Pain.
Flashing over the ground, ShadowWings shaped for raw speed, Denser wailed as the jolt from his Familiar’s wound thundered in his head. He clung to his concentration, held the wings together, kept flying, tears rolling down his cheeks, vision a blur.
He looked over his left shoulder. The Unknown was close behind him and Denser still had the energy to admire the way he had accepted the use of the ShadowWings. The ability to hold mana placed in his body was a given ability of Protectors and he no longer was one. The trouble would surely start when he had time to think and remember.
‘What’s wrong?’ called The Unknown.
‘They’ve hit him, the bastards. They’ve hurt him.’ Denser took a deep breath and pushed his wings beyond the safe limits of their speed. Behind him, without knowing exactly how, The Unknown did the same.
The Familiar was weakening. Pain forced tears from his eyes and his circling became ever more desperate as the fire ate along his tail and leg. His master was coming but he could not home in on the direction, and the dark shroud that threatened to steal his consciousness drove cogent thought from his head. He circled on, dimly aware that beneath him, a mage prepared another spell. He wept now, knowing death was upon him.
‘Master,’ he breathed. ‘Come for me. Avenge me.’
The spell caught him in the throat. The Familiar crumpled and plummeted to earth.
Nothing could prepare Denser for it. Like having needles pushed into his eyes and his brain crushed by rock, the Familiar’s last agonised whisper and the snuffing of its life shattered his mana stamina and took his consciousness. The ShadowWings vanished and he fell from the sky.
The Unknown saw it coming, saw Denser’s head snap back and his hands claw at his face as if he was trying to tear his skull apart. He saw the wings flicker, flash bright against the dark sky, then blink out. Already slowing and diving as Denser began to fall, he shot past him once, banked, turned and caught him on the next pass, maybe fifteen feet from the ground.
With the Dark Mage limp in his arms, he hovered, gaining height slowly. Looking down on his face, pale even in the gloom and taut with pain through his consciousness, The Unknown felt protective towards him. He frowned, knowing that he had felt hatred before, but it seemed long ago. Other memories were filtering slowly through the morass of his recently ordered mind, but he quashed them, keeping his attention on the ShadowWings.
He felt anger too. Anger at whoever had damaged Denser. Anger at Xetesk for taking him as a Protector and stealing his death. But desire for revenge was put aside. Right now he had to reunite The Raven. He flew for Triverne Lake.
Selyn appraised her route to the pyramid, her professional dispassion flawed by a shiver down her spine as she gauged her final, troubled half-mile. It wasn’t that she was concerned over her chances of making it alive. No. There was something more. An atmosphere hanging around Parve of power, energy, fear and anticipation. It was as though the very stones of the rebuilt City of the Wytch Lords sensed the coming of something.
Xetesk had been quietly aware of the Wesmen threat for months. Latterly, the news of the Wytch Lords’ escape had scared them into overt as well as covert action. Now she was here to answer the final question. And the question was no longer ‘if’; it was ‘when’.
The building she had been resting on for the past hour was completely encircled by streets. Three chimney stacks ran its length. She kept very close to the centre stack, body still, head moving slowly to gauge her position.
Behind her, the Torn Wastes stretched away into the night, their noise muted inside the City boundaries. To her right, more low buildings, none lit, gave way to ruins after about a hundred yards, but it was left and ahead that held her attention.
One street across was the eastern of four main thoroughfares to Parve’s central square and the pyramid which dominated it. The road ran straight and wide for around seven hundred yards before opening out on to the square. If her information was right, a tunnel, sealed and heavy with wards, led into the pyramid itself. And surrounding it, statues depicting scenes from the war. But it had been a long time since a Xeteskian had been to Parve’s ruins and the Gods only knew what might have changed. She had to know whether the tunnel was open. If it was, time would be short.
The City was quiet. She could pick out shapes moving in the streets ahead but there was nothing like the bustle even of Xetesk at dusk, let alone Korina or Gyernath. It should be easy to reach the pyramid tunnel but something inside her begged caution. She stayed and watched.
Three hours later, with night at its deepest, she was rewarded for her innate sense of danger. At the periphery of her vision there was movement in the square, where she expected the tunnel entrance to be. Dark shapes shifted against the firelit square, and although she couldn’t make out too much from this distance, it appeared the whole square rippled. Surely a trick of the poor light.
The dark shapes split into four groups and began to leave the square in the direction of the Torn Wastes. They were riders, and enough of them clattered along the eastern path for Selyn to know who they were. Shamen.
One link, at least, was proven. The Wytch Lords were directly controlling the Wesmen through the Shamen, and they would have strong magic. When they had left the City, she moved.
Dropping to the ground on the opposite side to the main street, she hugged the silent shadows, moving carefully but quickly towards the central square. Parve was built on a strict grid, interconnecting blocks making navigation very easy for the stranger. But it also made concealment difficult, and Selyn checked closely for openings, alleyways and deep shadow as she passed, logging anything promising for her escape.
Away from the main streets, the City was dark and deserted but strangely secure. No patrols echoed on the tight new pavings and cobbles, no shadows flitted between doorways or waited for the unwary traveller or lost drunk. It was an atmosphere quite without . . . atmosphere. Then it struck her, and she stopped to take the air more closely.
It wasn’t the quiet that caused her pause. There was something else, something that hung over the City like a blanket. Parve was dormant, slumbering. But waiting to awaken.
She quickened her pace, hurrying across a wide, large-cobbled street and into the shadows two blocks from the square and pyramid. She pulled up sharply in a let-in doorway, stilled her breathing and slowed her heart rate. She had been seen and followed. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, but that inner sense told her all she needed to know.
The man came slowly and carefully around the corner, his footfalls barely registering. Selyn’s body ceased all movement, waiting to pounce or run. From her position, hidden in shadow, she could see him edging along the opposite wall and her heart sank. It was a Shaman, and if his senses were tuned, he would be able to find her. She took short breaths and activated her wrist bolts, a leather trigger running up each palm and ending in a loop which slipped over the middle finger. Now, a sharp snap back of either wrist would be enough.
The Shaman moved on up the wall, his hand brushing the layered stone, passing out of her field of vision. Quiet reigned in the street. Selyn waited on, poised. Five minutes. Ten. As her hearing attuned, she became aware of the noise of people and fire from the direction of the square, the distant clump of a hoof on stone, a door closing. Fifteen.
And then he was in front of her, the stench of his furs heavy in her nose, his dark face and cold eyes close to hers, his arm reaching out.
‘Did you think I could not smell you, Xeteskian?’ His accent was thick, the words uncomfortable in his throat.
Selyn said nothing. Batting his arm aside with her right, she rammed her left wrist into the Shaman’s eye socket and snapped back. The bolt thudded home. He died instantly, dropping like a sack to the floor.
‘Damn it,’ she breathed. She rolled him over and retrieved the bolt, wiping it clean on his furs. Struggling with his bulk, she hauled him into the shadows of the doorway. What had he been doing so far behind the others and on foot? Now time was at a premium. It wouldn’t be long before a Shaman was missed.