Anadar X/II

4

And again Anadar dreamed.

Again he stood at that abyss.

No ravine as the world knew ravines. No crack in rock, no edge of a mountain, no cleft between two shores. This abyss had no bottom, no walls, no depth that could be measured. It was darkness, but not only darkness. It was a place where space existed only as memory and every step asked the question whether solid ground still existed at all.

Anadar stood at its edge.

As every night.

Behind him lay nothing.

Before him lay nothing.

And from the darkness came the voice.

“How will you decide?”

It was quiet.

Not threatening.

Not tempting.

That was precisely why it was unbearable.

Anadar looked down. He saw no movement, no light, no shape. Only blackness that did not wait and yet seemed to expect everything. He knew what came now, for the dream had repeated itself many times already. Even so, his body tensed. Even so, his heart was heavy. Even so, every breath felt as though he were already falling.

“How will you decide?”

Anadar stepped over the edge.

And did not fall.

As always.

His foot found something that was not there. Ground without stone, a surface without surface. He stood above the abyss, carried not by magic, not by wind, not by fire. He simply stood. And again he did not understand what it was meant to mean.

The darkness around him grew denser.

The voice came closer.

Or he moved farther away from everything else.

“How will you decide?”

“What is the choice?” asked Anadar.

His own voice sounded strange in the dream.

No answer.

Only the whisper.

“How will you decide?”

Then he awoke.

He startled upright, as every night.

His breath came quickly. His hands had clawed into the blanket, as though he had tried to hold on to something that had not existed in the dream. For a moment he did not know where he was. Not fully. The bed beneath him was too soft for a cell, the room too still for a camp, the walls too black for the Fiery Fortress.

Then Sahretûn returned.

Stone.

Shadow.

The faint reddish line in the floor that never quite went out.

The air, which was not stale and yet always seemed as though it had been enclosed in this city for too long.

Anadar sat up.

Again the same dream.

Again and again the same abyss.

Since he had been in Sahretûn, it came every night. Not always the same. Sometimes the voice was farther away. Sometimes he stood longer at the edge before taking the step. Sometimes he woke before his foot found the ground. But the question remained the same.

How will you decide?

He did not understand it.

That was the worst part.

Not that he was meant to decide. He was used to that. Too often he had been driven into situations where there were no good options. Too often he had had to choose between false paths simply because standing still would have been worse. But this time he did not even know the choice.

Between escape and staying?

Between Gnok and Shara?

Between power and refusal?

Between mage and wizard?

Or between something he could not yet name at all?

He rose.

The room they had given him was no dungeon.

That was almost insulting.

A dungeon would have made his situation more honest. Chains, bolts, guards, threat. But after the matter with Naaarstr, Sahretûn had removed his bonds, opened the door and withdrawn the visible guard. No more Muurgha in the corner. No demon measuring every breath with many eyes. No summoner before the door pretending merely to stand there by chance.

Naaarstr had been loosened from the sword.

Not freed.

Anadar had not been mistaken about that.

The summoners had cut the being out of the material binding, layer by layer, with a patience that frightened him more than any open spell of power. For one moment he had felt Naaarstr, not as a voice, not as a sword, but as a hungry presence in the room. Wild. Furious. Excited by the nearness of those who smelled of summoner blood.

Then the circles had taken hold.

Naaarstr had screamed.

Not with a mouth.

With everything.

After that he had been gone. Banished. Sealed. Away from the sword, away from Anadar’s mind, away from that unholy nearness to which Anadar had, against his will, almost grown accustomed.

Since then, the sword was only a sword.

And Anadar was no longer captive.

They did not say it that way.

They did not need to.

The door remained open. He was permitted to go wherever he wished, as far as the city allowed. He could wander through corridors, step into courtyards, go to a library where the books did not smell of age, but of dust, skin and sealed fire. Summoners met him with respect. Some inclined their heads slightly. Some called him guest. Once a young man had even called him “Master Anadar,” as though that title still held meaning in Sahretûn.

