On dead black horses with madness in their eyes, fifteen shapes of darkness and shadow rode forward. Their forms continuously shifted around the edges; even the enveloping cloaks they wore could not hide it. To stare too long on those fifteen creatures made of nothing-at-all invited madness. They rode up Coldwell Pass at a slow, steady walk like a funeral march. In the center of the pass, just in front of the Alkyran lines, they stopped.
And the Shee sprang their trap.
There was a shivering, and a tremor ran through the pass itself. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, high above the Shadow-born, a mile-high slab of the rock wall began to crumble. With deceptive slowness, the avalanche came on, gathering rock, snow, and speed as it came. There were screams of terror and a moment of mass confusion as half the Lithmern tried to turn back, out of the way of the deadly mass of rock.
One of the Shadow-born raised an arm, and the army stood motionless, bound in their places. His companions did not move, but about them the air grew suddenly dark and heavy. The avalanche continued, its roar drowning out all other noise. It reached the edge of the cliff and poured over it toward the floor of the pass.
The dark ring around the Shadow-born expanded rapidly. It met the leading edge of the falling wall of ice and rock fifteen feet above the heads of the Lithmern army, and held. Stone piled up above the barrier, and the first rocks were ground to a powder by the pressure from the rest of the mass. The shadow-wall darkened further in response, but still it held.
The last echoes of the avalanche died away, leaving both armies staring incredulously. For half a mile or more, the west end of the ravine was covered by an impossible bridge, a tunnel made of tons of rock and snow resting on darkness. Below it, the Lithmern army stood unharmed, save for those who had been trampled in the brief panic.
The Shadow-born hissed an order in Lithran and lowered its arm. The Lithmern shuddered and began to move again. Some of them looked upward uneasily, but none quite dared to defy the creatures they had raised to serve them. The Shadow-born gestured again, and the Lithmern surged forward with a roar.
The Alkyrans and their allies groaned in despair. The pass was narrow enough that they could hold the Lithmern for awhile despite their smaller numbers. The Wyrd bowmen could pick off the massed Lithmern easily from their positions on the cliff tops, but there were still far too many, even without the Shadow-born standing, motionless as statues, in the center of the pass.
A wave of hopelessness swept over Maurin even as he fought. So many, he thought, how can there be so many? Even without the Shadow-born to help them, they could destroy us.
Suddenly the whole struggle seemed pointless. Maurin looked hopelessly from the thinning Alkyran ranks to the Lithmern, milling like gray worms in the shadow of the tons of rock suspended above them. More and more of the attackers were passing through the uneasy tunnel of rock and magic, and the invading army began to push the Alkyrans back, until they reached the narrowest part of the pass.
There the defenders held, but it was only a temporary delay. Suddenly a cry of fear went up. The Shadow-born were moving forward at last, and darkness flowed before them in a flood.
Before it reached the Alkyran lines, the wave of shadow slowed, as though something hampered it, and Maurin guessed that battle between the Veldatha and the Shadow-born was joined at last. The Shadow-born halted, and the darkness began to creep forward once more. Inch by inch it drew nearer to the Alkyrans.
The fighting came almost to a standstill. Silence fell; behind Maurin someone sobbed in terror, but he did not turn to look. Like a bird watching a snake, he stared at the shadowy border that wavered, now, only a few feet before him. Even as he watched, it gained another inch, another six. Maurin drew a shuddering breath and clutched his sword in a hand slippery with sweat.
Coruscating light flared in front of him, and for a moment Maurin was blind. He almost screamed; was this the purpose of the shadow? Behind him he heard a ragged cheer; it was not to be feared, then. He shook his head and his vision began to clear.
The Shadow-born sat unmoving, but their spell of darkness had moved back almost half the distance between them and the Alkyrans. Little darts of fire flashed across the boundary, making a net of light that held back the darkness. Behind the Shadow-born, the rest of the Lithmern had stopped advancing and were moving uncertainly.
For a few moments, time seemed to stop. The Shadow-born, motionless on their great black horses, did not gain any more ground, but they did not lose any either. Then one of the figures signaled, and the Lithmern came forward again. They stopped short of the interface between shadow and clear air, and Maurin looked at them in dismay.
