He stopped before opening the door, concentrating, and then he relaxed. “She’s alive!” he said as I looked at him with concern.
“And the others?” I said worriedly.
“Safe, your wife took the last two of the enemy from behind, but Elaine is badly wounded. She seems to be unconscious. The last of them fell over her after your wife cut the top half of his head off… when did she get so strong? She fought like a demon!” said Walter, with some surprise.
“I’ll explain that later. Tell me what’s happening,” I told him impatiently.
“My daughter is definitely unconscious, they’ve dragged her out and it appears that Lady Rose is tying her leg up… it’s a terrible mess. I think she’s made a tourniquet. Your wife doesn’t have much of a dress left, they used one of her sleeves for it,” he explained.
That brought a smile to my lips for a moment. If only I were there to give her some encouragement, I thought. “Such a wanton…,” I said quietly. I didn’t bother saying it loudly enough for Walter; he wouldn’t have gotten the joke. “Are there any more of the enemy near them?” I asked.
“No,” replied the older wizard. “They’re almost to the door now. The countess is carrying Elaine. Her leg looks to be a mess. I don’t think I can heal something like that,” he admitted. “She might not walk again unless…” he looked at me before looking away.
Unspoken was the fact that if it required a complex act of healing, I was probably the only wizard alive that could manage it. “We have to survive this before we can think about anything else,” I told him.
“If we don’t…” he began and then paused for a moment before continuing, “Her wound is bad. I’m not sure she’ll survive for long without some sort of healing.”
“They can send word to George, if we don’t survive,” I said to reassure him. “And if by some miracle we do, then you can help her, maybe.” I slid back down to rest on the floor. The cold stone felt good. It helped distract me from the nausea. “How is the barrier holding up?”
“No real change,” said Walter in a quiet voice.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I never meant to put this sort of burden on you. I always intended to do this alone.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” Walter replied in an angry tone. “You always do that. It isn’t fair.”
“Do what?” I was curious. Walter rarely showed his irritation.
“Take responsibility for everyone else, and then apologize when you can’t do it all by yourself. How do you think that makes the rest of us feel? I’m a grown man. I may not be able to move mountains and bring gods to heel, but I can damn well do my best to protect friends and family… so don’t apologize to me for not being able to do everything for me!” he snapped back.
I lowered my head, “You’re right. I’m sorry, Walter.”
“What did I just tell you?” he barked back, but as I looked up his eyes held a glint of amusement.
I laughed, “Alright, I don’t know how to answer that, but you have a point. How is the barrier now?”
“Why do you keep asking that? You do realize I will tell you the second it breaks don’t you?” he answered.
“I should have been clearer. If possible, I want to open the barrier before it breaks. That’s why I keep asking. If you detect a weakness in it, we should turn it off then,” I explained.
“Even if the people aren’t finished evacuating?”
“Yes.”
Walter frowned. “I thought the idea was to buy as much time as possible. Why would you give up even a half a minute to them?”
“Because if it fails, the feedback might destroy more than the barrier enchantment, it might undo the enchantment that keeps Celior contained within the gem,” I replied. “That could make our situation significantly worse.”
My friend put a hand over his eyes. “You really should tell me these things sooner.”
“I don’t really know for sure,” I said. “It’s just a worry I have.”
The older wizard’s eyes lit with understanding for a moment, “Ah ha!”
“What?”
“Now I understand the ‘Ironheart Chamber’ a bit better. All that iron never made sense to me. You didn’t need it for the concealing enchantment, you needed it to help contain Celior if the gem failed,” Walter declared.
I had been watching him carefully from the moment he mentioned the Ironheart Chamber. It probably didn’t matter at this point if he knew the purpose, but I still relaxed once I heard his theory. For a moment, I almost corrected him, but I held my tongue. If one of the gods gets another crack at his mind, it might spoil our last chance, I thought.
That led me to another uncomfortable realization; without my power, how could I protect my own mind? Ignoring Walter’s sudden ‘insight’, I asked him a question instead, “What do I look like to you?”
“How do you mean exactly?”
“My aura, my mood… I can’t shield my mind. Can you read my emotions? Do I still look like a wizard?” I said, clarifying my question. Normally, if I wasn’t careful to shield myself, not only would another person with magesight be able to sense my emotions but they could also get a relative feel for the strength of my power.
Walter’s look was one of sympathy, or perhaps pity, “I’m sorry Mordecai. I don’t sense anything around you, other than a very faint aura, just enough that I can tell you’re still alive. Your power is gone… not just your sight.”
His description was disheartening. I had half-hoped that perhaps my problem was simply being unable to sense or ‘feel’ my own aythar, as well as the aythar around me. Still, there might be one bright side to my problem. “When you say ‘faint’, how faint?” I asked.
“Like Dorian,” he said bluntly.
Dorian Thornbear was what the wizards of old had called a ‘stoic’, meaning that he was completely dead to magic. He could neither manipulate it, nor sense it, and likewise he could not be affected by it, except in a purely physical sense. “Try to put me to sleep,” I suggested.
“Huh?” said Walter with a confused look.
“When you were fighting the influence of that god a few minutes ago, I couldn’t feel a thing. I think, for all intents and purposes, I may be like a stoic now. Put me to sleep, or paralyze me, anything… see if you can touch my mind,” I explained.
We experimented for several minutes before coming to the conclusion that I was indeed, essentially a stoic now. “Congratulations,” Walter told me. “Your theory was correct and you are completely powerless. I fail to see why you are even slightly happy about it.”
“Sometimes it’s the little things that matter,” I replied. “I may not have my power, but at least I don’t have to worry about them picking information out of my head, or fighting against their overwhelming compulsions once he… or they, do get in here.”
“They… do you think it’s more than one?”
“I hope not.”
Walter snorted, “It doesn’t really matter. I’m no match for one, two would just be overkill.”
“We still have some hope… if it is just one,” I suggested.
“I really wish you would tell me what you have planned. It would be a lot easier to help you,” retorted Walter.
“You can be my hands, but if you want my secrets, you’ll have to pry them from my mind,” I said tapping my head.
“Hmmph,” grunted Walter, “Not even your wife can get through that dense skull of yours.”
“Exactly, my friend. Exactly!” I crowed.
“You seem to be feeling better at least,” observed the other wizard.
The nausea had in fact faded to some degree. “I think you’re right. Perhaps I’m not dying after all?” I suggested hopefully.
He shook his head sadly, “From what I learned, you don’t start the bad part for a few days. You’ll turn yellow first before going slowly mad with pain and hallucinations.”