“Into that?”
“You’ll be fine as long as you stay close by and don’t lose sight of me.” Bannier looked back and fixed the young Ghoeran with his glare. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to follow where I go?”
The knight spat. “Go on, lead the way.”
“Remember, stay close,” Bannier said. “I will lead you on paths from which you do not want to stray.” With his horse kicking up clods of dark mud, he rode into the Shadow.
While Seriene examined the strength of her shielding one more time, reinforcing the spell where she could, Gaelin and Erin tried to revive Ilwyn. She looked like a pale flower preserved by the snow, her face and limbs cold and imbued with only a semblance of life. Gaelin despaired of waking her; the fires of her life had cooled to embers, too dark to rekindle. He rubbed her arms vigorously, trying to warm her, while Erin trickled some strong brandy between her lips. “I think we need to get her out of here,” the bard said. “This place is unhealthy.
I don’t think Ilwyn will recover until she’s back on the other side.”
“You’re probably right,” he replied. “It couldn’t hurt to get away from here.” He retrieved his cloak and wrapped it tightly around Ilwyn’s torso, wincing. The talons of the shadow monster had scored him deeply, and his injuries still pained him. When he finished, he signaled to Seriene. “Can we get going? We need to leave this place.”
Seriene’s exhaustion was evident. Still, she finished her examination of the barrier before she allowed herself to slowly turn away, her stride unsteady. Watching her, Gaelin wondered what price she paid to gain her sorcerous skills; clearly they were not won or wielded lightly. “That should keep him busy for a time,” she declared.
“What did you do?”
“Severing the ley lines dismissed the source. Think of it this way: If Caer Duirga is a well from which Bannier draws his power, severing the lines is like cutting the rope for the bucket. The well itself isn’t damaged – I’m not strong enough to do that, no one is – but even after Bannier undoes this barrier, he’ll have to spend a lot of time and effort calling Caer Duirga back to life.”
“What were the spells you just wove into your barrier?” asked Gaelin.
“Traps,” Seriene replied with a fierce show of her teeth.
“He’ll want to be careful in approaching my work. Now, let’s get moving before he shows up to investigate. I don’t think I have the strength to face him now.”
Seriene led the battered party back to the doorway she had created to enter the Shadow World, while the rest followed as best they could. Boeric, Bull, and the three remaining guardsmen carried the bodies of their fallen comrades; no one wanted to leave the dead soldiers in the cold and gloom of the place. Gaelin carried Ilwyn – she felt light as a feather in his arms, as if she had grown close to insubstantiality as her life faded in Bannier’s black circle – and, with a dark look at Gaelin, Erin helped Seriene along. The Dieman’s fatigue was even greater than she let on.
To Gaelin’s eyes, nothing remained to indicate that Seriene’s door had pierced the barriers between the worlds, but Seriene seemed to know instinctively where she had left the gateway.
She began the invocations needed to open the door again, but halted after a few syllables. “Damn,” she muttered. She looked a round, her eyes flicking nervously from the gloom that surrounded them to the cheerless sky. “The gate’s gone.”
After a moment of stunned silence, Bull said, “Your Highness, what do you mean, gone?”
Seriene directed a withering gaze at him. “This is a deceitful place. The gate has shifted, vanished, or been closed by design. I’ll have to find another or ready a spell capable of forcing the passage again.”
Gaelin looked down at Ilwyn’s cold face. “I don’t know if my sister will last that long. How hard is it to find an exit back to our world? I mean, could there be one nearby?”
Seriene waved her hands in disgust. “I don’t know. I guess I should start looking.” Bowing her head, she stretched out her arm, extending her senses to search for another weakness or flaw in the dimensional barriers. Gaelin glanced around nervously. The withered trees and sere grass rustled and creaked, but he felt no breeze on his face. He could almost make out some kind of muttering, a voice whispering in the shadows, faint and hard to hear. He found himself straining forward to hear the words, words he must understand…
“Riders coming,” announced Erin. With a start, Gaelin realized that he’d let himself drift off. He shook himself, looking up at where Erin stood, gazing into the gloom. “They’re climbing the hill, back to the stones. I can hear their horses.”
Gaelin rose and moved to see where she was looking. He could discern nothing in the gloom. “Are you sure your mind isn’t playing tricks on you?” he asked.
“I’m certain of it,” she replied.
“It must be Bannier. Who else would come this way?”
Gaelin carefully laid Ilwyn down on the cold stone, checking to make sure that his cloak covered her for warmth. The soldiers readied themselves, throwing cloaks back over their shoulders to clear their sword arms. Boeric and two of the other men still had their crossbows. They cocked and loaded the weapons with grim looks on their faces. Gaelin debated the advantages of flight, but he didn’t want to abandon their best route home.
“What should we do, Lord Mhor?” asked Boeric. In the gloom and the cold, the stoop-shouldered sergeant resembled an old, weather-beaten fence post, gray and featureless.
“Let’s wait here and keep out of sight,” Gaelin decided.
“They may miss us. We’re in no condition for a fight.”
Erin nodded in agreement. Distantly, they could make out the rough voices of the intruders, as they shouted orders to each other and trampled the ground of the clearing, but the sound was far fainter than it should have been. After a moment, Erin’s mouth stretched flat in a dark grimace. “Bannier’s with them. They’re asking him what to do. I think – ”
Suddenly, there was a flash of pure white light that illuminated the trees, blinding them all with its glare, and a rolling crack of thunder that echoed among the black rocks. Gaelin blinked spots out of his eyes and swore. “What in Haelyn’s glory was that?”
“My spell of warding,” Seriene answered. She paused in her divining to look back toward the stone circle, hidden by the dark shoulder of the hillside. “Bannier must have been impatient; I thought for certain he’d find and disarm it.” She f rowned thoughtfully. “It was a powerful enchantment, Gaelin. It might have killed him or anyone else nearby.”
“Then we may find Bannier and his allies at a disadvantage,” Gaelin breathed, climbing to his feet. He studied the darkness. Cries of distress came faintly to his ears. He’d like nothing more than to take the fight to Bannier in a direct fashion.
In fact, he’d like to know for certain that Bannier was not going to be a threat to anyone for whom he cared again. He glanced at Seriene. “Do you have any more spells of that sort at your command?”
“No. I’ve exhausted my powers. I’ll be lucky to open the door again, once I find it.”
Gaelin weighed their options. As long as Tuorel had Bannier’s magic to aid his powerful army, Mhoried didn’t stand a chance. And he owed Bannier for the deaths of his father and brother. “Seriene, you stay here,” he decided. “We can’t afford to risk losing you to a stray arrow or sword blow, not when you’re our only way home.” He picked out one of the surviving guardsmen, a fellow who had been wounded in the fray with the shadow monsters. “Hueril, you remain here to guard her and Ilwyn. The rest of you, come with me.”
They retraced their steps back to the clearing, which still danced and glimmered with an eerie, pale radiance. Gaelin quietly drew his sword and held it bared in his hand as they cautiously climbed the last few feet to the lip of the hollow through the dead, twisted trees. His breath steamed in front of him, streaming away in the coldness.