They covered the canyon floor from cliff to cliff in an unbroken mass stretching back nearly to the mouth of the pass; half the army was still inside the tunnel formed by the avalanche and the Shadow-born’s spell. As he looked, the veil of shadow shivered and broke through the restraining net of light. It began to advance once more, steadily this time. The Lithmern army came behind it, moving forward at the direction of the Shadow-born. Maurin was beyond terror; he felt almost calm as he waited for the wall to reach him. His last thought before it touched him was a vague curiosity.
Cold, darkness, and despair froze him where he stood. In the moment the spell swept over him, Maurin saw the loss of everything he ever loved, felt again the guilt of every mistake he had ever made and every wrong he had ever done or imagined. He saw his dimly remembered mother dying painfully in his arms. He saw Alethia screaming in terror amid the blizzard, dying slowly of thirst and exhaustion in the Kathkari because he had not found her. He saw Har hacked to pieces because he was not there to help him; he saw Traders from the vanished caravans dying in torment because he had not searched for them.
Maurin bowed his head in misery and self-condemnation. Just in front of him, a grinning Lithmern soldier was advancing to the kill; very well, he would not resist. Death was all he deserved. The Lithmern’s sword swung up and wavered mistily before him.
Alethia awoke early. Though it was still cold and gloomy, she was much more hopeful. Her arm was healing, and she knew she traveled in the right direction. She started off as soon as she finished eating the last of her food. She had been hoarding it carefully, but she was certain that she would find someone before nightfall who could replenish her supplies at least.
The ground rose slowly. A few hours of hard riding brought her to a ragged cliff above a maze of rock piles, and she began to wonder whether she really was traveling in the right direction. Then, ahead of her, she heard a roar. Looking up, she saw a piece of one of the mountains go sliding away. Without stopping to think, Alethia dug her heels into the horse’s sides.
The animal broke into a trot, then a gallop, and suddenly the battlefield was in sight. Alethia reined her horse to a halt atop a low ridge that commanded a good view. She slid out of the saddle and looked down; she had no doubts that she had found Coldwell Pass.
The Alkyran army was drawn up at the foot of the ridge. Facing them, the Lithmern were emerging from the shelter of a tunnel of some sort. Alethia saw the blackness at its edges and flinched away. Only then did she see the Shadow-born themselves.
Alethia froze. Without realizing it, her hand clutched at the bulky package that contained the Crown of Alkyra, and spell-sight hit her like a wall. The ravine was dark with power. She felt the fear and pain of the men below, and suddenly realized that the Shadow-born were drawing it in, feeding on it. That is why they are so still, she thought numbly. They are feeding.
She tore her eyes away to look for the Veldatha; somehow she thought she still might reach them before the Shadow-born began their attack. The wizards were not hard to find; to her spell-sight they were a white blaze against the shadows. For a moment Alethia felt more confident; then her heart sank as she saw how small was their fire compared to the mass of darkness that was the Shadow-born. She started to remount, but even as she did she felt the Shadow-born begin their attack.
&nb
sp; Power swept out from the creatures in a wave. The Veldatha flame met it, slowed it, but could not stop it. Alethia felt the terror of the troops below her, felt the way the dark spell fed on their fear. Then her spell-sight saw a weakness in the Shadow-born spell.
For a moment she hesitated, torn between fear of detection and fear for her friends, family, and home. Then she threw all of her power against the shadow-spell. Light flared as her force struck, and the shadow gave ground. Alethia pressed harder, searching for more weak spots, but the Shadow-born recovered quickly.
The spell-sight gave her an advantage, and she held them. Not alone; the Veldatha were still fighting, and they added their power to hers as they realized what had happened. She could see weak spots that the wizards could only sense dimly, and she formed a wall of lightning to keep back the Shadow-born’s spell.
The creatures of darkness stopped moving and motioned the Lithmern forward. As the army surged around them, they drew more power from it. The Shadow-born reached out, and Alethia realized with a spasm of fear that she had been right; the creatures knew that the Shield, the Cup, the Sword, and the Staff were somewhere in Coldwell. They were searching for the added sources of power. Alethia moved to block them, but the effort stretched her powers too thin, and the shadow spell moved forward once more.