Yet as soon as Anadar asked a real question, the faces closed.

Politely.

Perfectly.

Impenetrably.

“Where is Gnok?”

“He is being cared for.”

“May I see him?”

“At the proper time.”

“Who decides that time?”

“The lords.”

“Which lords?”

“The responsible ones.”

“Has Marabar returned?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“Outside the city.”

“Where?”

A silence.

A smile.

A bow.

“You will be informed as soon as it is of importance to you.”

It was a different kind of imprisonment.

No wall held him.

Only answers.

Or their absence.

Anadar dressed and left the room.

The corridor outside was empty. It often was. Sahretûn could be full of people, and yet in certain corridors one had the feeling of walking alone through the entrails of a being that slept and dreamed. The walls were smooth, black, not reflective, but not dull either. If Anadar looked long enough, he sometimes believed he could recognise movement beneath the surface, as though something were flowing slowly through stone.

He walked without destination.

He often did that.

Certain paths were open. Others were not. There were no visible barriers, no doors with guards, no signs forbidding passage. But some corridors suddenly ended in walls he had not noticed the previous day. Some stairways led downward and then back to the same corridor. Some doors opened onto chambers that were empty, and when he returned later, foreign summoners were at work there and politely asked him to take another way.

Sahretûn let him walk.

But not everywhere.

That too was an answer.

He came into a courtyard he liked, though he did not know why. Above him lay no sky. Or no true one. A grey vault, very far overhead, streaked by slow dark currents that were perhaps clouds, perhaps something else. In the middle of the courtyard stood a basin of black water. No waves. No smell. Anadar had once thrown a stone into it. He had heard no sound.

He spent the day in the library.

It was large, but not large in the way the library of Tandor was large. Tandor had been allowed to breathe. There, shelves had formed paths, tables had borne traces of hands, windows had let in light, dust had gathered stories. Sahretûn’s library was different. Deeper. More ordered. More dangerous. Here books did not seem like knowledge, but like prisoners who had learned to be silent.

Sahretûn did not lie crudely.

It curated.

That was worse.

He read nonetheless.

For hours.

Perhaps longer. In Sahretûn he did not trust the day either.

He read of humans who had not divided magic into schools, but according to relationship. Not fire as element. Not earth as technique. Not mind as art. But nearness, will, image, name, memory, exchange. He read of early wizards who were no longer described like teachers or warriors, but like junctions of a world that had not yet learned to close itself.

He understood little.

And too much.

Again and again he thought of Gnok.

Of his voice.

You must become a wizard.

Then he thought of Shara.

Not consciously at first.

Her image simply stepped between the lines.

Shara on a wall of the Fiery Fortress. Shara with soot on her face and a gaze that burned every false word before it could be spoken. Shara in the desert, although he did not know where she was at that moment. Shara with his child beneath her heart.

His child.

Anadar closed the book.

The room remained still.

He was here.

In Sahretûn.

He read their books, spoke with their masters, allowed himself to be surrounded by their half truths. He moved freely enough not to feel like a prisoner, and unfreely enough to be precisely that. Outside, Shara was somewhere in a war Hokn`f had begun. The Fiery Fortress was without him. Slonda was somewhere out there. Mother lived. Gnok perhaps lived only because Anadar stayed.

Perhaps.

That was the cage.

Not the city.

Not the doors.

Gnok.

If Anadar left, they would kill Gnok.

Perhaps at once.

Perhaps slowly.

Perhaps worse than killing.

And if Anadar stayed, they would try to shape him. With books. With respect. With truth poisoned at the edges. With the memory of Gnok’s life as a chain around his neck.

He stood.

The library was empty as far as he could see.

“So I am captive after all,” he said softly.

No one answered.

Perhaps they heard it nonetheless.

Anadar returned to his room and closed the door.

He sat down on the bed.

The moral trap was perfect.

If he stayed, he played Sahretûn’s game.

