Sunset of Lantonne (66 page)

Ilarra tried to get up, but her arms and legs froze. She strained against the sensation of her body turning to stone and realized the woman had cast something on her that prevented any movement whatsoever. She could not move, and more importantly, could not manage to cast a spell of her own without either movement or the ability to speak. Ilarra could work around either, but not both.

Liris watched Ilarra a little longer, apparently gauging whether Ilarra would be able to get free. Once she seemed satisfied, she turned and headed into the fields after Nenophar.

Ilarra knelt there, struggling against the magic that held her, trying to find any way to free herself. It was painful and demeaning, knowing Nenophar was in danger while she could not even turn her head to watch him or force her eyes to strain toward the edge of her vision in hopes of a glimpse. All she could do was listen.

The first indication of the two beginning their fight came with a roar of flame washing over the field, warming Ilarra’s left side. Explosions sent dirt and flaming remains of the corn stalks flying past her face. The sounds of magical battle continued for a while, growing louder each minute, until the area suddenly went still. Every so often, mud or rocks pelted her back, stinging her. One particularly large clump of what felt like mud slammed into her, knocking her over onto her side, still unable to see what was happening.

Ilarra strained against the invisible bonds, her whole body shaking as her muscles fought to obey. Finally, she managed to turn her head slightly, then one by one, her muscles unlocked and she fell over as the spell ended.

Looking around, Ilarra was amazed by the damage the two spellcasters had done. The entire field was gone, burned black and smoldering, with huge sections of the ground ripped open. At first, she thought maybe the two had managed to kill one another, then saw a single body lying near the far side of what had been the field.

Ilarra ran across the uneven ground, tripping multiple times on her way to the lone figure. She could see it was Nenophar before she was halfway across the field, but he was not moving. The Turessian woman was nowhere to be found.

Coming up over the lip of a crater the two combatants and created, Ilarra dropped beside Nenophar and put a hand to his neck. She could not find a pulse, but he was still warm and seemed to be breathing. Nearly every inch of his body was torn and covered with blood leaking from burns, cuts, and other ailments. His leg was bent at an odd angle that she worried might indicate broken bones.

“Nenophar,” she whispered, patting his face. “Wake up!”

The man groaned and his eyes opened briefly as he croaked out, “Must…rest. Cave…”

“No time to travel. I can do this,” Ilarra assured herself, trying to remember the healing spells that she had “learned” over recent months. She had mostly ignored them, preferring the elemental magic she had intended to learn on her own before her life had taken such an odd turn. For once, the random information that she gained from her link with the Turessians was proving useful.

Summoning all of her strength, Ilarra struggled through the dramatically different way healing magic pulled the actual spell from the realm of spirits, rather than shaping raw energy into a form that could be used more easily. It took her longer than she would have liked, the magic feeling almost slippery as she strained to keep it working as intended. Finally, it took shape and poured into Nenophar, and his body began to heal.

Ilarra smiled in relief as she felt life begin to rush back into Nenophar, but as her magic continued to flow unhindered into him, she soon began to wonder if she had done something wrong. From what little she knew of the healing spells, the more of her own strength that went into the target, the more of their injuries would be healed. Any man should have been in perfect shape after the amount she had already pushed into his body, even if every bone in his body had been broken, but energy continued to drain from her. All of her magic was draining into Nenophar with no end in sight.

The discomfort and exhaustion of the powerful spell soon turned painful as Ilarra’s endurance began to wane. She feared letting up before Nenophar showed any sign of waking, but her muscles and then bones began to hurt as the limits of her body were exceeded.

Tears soon ran down Ilarra’s face as she fought to keep the spell from ending. Through bleary eyes, she could see the skin of her arms had begun to take on a chalky pallor and her veins were darkening rapidly. No matter what Nenophar had said about her being already dead, the pounding in her chest as her heart strained to keep up told Ilarra that if she could be killed, she was getting very close to it. Still, she could not let Nenophar die.

Ilarra did not even realize she had fallen until she had to lift her head to see if Nenophar was beginning to wake. Her vision was blurring badly, and the world wavered around her as if she had had heard happened with excessive drinking. Cold sweat ran down her back, but she pushed on in the hopes she had to be close to waking him. He had already absorbed enough healing to save the lives of dozens of men his size, so she had to believe she was close, no matter what he might be behind all of his illusions.

Finally, Nenophar’s eyes flicked open and he looked around, and then he focused and he turned to stare at Ilarra. His eyes went wide when he realized what she was doing, and he pulled away from her, ending the spell abruptly.

“Are you mad?” He caught her as she fell over, keeping her head from hitting the ground. “You could have destroyed yourself.”

“I just wanted to heal you. I promised I wouldn’t be the reason you died first,” Ilarra whispered in reply, barely keeping herself awake.

“I could have healed without your help after a few weeks of rest. If you fully exhaust your magic, you will die, and that doesn’t help either of us.”

Ilarra smiled weakly and shrugged. “That should bother me more than it does. You’ve been telling me for months I’m already dead and you and Raeln are all that is keeping me from going crazy. Dying to save someone else sounds so much better than the alternatives…”

Nenophar sat up and looked over Ilarra’s exposed skin on her arms, where the flesh had darkened and her veins appeared to be filled with ink. Shaking his head, he picked her up in his arms. “We both need rest,” he told her, and then the somewhat familiar rush of winds washed over Ilarra. “We will talk more once we heal.”

