Hallsfoot's Battle (36 page)

From across the park, a great flash of
emerald fire exploded through the trees. The roar of it deafened
her inner mind, knocking her backwards and onto the ground again.
She scrabbled for safety and a wave of cool flame passed over her.
It was a thousand times more deadly than the Library fire. Annyeke
felt a terrible darkness hidden within the light, but all she could
think about were Johan and Talus. They were at the park,
battle-training. What was happening to them? And all the time,
around her, women and children were crying and, from further away,
men were shouting.

The terrible sound passed into the distance,
but something had been left behind, something she couldn’t grasp.
She couldn’t see anything in the immediate vicinity. Iffenia had
vanished. Where was she? They had been standing together and now
the other woman had gone. She should have paid closer attention to
her. Only the snow and the feeling of loss cloaked Annyeke.
Something had happened, the world was wrong, off kilter more than
it had been.

Shaking her head to dispel confusion and
concern about what her missing companion had done, and why, Annyeke
scrambled to her feet, shaking off soil and grass from her skirts.
She could see other people were following suit. Heart beating fast,
she knew something more was expected of her, now more than ever.
She shut her eyes and concentrated. It didn’t take long to find
what she sought for, the air all but vibrated with it. Gelahn and
his forces were already upon them. Too soon. They had once more
breached the sacred gap between worlds and were, even now,
streaming in through the far side of the park. Because of Iffenia?
By the gods, she could not be sure.

She opened her eyes again. For a long moment,
Annyeke’s glance took in the salvaged tales of her people, those
from the destruction of the library and those they had shared aloud
and in their own hearts today. She knew then what she had to
do.

Listen.

She hadn’t thought the word she’d carved out
in her mind would have the effect that it did, but everyone around
turned towards her at once. Even in the midst of this new
emergency, Annyeke found she was pleased with the ability to garner
such instantaneous attention. She, Acting Elder of the Gathandrian
people, had to rise to the occasion.

Take up the stories, she said, using only her
thoughts to convey the command. Take them quickly and follow me.
The enemy is here and we must meet with him, before it is too late
for us.

She gathered an armful of stories, old and
new, from the stacks near the once majestic Library and began to
run towards the sound of the explosion. She didn’t need to look
back to know the women were copying her act, hurrying after her
even in spite of the orange streak of fear that gripped them. It
hovered over them all. In Annyeke’s arms, the tales made her skin
prickle, words rubbing against her flesh as if singing in a voice
she was unable to reach after. She had no time to listen to them.
All she could think about was Talus and Johan in the park, where
she could see a bright tongue of green fire rising to the skies and
then falling, over and over again so there was no break in it. A
circle, she thought, it’s a circle. What was it doing? She slipped
on the packed down snow that covered the streets. She couldn’t run
fast enough, would never get there in time.

Then her feet met something solid hidden in
whiteness and she stumbled forward. A strong hand saved her from
landing winded on the earth. When she looked round, it was Iffenia.
Where had she come from? She saw a green and fiery light in the
other Gathandrian woman’s eyes that had not been there before, as
if the glow from the circle of fire could be found also in
Iffenia’s face.

“What is it?” Annyeke demanded, trying and
failing to shake her arm free. “What have you done? It’s because of
you that Gelahn is here, isn’t it? The battle has begun.”

For a moment, the air between the two of them
was silent, although the echoes of the explosion and small
aftershocks still haunted Annyeke’s ears, and the cries and gasps
of the crowd of women hemmed them in. Then Iffenia spoke, but the
voice was not hers.

“The battle is yours, Annyeke,” she
whispered, her tone deep and edgy. “So you must never join it.”

Then Iffenia pushed her fiercely onto the
ground. Stories rolled away, landing in snow, their small centres
breaking under the strain, words leaking into air. Annyeke cried
out, more in frustration than fear, and struggled to push the
sculptor away from her.