The spell reached the edge of the Alkyran army, and Alethia reeled under the wave of guilt and terror and misery that flowed up from them. For a moment she was shocked out of the linkage of power, and in that moment she saw Maurin, tall and stern, standing with his head bowed before a Lithmern soldier, about to be cut in two.
“No!” Alethia screamed, and with the instincts of desperation she raised her hands and jammed the Crown of Alkyra on her own head.
Time stopped. The world swam before her eyes as the full power of the Crown coursed through her. The mountains themselves seemed transparent; the armies below were insubstantial ghosts, frozen in mid-motion. Only the power of the Veldatha and the Shadow-born was real and tangible. As if in a dream, Alethia reached out and once more summoned the power of the Veldatha to her.
It came to her in a burst of fire. She turned toward the Shadow-born, and saw clearly on them the mark of the bindings that had held them for three thousand years. She felt a moment’s doubt; even with such power, could she replace them? Once more, she reached out.
A feeling of warmth crept through her. Shapes of fire formed in the air in front of her, and another power rose in her like a flood tide, making her very bones ache with joy. The Gifts of Alkyra had been summoned through the power of the Crown.
No longer hesitant, Alethia rebuilt the ancient spells, following the pattern that only she could see. With great bars of power she bound the Shadow-born to the rock beneath the pass, cutting them off from the roots of their power. The struggle was intense, but brief, and the Shadow-born sank out of sight, melting into the stone.
Through his trance of despair, Maurin heard a familiar voice crying, “No!” He gasped, shaken out of the spell, and his arm jerked reflexively to block the Lithmern blade. He was only partly successful; the sword bit into his side before he killed the man wielding it. He hardly noticed. “Alethia!” he shouted, looking about wildly. “Alethia?”
On the ridge overlooking the battlefield, a pillar of light rose toward the sky. It grew brighter and brighter, and the very walls of the ravine itself seemed to glow in response. Light exploded in the pass, sweeping away the dark spells of the Shadow-born. A wind sprang up, blowing off the ridge, wiping away the last shreds of the veil of misery.
The Shadow-born vanished, leaving fifteen black horses standing riderless in the center of the Lithmern army. Even the clouds began to break up and dissipate. The Lithmern gave a cry of dismay that turned quickly to terror as the black wall that held back the avalanche grew insubstantial, faded, disappeared.
With a grinding roar, half a mile of stone collapsed into the pass, blocking it completely and wiping out over half the Lithmern army with one stroke. The noise of its falling drowned the screams of the men it caught and the sounds of battle alike. As the echoes died, the Alkyrans surged forward. The remaining Lithmern were trapped against the newly fallen rock, and they knew it. Some tried to flee toward the sides of the pass, but the archers cut them down. The main body of Lithmern, however, chose to fight, and they attacked with the desperation of men who know that they have no other hope of life.
Maurin fought with a fierce joy. He did not know how it had happened, but the Shadow-born were gone and the Lithmern no longer outnumbered the allies. More, Alethia was alive; the knowledge sang through him as he fought. He led the attack on the last of the Lithmern, who had managed to barricade themselves between the cliff and the rock slide, and he accepted their surrender at the end. Only then did he go to look for Alethia.
Not content with merely binding the creatures, Alethia wove a net of spells into the rock, drawing recklessly on the huge store of power at her disposal. Only when she was sure that not even a thread of darkness could creep out was she satisfied enough to stop.
The power drained away, leaving her suddenly exhausted. She sat down heavily and stared unseeing at the battlefield, where the Alkyrans were forcing the Lithmern back. She could not even feel triumph. She was still sitting on the cold rocks when the crowd of wizards and lords, led by Maurin and her brother, came to find her—a drooping figure in torn and travel-stained garments with the greatest treasures of Alkyra clustered about her feet and a crown of light on her head.
