The Grand Crusade (43 page)

“Well, if I ever find myself at the bottom of the sea, in conversation with Tagothcha, I’ll ask him.”

That first night in the Splinters Kerrigan cast the search spell and got his results even more quickly than he expected. The fragments were still north, but seemed to have moved closer. Kerrigan sought Resolute and informed him of his impression.

The Vorquelf’s face closed up. “There have been signs of activity in the area. Lots of gibberers, with a fewturekadineto lead them. This is good in that it means our opposition is smaller. It’s not good in that the heaviest troops are now headed off to fight in the east.”

Resolute looked to the north. “If the courier is heading in this direction, it

may be because the Aurolani landed more troops on the coast and has them moving south. Can you change your spell to give me troop dispositions?“

“I could, but if they are moving, I’d have to be casting constantly to keep track of them. I could pick up gibberers, vylaens, and frostclaws easily enough. Probably theturekadine, too, but the batrachians andslurrikiwould get past me.”

Oracle came over to the two of them, helped by Trawyn. “Resolute, you have to go now. You have to find him. He is very close, but so are they. We all have to hurry.”

Without question, Resolute stood and whistled sharply. “We’re moving north,now”He shrugged off his pack and stuffed it behind a bush and beneath a rock. “If it is not one of us and it is moving out there, kill it. You know what we are looking for. You’ve never done anything but steal your whole lives, so steal this one from Chytrine.”

The Grey Misters and Trawyn’s companions likewise divested themselves of their packs, then drew their weapons and began to move north. Kerrigan struggled out of his pack and found Resolute helping him. “Listen to me carefully, Kerrigan.”

“Yes, Resolute?”

“You and Bok are the most important people here tonight. You can find our quarry, so you must go for him and direct others to any opposition in your way. Qwc will stay with you and carry messages. Unless you’re forced to, you cast no combat spells, just keep getting closer to the fragments, got it?”

He nodded.

“Good. The second thing is that you’re also responsible for Oracle and Trawyn. You’re in command of the search; the rest of us will handle the rescue. Once you find our target and free him, you all head north. The rest of us will come as fast as we can, but you know our mission. You wait for no one; just go.”

Kerrigan’s throat tightened. “But what if

?”

Resolute laughed. “Something happens to me?” The Vorquelf came around in front of him and rested his hands on the mage’s shoulders. “Do you honestly think I won’t be there? I’m taking it as a personal affront that Chytrine didn’t send herturekadineafter me the second they were spawned. I intend she know that even they are not enough to stop me.”

Kerrigan smiled, his heart beating a bit faster. “I won’t wait for anyone.”

“Good.” Resolute’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “You remember when Orla said to stay with Crow and me?”

The image of his mentor, as she lay dying in the cabin of a ship, came back. So did the lump in his throat. He nodded.

“She did that so you’d learn enough for today. If it comes down to you leading the force north alone, I know you can do it. Furthermore, I thinkyouknow you can do it.”

Kerrigan hesitated, then closed his eyes and thought for a moment. When he first left Vilwan he couldn’t have done any of what had been accomplished since

before Bok had kidnapped him and begun to instruct him in the true paths of power. Even the long hard marches they had made in the past six days would have been beyond him, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. J^ewould have been one of the first sent back.

Now, however, Resolute’s words found purchase in his heart. He still felt afraid, but he also had a need to push on.Back when I left Vilwan, I was the center of my own world. My world was limited by what I could do and what I thought I could do. Now the world is much bigger. It challenges me and I rise to that challenge.

Kerrigan slapped the Vorquelf on the shoulder. “North to Vorquellyn, get Will, north again, and get the Nor’witch. If you get lost, we’ll leave signs of our passing.”

Resolute smiled, and Kerrigan didn’t find it as frightening a thing as he had in the past. “Good. Let’s go kill some Aurolani and, while we’re at it, push the world a little further from destruction.”

Moving through the Splinters in darkness would have been impossible for him, so, despite Resolute’s admonition about the use of magick, Kerrigan did resort to a spell that amplified the visible light. He could have used a stronger spell that would have rendered night as day, but that was far more easy to detect than the one he chose, and much easier to dispel. By his choosing something slightly less efficient and more complicated, a magicker would have to work to destroy the spell, and Kerrigan would have a chance to rid himself of his tormentor.

