Julatsa was quiet. Throughout the night and into the morning, the Wesmen camped around the College walls had tried to breach the DemonShroud. The souls of those who touched it merely went to feed the insatiable appetite of the demons controlling the awful spell.
It had been as pitiful as it had been painful. Barras had listened from his rooms as the Wesmen tried to walk across the moat, then bridge it with wood and metal and finally climb above it using grappling ropes strung from nearby buildings to the College walls.
Now, with the sun high, they were building something. Barras, unable to simply hear the terrible calls of the dying, walked out to the Tower ramparts and took in the sight of the hell that he and the Council had created just beyond the walls.
The DemonShroud surrounded the College like a thin grey cloud, rising from the unbroken ground. It was ten feet thick, rippling into the sky as high as could be seen and, Barras knew, it drove into the earth deeper than men could survive. It was an awesome, oppressive conjuration. Majestic in its way and awful testament to the power demons could wield on Balaia with the help of mages. Proximity to it set teeth on edge and fear leached from its surface, covering everything in its compass with a sheen of anxiety and requiring conscious effort not to shy away from it.
He had no doubt the Wesmen would try to tunnel in at some stage during the coming weeks. He just prayed that they would see their folly before too many souls were taken. Yet, as he gazed at the Shroud, through which blue and yellow light occasionally flared and forked like desultory lightning, he wasn’t so sure. Not sure at all. The Wesmen’s actions so far revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of mana and dimensional connectivity. He found himself smiling a little sadly. Of course they wouldn’t understand. The Wesmen had no magic. It was both their innocence and their curse.
Barras walked around the Tower, taking in the totality of the Shroud, the shifting greyness of which lent everything beyond it a washed-out aspect, dimming colours and making movement seem indistinct. It had first been employed to make the College of Julatsa impregnable over seven hundred years previously and had served the same purpose as a moat but had been infinitely more effective.
There was no way to cross the DemonShroud until the spell was ended. Any who tried, whether friend or foe, would be taken. It couldn’t be overflown, it couldn’t be dug beneath. It took souls indiscriminately from man and beast. It was evil on the face of Balaia. Yet it would save Julatsa from the Wesmen and, despite the horror of the DemonShroud, the knowledge gave Barras comfort.
Inside the College grounds the Shroud was given the utmost respect, with no one who braved the walls venturing closer to its modulating edge than half a dozen paces. Those who had made it through the gates, and who now mingled with those to whom the College was their natural home, walked, stood or sat in groups, all dazed, all saddened and all affected by the dread calm that pervaded the whole grounds. Because the single hardest aspect of the Shroud casting to take in was the quiet.
Every sound the Wesmen made was dulled and far away. They had long since stopped sending arrows over the walls; it was a waste for them and an addition to the stocks of the Julatsans. Instead, they ringed the walls just beyond the edge of the moat, clustering and staring. But their clamouring at the edges of the Shroud, the hammering at the tower Barras could see them making, their living hubbub, their walking, running, cooking, talking, laughing, all of it was muted.
Barras dug a finger into each ear, unsure for a moment of whether he wasn’t losing his hearing. But then Kard’s voice, loud and invasive, struck up to his left.
‘Good afternoon, Barras.’ The old elf started and turned.
‘Kard. Glad to see you are well.’
‘All things are relative,’ said the General.
‘So they are. What brings you out here?’
‘The same as you.’ Kard came to Barras’ shoulder. ‘To see the Wesmen building their folly.’ He nodded towards their half-built tower outside Julatsa’s south gate.
It looked a rickety structure from where Barras stood but he knew better - the Wesmen were fine woodsmen. A lattice of crossed beams was strung around four tree trunks, at the base of which carved stakes would act as axles. Inside the lattice, ladders scaled thirty feet to a platform thick with Wesmen hammering feverishly at the next level of their tower, each strike muted as if heard through thick cloth.
To the left of the main structure, another team of carpenters was carving wheels while to the right, fires belched smoke into the cloudless sky. These were not cook-fires. Wesmen in thick hide aprons toiled with hammer and anvil while others made moulds.
‘What are they making, more weapons?’ asked Barras.
‘No,’ said Kard. ‘If I’m right, it’ll be cladding for the tower.’
‘They think we’ll try and burn it, is that it?’
‘That and I believe they will try to push the tower across the moat, hoping the metal will deflect its power.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Barras. He shook his head. ‘I think we should try to talk to them.’ Kard looked at him askance.
‘I see no reason to persuade them to stop committing suicide.’
‘I understand your hatred of the invading force but they are not killing themselves in sufficient numbers to make a difference to the weight of their advantage,’ said Barras. ‘But more than that, I don’t think you realise what a death in the DemonShroud means. I would wish an eternity of torment on no one. Not a Xeteskian, not a Wesman, no one.’
Kard shrugged. ‘Talk to them if you must. I won’t stand in your way but I certainly won’t stand at your shoulder.’
‘Your heart is hard.’
‘They have slaughtered much of my army, untold numbers of Julatsa’s people and more of your mages than you can count,’ said Kard, his voice cold and harsh. ‘For every one of them that dies in the screaming soul agony you say awaits them in the Shroud, I am a little more assuaged. Just a little.’
‘You are happy to greet death with more death?’
‘That’s unfair,’ said Kard sharply. ‘It is human to seek revenge and we did not invite this. The Wesmen have chosen their path and so far as I am concerned, if they can’t learn from their mistakes, that’s their problem. I will have no part in putting them straight.’
Barras nodded. ‘Perhaps I should consult my conscience further.’
‘My old friend, I admire your conscience and your capacity for forgiveness but this is a war in which we have never been the aggressors,’ said Kard. ‘In fact, I still can’t believe it’s even happened but clearly the Wesmen felt that, with the Wytch Lords at their backs, they could destroy the Colleges just as they thought they could, three hundred years ago.
‘And now they’ve come so far they believe they can win even without the power the Wytch Lords gave them. And they may yet be right. If you must speak to them you must, but consider this. The longer they believe they can breach the Shroud, the longer their minds are deflected from moving onwards and the better our chances of effective relief from Dordover. It may also deflect their minds from what I think is a rather obvious move they have so far overlooked.’ Kard’s face was grim.
‘And that is?’ But Kard’s reply was left unspoken. From the North Gates, a cry went up. The two men ran around the Tower to see a dozen Wesmen walking towards the edge of the Shroud, a white and red flag of truce held in front of them. Shouts echoed up the Tower and the door opened. An aide ran out.
‘Kerela requests your urgent attention, sirs.’ The young man wiped long red hair from his brow as it blew in the breeze.
‘The North Gate?’ asked Barras.
‘Yes, my mage.’