If he left, Gnok paid.

If he refused to learn, he remained weak.

If he learned, they would use his learning against him.

If he trusted, he was lost.

If he trusted no one, he became like them.

Anadar put his head in his hands.

You must become a wizard.

“How?”

The word fell into the room.

Quietly.

Honestly.

And then Anadar sat down on the floor, crossed his legs, and pushed all those thoughts aside. He began to meditate, and he began to lead himself back into himself. He searched for the thought, he searched for the spark.

5

After some time, it became easier.

Not easy.

Only easier.

At first Shara had consciously felt every breath, every movement, every tremor of the wings. She had closed her hands far too tightly around the grips, tensed her shoulders, cramped her back, as though sheer will alone could prevent the wind from swallowing her. Every thrust from above had startled her. Every change in the air had felt like the beginning of a fall.

But the longer she flew, the more she understood that she must not fight the wind.

The principle was simple.

Almost ridiculously simple.

Too simple for something that carried her over death, sand and demons.

The wings did not want to be forced. They wanted to be set. A little to the left, and the body followed. A little more surface, and the fall slowed. The hands did not hold tight, they asked. The wind answered. Not like magic. Not like fire. But not entirely foreign either. It had will without being will. It carried when one allowed it. It struck when one positioned oneself wrongly. It punished rigidity and rewarded yielding.

Zars flew before her.

White and slender, with wings spread wide, certain in every movement. She did not seem to be fleeing, but following an old road that existed only in the air. Around her and behind her, more Sondra glided through the sky. Some lower, some higher, a few close together, others alone. Their wings caught the light, tilted, dipped, rose again. There was no triumph in this flight. Only survival.

Shara kept behind Zars.

There was only one direction.

Northward.

Behind them, the pyramid remained.

At first it had still been vast, an enormous shape in the sand, half swallowed by dust and smoke. Then it grew smaller. The lines blurred. The terraces became steps of shadow. Smoke still rose, dark and torn slantwise by the wind. Somewhere down there, Sondra might still be fighting. Or dying. Or fleeing through paths Shara did not know.

No one followed them.

No carpets.

No vortices.

No mages on floating boards.

No demon with wings.

Shara kept looking back, first out of fear, then disbelief. But the sky behind them remained clear. The attackers had the pyramid. Perhaps that was enough for them. Perhaps they did not see the fleeing figures. Perhaps they believed no one could get far enough.

Perhaps Zars had counted on exactly that.

After a while, Ashambrat became visible.

At first only as a dark line at the edge of the desert, then as a cluster of towers, walls and structures that seemed stranger to Shara from this height than they had on her arrival. The School of the Winds lay beneath them like something that had once been important and was now only a point along the way. There Hokn`f had gathered power. There Morgut had suffered. There much had begun that could no longer be stopped.

Zars did not fly there.

None of the Sondra did.

Nor did Shara.

Ashambrat fell behind beneath them.

The wind carried them onward.

They were still high enough that many kilometres passed beneath them without the ground seeming to come any closer. The desert changed slowly. The endless yellow and brown broke open. At first there were only darker patches, then low shrubs, narrow lines of dry green, small hollows where life held on. Farther north, the land became more restless, less empty. Transition. No longer entirely desert, not yet truly fertile land.

Only then did Shara begin to wonder how one actually landed with these wings.

No one had explained it to her.

Zars had told her not to think too much about the ground.

That was easy while the ground was far away.

Now it was growing larger.

Shara looked at the wings, at the grips, at the straps around her body. The construction was clever, perhaps ancient, perhaps often tested. But nothing about it told her how to avoid striking the earth like a stone at the end.

She wore stone skin.

That calmed her a little.

Not enough.

Ahead of her, Zars descended.

Not suddenly. Not steeply. She merely changed the angle of the wings, and at once her flight changed. The white figure glided lower, losing height without falling faster. Shara watched closely and did the same.

The wings set themselves differently.

The wind entered them differently.

