Song Magick (42 page)

Her thoughts flashed back to the night of
Aric’s life celebration, when Cormac had been able to call her song
magic forth on his own. Telyn had put it down to the fact that he
could share her gifts, but she now was almost certain that it was
the atmosphere in the Circle which was responsible—her gifts were
in a constant state of activity there, stimulated by the primal
power that resided in the earth. Once they had shared her powers
that night, Cormac and Colm had instinctively known how to access
them. The men who had not been able to call on her gifts had now
shared her powers via the incantation, and should possess that
reference point as well.

If she was right, this would allow the men to
use her gifts without being bound to her will. She began to think
that this was what had doomed Genefar’s attempt: trapped by her
powerful, untrained influence, most of Genefar’s men had not been
able to break the connection when she lost control.

She looked around wildly to see if anyone was
awake, excitement stripping the last cobwebs of sleep from her
mind. No one was stirring, but unable to wait, she shook Mithrais
gently. He woke immediately, sitting up and untangling himself from
his cloak.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, and Telyn
shook her head, smiling.

“I don’t think so. Wake up Cormac, and we’ll
find out.”

* * * *

Half an hour later, as the first blue-grey
light of dawn was touching the sky, she had her answer.

Cormac had immediately been able to access
her gifts, and create the link between them without the aid of the
incantation or a direct mind-to-mind joining. The energies in the
Circle had come eagerly to their call, gathering between them with
frightening speed, and Telyn had quickly directed it to Mithrais,
who in turn, was able to draw the magic in and broadcast it
outwards as they had done in the guild house, but without being
bound to Telyn’s will. At her signal, Mithrais terminated the link
on his own, sending all the power back to that space between Cormac
and Telyn.

The brief building of power had wakened the
rest of the wardens, who gathered to find out what was happening,
and listened to Telyn’s explanation.

“I believe that this will allow each of you
to drop out of the working if I can’t control the magic,” she
finished. “I think this is why so many wardens died the first time.
I don’t want that to happen here. You must be free to drop out if
you become endangered.”

“What about you and Cormac?” Colm asked.

Telyn exchanged glances with the young
warden, who shrugged, already knowing the answer.

“We are the convergence of power,” Cormac
told them. “Telyn and I must bind to each other, and to the
Gwaith’orn, or it will not work. There won’t be a way for us to get
out if things go badly.”

“But Telyn has skills that Genefar didn’t,”
Mithrais added. “The Gwaith’orn believe she can accomplish this,
and so do I.”

“As do we all,” Eirion said, “else we would
not be here.”

“It’s nearly dawn—we should be prepared,”
someone else said, and Telyn nodded decisively.

“We’ll try this first time without the
connection to the Gwaith’orn. I want to know exactly how much power
we can call, and what effects it has on all of us. Afterwards, we
can decide what tomorrow will bring.”

* * * *

The first attempt was staggering in its
magnitude.

Evenly spaced between each Gwaith’orn, the
eight wardens completed the broken Circle. Telyn and Cormac stood
at the center, facing each other over the granite slab. Together,
they raised their arms to the sides, shoulder height and slightly
curved, as if to embrace what they were about to call. Cormac
called her magic to him, and the connection was made.

Telyn felt the power gather as their gifts
combined, immense and almost oppressive in its presence. Instead of
constricting the energies to the area between their joined hands as
they had in their earliest attempts, Telyn and Cormac took the
slow, measured steps backwards toward the east and west. The power
began to gather in the midst of the Circle, swirling with the force
of a hurricane—even the grass stirred beneath it, ruffled by unseen
fingers of energy.

Even as she and Cormac continued to increase
the area between them, Telyn willed the magic outward, and felt it
picked up by all eight wardens in succession as the gale subsided
momentarily, only to build again until that ghostly glow began to
form in the emptiness of the Circle. The bard stopped before she
would have walked under the canopy of the easternmost tree, as did
Cormac in the west. They did not envelop the Gwaith’orn with the
power she had gathered as they would when the final working took
place. There was power enough and more to accomplish what the tree
folk wished, and Telyn was taken aback by the ease with which they
had called it.

