Elves: Beyond the Mists of Katura (25 page)

Takaar wondered again why he was talking to this man. He didn’t seem to know terribly much.

‘Septern guarded his lands. The Wesmen triggered his castings. Follow the latent energy trails. It should be obvious to one so talented.’

Pryfors stiffened. ‘Your eyes are keen.’

‘And my ears are sharp.’ Takaar tripped Pryfors and followed him down, putting a knife to his throat. ‘I am uncomfortable with liars. I don’t like being
uncomfortable.’

Pryfors did not hide his fear. Takaar had a hand on his neck and a knee on his stomach. He tried to push Takaar away but quietened quickly, surprised by the elf’s strength. The Senserii
levelled their ikari at the prisoners to quell their disquiet.

‘Please. Whatever you want,’ gasped Pryfors. ‘What do you want?’

That really is a good question.

‘Just be quiet.’

‘All right, whatever you want.’

‘Not you!’ spat Takaar. ‘Why don’t you know when I’m not talking to you?’

Takaar sighed extravagantly, his sense of frustration intense, eclipsing his pain and his fatigue.

‘Please,’ said Pryfors again.

‘I hate to be wrong, it makes me very angry, but I’m wondering something. Auum said you wanted Dawnthief for yourselves to gain dominance. He said you didn’t send forces to
Julatsa because you would be happy if Julatsa fell to the Wytch Lords and Wesmen. I disagreed with him. You will tell me the truth.’

‘All right, all right. We have no love for Julatsa but we also have no hatred of elves. We know we have to live together.’

Takaar pushed the knife into Pryfors’ skin. Blood leaked and Pryfors whimpered.

‘One more chance. I have made errors more costly in terms of lives than you could possibly match. I am forgiving. I am Takaar.’

Pryfors’ words came out in a rush. ‘The Julatsan team here was too close to an answer. We couldn’t let them discover the spell. They would not share their information and they
would not back away. We had our orders and the Protectors can be commanded from great distance. I’m sorry their team had to be killed but they brought it on themselves. And then the Wesmen
laid their siege. Julatsa is not the all-embracing peaceful college it claims to be; the Julatsans are dangerous and aggressive. They would challenge us after the Wytch Lords are defeated. So yes,
we decided not to come to Julatsa’s aid . . . they would have done the same.’

Takaar stood up. Pryfors lay where he was for a moment before getting slowly to his feet. Takaar shoved him back towards the rest of them.

‘I understand your anger at the death of the elves in the Julatsan team,’ said Pryfors. ‘We can make recompense to your nation and their families. We can—’

‘Have you understood nothing?’ shouted Takaar. His head was hot, his fingers were tingling and his grip on his knife was painful. ‘I was wrong and Auum was right. How could you
let that happen?’

‘All I did was tell you the truth.’

‘And I do not like it,’ said Takaar.

Someone was hiding something from you. Maybe even Gilderon. He must have known.

Takaar shot a glance at Gilderon, whose expression was hidden behind his filthy cloth mask.

‘We are not your enemies. We are the power in this country. Side with us.’

Pryfors was back inside the ring of Senserii. His people were frightened. Takaar strode up to him, the reality of the situation suddenly obvious like a rush of Gyal’s tears on dry
ground.

‘There is only one power in this country, and it is the magic of the Il-Aryn. You’ll see. I can sense so much that you cannot. No matter how you search you’ll never find the
spell because it isn’t here. Not physically. I can find it though. I’ve travelled the dimensions before and I will research and understand all that Septern wrote. I will be the one to
hold the power, I shall return myself to my rightful position and the elves shall be the masters. Then it won’t matter that Auum was right because we won’t need Auum, will we? He and
his precious TaiGethen can be consigned to history. I was born for this moment. Yniss blessed me with the gift of the Il-Aryn so I possessed the skills to unlock the great secrets.

‘This is my destiny.’

That is your best yet. Over eight hundred years we’ve been together and you have exceeded even my expectations.

They were all staring at Pryfors and he was relating to them what Takaar had just said. Some of them managed to laugh but mostly they switched their stares to Takaar. The Senserii had eyes only
for their prisoners but there was a tension in their stances which was at odds with their nature.

