Songs of the Earth (60 page)

She regarded him with a birdlike eye. ‘Paint in the dark, of course.’

He patted her shoulder and moved on. All along the roof line, Masters waited: Coran, who had done this once before and surely remembered; Brendan, who had not, looking anxious. Men and women whom Alderan had known for more years than he cared to recall were now ready to fight.

Down in the yard, others watched over groups of adepts, whilst
the last few children were escorted inside. Even the youngest sensed the tension. Barely old enough to speak, still they stared round-eyed from their mothers’ arms, with that knowing look that small children sometimes have, when they seem old beyond comprehension.

As the minutes passed, the wind shifted to the north, oddly warm for so early in the year, then fell away to nothing. The sea grew steely. Overhead the clouds boiled, their bellies full of lightning.

‘And so we come down to it,’ Alderan murmured. At his side, Masen said nothing but followed his gaze across the yard to the far side where Healer’s green splashed the snowy stone wall. ‘Goddess look kindly on us now.’

It was a blessed relief when the alarm bell fell silent. Each urgent clang had stabbed through Darin’s bloated head like a spear. He had never known pain like it, and never wanted to again. He pushed himself up, lifting his head off the pillow carefully. It felt like the worst winehead in the world, except he hadn’t been drinking. He’d gone to bed early because he was exhausted, still unable to sleep more than two or three hours a night without interruption, then woken before Prime wanting to die. He’d been lying on his bed with the curtains closed ever since.

Something fell off his chest as he moved and he picked it off the blanket without looking, closing his fist around it to keep it safe. Goddess, his head felt as if it had been boiled. Every hair was a red-hot needle stabbed into his scalp. His face felt raw; he could hardly bear to touch it to rub the crusts of sleep from his eyes. Maybe he should go to the infirmary. Saaron would surely have something to help with the pain. He swung his feet down to the floor. His boots were muddy and the cuffs of his trousers were badly stained. He’d have to put them out for laundering soon.

A wave of dizziness engulfed him and sweat broke across his
back. Merciful Eador, he was going to lose his breakfast. Sourness rose in his gorge and he heaved, but nothing came up. He swallowed, but could not get rid of the sting in his throat. Yes, the infirmary, before he did anything else. He couldn’t think with this headache, and he needed to concentrate on what he had to do today.

Darin levered himself to his feet and made his way to the door. He left it swinging open behind him and set off along the gallery. Something for the pain, then on with his task. He had to make sure he got it right.

Nordships rounded the outer islands, square sails bellying with a wind that did not reach the walls of Chapterhouse. Alderan scowled. Weather-Song again. Well, that removed any remaining doubt about who might have sent the storm that almost ended the
Kittiwake
. He ground his teeth together, then, with a great effort, he forced himself to relax. He could not afford to be distracted by past mistakes, nor thoughts of future vengeance. Chapterhouse’s safety demanded all of his concentration.

He sent his awareness further afield, over to Pensaeca, where black longships rode in the harbour and the town burned. Horned helmets swarmed through the streets, the braided and bearded Nordmen looting as they went, taking only what they could carry, the small and precious things. Anything else they left strewn in the gutters, or smashed to flinders. The market square taverns had been hit hard, judging by the gaping doors and shattered glass, and red wine ran like blood amongst the spangled cobbles.

The first raiders to emerge from the town on the southeast road met a barrage of arrows. The trees were close there, the narrow forest paths of the hinterland a maze to anyone who did not know them well. Nord after Nord whirled to clutch at the feathered shafts that sprouted from backs and legs. A grim smile tugged at the corners of Alderan’s mouth. The men of the Isles might only
be farmers and fishermen, but they knew how to use their bows. Even the shepherd-boys were letting fly with their slingshots, gouging eyes and ringing skulls. Pensaeca would not be easily taken.

‘Can you see them?’ Masen asked, intent on the longships that edged into Pencruik roads.

‘Aye. They’re making heavy weather of it – Pensaeca has teeth.’

Alderan dragged his attention back to the town below. Anchors splashed down now, and boats were already carrying the first wave of warriors ashore. They met no resistance. He saw a flicker of movement in the woods and orchards that lined the road out of town. Just as on Pensaeca, the Nordmen were in for a surprise if they pushed inland.

Thunder rolled across the sky and shook the air in its fist. Somewhere inside the building a baby wailed.

Gripping the stone coping with both hands, Alderan reached to his defenders.
Be ready
.

Out beyond the net of the shield, a cruising gull rolled indolently down the breeze and sideslipped out of sight.
I am always ready
.

Have a care, Aysha
, Alderan called, and laughter floated back on the ether, with a brush of brilliant colour. Her crimson was bloody today, beating like a heart.

