Taliesen sat alone in the semidarkness of his viewing chamber. It was cold, and idly he touched a switch to his right. Warm air flowed through hidden steel vents in the floor and he removed his cloak. Leaning back against the headrest of the padded leather chair, he stared at the paneled ceiling, his mind tired, his thoughts fragmented.
He transferred his gaze to the gleaming files. Eight hundred years of notes, discoveries, failures, and triumphs.
Useless.
All of it…
How could the Great Gates have closed?
And why were the Middle Gates shrinking year by year?
The Infinity Code had been broken a century before his birth by the scientist Astole. The first Gate-a window really-had been set up the following year. It had seemed then that the Universe itself had shrunk to the size of a small room.
By the time Taliesen was a student his people had seen every star, every minor planet. Gates had been erected on thousands of sites from Sirius to Saptatua. Linear time had snapped back into a Gordian knot of interwoven strands. It was a time of soaring arrogance and interstellar jests. Taliesen himself had walked upon many planets as a god, enjoying immensely the worship of the planet-bound humanoids. But as he grew older such cheap entertainment palled and he became fascinated by the development of Man.
Astole, his revered teacher, had fallen from grace, becoming convinced of some mystic force outside human reality. Mocked and derided, he had left the order and vanished from the outer world. Yet it was he who had first saved the baby, Sigarni. Taliesen felt a sense of relief. For years he had feared a rogue element amid the complexities of his plans. Now that fear vanished.
He understood now the riddle of the Hawk Eternal.
“You and I will teach him, Astole,” he said, “and we will save my people.” A nagging pain flared in his left arm, and rubbing his biceps, he rose from the chair. “Now I must find you, old friend,” he said. “I shall begin by revisiting the last place Caswallon saw you.” His fingers spasmed as a new pain lanced into his chest. Taliesen staggered to his chair, fear welling within him. He scrabbled for a box on the desktop, spilling its contents. Tiny capsules rolled to the floor… With trembling fingers he reached for them. There was a time when he would have needed no crudely manufactured remedies, no digitalis derived from foxglove. In the days of the Great Gates he could have traveled to places where his weakened heart would have been regenerated within an hour. Youth within a day! But not now. His vision swam. The fear became a tidal wave of panic that circled his chest with a band of fire. Oh, please, he begged. Not now!
The floor rose to strike his head, pain swamping him.
“Just one more… day,” he groaned.
His fingers clenched into a fist as a fresh spasm of agony ripped into him.
And as he died the Gates vanished.
During the week that followed Caswallon’s departure Maggrig led his Pallides warriors on a series of killing raids, hitting the Aenir at night, peppering them with arrows from woods and forests. Leofas, with four hundred Farlain clansmen, circled the Aenir force and attacked from the south.
Whenever the Aenir mustered for a counterattack the clans melted away, splitting their groups to re-form at agreed meeting places.
The raids were no more than a growing irritation to Asbidag, despite the disruption of his supply lines and the loss of some three hundred warriors. The main battle was what counted, and the clans could not run forever.
But where was Barsa? Nothing had been heard of his son and the Timber Wolves he led.
Drada trapped a raiding party of twenty Pallides warriors in a woods twelve miles from Attafoss, and these-bar one-were summarily butchered. The prisoner was tortured for seven hours, but revealed nothing. He had been blood-eagled on a wide tree. But the main force, led by Maggrig, escaped to the north, cutting through the ring of steel Drada had thrown around the woods. Still, twenty of the enemy had been slain, and Drada was not displeased.
In the southeast Gaelen and his companions had found more than eighty Pallides warriors in the caves of Pataron, a day’s march from Carduil. These he had persuaded to march with him on his return. It was a start.
On the fifth day of travel Gaelen and his group entered the thick pines below Carduil, and as they climbed they felt the chill of the wind blowing down from the snowcapped peaks. As they neared the opening to a narrow pass, a tall woman in leather breeches and a hooded sheepskin jerkin stepped out from the trees, a bow half drawn in her hands.
“Halt where you stand,” she commanded.
“We are seeking Laric,” Gaelen told the clanswoman.
“Who are you?”
“Gaelen of the Farlain. I come with a message from the War Lord Caswallon and his friend Maggrig of the Pallides.”
The warrior woman eased down the bowstring, returned the shaft to the quiver, and moved forward. “I am Lara,” she said, holding out her hand. “Laric’s daughter. My father is dead. He led the men on a raid to Aesgard; they were taken and slain to the last man.”
“All dead?” asked Agwaine, pushing forward.
“Yes. The Haesten are finished.”
“I am sorry,” said Gaelen, his heart sinking.
“No more than we are,” said Lara. “We are camped within Carduil. Join us.”
The companions followed her into the pass, and up to the winding trail below the caves. Once within the twisted caverns Lara pushed back her hood, shaking loose her dark hair. Leaving the companions at a fire where food was being prepared, she took Gaelen to a small rough-cut chamber in which lay a bed and a table of pine.
“There used to be a group of druids here,” she said, stripping off her jerkin. Tossing it to the bed, she pulled a chair from beneath the table and sat.
Gaelen sat on the bed, his misery evident. “You thought you’d find an army?” she asked softly.
“Yes.”
“How many Farlain warriors escaped?”
“Close to four thousand.”
“And Pallides?”
“Less than a thousand.”
“They’ll fight well,” said the girl. “Would you like something to drink?” Gaelen nodded. She stood and crossed the chamber, bending to lift a jug and two goblets from behind a wooden chest. The soft leather of her breeches stretched across her hips. Gaelen blinked and looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.
She passed him a goblet of honeyed wine. “Are you warm?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Your face is flushed. Take your jerkin off.”
She really was quite striking, he realized as he removed the garment. Her eyes were the blue of an evening sky, her mouth wide and full-lipped.
“Why are you staring?”
“I’m sorry,” he stammered.
“I saw you run in the Games,” she said. “You were unlucky to miss the final.”
“Luck had little to do with it,” he said, happier to be on firmer ground.
“I heard-you were attacked. Still, the clans won.”
“Yes.”
“They will win again.”
“At this moment I don’t see how,” said Gaelen. “Nothing has gone right for us. We have lost thousands and the Aenir are hardly touched.”
“I have eight hundred warriors at my command,” she said.
“What? Where are you hiding them?”
“They are not hidden. They are here, with me.”
“You mean the women?”
“If that patronizing look does not fade soon, you Farlain pig swill, then you’ll be leaving here faster than you came.”
“I… apologize,” he said.
“Well, stop apologizing!” she snapped. “It seems you’ve done nothing else since you arrived. You’re the Lowlander Caswallon brought home, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Then, this once, I will forgive you for not thinking like a clansman. All our women are skilled with the bow. We can also use knives, though swords are a little unwieldy. Our men are dead and our clan finished. None of us have any reason to go on living like beasts in the mountains. Even if we survive and smash the Aenir, there will be no Haesten. Our day is gone. The best we can hope for is to find husbands from other clans. Believe me, Gaelen, that is not a happy thought.”