The Communion had ended abruptly and she had not been able to raise it again though every mage had lent their strength to the signal. They were lost, they had to be.
So now she stood, as she had so often in the past days, gazing down into the pit containing the Heart, her thoughts chasing around her head, settling nowhere.
‘You know why it’s fading, don’t you?’ said a voice near her.
She turned. It was Geren, a mage she had distrusted when he had appeared, a dishevelled, stinking wreck, from the Balan Mountains something like a year ago but who now represented much of the will to survive that they still retained. He was a young and energetic man. Not a great mage but willing.
‘No I don’t, why?’ she asked, biting back on her frustration.
Geren scraped some lank black hair from his face, pushed it back behind his ears and scratched his nose.
‘It’s because we are so few.’
‘What?’
‘Think about it,’ said Geren. ‘This shadow appeared and deepened at the same time the Elfsorrow was killing the elves. Think how many mages died, lapsed or not, during the plague. It weakened the whole order. And every day since they arrived here, the survivors have been whittled away. More and more Julatsan mages dying. Remember how it deepened more after the first mana-flow failure? I reckon that’s because of the elven mages who died in the Xeteskian barrage that followed it.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ said Pheone.
‘I’m saying it isn’t a one-way flow. I’m saying I think that every Julatsan mage alive feeds power back into the Heart, keeps the flow a circle, if you see what I mean. Doesn’t matter how far they are away, they still do it. And now we’re so few in number, we can’t feed in enough power and so the Heart is fading. Don’t forget, now the Heart is buried the normal cycle of mana beneath it is gone so it can’t self-sustain.’
Pheone frowned. She looked hard at Geren, trying to see doubt in his eyes but there was none at all. Could he be right?
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Have you checked the shadow on the Heart today? I bet, if you do, it’ll be deeper. Not much but you’ll see it. More mages died today. Julatsans. Why don’t you check?’
Pheone shook her head. It didn’t seem worth it. She could sense the sickness without tuning in to the spectrum to see the dull yellow, like thick dust on paint, that covered the mana flow.
‘Have you told this to anyone else?’
‘No,’ said Geren. He smiled but it was a regretful gesture. ‘It hardly makes any difference does it?’
‘Why not? I mean, if this is the answer . . .’
‘Then all we know is that with every mage that dies, we get weaker, only it’s worse because the Heart weakens with us. We knew most of that already and the conclusion is still the same. The fewer of us that attempt the raise, the less likely it is to succeed. Let’s hope your elves make it without losing anyone else or we’ll be left with nothing but a shadow Heart in a few days, won’t we?’
Pheone gazed at him and he returned her stare apologetically.
‘Was there anything else you came to tell me?’
‘Yes. The city council is here, like you asked. What are you going to tell them?’
Pheone began to walk to the new lecture theatre. It stood in the ruins of the six the Wesmen had pulled down and was a less impressive structure than any of its predecessors. ‘Hear for yourself, why don’t you?’
He shrugged and followed her in.
The audience in the lecture theatre was sparse. Thirty rows of stepped benches climbed up to the back of the medium-sized auditorium, all looking down on a brightly-lit stage containing a single long table, a huge raised blackboard and a podium. The lantern light was augmented by LightGlobes and the last of the afternoon sun, which shone through huge angled windows set in the roof.
Pheone walked straight to the podium, nodding at the five temporary college elders at the table supporting her. Geren walked across to sit with what looked like every other mage in the college, ranged along a few benches to the left. She counted about fifty. Pathetic, really. Perhaps one per cent of the number the college should have and could comfortably support. Geren’s theory was looking solid.
To the right sat the city council of Julatsa. All decent people, she had to admit. Businessmen, the commander of the city guard, such as it was, local nobility and the city mayor.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ she said, her voice carrying easily to the empty benches at the back of the theatre, augmented by engineered acoustics and amplification spells. ‘I just wish I was here to bring you good news.’
A ripple went round the sparse auditorium.
‘The siege of Xetesk has collapsed. At dawn this morning Xeteskian forces using a powerful magic we are still trying to understand, swept through the Lystern and Dordovan defences north and east. Our information is incomplete at best but we have to assume that at present, there is nothing standing in their way. We know that the elves, who were not taking part in the siege this morning, have escaped almost unscathed and will arrive before the enemy, but not long before.’
She paused, listening to the depths of the silence, every eye upon her.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we know why the Xeteskians are coming here. They are coming to destroy this college and its Heart before we have a chance to raise it. Indeed, they may be too strong even if we do. As Julatsan mages, we have to stay here, we literally have nowhere to go and nothing to gain by standing aside. Everything we have striven for is here. As is our future as mages.
‘But you, mister Mayor, honoured council members, are not under any direct threat and neither are the people of the city.’ She paused again. This wasn’t coming out quite right. ‘What I am saying is this. You are innocents in this conflict. Xetesk doesn’t desire destruction of the city like the Wesmen did. The people of Julatsa have a choice and they must make it quickly.
‘Those who are tired of war and suffering should leave now. Join those who already find the city claustrophobic and those who do not want to face hunger in the name of a future here any more. No blame could possibly be attached to any that leave after the sacrifices all have made in the name of the college and city of Julatsa since the end of the Wesmen occupation.
‘Those that choose to stay, and I pray it is the mass of the able bodied and willing, I urge to lend their strength to us because if Xetesk beats us and throws down our college, the freedom you have enjoyed so long will be gone. That is all. I welcome questions.’
The silence hung like a thick cloying fog before a hand was raised among the twenty council members.
‘Master Tesack, please speak.’
‘If we pledge our strength to you, can we win?’
Pheone spread her arms wide. ‘I do not know. I believe so, as I must, but there is no certainty that any strength of arms we can muster will be enough. We do not know how many men Xetesk is bringing, nor the strength or state of the remaining allied force that might or might not arrive before them.
‘We might laugh or we might be swept away. But I could not live with myself if I did not tell you the risks we are facing as a city and college. There will be a battle fought in our streets, in our parks and squares. Xetesk will struggle to the last man to reach the college and people who get in their way will be killed.
‘What you must ask yourselves and the people of this city is, after everything else that has befallen us, can you stand with us again or must you try to find another place to build your lives? The choice is that simple.’
Another hand was raised. It was Geren. Pheone nodded for him to speak.
‘I have not always been the perfect loyal mage,’ he said. ‘So you might choose to ignore my words. I have not always lived here to lend my support to the cause. But I could not leave now, whether I was a mage or not. The Heart of the college is also the heart of the city. If it dies, the city dies with it. And the wider implications of the loss of a college for the whole of the country do not bear thinking about. Any able to defend are honour-bound to do so.’