*

Ilarra woke slowly, feeling the clammy cave floor under her. She could not see at first, but her whole body ached.

“I had begun to wonder if you were going to wake at all.” Nenophar’s voice came from nearby. A dim light appeared, floating over his hand as he sat against the cave wall. “I slept a week and you were still unconscious. I do not think you would have lived much longer, had I not stopped you. You have been asleep for nearly three weeks since the battle.”

Groaning, Ilarra pulled herself upright and examined her arms. The skin there had returned to normal, even if she felt as though she had been trampled by a herd of animals.

“I owe you an apology,” Nenophar added, setting the light down on the cave floor between them. “When I saw you with that…with her…I believed the prophecy had come true and you were ready to try to kill me. I was not thinking clearly and jumped to an improper conclusion. You did not need to try and save me back there, and that means a great deal to me.”

Ilarra nodded weakly. “Did I earn the right to know what’s really going on?” she asked him, smiling. She did not actually expect a reasonable answer, but knew it was worth a try.

“You very nearly destroyed yourself to heal me when you had no understanding why that was so risky or why that Turessian tried and failed to capture me,” Nenophar replied, looking down at the floor. “Yes. I think you have earned some of the answers I did not intend to give you.”

Nenophar took a while before speaking again, but Ilarra was too tired to push him. She figured he would go on when he was ready and it gave her time to wake up more fully.

“More than two thousand years ago,” he finally began, “a human came to me to find an answer to a dilemma he had caused. In truth, I did not believe or trust him…mostly because his troops had attacked me a week before. He pleaded and offered me wealth, magic, any number of things I had no use for…then he offered his life in exchange for knowledge.

“I have lived a long time, Ilarra. Despite being a child in those days, such an offer was surprising, to say the least. I have never known mortals to willingly give up their lives for wisdom and the idea fascinated me. That made me more willing to hear him out. I am glad I did. This tiny human had created a tear in the walls of the world through which we pull our magic. Had he made matters any worse, I can only guess at the destruction that would have come. What he wanted to know was how to fix his mistakes…something I had no answer to. He would need a kind of foresight, much like my people possess innately, if he had any hope of seeing how he could save his people and lands from his errors.”

“I thought mortals couldn’t see the fabric?” Ilarra asked.

“They cannot without the help of one who can and a certain detachment from their own lives,” explained Nenophar. “I gave him the visions he needed in exchange for the answer to one question of my own. A mortal’s sight of the fabric had the potential to be far different from my own. The chance for new knowledge for myself was enticing.”

“You asked him how you die, didn’t you?”

Nenophar smiled and nodded. “A childish wish, but one that captivated me. I thought I had the man trapped. I proposed I would help him however I could if he could answer that one question. My kind do not die unless they grow tired of living and choose to slumber forever, but even then, it is not truly death. We are born, but do not die. I believed this question was an easy way to deny the human any aid I chose not to give him. However, he answered my question.”

Ilarra waited on Nenophar to continue, but he took quite a while, fidgeting the whole time.

“He explained I will die one of several ways,” the man finally went on. “If I find a Turessian who still resists the others through a bond of magic, I had the chance to challenge the doom that would befall my people and the lands we inhabit. Had I not found you, my fate would have been sealed to my kin. All of us would have been hunted down by the Turessians in our sleep and killed. Given the Turessians were no threat in those days, I found this idea baffling.”

“Why not avoid the endings he told you about?” Ilarra inquired. “You told me your people can change fate because you are not bound by it. If that’s true, you could simply choose to be elsewhere and change everything. Take your family and run.”

“True,” he admitted, shrugging. “I thought of that centuries ago. I’m guessing the man who foretold my death knew that was a possibility as well, since he told me three endings to my life. By avoiding the war that is to come, my kind will be the last creatures to face the destruction the war causes, but it will find us in time and starve us all. In that possible end, my people watch helplessly as the world dies around them.

“By staying here to fight, there is the chance of the other endings coming to pass. Should I find the Turessian who resists—you—and you join with the other Turessians, then I and all my people will be hunted down and killed. Your choice to continue resisting them means I could still die before you, but if not, then I may have some chance of saving myself. My people are predicted to die, whether you die first or I do. Turess saw no different ending for my kind.”

Ilarra nearly let his words pass, but the one leapt out at her. “Turess?” she demanded, leaning toward him. “The one who started these people on this path?”

“Not even remotely. Turess was a good man, Ilarra. He was one of the few mortals I have felt a respect for all these years. He chose his fate willingly and faced an ending I forced on him with a poise I have not seen since. If I must die, I would want to go with the acceptance he did. For all his faults, none of what these people are doing can be laid at his feet.”

Ilarra slid over to Nenophar and looked over his face, clearly making him uncomfortable in the process. She studied the features that were so nondescript she could barely attempt to describe them if he were not sitting in front of her. More importantly, she stared at him in an attempt to see through his illusions as she had nearly done back by the fields.

“I saw you when the Turessian was there,” she explained. “Your image blurred…I’ve seen that a couple times. I’m not stupid, Nenophar. I know you’re hiding yourself from me. We need to trust each other if we’re going to stand up against the Turessians together.”