‘You’re raving,’ said Pryfors.

‘I am fulfilling my purpose.’

‘You don’t understand. You are not a lore scholar. You can never unlock Dawnthief. You could never cast it.’

Takaar smiled. ‘I am immortal. I can learn.’

‘Let me help you,’ said Pryfors, brightening.

‘I do my best work alone,’ said Takaar.

What, testing poisons out on yourself that didn’t ever quite kill you?

Takaar ignored the voice. A sense of calm was descending on him. The path was laid. Here, in this place, he would do his greatest work, even greater than creating the harmony. It would define
man and elf anew, place them in their rightful positions.

There was just one minor unpleasantness to deal with. Takaar stood as if deep in thought while he constructed the dome once more and put it back in place. Consternation fled through the
prisoners, those that felt the touch of magic anyway.

‘Gilderon, flethar kon aryn bleen.’
Make the earth red
.

Takaar turned his back. Pryfors’ desperate cries were the first to be silenced.

When Gilderon sought out Takaar later, he was sifting through the ruins of the Manse, drawing lines on the ground and scratching marks on a piece of tree bark. Gilderon and the
Senserii had moved the bodies downwind, laid out for reclamation by whatever beasts roamed Balaia. The Protectors had been accorded particular respect, their weapons cleaned and laid with them.

They had prayed then, long and fervently, seeking a means of escape from their confusion, or rather seeking confirmation that their decision was blessed by Yniss and the pantheon of elven gods.
They had cleaned their ikari and their masks, using the Xeteskians’ ample supply of water. They had freed the humans’ horses to roam wherever they willed and set up a rolling guard
about the perimeter, allowing six at a time to sleep.

‘The Protector who ran looked as if he died of fright,’ said Gilderon.

Takaar’s shrug was the merest acknowledgement of his words.

‘All are laid out for reclamation.’

‘You should have left them where they were,’ said Takaar.

‘They were courageous warriors who deserved respect. This fight was not of their choosing and we Senserii know more about that than anyone.’

Takaar paused in his drawings, which looked to Gilderon like the map of energy lines Takaar had carved in the temple at Aryndeneth. He turned his head to consider Gilderon.

‘Perhaps you are more insightful than you let on,’ said Takaar. ‘There was something else within the rope of mana that secured them to whatever place it was rooted. Something
living.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ said Takaar, and his smile held no kindness. ‘Is there more you wish to tell me?’

‘We have brought you as far as we can,’ said Gilderon, and a weight lifted from his shoulders, letting him breathe in the fresh air as if for the first time. ‘We will leave at
dawn. We will find the Wesmen reading party. They won’t bother you, but you know more will be coming from Xetesk.’

‘So you choose to betray me too,’ said Takaar, his eyes dead in his skull and his hands itching at his forearms. ‘Just like Auum. Just like Drech.’

Gilderon tensed. ‘I am faster than Drech.’

‘I will not kill you, Gilderon, even though you would not be fast enough.’

‘We must all choose our paths, Takaar. This search for the spell is the wrong one. Auum and our brother and sister elves are walking into a trap – heading, at your instigation, to
join Xeteskian forces who want them dead. We have to warn them. We have to fight with them.’

Takaar sighed. ‘I suppose it was inevitable that you wouldn’t understand. Why would you? Only I can see the truth. You’ll be too late, you know.’

Gilderon inclined his head. ‘We have to try.’

Takaar turned back to his drawing and marks. He was muttering, talking to his other self.

‘Will you find it?’ asked Gilderon, curious in spite of himself.

Takaar said nothing, didn’t even appear to have heard the question.

‘Takaar?’

While Julatsa had breathing space in which to resupply, rebuild and refocus after the siege was broken, the threat of another major attack on the college was ever present. They
planned to set up a series of mage-led watches along the northern coast and of course at Triverne Inlet to provide early warning. But it was the knock-on effect of the siege that was most keenly
damaging to Auum’s expectations. The Julatsan city council refused to allow any of its militia to leave in support of the other three colleges in retaliation for the support withheld from
Julatsa in its darkest hour, while the college decided to keep most of its mages at home, citing an unacceptable risk to its heart stone should the Wesmen return.

