Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Twenty-Three

The marshes west of Asentyr started as freshwater and ended salty. The last breach point was well toward the centre, where the water was brackish and black and the reeds thick. Most of it was hardly more than knee-deep, but below was sucking mud, and anyone wading risked sticking themselves firmly in place. Long Sentene coats were quickly abandoned, and movement was either awkwardly accomplished in flat-bottomed boats, or involved getting very dirty. Power-hungry levitations were carefully rationed, for all the Sentene mages felt they would need their full strength.

There were no conveniently large areas of dry land where a traditional circle could be constructed, let alone a camp, and the Sentene had been working for weeks on the technical problem this presented. Rennyn was faintly astonished by their solution. Not that they had sunk pylons and constructed a platform, but that it was so large. Enough for dozens of people to move about freely. There were a scattering of smaller artificial islands surrounding it, an archipelago of wood doubled in size again by the boats used to travel across the swamp. Like ocean-going ships, the main platform had wards built into the boundary. Wards were more energy-intensive than the circles placed around fixed locations, but they were quicker to establish so long as you had the power to feed them. The platform was safe for sleeping, and difficult to attack.

It was also extremely crowded. Determined and anxious people, busy preparing spells and weapons, discussing strategies, resting, eating, stretching. They still managed to leave a clear space around Rennyn. Intellectually, they might understand that she had not created these circumstances. That didn’t make them any less angry with her: for concealing what she knew, for not warning them. For being the owner of their friends.

It didn’t help that she’d made it clear, during the uncomfortable meeting yesterday, that the question of how she would reach the throne room, how she would survive the day between the attunement and Solace’s arrival, was something she still wasn’t going to discuss. Her position hadn’t changed: the easiest way to protect herself was to be difficult to find. Travelling with an escort was like painting a target on her back.

"Counting the hours?"

Captain Medan. He’d become designated babysitter, perhaps because Lieutenant Danress no longer seemed able to talk to her.

As he settled his bulk against the wooden railing, Rennyn shrugged. "I’m surprised how close this is to the incursion point." They would be able stage much of their attack directly from the platform.

"Very complex calculation based on the previous breaches," he said, then met her sideways glance. "Or luck. One of those."

"It never hurts to have a little luck."

"Just don’t rely on it." Captain Medan bent down and studied her face. "And sleep more, for pity’s sake. You make me tired just to look at you."

"It’s hard to sleep when you know you have to," she said, lying. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Illidian Faille chained to a wall. "I’ll go in a few hours, anyway. Has there been any sign of observers?"

"We’ve scared everything down to the guppies out of the area. If there’s going to be an attack here, it will come out of the Eferum, not from this side."

She nodded, unsurprised. "If it’s equal to the Asentyr incursion, will you be able to handle it?"

"Ah–" He shrugged. "I wouldn’t care to try an Azrenel that wasn’t handily leashed. You made Asentyr easy for us. But we’re better prepared this time."

Rennyn lifted her eyes and looked at him until he sighed. "We’ll be able to handle that many, yes," he said in a slightly less booming voice. "But the Kellian are the backbone of the Sentene for a reason. Speed and instinct. The Ferumguard have the same training, and they’ll do us proud, but a lot more people will die tonight, if we face even half the numbers."

The sun was sinking, and birds and insects began to clatter and call, revealing just how much life still remained in the marsh. Captain Medan watched a heron fly overhead, and when he spoke again his voice was stifled. "Will it hurt them, do you think?"

"I can only guess. Like a slow suffocation, perhaps. Or drowning. I can’t be sure."

"I’d appreciate it if you got some rest, then. Even a couple of hours." His hands gripped the railing like he wanted to wring someone’s throat. "She means the world to me. Dessaile. My partner. If you fail, she drowns."

This wasn’t news, but to make him feel better Rennyn returned to the flat, covered boat which was her personal bed and lay down, curling around Solace’s focus. The heavy wards on the boat stung at her senses and made her brain itch, but she fell asleep despite them for all she really didn’t want to, and had the same dream as she’d had last night. Illidian, kissing her, touching her. His weight on her. Looking up at him with growing doubt as he pinned her hands. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t make out his expression. Didn’t know whose will moved him. Illidian’s? Solace’s? Or her own.

It was just barely still light when she woke, gasping. She felt sick, her head pounding, and she was keenly aware that Illidian was not nearby, was not watching over her. Chained to a wall, waiting for his mind to be taken away, his body to be made puppet.

Rennyn couldn’t continue to allow her self-command to fray at the seams. It would have been easier if she could have had Seb with her. She would at least have been spared the constant, nagging worry that he’d been found and killed. Lying with Solace’s focus on her stomach, she began a series of mental exercises. She had to set this aside. Illidian. Seb. Sukata and Kendall. People glaring at her and depending on her at the same time. Fear of failing. Fear, even, of succeeding. She had a task. She would carry it out as she had been trained to do. When it was done, she could spend as much time being upset as she wanted. Or wouldn’t care either way.

When dusk had moved to moonlight, she forced down a little dry food and cast a number of preparatory spells before emerging. She had asked that the small platform closest to the breach point be left free, and she levitated across to it now to wordlessly begin marking out her circle.

"Good luck."

Rennyn looked over at Lieutenant Danress, sitting in one of the many small boats. Her face was pallid in the magelights.

"You too."

Enough said. Enough waiting. Rennyn stepped into the Eferum, bracing herself against the pull of the Summoning, and lit up her surroundings with an outpouring of power. Enough to disrupt any ambush.

