She rode into the clearing holding the Sisterhood to face a scene of carnage.
Elspeth was all too familiar with scenes of carnage, but this was the equal of anything she'd seen during the conflicts with Hardorn. Bodies, systematically looted bodies, lay everywhere, not all of them female, none of them alive. The buildings were smoking ruins, burned to blackened skeletons.
Shock made her numb; disbelief froze her in her saddle. Under it all, the single question-why? The Sisterhood wasn't wealthy, everyone knew that-and while no one lives without making a few rivals or enemies, there were none that she knew of that would have wanted to destroy them so completely. they held no secrets, not even the making of the mage-blades was a secret.
Anyone could do it who was both smith and mage, and willing to spend one month per spell on a single sword.
Why had this happened? And as importantly, who had done it? that was when Vena came running, weeping, out of the forest; face smudged with ash and smoke, tear-streaked, clothing and hair full of pine needles and bark.
Again the scene changed, to the forge she had seen before, but this time there was little in the way of walls or ceiling left. And again, knowledge flooded her.
Vena had been out in the forest when the attack occurred. She had managed to scale one of the smaller trees and hide among the branches to observe. Now they both knew the answer to her questions.
"Who" was the Wizard Heshain, a mage-lord who had never before shown any notice of the Sisterhood. Vena had described the badges on shields and livery of the large, well-armed force that had invaded the peaceful enclave, and she had recognized Heshain's device.
"Why?
His men had systematically sought out and killed every fighter, every craftswoman, every fighter apprentice. There had been mages with them who had eliminated every adult mage.
Then they had surrounded and captured every apprentice mage except Vena. They fired the buildings to drive anyone hiding into the open and had eliminated any that were not young and Mage-Talented.
The entire proceedings had taken place in an atmosphere of cold efficiency.
There were no excesses, other than slaughter, not even rape-and that had struck Vena as eerily like the dispassionate extermination of vermin.
Afterward, though, the bodies of both sides had been stripped of everything useful and anything that might identify them. There had still been no rapine, no physical abuse of the apprentices; they had been tied at the wrists and hobbled at the ankles, herded into carts, and taken away. Vena had stayed in the tree for a full night, waiting for the attackers to return, then she had climbed down to wander dazedly through the ruins.
Vena had no idea why the wizard had done this-but the kidnapping of the apprentices told her all she needed to know.
He had taken them to use, to augment his own powers. To seduce, subvert, or otherwise bend the girls to his will.
They had to be rescued. Not only for their own sakes and that of the Sisterhood, but because if he succeeded, his power would be magnified.
Considerably. Quite enough to make him a major factor in the world.
A man who sought to increase his power in such a fashion must not be permitted to succeed in his attempt.
He had to be stopped.
Right. He had to be stopped.
By an old, crippled woman, and a half-trained girl. this was a task that would require a fighter of the highest skills, and a mage the equal of Heshain. A healthy mage, one who could ride and climb and run away, if she had to.
But there was a way. If Vena, a young and healthy girl, could be endowed with all her skills, she might well be able to pull off that rescue. One person could frequently achieve things that an army could not. One person, with all the abilities of both a mage of some strength-perhaps even the superior of Heshain-and a fighter trained by the very best, would have advantages no group could boast. that was their only hope. So she had sent Vena out, ostensibly to hunt for herbs she needed. In actuality, it was to get her out of the way. She was about to attempt something she had only seen done once. And that had not been with one of her bespelled swords.
She took the hidden sword, the one with the spells of all four seasons sealed to it, out of its hiding place under the floor of the forge. She heated the forge, placed it in the fire while she wrought one last spell-half magic, and half a desperate prayer to the Twain.
Then, when the blade was white-hot, with fire and magic, she wedged it into a clamp on the side of the forge, point outward-And ran her body onto it.
Pain seared her with a white-hot agony so great it quickly stopped being "pain" and became something else.
Then it stopped being even that, and what Elspeth felt in memory was worse than pain, though totally unfamiliar. It was not a sensation like anything Elspeth had ever experienced. It was a sense of wrenching dislocation, disorientation-Then, nothing at all. Literally. No sight, sound, sense of any kind.
If she hadn't had some feeling that this was all just a memory she was re-experiencing, she'd have panicked. And still, if she had any choice at all, she never. ever wanted to encounter anything like this again.
It was the most truly, profoundly horrifying experience she had ever had.
A touch. Connection. Feelings. sensations flooded back, all of them so sharp-edged and clear they seemed half-raw. Grief. Someone was weeping. vena. It was Vena's senses she was sharing. The spell had worked! She was now one with the sword, with all of her abilities as mage and as fighter, and everything she had ever learned, intact.
Experimentally, she exerted a bit of control, moving Vena's hand as if it had been her own. The girl plucked at her tunic, and it felt to her as if it was her own hand she was controlling. Good; not only was her knowledge intact, but her ability to use it. She need only have the girl release control of her body, and an untrained girl would be a master swordswoman.
Vena sobbed helplessly, uncontrollably. After the first rush of elation, it occurred to her that she had probably better tell the child she wasn't dead.
Or not exactly, anyway.
The sword released its hold on them, and Elspeth sat and shook for a long time.
It was a small comfort that she recovered from the experience before Skif did. She had never been so intimately one with someone's thoughts before. Especially not someone who had shared an experience like Need's death and rebirth.
She had never encountered anyone whose thoughts and memories were quite so-unhuman. As intense as those memories were, they had felt old, sounded odd, as if she was listening to someone with a voice roughened by years of breathing forge smoke, and they contained a feeling of difference and distance, as if the emotions Need had felt were so distantor so foreign-that Elspeth couldn't quite grasp them. Perhaps that made a certain amount of sense. There was no way of knowing quite how old Need was. She had gotten the distinct impression that Need herself did not know. She had spent many, many lifetimes in the heart of the sword, imprisoned, though it was by her own will. That was bound to leave its mark on someone.
To make her, in time, something other than human? It was possible.