She was about to signal Cormac to begin to
disperse what they had called when the sunrise began to touch the
tops of the trees. Without warning, the level of energy suddenly
doubled. It was almost a physical blow; Telyn rocked backwards, and
immediately began to pull back her magic, although the wardens
continued to stand firm against the surge of power.

It was a herculean effort to will the immense
power to subside the midst of the Circle, pushing against it as she
walked back to the center of the Circle and faced Cormac once more.
Telyn felt shaky and weak by the time Cormac released her magic.
Mithrais came from his place in the northeast as she sat down
heavily on the grass, utterly spent. Across the grey stone, Cormac
had fallen to his hands and knees in exhaustion, Gaelen and Colm
coming to his aid.

“How do you feel?” Telyn managed to ask
Mithrais, and he shook his head as he sat beside her, supporting
her against his body.

“Tired, but not debilitated. The flow was
enormous at the end, but I believe that we could have handled
more.”

“I don’t think that Cormac and I could,”
Telyn panted. “The level of power felt more than adequate to do
what the Gwaith’orn are asking before the sun came up, but
afterwards...”

“That could have flattened a mountain if we
told it to,” Cormac gasped as he sprawled on his back. He let out
his breath with a whoosh, the sunny grin still wide on his weary
face.

Jona and Conlad came from where they had
watched outside the Circle, sheltering behind the trunks of the
Gwaith’orn.

“We were protected from the brunt of the
energy, but we could tell that it was frighteningly powerful,”
Conlad reported. “Had we been standing in the open, we could have
been knocked off our feet.”

“I hope that that kind of energy won’t be
available to anyone with the gift to use it,” Jona said worriedly.
“Who knows what havoc it could wreak?”

“That is something we will have to
determine,” Mithrais confirmed grimly.

There was a gentle pulse from the ground
beneath Telyn; it was a summons from the Gwaith’orn, and she
groaned. “Oh, why do they want to talk now?”

“I’m certain they want to know what we’re
doing,” Cormac hazarded, and Telyn dragged herself up with
Mithrais’ assistance to make steps to the trunk of the easternmost
tree, leaning against it with both palms in weary resignation.

Yes, old ones
?

Their excitement was evident in the rapid
trill of music their presence created.
We tasted the power. Why
did you not allow us to participate?

We want to be certain that we succeed the
first time. We wished to know how the power affects us, so we can
prepare.

You have done well.
Telyn felt their
approval, and their impatience.
We have not sensed so much power
since the covenant was sealed. We thirst for it.

Soon, you will drink from the fount
again,
she reassured them.
Now, we must rest and regain our
strength.

At the rise of the sun, we will participate
and the covenant will be fulfilled.

Telyn frowned.
We may not be
ready.

You are ready. At the rise of the sun.

“Not so fast,” she muttered aloud, but the
Gwaith’orn had already withdrawn from contact. She removed her
hands from the trunk, staring upwards into the branches in
consternation.

“What did they want?” Mithrais asked her as
the rest of the wardens joined them near the tree.

“They don’t appear to want to give us time
for another rehearsal,” Telyn said irritably. “Tomorrow at dawn,
they want to fulfill the covenant.”

The men exchanged glances of inquiry, and
seemed to reach a silent accord.

“Is there any reason not to make the
attempt?” Cormac asked her seriously.

The question brought Telyn up short, her
temper subsiding. The morning’s work had been a success. She had
done what she could to assure that the men would be able to save
themselves should she be unable to bend the power to her will.
There truly was no reason to delay, which served only to mollify
her fears. She scanned the faces around her, seeing nothing but
steady conviction. They were waiting for an answer, trusting her
judgment.

“No, there isn’t,” she finally conceded
quietly. “We have proven that the knowledge we were given works. We
will make the attempt tomorrow, as they wish.”