His spell showed him a world of grey and yellow. He brushed past trees and scrambled over rocks, pausing to help Oracle or Trawyn along. Bok, who had lengthened his legs and sharpened his arms, became an odd yellow stick figure striding through the night. He again bore on his back the chest in which Rym resided, but it slowed him down not at all.

From all around them came the sounds of combat, but not those of a raging battle. People did scream, but mostly there were muffled groans, or the sharp crack of a neck snapping. More than one gibberer lay on the ground, his throat slit or a hole over his heart. Part of Kerrigan wanted to cast diagnostic spells to see what had killed them, for the information would have been invaluable, but the mission kept him focused.

Haifa mile into the forest, Resolute intercepted them after Qwc made a quick flyby. Wordlessly he beckoned for Kerrigan to come with him. As the mage moved through the night, he saw a number of gibberer bodies on the ground and could smell the stink of singed fur. Resolute brought him to a place between two standing stones where two gibberers and one of the Grey Misters lay dead.

The flesh had been burned from the elf’s face. A few other elves stood around, but Resolute quickly deployed them to watch, then sent Qwc to bring

the rest of the group in. Resolute moved toward the stones, and extended his lefta rm toward the space between them, but he didn’t stick it in there. As his skin grew close, a couple of the tattoos on his forearm began to glow faintly.

Kerrigan nodded and cast a quick spell. In his sight, the stones lit up as if theyW ere mirrors reflecting the noonday sun. “Wards, very powerful wards that were worked a long time ago, but not activated until now. I can feel them linked to other setups.” He glanced back in the direction whence they had come. “There’s more out there. We’re trapped inside two rings.”

They heard a couple more screams from a position about ninety degrees away from them on the inner ring, then a harsh horn. A grim expression settled over Resolute’s face. “They’ve figured out what we’ve figured out. They’ll attribute their dead to the ring and its maker, so they don’t know we’re here at the moment. Can you get through the wards?”

Kerrigan nodded. “I think so. They’re elven, but complicated. Could be, however, if I get through,allthe wards stop working. If they’re closer to the hiding place, they get there first.”

“I’ll take care of them. Predator, get your people ready. We’re going around to the east and we’re hitting them hard.”

The Grey Mister nodded and started gathering his charges.

Resolute smiled. “Fast, Kerrigan. Get in there but be careful.”

“I will.”

“Go, then.” The Vorquelf shot him a little salute, then vanished in the night. Like a feral fog, the Grey Misters drifted in his wake.

As Bok brought Trawyn and Oracle up, Kerrigan pondered the wards. He cast another diagnostic spell, carefully looking for any traps or any telltale signs of modifications to the spells. Wards usually were fairly simple. They linked two or more points and had a lot of magickal energy flowing between them. When someone tried to cross between those points, the spell evaluated them as a target. If they didn’t have a talisman, or the right bloodline or any of thousands of other traits that would make them harmless from the spell’s point of view, they suffered the consequences.

Kerrigan could have easily gotten lost in a search for a key to the ward. Finding the right key, then crafting a spell that would make it appear as if he had the key would take a lot of time. That was the standard way of getting through a ward. It wasn’t easy, and took not only a very good magick-user to do so, but also a lot of time.

Instead he picked up on a trickle of a diagnostic spell coming through the wards and smiled. It was clearly Aurolani magick. Kerrigan smiled and punched a spell back along that line that reported to the Aurolani magicker that there was a key, and that it was to appear to be an elf.

A triumphant blast on the Aurolani horn was followed by a hideous scream. Kerrigan got no sense of the magicker’s death through the ward, though he did

get something else. Seconds later more screams sounded, along with war cries as Resolute’s raid on the Aurolani began. The clash of steel on steel rang through the darkness.

Bok tapped him on the shoulder. “Moving quickly would be good.”