Other hands reached out to pull them apart,
but it was no use. Iffenia seemed possessed with a strength Annyeke
and the other women had no way of fighting. Neither could she
understand her attacker’s words, though they were ones she had used
herself only recently. Why was the battle hers? It was Gelahn who
fought them, and they were not the instigators of this war, either
in the mind or in the body. No, the words were meaningless, but
none of that mattered. She had to get free, she had to lead her
would be army, with the tales she hoped would save them, to where
the war had commenced. But more than anything, she had to know if
Johan and Talus were safe. If they weren’t, she’d…by the truth of
the gods and stars, she didn’t know what she would do, but someone
would pay.

And she could start now.

With a sharp cry, Annyeke punched Iffenia in
the eye with all the strength she could muster. There was no way on
Gathandria she was going to be defeated by this elegant, silver
haired woman, no matter who else might be holding her mind-power at
the moment. Redheads were always stronger, everyone knew that.

Iffenia gasped, but didn’t weaken. Annyeke
found her fist pushed aside and held down, and at the same time
Iffenia reached out towards her head.

Whatever happens, she mustn’t touch me.

Acting purely from instinct, Annyeke twisted
her head towards the approaching fingers, opened her mouth and bit
down on them hard.

Iffenia screamed and this time the voice was
her own. Seizing the opportunity, Annyeke scrambled out from
underneath her body and tried to get to her feet. Willing hands
from the crowd struggled to assist her efforts but, with a roar,
Iffenia grabbed her legs and the two of them fell again.

The battle must be yours, Annyeke. Fight
it.

These new words filled her mind, but she
didn’t know where they came from. For an agonising heartbeat, she
couldn’t even recognise who had placed them there, but then the
realisation swept over her.

The First Elder. But how?

Even as she thought that question, a figure
rose up from the snow, dark and bloodied against the pure whiteness
and deep holes where eyes should have been. It must have been his
body she’d stumbled over when first she fell. Now he was barely
Gathandrian, simply a mass of dying flesh and pain. What had
Iffenia done to him? Had he ever found shelter? Bile rose in her
throat but she swallowed it down.

It was then that, suddenly and shockingly,
his story overwhelmed her and the First Elder’s voice was the only
one she heard.

*****

I am at the Great Library. Both of us broken
beyond repair. The darkness in front of my eyes is tearing into my
mind and I can barely think. The world is out of kilter and what I
had thought I was a part of does not exist. I cannot find
Gathandria in my senses. The pain blocks out everything.

I had so many things I want to tell Annyeke,
but none of them have any meaning now. Everything has changed. The
old stories are lost to us and, as she has commanded, we must
sculpt new ones. I thought I could somehow, even in my disgraced
state, help to save the Library, but I have failed even in that
task. The mind-cane and the snow-raven who brought me here have
other visions I can no longer see. Surely my fellow elders can help
Annyeke, but they are so far away. It will take them half a
day-cycle to get here. By then, it will be almost night and the
battle will have commenced.

Annyeke thinks what she has seen now is the
beginnings of the battle, but I know it is not. That is what I must
say to her—this is what she has to know—but even as this wisdom
fills the part of my mind not blasted by pain, strong hands are
taking hold of me, lifting me up and half supporting, half carrying
me away from the place of destruction.

One of them I do not know and one I
do—Iffenia, the wife of the Second Elder. She is at my right side.
I recognise her mind as it links to my shattered thoughts. It is
her touch and the scent of wood shavings she bears on her clothes
that brings my disorder into a kind of peace or, if not peace, then
at least stability.

Come, she says but not with spoken words, we
must find shelter.

As she speaks, what I have known falls into
place and my blood cries out a warning. It is she, it is she, it is
she, but she does not yet know it. Unable to respond or to
understand fully what my own soul tells me, I submit to her
ministrations and at once the colour blue fills my imagination. It
is the most violent shade I have ever seen, but it is neither my
nor her colour. Iffenia’s character is a subtle grey, like the
chairs her husband used to make, whereas my own is mauve. Where has
this terrible blue come from?