The wave was already swelling: she’d almost left it too late. Rennyn let loose another barrage, aiming it directly at the approaching surge of power, and then busied herself with the final attunement. She kept herself methodical with the discipline of life-long training, and concentrated only on completion as the surge of the Grand Summoning swelled. Then, the focus hanging heavy from her wrist, she looked up to see a horde even larger than the first, heading toward the rapidly forming breach. An attempt to eliminate the Sentene mages once and for all.

Rennyn emptied the remaining prepared spells directly into the centre of them, then stepped back into the world as the remnants tumbled through the breach.

Her shield was active, but she still ducked as something flew close to her head. Needing to get her bearings, she levitated up, trying to make sense of a tangle of fighting beneath moon- and mage-light. There were fewer Eferum-Get moving than she’d expected, dominated by a group of hopping things, all legs and long jaws. Spindly, grinning foxes.

Heat washed over the area from a barrage of spells, but the foxes shrugged off the flames, no more than briefly stunned. A shielding aura? They moved extremely quickly, leaping high into the air, bounding about like over-excited foals. She saw one come down on the shoulders of a nearby woman, overbearing her so she fell. White teeth flashed into red, but the thing leapt away before those nearest could react.

These were the kind of Eferum-Get which the Kellian had been most valuable in countering. The Ferumguard, using a combination of swords and pistols, were just too slow. Frowning, Rennyn dropped to the large platform, since she’d agreed during yesterday’s meeting to be properly guarded while the battle went on. She allowed herself to be surrounded while she tried to puzzle out a solution. Magic directly used was often resisted – it was far more effective to create fire or throw stones, and these things seemed resistant to conjured fire. Nor would the technique the Sentene had used back at the Arkathan work here: the creatures were rarely in one place long enough to be hit by missiles. Besides, she had already seen a mage fall to musket-shot gone astray. She watched one of the things leap up, soaring well above everyone’s head, and then closed her eyes.

Trying to move things you couldn’t see was far from easy. Not looking at all helped a little, but it still took far more energy than she liked. There was a faint murmur from those surrounding her as glistening black columns rose from the water around them, thickening as they grew. Mud, glutinous and stinking.

Tendrils began to extend from each column, curling and twisting like the new growth of plants, reaching out to each other, lacing together, sending out new feelers, linking and interlinking until there was a net, a ceiling, a web of the stuff.

Three of the leaping foxes were stuck immediately. Rennyn allowed the mud to encase them as they struggled, and saw that the rest were intelligent enough to start trying to avoid the new obstacle. That limited their movement enough for the Sentene to more effectively counter them. Already, most of the Eferum-Get were gone. But not killed, Rennyn realised. The foxes had kept the Sentene busy, while the rest of the creatures had run. A deliberate delay.

Mud was heavy, so Rennyn let it funnel back beneath the much-churned water, and then went and sat down while the Sentene did efficient things. She didn’t know the name of the woman whose throat had been torn out, but she recognised a body taken out of the water as one of the Ferumguard who had travelled to Surclere with her. Lieutenant Danress was injured: a bite to her arm which she was trying to bind herself. Illidian would be less than pleased.

Illidian. Had the Black Queen set the Kellian to fighting their way from their prison? Killing people? Rennyn looked down at the sphere in her lap, smoky black with a shining spot of white at its core. The power rolling off it was tangible, grown strong enough that any mage would sense the focus nearby. Only an echo of what Solace would bring to this world.

Captain Medan squatted down beside her. "We’re going to have to hunt them through this."

"Eferum-Get acting under orders."

"Yes. The idea of them using tactics isn’t a pretty one. Feints and ambushes. Not what we usually have to deal with, and hunting through this stuff will be painful, especially when half of us have been instructed to return to the city for its defence. We may find it more useful to head to the nearest settlements and wait for them to show up, rather than expose ourselves in small tracking parties. Now, can I talk some sense into you?"

"Can I have something to eat?"

He sighed deeply, but went and fetched her a bowl of thick soup, barely warm but filling. She drank it down and handed him the bowl, then said: "It will take me about two hours to reach Asentyr."

"Two–?" His surprise was understandable. The journey into the marsh had been slow and tedious. Eight hours of working the boats through shallow channels.

"Captain, if I hadn’t been throwing so much power about today, I could probably levitate all the way there. I’ll use something a little more efficient though. I want to get inside the city’s circle as quickly as possible."

"You said, yesterday, that you think this uncle is capable of passing the circle."

"He’s an outstanding mage, just lacking the strength of a focus. Teleporting a short distance would be well within his abilities, and totally bypass the circle’s protections, though not the alarm I added. Now that he’s in this world, he would also be able to create gates into the Eferum, and travel there and back at will. And he’s definitely capable of placing people under injunction, and could use them to access Asentyr, though the duration of the spell would be limited. But the city’s circle is still the first line of real protection, and I need to be inside it. When I reach Asentyr I will hide myself and wait until there’s only an hour or two left, and then I’ll head to the Hall of Summoning."

Captain Medan rubbed at his black-stubbled chin, made wary by the sudden flow of information. "I get the feeling you’re about to say something I won’t like."

"In a way. I want you to do something for me. You know the flag that sits on top of the tower at the centre of the Halls of Magic?"

"I may have noticed something of the sort."

"If the Kellian escape, lower it."

Rennyn watched the muscles bunch in his jaw, but then he nodded. "Very well."

"Solace’s obvious move is to take control of the Hall of Summoning. Unless her son brings another army of Eferum-Get into the city’s circle, the Kellian are the ideal tool. All that talk yesterday, the defences Lady Weston plans, do you think it could stand against them?"

"That would depend on how much warning we had. And–" His voice dropped. "And whether we were willing to kill them."

Rennyn stood. It was time she started moving. "One thing I am at least sure of, Captain." The thing she clung to, whenever she thought about this plan. "They’d prefer death to the alternative."