When the numbers were totalled the expeditionary force was pitiful, made worthy of the name only by Auum’s TaiGethen and the Il-Aryn, now under the reluctant command of a sour-faced
Ynissul teacher named Rith. She had spent a day denouncing her own leadership skills when her name was put forward, but the fact remained that she was the most experienced and most respected
practitioner still alive.

Harild had lent the force some cavalry to act as guides and escorts for the journey, but they were under orders to return before any fight. And very few of the elven mages Takaar had been so
determined to come and rescue had chosen to travel, which left the TaiGethen’s Arch questioning his elves’ role here once again. Stein had demanded to go with them, which had been the
single blessing, but they left the city with fifty cavalry, just eighty-two TaiGethen, one hundred and four Il-Aryn, and a mere seventy-eight Julatsan-trained elves of the four hundred or so Auum
had been persuaded to rescue.

Supply wagons rattled along at the rear of the column where the Il-Aryn had also chosen to walk or jog. If there was one thing Auum could thank Takaar for it was his insistence that his adepts
were fit. A hangover from his TaiGethen days in Auum’s opinion, though Rith had assured him in her dry humourless tones that it had everything to do with casting stamina and nothing to do
with anything else.

Not one of the Julatsan mage council had seen them off, all distracted by some turn of events elsewhere. It was a fact not lost on Auum and he quizzed Stein about it, jogging beside his horse as
they travelled across the easy ground west towards the Blackthorne Mountains.

‘They lost contact with their team at the Septern Manse a few days ago. Apparently Lystern have the same problem. We don’t know about the other two colleges.’

‘And they’re surprised, are they?’ said Auum. ‘Remind me why we’re going to join Xetesk again, would you? Sounds like they’re more likely to kill us than
welcome us.’

‘You’re not seriously suggesting that our researchers have been murdered, are you?’

‘I think they have to consider it. And what are they planning to do about it? Send more to die, or make more pointless entreaties to Xetesk – out of whom they will get no information
whatever?’

Stein shook his head, chuckling. ‘How long have you been here? Ten days or so, is it? And you seem to know more about the workings of Xetesk than most will absorb in a lifetime. I think
your suggestions of murder and the abandonment of Julatsa are off target, but the general attitude of our Xeteskian friends? You’re spot on.’

Auum shrugged. ‘They are the human face of the Wytch Lords. I had a hundred and fifty years to understand exactly how their minds worked. Ystormun might have been forced out when the
sundering came, but he and his band of bastards left behind plenty of malevolence, and it all rests in Xetesk, doesn’t it?’

‘They are not as black as you paint them,’ said Stein.

Auum increased his pace and ran to the head of the column, which snaked its way towards the chill of the Blackthorne Mountains dominating the horizon. The bleak grey peaks, capped with what
Stein said was snow and ice, were imposing, pressing down on the tiny elves and humans travelling into their shadow. Calaius had mountains, but these were of a different scale altogether.

Their aim was to track along the foothills all the way down to Understone Pass, where they would join the fight. Auum was puzzled that the power of human magic had not already forced the Wesmen
back, but he needed to see the battle for himself if he was to employ his people to their best advantage.

Stein was adamant that they wouldn’t encounter Wesmen along their route, and so far there were no signs of any enemy activity. Farms and hamlets were undamaged; the land was pristine, and
when the question was asked, livestock was all accounted for.

It took Auum a little while to work out why this worried him. Had he been commanding Wesmen forces he would have sent significant numbers this way, hidden from all the college cities, to
outflank the pass defenders. Something just wasn’t right and he wasn’t about to blame a lack of tactical acumen on the part of the Wytch Lords. Auum had learned through bitter
experience never to underestimate Ystormun.

Ulysan was heading the column with Duele, who had been co-opted back into Auum’s cell with the fall of poor Ollem on the walls of Julatsa. They’d lost too many up there and on the
field afterwards: twelve in all from across the spectrum of experience and representing four full cells. It left them light.