Tessaya glanced around him at the almost complete stockade and tower system. He shrugged. ‘Its purpose has been served. It has kept us safe and our warriors busy. We are under no threat of losing the pass again. The Colleges do not have the will now that Julatsa has fallen and Styliann is absent. We will leave it.’
‘For Riasu?’ said Arnoan.
‘No.’ Tessaya shook his head. ‘We will leave no building standing. ’
‘And our prisoners?’
The Lord Tessaya sighed and passed a hand over his face. ‘We are warriors, not warders. And they must not be allowed to rejoin the battle.’
‘My Lord?’ Arnoan’s face had paled.
‘They have no value to us and they have become an encumbrance. I wish to be unencumbered.’ Tessaya rose and walked away down the street towards Understone Pass, his heart not matching the chill of his voice. This was not how he wanted it to be. But too much was happening and conquest by any means was now the only way. He stopped and turned, his eyes coming to rest on the billets where the prisoners were held. He breathed out heavily and marched to give the orders.
Perhaps sensing their urgency, or feeling pressure of his own, Jatha hurried The Raven plus unwelcome guests from the rip, moving quickly through several turns of the man-made cave before coming to a blank wall. Pausing only to glance over his shoulder and beckon them on, he disappeared into it. The Raven pulled up short.
‘Ilkar?’ asked The Unknown.
The elf stepped forward. ‘Illusion, I should think.’ He placed his hand on the wall. It was solid. ‘And an exceptional one at that. I’m not sure . . .’ His voice trailed off. He pushed again, this time his hand sank into its surface. ‘Extraordinary.’ Denser came to his shoulder.
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a mana construct.’ Erienne and Styliann crowded the end of the passageway, probing at the rock illusion.
‘What do you think?’ asked Denser.
‘Well, it’s actually rock, isn’t it?’ said Styliann. ‘But modified.’
‘Perhaps it recognises certain people or something,’ ventured Denser. He sank a hand through up to the elbow, feeling his fingers reach open space beyond it. ‘There’s only token resistance here.’
‘How would it know to recognise me?’ said Styliann. ‘There was no word of my coming.’ He too probed the rock.
‘Good point,’ said Erienne. ‘To me, it feels fluid, though I agree with you that it’s rock. The question is, how does it maintain solid appearance and form?’
‘I suspect it’s a bounded magic, a little like the rip,’ said Ilkar. ‘It has clearly been placed here deliberately to hide the rip.’
‘So has the whole cave system, come to that,’ said Denser. ‘Though the rest of it is solid enough.’
Hirad, who had been leaning against a wall, idly scratching his chin, blew out his cheeks, winked at The Unknown and stepped forward, a smile on his lips.
‘All this wisdom and none of you have a bloody clue, have you?’
The quartet of senior mages turned as one, their supercilious expressions mirrors for each other.
‘Hirad, do you mind?’ said Ilkar. ‘We’re trying to solve this before we walk blindly through it. That is our way, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Hirad. He placed a hand on the construct and leant hard. ‘But you’re missing the point.’ He pushed himself away then leant in again, more gently this time, his hand moving easily through the rock.
‘Oh no.’ Ilkar’s face betrayed a brief comical alarm. ‘You know exactly what this is, don’t you?’ Hirad nodded. Ilkar sighed and addressed the mages. ‘You’ll just have to live with the fact that he knows something we don’t. It doesn’t happen often but you’ll never be allowed to forget it.’
‘Well?’ demanded Denser.
‘It’s not magic. Not like you know,’ said Hirad. ‘It’s a piece of interdimensional material carrying the signatures of the Kaan and Balaia. No one outside of those groups can go through it. To them, it’s solid rock. Clever, these dragons, aren’t they?’ He walked through the wall.
Outside, the accuracy of Denser’s memories of the landscape was confirmed. They emerged into a vast valley of blackened earth and scorched trees, dead trunks reaching for the sky, fingers searching in vain for rescue. Only the most tenacious of undergrowth grew on the blasted ground and an acrid burnt smell permeated the air.
Behind them, the rock appeared like an area of tumbledown crag, indistinguishable from a dozen like it scattered along the valley slopes. Above, the sky was a deep and beautiful blue, blown through by wisps of high cloud. Nothing stirred. No animals nosed under the trees, no birds twittered in the boughs or swooped through foliage. The atmosphere was heavier here, thick and moist, every smell alien in their nostrils; and the air settled uncomfortably in their lungs, though there was no ill in it.
‘It’s so quiet,’ breathed Erienne. The Raven stood together a few paces distant from Styliann and his half dozen Protectors, the latter seeming just a little distracted; a fact not missed by The Unknown. To the left, Jatha stood with two dozen of his people, all small men by Balaian standards, similar in height to poor Will but stockier, powerful in the shoulders and legs, their bodies used to hard physical labour. All were men and all wore beards of varying lengths tied with braiding, Jatha’s being the most complex.
While The Raven studied the devastation, Jatha’s people scoured the sky or held their ears to the ground, listening for attack, never letting their hands stray too far from their weapons; flat-bladed stubby broadswords and short maces, weapons designed to deliver uncultured power in battle.
‘What now?’ asked Ilkar.
‘Now we travel to Wingspread. To the Kaan homeland,’ said Hirad.
Jatha came to Hirad’s side and turned an anxious face in his direction.
‘Come,’ he said, uncomfortable with the speech. ‘Bad place.’ He gestured away along the valley floor with his left arm. In the distance, hills shimmered in the sun’s haze. ‘Home,’ he said.
‘It’s time to go,’ said Hirad. ‘Looks like we’re walking it.’
‘No dragons to give us a lift?’ asked Denser.
‘Never,’ said Hirad, his face stony.
They set off after Jatha and his people, the Kaan’s servant race setting a brisk pace, their eyes always tracking the sky above. Underfoot, the ground was baked hard by sun and fire and, here and there, as they crossed the valley floor, the white of bone showed bright against the earth.
‘How far is it?’ asked Erienne, her hand on her belly, eyes troubled. Hirad shrugged.
‘We’re very short of time,’ said Ilkar. ‘We have a great deal to learn if we are to cast an effective spell.’
‘Or anything at all,’ agreed Denser. He placed an arm around Erienne’s shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Tired, I think.’ She smiled up at him. ‘I’ll be fine.’
The party continued along the valley floor for over an hour before Jatha turned left and scrambled up a dried-up watercourse that wound up the slope, alternately steep and shallow in the climb. He and his men halted at the top where the line of blackened trunks thinned out. The sight that greeted The Raven was breathtaking.
In front of them, and sweeping away for mile after unbroken mile, lay a softly undulating plain of tall grass that whispered in the breeze. Gusts of wind played across its red- and blue-flecked straw yellow surface, driving dark colour in swirling patterns that ebbed and flowed like eddies on the sea. Here and there, unmoving dark scars spoiled the totality of the plain and the land rose and fell in gentle rolls until it butted against the foothills of a cloud-shrouded mountain range that ran across the horizon, its ends lost in mist.
But it was the scene above and ahead of them that caused hearts to flutter. Staining the cloud-flecked blue of the sky like a monumental smear of dirt on fine cloth, was the rip. Around its edges, cloud bubbled and roiled; across its surface, red lightning flared and coursed and the whole rippled, its periphery agitating ceaselessly at the blue.