The urgency of the orders had frightened him and he’d led the team at a run from the catacombs. Much of the rest had been a blur of impressions. Voices clamouring. Armour clanking and grinding as soldiers ran beside them. The glare of fires against dark buildings. People running towards them, pushed aside to speed their progress. The smell of wood smoke. The cobbles beneath his feet. The extraordinary din of battle that grew with every pace they took nearer the walls.
The college guard brought them to the roof of a building with clear line of sight up to the embattled walls. Commander Chandyr had joined them almost immediately. Sharyr missed his first words, transfixed by what he saw in front of him. A mass of warriors on the battlements, bodies choking the street below. Fires in two guard turrets. And desperate defence on the ground. Xetesk under threat.
‘. . . are not who I wanted here. Why are you here?’
‘My Lord Dystran ordered us here in response to your messenger. ’
‘I don’t want your dimensional spells, Sharyr. You know my feelings.’
‘Commander, Ranyl has died. Dystran wants to make a statement. We’re all you have and we have instructions about which spells we will use.’
Chandyr nodded. ‘Fine. Then do so carefully. Take out that turret. Destroy the stairway.’
‘Commander, that kind of focus is not possible. The minimum strike area will cover left and right for twenty yards. And that assumes we can keep it tight. The dimensional alignment is not right.’
Chandyr regarded him blankly. ‘You’re talking to me as if I should care or understand. Fifty yards either side is Wesmen. Take them down too.’ He shrugged. ‘I asked for mage support and here you are so do what you have to do. But don’t hurt a single Xeteskian.’
‘Have your mages shield our forces,’ said Sharyr. ‘It’s the only way to keep them safe.’
Chandyr spun round at a renewed roar from the turret. Xeteskians spilled into the street once again but this time could not drive back in. The first Wesmen set foot on Xetesk’s soil.
‘And you’d better do it quickly,’ said Chandyr. ‘Or they’ll be up here too. Don’t let me down.’
Sharyr watched Chandyr stride from the rooftop then turned to his team.
‘You can see the target. You know the risks. Shut out everything. We cannot afford to slip. Are you ready?’ The chorus of assent was loud but anxious. ‘Then we will begin.’
Sharyr felt a charge race through his body and lodge in his gut. The mage team gathered about him. He tuned to the mana spectrum and could see through the chaotic streams the dark outline of the walls. He began to focus, constructing the shape to pierce the fabric of the Balaian dimension to access the raw energy beyond.
One by one his mage team joined him. In the stark colour contrasts that made up the Xeteskian mana spectrum the deep blue mana stream gained intensity. Power surged through every strand.
Like all base magical constructions, this one was essentially simple. The shape was a shifting octagonal column no more than ten feet wide. At its head, gossamer threads wove a complex pattern that mimicked the flows of inter-dimensional space, allowing them to lock onto the chaos outside the Balaian dimension.
The column itself acted as direction for the power they were tapping and as a seal against that power spilling out uncontrolled. Where the column attached to the dimensional fabric was entirely at Sharyr’s discretion. And because this spell was statement as well as destruction, he drove it high into the night sky, issuing the command that activated the threads just beyond a layer of thin cloud.
They felt the backward surge along the column, saw the shivers in the mana light. And that was just the start. With the threads fast on the fabric, Sharyr began to feed energy into the column. Half the team followed his lead.
‘Brace,’ he warned, his words carrying to them across the spectrum in sound and light. ‘And expand.’
They pulled. And in the fabric of Balaia was torn a hole. Immediately, they felt the rush of the forces of inter-dimensional space, apparently grabbing at the hole, trying to force it wider. It was purely a reaction as chaos and order clashed. The mages were ready for it and used it. They allowed the tear to grow to optimum size and only then stiffened the borders, feeding in mana energy and locking it tight.
‘That was the easy part,’ said Sharyr. ‘Column team, prepare. You know this isn’t going to be easy to handle. Alignment team with me, keep your concentration if you keep nothing else. Let’s go looking.’
The information given Xetesk by the Al-Drechar and Sha-Kaan had allowed mages to draw a new dimensional map. They could predict with some accuracy the movement of those dimensions closest to Balaia. They also had some perception of the enormous number of dimensions crowding space. The old notion that all dimensions were somehow occupying the same small area of space had been disproved beyond reasonable doubt. Now it was about alignment. And the more dimensions aligned with Balaia at any one time, the more powerful the spell effect.
Sharyr’s problem was that there was no alignment. Almost, but not quite. And while it was still possible to cast, the streams of energy would not be as focused and would be difficult to control.
Sharyr, using the combined energies of his team of nine, pushed the seeker pulse into the void, already knowing roughly what he would find. They were awaiting a four-dimension alignment. It was expected to begin the next midday. What Sharyr was presented with was a confusion of power streams, still in partial conflict though with a common broad direction given them by the partial alignment in which they were caught.
He could feel the pull of the distant dimensional shells and imagine their ponderous movement. Every heartbeat that passed brought the alignment closer but at this moment there was a problem.
The first and third shells were about in line, the latter moving slightly faster than the former. But the second shell was still way out of place though travelling quickly in relation to its peers. Currently, he couldn’t sense the fourth shell at all.
‘This is going to hurt,’ he said. ‘Brace yourselves.’
Lacking the natural focus alignment would bring, the mages would have to channel the power themselves while holding the sheath spell construct in place to avoid a casting without control. Without a certain end.
On Sharyr’s command, the alignment team poured mana energy into the seeker pulse, changing its polarisation from repulsor to attractor. At once, the part-aligned streams fed into the seeker pulse. Sharyr felt the force thunder through his mind, a sudden and prolonged deluge of crudely directed energy. The seeker pulse bulged under the strain.
‘Hang on!’ Sharyr gasped, sensing the tension in those around him. There was a roaring in his ears, reminiscent of a distant waterfall. ‘Right, let’s use it.’
The alignment team shortened the seeker pulse, dragging the inter-dimensional power with it. Sharyr knew that there was too much to control safely. It raged through his mind while he struggled to hold his concentration.
With the sound of air rushing to fill a void, the inter-dimensional force met Balaian space. It coalesced into thin discs, trailing smoke in their wake. Shaped by the minds of the mages and set spinning by nature. Tens, hundreds of them, cobalt blue and travelling at extreme speed, fled down the octagonal mana corridor. They bounced hard against its surface, the collisions increasing the stress on the structure further, to emerge from its protection to slam into ground, walls and men.
The Wesmen could see the spell approaching. Those at the base of the tower had some route of escape but they were the only ones.
The discs sheared into the tower, the ground surrounding it, and any flesh in their way over a sixty-foot spread. With a sound like a thousand metal spikes hammered into rock, they bit into the stone. Sparks flew, lighting up the night in garish relief. Dust was projected into the air, sections of the stonework cracked and crumbled. The tower shook under the impact.