She sank.

Too fast.

Her heart struck hard.

She drew the grips back slightly, gave the surfaces more resistance, and the descent flattened. Now she understood. Do not want downward. Remain forward. Lose height slowly. Do not search for the ground, let it come.

Zars was now clearly lower.

Shara kept her in sight and imitated every movement. The other Sondra spread out, as though they carried invisible landing places in their minds. Some sank toward a long, shallow slope, others headed for a broad plain with low grass and scattered stones.

The landing was easier than Shara had feared.

And yet it was not beautiful.

Zars raised the wings steeply at the last moment. For an instant she stood almost upright in the air, the fabric tightened, the wind gathered inside it and slowed her completely. Then she dropped the final steps to the ground, absorbed the impact, stumbled once and stood.

Shara did the same.

Too late.

The wings rose, the wind struck into them, her body was torn backward, then she fell. Not far, but hard enough that the air was driven from her chest. She landed on her feet, buckled, came down on one knee and one hand. Stone and dry grass beneath her fingers. Dust in her mouth. The wings half collapsed behind her and tugged once more, as though they wanted to throw her backward.

Then it was over.

She was alive.

Not far from Zars.

Shara remained kneeling for a moment and breathed.

Then she began to laugh.

Not loudly.

Not for long.

But she laughed because she had flown and had not died. Because the ground was beneath her again. Because her body trembled and still obeyed. Because something in her, despite everything, despite pyramid, death and smoke, wanted to remember this flight.

Around her, more Sondra landed.

Some smoothly. Others more heavily. One crashed, rolled and immediately stood again. Two helped a third whose wing frame was damaged. No one screamed. No one collapsed. But when it became clear that no one was following them, something changed.

The tension did not leave.

It only cracked.

One Sondra placed both hands on the face of another and drew her close. Two embraced silently, their foreheads pressed together. Farther back, someone sank to their knees, not from injury, but because for a moment their strength was no longer enough. Some looked back south. No one said what they saw there.

Shara rose slowly.

She felt foreign.

Not unwanted.

Only foreign.

The Sondra shared something she did not share. Days and weeks of defence. A pyramid that had not merely been stone. Companions who had remained behind. Paths she did not know were open or buried. A people that had learned to survive quietly.

She did not loosen the straps of the wings at once.

Her hands moved to her belly.

The little guest within was awake.

Very awake.

He kicked strongly, as though he wished to complain or announce that he had by no means slept through the flight. Shara looked down. By now her belly could no longer be overlooked. What for a long time had still been hidden beneath clothing, posture and movement now stood out clearly. A curve that seemed almost defiant in a world of war and ancient powers.

“So you found that exciting too,” she murmured.

The next kick was answer enough.

Zars came to her.

She had already taken off her wings. White fabric hung from one shoulder, dust lay on her face, and blood clung to her armour. Not much. Enough to remind them that they had not fallen out of a dream.

“My dear,” she said, “we must go on.”

Shara looked south.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“They are not following us.”

“Not yet.”

Shara still hated that word.

Zars smiled as though she had heard the thought.

“Besides, we have something for you.”

Another Sondra led a horse over.

It was smaller than the horses of the mages, leaner, with dark coat and clever eyes. A simple saddle lay on its back, not beautiful, but practical. The reins were mended, the blanket beneath them dusty. It was not an animal for courtly roads. It was one that knew long distances.

Shara looked at the horse.

Then at Zars.

“You brought me a horse?”

“No,” said Zars. “We kept one for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you should not walk the whole way.”

Zars’ gaze lowered briefly to Shara’s belly.

Shara twisted her mouth.

“I can walk.”

“I do not doubt it.”

“But?”

“But a child beneath the heart is no reason to be called weak. It is a reason to act wisely.”

Shara wanted to object.

She did not.

Instead she loosened the straps of the wings. A Sondra helped her, wordlessly and skilfully. When the frame was taken from her shoulders, she suddenly felt lighter and at the same time more vulnerable, as though she had laid off a second skin. She touched the fabric of the wings before it was folded together.