* * * *

After eating a cold breakfast, Telyn slept
for several hours, as did Cormac, both exhausted from the morning’s
efforts. It fell to the rest of the men to find activities to pass
the time, seeking an outlet for the restless, anticipatory mood
that seemed to inhabit them all. The following dawn could not come
too soon for most of them.

Colm played his low whistle meditatively, his
eyes far away and unfocused. The music was sweet and achingly
poignant. Mithrais listened while he leaned back in the grass
beside the sleeping bard, and wondered what the Northwarden’s
thoughts were. When Colm became aware of his regard, he stopped
playing, grinning in self-deprecation.

“Not the kind of tune for keeping one’s
spirits high,” he admitted. Mithrais acknowledged him with a quirk
of a smile.

“It’s a strange day,” he allowed. “I feel as
if we’re about to go into battle.”

Colm nodded. “I am anxious to see it done.”
His voice dropped to a lower register, meant for Mithrais’ ears
alone. “I’ve spoken to the others. Cormac and Telyn may have given
us a way out, but we will not abandon them if it comes to it. I
would not leave a comrade to battle alone.”

“Nor will I,” Mithrais responded, hearing his
own thoughts in Colm’s avowal. He lay back on the grass, folding
his arms beneath his head and studying the cloudscapes. “I fear
that our roles in these practice workings are deceptively passive.
Tomorrow will be the true test.”

“Tomorrow,” Colm echoed, and looked at his
low whistle. “I think that I need to find an alternative
distraction.” He gave Mithrais a half-grin, and climbed to his
feet, wandering toward Eirion and Kevan, who had begun playing a
game with Conlad that involved dice and a coveted bag of sugared
almonds, a known weakness that plagued the Elder Historian.
Mithrais grinned and turned back to the blue and white expanse
above the clearing.

He felt no fear, only that inexplicable sense
that everything was right; that all the pieces were in place and
the puzzle about to be solved. Only when he turned his head toward
the deeply slumbering Telyn did he have a fleeting moment of
foreboding: lying there on the earth, her eyes closed, she appeared
pale and lifeless in the shadow of the Gwaith’orn. His thoughts
touched on the circumstance that once more, they were within the
Circle, facing the specter of death together. Then she stirred,
those lovely, tawny eyes opening, and she smiled sleepily at
him.

“How late is it?” she asked, stretching
luxuriously. Mithrais rolled over on his side, moved anew by her
alluring mix of strength and vulnerability.

“It’s just midday.” He touched her hair,
moving the stubborn curls back from her eyes. “You can sleep a bit
more, if you wish.”

Telyn considered that a moment, and shook her
head. “No.” She pushed herself up slowly, and smiled down at him
again with a touch of mischief in her eyes. “Do you know what I’d
like to do?”

“What?”

“I’d like to walk through the Wood with you
for a while. Slowly, without fear of being chased by bounty
hunters.”

Mithrais laughed. He rolled lithely to his
feet and extended a hand to help her rise. “There is a glade I
think you might like, and a place to swim, if you are so
inclined.”

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

The beauty of the deep forest was something
Telyn had not had time to appreciate before, and she absorbed the
sounds and sights with hushed delight.

The dappled greens and golds of the trees,
the thick emerald moss that carpeted the forest floor were dazzling
in their intensity, and the songs of birds held melodies and
counterpoints that were wild and complex. It occurred to her that
the unusual clarity of her perceptions might be born of a
subconscious sense of doom, but Telyn had never really believed in
presentiment. She refused to give the thought credit. She
concentrated instead on the moment: the scents of spring unfolding
in the heat of the sun, the mildness of the breezes, and the
presence of the man beside her, his hand warm in her own.

Mithrais did not speak either, leading her
through the Wood in a seemingly random path that led to the west
and north. They crossed a small ridge, and when they began to
descend, the bard saw a large, clear pool tucked beneath the cliff,
the rocks at the bottom sharply defined in the sunlit waters. A
small stream wound away from the pool through a lovely dell,
scattered with small flowers and deep, green grass that stretched
from the pool in an uneven crescent shape.