Chapter 23
IT WAS NOT UNTIL late the following day that Alethia was finally able to tell her story. The Neira healers took her in charge as soon as she reached the camp, and they refused to allow her to be disturbed by anyone until they felt she had rested enough. Har prowled restlessly around the outside of the tent for nearly an hour, but the healers remained firm.
The Crown and the Gifts were carefully wrapped and carried back to camp, where they were put under heavy guard while the survivors tried to decide what was to be done with them. The victory had taken a terrible toll, and the traditional celebrations were subdued. Lord Marhal and Grathwol of the Wyrds were dead; Armin was not expected to live. The prickly Shee general had been killed defending Herre, and the commander of the Shee was badly wounded. One of Bracor’s legs had been seriously hurt; only the skill of the Neira kept him from losing it. Tamsin, too, had reason to be grateful to the healers. He had been wounded in the shoulder, but the Neira assured him that it would heal cleanly. Nearly a third of the combined force of Alkyrans, Wyrds, and Shee were dead, and hardly any of those remaining had escaped unscathed.
When the healers finally pronounced Alethia rested enough to speak, the leaders of the allied armies gathered around Herre’s bedside to listen to her. In a fit of stubbornness, the Shee lord had insisted on being present, and since the Neira would not allow him to be moved, everyone came to him.
Everyone who was able crowded into the tent. Rialla was there, gaunt and weary, and Murn, Arkon of Glen Wilding and leader of the Wyrds since Grathwol’s death. Gahlon and Vander stood against the walls of the tent. Bracor, overruling the Neira’s protests, had persuaded Har and Jordet to carry him from his own tent to Herre’s. He sat next to Alethia, nursing his bandaged leg, with Har beside him. Larissalama sat between Herre and Bracor, dividing his attention between his two most difficult patients. Maurin, despite his injured side, stood near the doorway, half-hidden in the shadows behind Tamsin and Jordet.
Shadows flickered across the walls of the tent as Alethia told the assemblage about her lessons in Eveleth, the firestone, the blizzard, and the finding of the Crown. The firestone shone like a star on her finger as she spoke of the battle. When she finished, there was silence.
“So now the Crown is returned, and we shall have a ruler in place of a regent,” Gahlon said with a smile. “Well, it is high time the peoples were united again.”
“I suppose the Conclave of First Lords will have to choose a king now,” Alethia agr
eed.
“Not a king, Alethia, but a queen,” Jordet’s voice said from behind her. “And I do not think that the Conclave will have a choice.”
Alethia looked at him and her face lost color. She did not pretend to misunderstand him. “That is absurd! I don’t want to rule Alkyra!”
“You made your choice when you placed the Crown on your head,” Jordet said gently.
“I had no choice! I could not reach the Veldatha in time, and Maurin—” She broke off suddenly, and flushed. “I had no choice,” she repeated.
“The Crown of Alkyra may be worn by one person, and one only, so long as the wearer lives,” Tamsin said in his lilting minstrel’s voice. “Have you never heard ‘Queen Carr’s Lament?’ Her son Morrath died when he put the Crown on with his mother still living, and it broke her heart with grief.”
“But the old tales say that only Kirel’s line can wear the Crown!” Alethia objected. “I am not of the line of kings; I am not even of his blood.”
“Yet you have worn it,” Tamsin said.
Rialla nodded. “There was a reason that only those of Kirel’s blood could wear the Crown. Only his line could handle the enormous flow of power, and live. I felt what you did in that battle; it would have burnt up any one of the Veldatha in spite of our training. I think, girl, that as unlikely as it seems, you are the only one who can wear the Crown.”
“Which is just as well,” Gahlon said quietly. “If the First Lords had to choose a king, there would be war.”
“The Shee would never bow to a puppet of the Alkyran nobles,” Herre growled from his bed.
“Why should the Shee bow to anyone?” Alethia said, frowning. “You have kept apart from humans for hundreds of years!”
“Once we all were apart,” Murn said quietly. “And you have brought us back. Your people fear the Shee and Wyrds already; if we do not become part of Alkyra again, how long will it be before your ambitious nobles turn their soldiers against us? Alkyra must be united. You are the one to do it.”