weird substance of its body pierced the plates and mail. Shadow stuff clawed at Gaelin’s heart within his chest.
The cold seized him in a relentless grip, and he sank to the ground.