“Yes, and I think I can now.” He shook his head and set his shoulders. What he’d caught when the Aurolani magicker died was a momentary flicker in the wards’ intensity. The mage who had created the wards had used several spells to create his trap, which made it almost impossible to dispel quickly. Most importantly, to avoid its detection and the slaying of things for no reason at all, he made the spell that channeled energy into the wards as something that required conscious control and recasting.

“Just as the dragonbone armor causes me trouble with spell casting, this ought to work for you.”

Kerrigan quickly recalled the impressions of theturekadine, vylaens, and gibberers, then shaped each one into the equivalent of a disguise spell and cast it at the ward. The defensive spell looked at all aspects of the spell, evaluated it as a disguise, then pulsed power back to kill whatever it was hiding. Faster and faster Kerrigan sent these little spells. Bok picked up on what he was doing and began to cast as well.

The wardmaster’s reaction time faded. It took him longer and longer to get the power flowing back into the spells and then, all at once, the wards collapsed. Kerrigan cast one more disguise to see if it was a ruse, then followed with his search spell. The response came so quickly that his head snapped around and he began to run. Behind him, Bok scooped the princess and Oracle up in his arms and streaked after him.

To his right, out of the darkness, aturekadineburst from the brush. It snarled loudly and brandished a curved longknife. Before it could advance, however, a bladestar whirred through the air and caught it in the ribs. The creature had enough time to look down, then the poison on the throwing star’s point took effect.

Kerrigan leaped over the thrashing beast and plunged on into a dark cavern. He ducked his head and raised his hands, saving him a nasty knock on the skull. He quickly dropped to his hands and knees and crawled along a twisting passage that had been reshaped by magick. The tunnel wove back on itself once, then opened into a grotto.

A cadaverous figure hung in the middle of it, ensnared in long pale roots from above—roots that had been woven into a web. Kerrigan had a hard time telling where the elf’s hair ended and the roots began, for his fine hair hung to his waist and spread behind him as if a cape. The elf’s head lolled to the side. A thin rope of saliva and another of snot slowly dripped down. Most curious of all, his pale skin had a lavender cast to it.

Two large pouches, one on each hip, hung from his belt. Kerrigan assumed they contained the DragonCrown fragments, but it wasn’t an assumption he

anted to test. The elf’s skill at wards and Kerrigan’s own experience enchanting

afragment kept him back

Trawyn entered the cave next and hissed. “Stay away from him, Kerrigan. Cast

no spell“

“What’s the matter?

She pointed at the figure. “His purple flesh. He is an eater of dreamwing.”

“You’ve mentioned it before. What is it?”

She exhaled slowly. “It is a narcotic plant, which can be addictive. It soothes great pain, emotional pain, at least temporarily, and can help one cast powerful niagicks. Use begets use, however. When one is as far gone as he is, he cannot tell dream fantasy from reality. He may lash out without warning, and he would hurt you badly.”

“Who is he?”

Trawyn shook her head, but Oracle appeared behind her. “He would be the last adult Vorquelf in the world. He is our key to thecorüesciin Saslynnae.”

Trawyn looked at her as if she were insane. “A dreamwing eater can’t enter acorüesci. He hasn’t the presence of mind to open the way.”

The Vorquelven soothsayer shrugged. “We will have to make him recover before we need him on Vorquellyn.”

Kerrigan smiled. “Resolute will sober him up.”

“Oh, I wish that were true, Kerrigan. The Aurolani have been scattered. The others will be coming in.” Oracle shook her head slowly. “Unfortunately, Resolute will not be in their number.”

Princess Alexia did not let Tythsai’s force escape entirely. She used her cavalry to chase, scout, and harass the Aurolani as they retreated. Once the rear guard felt sufficiently threatened by fast-moving light horse units, Tythsai would be forced to form her army up and offer the rear guard support. Alexia would keep her harassing troops in place, bring the rest of her army up, then allow the Aurolani to decline an engagement and move off again.

While the mix of chase and release might have seemed pointless, Alexia actually managed to accomplish several things at the same time. The raids against the rear guard did cost the Aurolani soldiers. More importantly, every time Tythsai had to stop her army and march them back west to support the rear guard, the Aurolani were being made to retrace their steps again and again. The fact that when they got there they were allowed to march off again built up resentment and began to erode morale.