It is the Lost One, she says. He is most
truly lost.

You have seen him? The words do not appear in
the right order in my thoughts but, nonetheless, Iffenia seems to
understand.

Yes. This morning, before the fire.

It is not the answer I sought. The sudden
down-lurch of hope makes the pain shatter my mind once more. As she
speaks to me in the connection running through her fingers on my
arm, we are walking, to where I cannot tell. But the fact of
movement is itself a steadying hand in the midst of the blackness
of her strange anger and grief that fill the air between us. It
makes me want to cry out, but I have no voice. Instead, the grit
and soil carve out their patterns on the underparts of my feet; I
can feel each small puncture like a gift that focuses me on a
lesser pain. The air is unexpectedly cool on my face and the threat
of snow overpowers the remains of the fire-heat. I notice if I
think only of the physical, then the mind-pain is kept at bay,
although not vanquished.

The two women and I stumble through streets I
know only from memory until at last the air changes, and Iffenia
alters her pace. All I know now is I must go with her. Her
suppressed hatred of me nibbles at my skin like wood beetles.

We’re home, she says.

For one sky-spun moment, I imagine she means
my home, but of course she does not. The smell of wood shavings
deepens and I feel the velvet warmth of her door curtain brush
against my shoulder.

The unknown woman at my left guides my hand
until my fingers touch the smoothness of polished wood. She then
steps back. For the first time I feel alone. I am breathing hard,
unable to re-form my world out of what it once was into what it is
now.

“I must go,” the strange woman says. These
are the first spoken words between the three of us.

“Of course,” Iffenia says. “You have your
family. You must go to them.”

Her voice comes to me from further away than
I had anticipated, from the other side of the room, I think, though
my memory of the crafting-area is poor. I had not felt her step
away, but I feel the stranger go. With all that I am, I long for
her to stay, but Iffenia waits for me and I will not harm another
by begging her not to leave us.

“Thank you,” I call out as I hear the curtain
rustle and the air swoops in. I do not know if she hears me.

It is only when she has gone that I
understand fully how much the woman I am with despises me and how
much she has been holding back. The words family, love, cowardice
assault me from every side and, from instinct, I raise my hands to
fend off what I cannot see and cannot touch. At once, I stagger,
supported only by air, and grasp the table again before I fall. It
must have been the presence of the stranger that has kept this
grief in check. Well, it is set free now, with something underneath
it that I cannot yet fathom.

“Please,” I whisper when at last I am able
to. “What do you mean?”

A silence. And somehow that is worse than
what came before it. I have no idea what Iffenia is doing. I cannot
see it. I am afraid to use the remnants of my mind to sense her
intention, even if I had that capacity any more. Slowly, as if any
swift movement would break the sudden impasse between us, the stool
curves its way into the back of my knees. I sit down. Words bite at
my skin and thoughts, but I cannot interpret them.

Finally, she takes a sharp breath and speaks.
“So. You are here. I did not intend you to sense all of that but,
even so, you are here.”

With her voice come images—she and her
husband, his narrow lips set in a line that contains a sorrow I
have never paid heed to, and the river of black between them as he
abandoned her in order to follow me.

The noise of my swallowing is loud in my ears
and the words are at last on my tongue.

“Forgive me,” I whisper. “I did not think
about those left behind when I walked away from the damage I had
done.”

“No,” she replies and this time her voice is
close, almost at my ear. “No. You did not think. That is the truest
thing you have ever said, Daagmund Winnland. You did not think
about the fact the Council of Elders would follow you out of
loyalty, though the tradition of faith to the Chosen Elder is as
real to us as any of the ones you chased after in your foolishness.
Neither did you think of the wives and families you tore those
elders from. For who is to say we will ever see them again? The
snow-raven brings you back, but where are your fellow elders? Where
are the ones we love? All of them chose to be with you but, when
you return, you return alone. Where is your own loyalty?”