It drained from her, into him and Leithen coughed, coming awake again as startled as a child roused from a nightmare. Jeren grabbed the sword and used it to root herself, to bring her magic back under control before it could slip her grasp.
“Jeren!” Indarin followed her, cursing under his breath. “Jeren, please.”
Elayne next. She sank to her knees beside her friend and repeated the healing. It was harder this time. Elayne had been hurt earlier, and her wounds were more severe. Jeren’s hands shook.
“Get Leithen to safety,” she told Indarin without casting so much as a glance at him. Or at the swordfight happening behind her. She couldn’t look. If anything happened. If Khain won...
Focus, she commanded herself. Do what needs to be done. Don’t think. Don’t, whatever you do, think.
Elayne stirred, also awakening, her wounds healed. Jeren knew she should be feeling this, that fixing so many fatal wounds should be hurting her as well. But there was nothing. Or else the pain she was already feeling was too great.
Or her fear was.
Fear. She glanced over her shoulder.
Shan didn’t move like Shan anymore. Or rather he did, but every nuance of movement was exaggerated in grace, his abilities charged with lightning. Fighting a god, his eyes black as shadows, his body flowing between movements, while the Fellna seethed around him. They were helping him, healing and strengthening him, changing him.
No. They had already changed him. When they took him. When he left her.
At least she’d made the bitch that started it pay.
Just like I promised. A Scion of Jern always keeps her promises.
“Jeren.” Elayne pulled away from her and lurched towards the last slumped body. Vertigern. The man who had betrayed her, who had brought them here. “He’s still alive, Jeren. Please!”
The anguish in her voice was like a dose of cold water. Easy to be cold and withdrawn, easy to stay distanced when the only person Jeren cared about was lost, changed, had turned into... someone, or something else.
But when they were hurt, when they were slowly and painfully dying—
She glanced back at Shan, watched him slide beneath Khain’s sword, folding back to avoid it, his body far too fluid, even for a Fair One.
If she saw him hurt, if she saw him fall... It didn’t bear thinking about. Was that the torture Elayne was going through now? She’d already seen her lover change, seen him hurt.
Could she watch him die?
“That way,” Indarin shouted to the Feyna filing into the room. Their amazement lasted only a moment as the Fellna met them in an angry wave. “Seal the area. Don’t let them out. None of them. Or River Holt is lost.”
Jeren breathed out, gripping the sword hilt so hard it dug into her palm. “Let me see.” Still Elayne hesitated. “I’ll do what I can, I promise.”
Vertigern was almost gone. His heart fluttered, hardly able to go on. Blood filled his mouth, stained all down the side of his body. He’d lost so much.
And worse, she sensed, he didn’t want to go on. Not after what he’d seen. Not after what he’d done, or been tricked into doing.
Shan gave a grunt of pain that was half-snarl. Jeren’s whole body started, as if hit by lightning. But the clash of metal continued. He was still alive, still fighting. And that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?
Jeren pressed her shaking hands to Vertigern’s broken body and willed him well. Golden light flooded her, more than she’d ever channelled before. This place, and the sword, and all the wild energies surging through her swept her magic along with it, churning it up into a frenzy.
Too much. It was far too much.
Vertigern coughed, spitting out blood and jerked up, almost crashing into Jeren in the process. So quick a healing, so bewildering a sensation, Jeren’s head reeled sickeningly, even as Elayne grabbed him in her arms and pulled him up.
“Get him out of here,” said Jeren. She would deal with it later. She’d have to. Because right now only one thing mattered. “Indarin, what happened to Shan? How did he get back here? With them?”
Indarin stiffened and his eyes turned hard. So very hard. “He called them, went with them. I think he intended to use them to reach you. But—”
“But?”
“Look at him.”
So she did. The one thing she didn’t want to do was to watch Shan, to see the changes, to accept that the Shan before her was not the same man anymore.
The Dance flowed on—Shan, holding his own against a god. And she had never doubted he was capable of it. Not for a moment. He was her husband. He’d pulled her out of the snow, had freed her from a life of duty and obligation if only for a little while. He had loved her.
He still did. That was why he’d gone with the Fell. That was why he was here. He was magnificent. Terrible. So beautiful.
And then it happened.
Her nightmare, her worst imaginings, and the one thing she dreaded above all others.
Shan missed one step and Khain’s sword found its mark. The Dance stuttered to a halt as Shan jerked on cold steel.
The scream inside her stopped at her throat. It couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t. Not to him.
Her body wouldn’t move. So it couldn’t be real. It had to be a dream.
Her mind howled that one thing, even as he fell, like a ragdoll, onto the unforgiving stone.
“Indarin, what’s the spell? How is Khain bound in Andalstrom? How was the dark god freed? We need to reverse it, put him back there.”
Khain raised the sword, ready to finish him off.
“I can’t cast it,” Indarin protested.
“Just say it. Now!” She grabbed his arm and channelled everything she had into him.
Words flowed from the former Shaman, words which altered the world around them, words of power.
Khain stopped his blow, staring at them in something like confusion. Wounds covered his body, wounds which would have killed a mortal man. But he was a god, albeit one in a human body. He kept it alive. And his blood wasn’t the only blood on him. Shan’s coated him too, and his had fallen on Shan. The oldest magic seethed at so much blood, so many wild energies loose in the chamber.
Jeren reached out to Khain’s wounds, through Indarin’s spoken spell. She called on them not to heal, but in the way Fethan and the Seers had taught her, she bid them bleed and give that energy to those who needed it, to Shan, to herself, to all of them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Khain started forward, intending perhaps to stride towards her, to kill Indarin as well and push her to the ground again. Jeren panicked, throwing more energy at him.
Indarin groaned, his voice sharpening in pain, but he didn’t stop the spell, didn’t run out of words.
Wondrous, magical words.
Die, Jeren wanted to shout, but she didn’t have the strength to speak. Everything she had inside her, and could draw on from the chamber itself, everything she was needed to stop Khain, to drive him back.
Realisation spread across his face, which had once been Gilliad’s face. Pain filtered across those familiar features, confusion.
“What are you— No. Stop this, Jeren. I command it.”
The tattoo seared into her flesh, burning into her like acid. He tried to drive her back, to grind her down beneath his will, to break her and so break the spell.
No! She pushed harder, dredging up everything she could, drawing on his magic, letting it grind into her, even as she fed it back through Indarin.
The Shaman’s voice dropped to a monotone, a chant that made the air vibrate with power. His body jerked against hers and for a moment she wondered if she could break free now, if it was even possible. He was a puppet and she controlled him, his mouth her voice, her power.