More thunder boomed out of the north. Storm clouds heaped from horizon to zenith, black on grey on sickly yellow. Light drained from the day. Thunder again, then lightning connected earth to sky like a hot wire and scorched the salt air.

Not long now. The weight of a will pressed down on Alderan’s mind, a finger pushing into the soap-bubble of the world. The child’s wails took on a shriller note that sawed through his ears. Even that untrained, untapped talent sensed the pressure being brought to bear on the Veil. And he, the oldest of them, supposedly the wisest, Guardian of the Veil for more than thirty years, was powerless to prevent it.

The heart of the storm seethed. Clouds gyred slowly into a vortex and the sky bulged. Alderan opened himself to the Song. Over Pensaeca the bulge pulsed, contracting and expanding rhythmically in a ghastly parody of a heartbeat. Thunder shook Chapterhouse until its windows sang in their casements. The hideous tumescence ruptured and imps boiled forth – far more than there had been last time, many hundreds more, bile-yellow and black and red as old blood, teeming across the channel on crooked, batlike wings. Thousands of them, with still more scrambling after.

‘Dear Goddess,’ Masen breathed, ‘I never thought I’d see this again.’

‘Nor me, but it’s here. Courage, old friend.’ Alderan reached out and clapped Masen on the shoulder.

Soon the first imps were close enough to distinguish from the swarm: squashed faces, and too-wide mouths lined with sharp teeth. In a few moments, they would reach the shield.

‘Take care of Tanith, Masen,’ Alderan said. ‘We have work to do.’

His friend left at a trot, but Alderan did not watch him go. He dared not take his eyes off the gathering demons. Inside him the Song bubbled like a spring, fresh and clear as it had always been, waiting to take on the shape he gave it. Easy as breathing, he raised his arms and called for lightning.

The first fireball exploded in the front rank of the demons and blackened fragments showered the shield, punctuated by the squeals of the wounded as they fell heavily to earth. Greasy smoke tainted the air. Seconds later, another fireball hissed into the next rank, joined almost immediately by one from either side. Demons blew apart into offal, but the gaps in the swarm were immediately filled. The outriders hit the shield and bounced back, then flew at it again. Actinic flashes arced from Master to Master across the domed shield as claws scrabbled for purchase and
wedge-shaped jaws snapped at the defenders they were unable to reach.

Alderan took a step back and reached along the weave to the other Masters. He felt strain in one or two, but he had no time to coddle them. They would stand or fall by the plans he had drawn. If they fell, others would take their places, and if the others fell, well, there were always the adepts.

Charge the shield!

The force of the weaving roared into him. Resonance upon resonance multiplied in him, expanding outwards in a heartbeat to encompass the entirety of Chapterhouse.

Now!

The shield flashed silver, and demons burned.

Cool stone under him. Hands on the sides of his head. A scorched smell on the air. Gair opened his eyes, and they were seared by a brilliant flash.

‘Holy Mother!’ he yelped, screwing his eyes shut again.

‘Just relax, Gair.’ Tanith’s voice, very close.

He dared a look.

She was bending over him, her Song lifting the hairs on the back of his arms. ‘You’ll be fine in a few minutes.’

The Song dwindled and she helped him sit up with his back against the wall. Above him, lightning stitched a stormy sky behind a faint pearly dome.

‘What’s happening?’ He had to raise his voice above the chittering that filled the air.

Tanith moved round to sit against the wall next to him. Wisps of copper hair had escaped her braid and floated round her face in a halo.

‘Savin tried to take hold of your mind, from the inside. When he attacked you by the Five Sisters, he left something behind in your head, a seed of his will, so that he could get back in whenever he wanted. We managed to destroy it.’

‘And all this?’ A flip of his hand took in the noise and smoke.

‘Whilst I was in your mind, he attacked Chapterhouse with demons. So far the shield is holding, but there are thousands of them.’

Swearing, Gair hauled himself to his feet and looked over the wall onto a scene from a nightmare. Scaly bodies squirmed over one another, pressed up against an invisible barrier that curved over Chapterhouse like an upturned glass basin. Some were burned; their wounds bled a yellowish ichor that left smears on the barrier. Every few seconds, the shield flashed silver, blessedly opaque, to a chorus of squeals.

He spun around to see Masters, standing every few yards around the roof, maintaining the shield. Sweat sheened their faces. Hands were clenched in fists or gripping the wall coping with white-knuckled intensity. Some bared their teeth, or kept their eyes closed in concentration. The weight of their working pressed on Gair’s brain.

‘How long?’ he asked.

Tanith peered at the sky and the pale disc of the sun behind the fringe of the storm. ‘Two hours, a little more.’