“Will I use this again?”

Zars looked north.

“Perhaps sooner than you would like.”

After a short rest, they set out.

Not long enough to truly rest. Only long enough to stow the wings, bind wounds as best they could, share water and divide the horses. There were not enough animals for everyone. Shara quickly understood that the Sondra had expected that. Some rode, others ran alongside. The horses were changed without quarrel, without a tone of command, almost soundlessly. Whoever was exhausted was placed on an animal. Whoever had regained strength dismounted. No one took a horse because they had rank.

Zars walked at first.

Shara rode.

That annoyed her.

Then she thought of the child and was silent.

The path led north.

Behind them lay the desert, the pyramid, smoke, Hokn`f, Marabar and the Valley of the Dead.

Before them lay another land.

And somewhere beyond the distance, behind hills, roads, rivers and coming dangers, stood the Fiery Fortress.

Shara placed a hand on her belly and straightened in the saddle.

“Good,” she said softly.

The wind came from the south.

It still carried dust with it.

And perhaps, Shara thought, the last breath of a pyramid that had fallen so something else could live on.

6

The Kaula left.

Not in a procession. Not with words of farewell, not with thanks, not with that long circling around a decision that humans so often needed when they had experienced something great. They simply left.

After they were certain that their companion could stand.

After his mate had touched his shoulder and looked at him for a long time.

After Son and Indra had faced them once more, silently, with that cautious respect that had arisen between them and the great beings.

Then they vanished.

Heavy, quiet and dignified in a way that needed no spectator. They had brought more to the Fiery Fortress than their suffering. They had left behind a question to which no one had an answer.

Roto remained behind.

And he was no longer quite the same.

That annoyed him a little.

He liked clear things. An enemy was an enemy. A friend was a friend. A knife had an edge, a bow a string, a horse either good legs or bad ones. The world could be hard, but it did not have to become unnecessarily complicated.

But now he stood in the Fiery Fortress and had to admit to himself that he had set out to hold the murderer of his friend to account, and in the end had been glad that this very murderer lived on.

Life, Roto thought, could sometimes take very strange turns.

He had already had the blade at the Kaula’s throat. He had felt how heavy that moment was. Not because of Kol. Or not only because of Kol. But because there was a difference between revenge and mercy, and because in that moment he had understood that his arm no longer acted for the same reason for which he had originally set out.

He had wanted to kill.

Then he had wanted to release.

And then no one had killed anymore.

The Kaula had been healed.

A miracle.

Or something else.

Roto did not like the word miracle. It sounded too large for humans who did not know what had happened, and too convenient for those who had no explanation. But he had seen what had happened. He had seen the wound. He had seen the pain. He had had the knife in his hand.

And then it had been over.

Since then, his anger felt foreign. Not gone. Only foreign. As though it still belonged to him, but no longer entirely in his hand.

There was now a great deal happening in the Fiery Fortress.

More than Roto had expected.

He had always thought of the fortress as a place that stood above things. A legendary school by the sea, hard, old, proud, full of fire mages who had probably been born with burning gazes and fought three duels before breakfast. That, at any rate, was how people in Ashambrat imagined the Fiery Fortress when they did not like it.

Reality was less orderly.

Messengers came and went. Some exhausted, some in haste, some so pale that they themselves apparently did not believe the news they carried. Many were sent north. Others returned from the north. The gates were hardly ever still. In the courtyards students trained, but not with the ordinary severity of school practice, rather with the tension of people who knew that practice might very soon no longer be practice.

Mother was everywhere and nowhere.

Roto did not see her often, but when he saw her, the room around her was different. Not louder. Not quieter. Only more attentive. People stepped aside before they noticed her. Messengers spoke more briefly. Teachers stood straighter. Even Manador, the Dean of the Fiery Fortress, did not seem smaller in her presence, but differently aligned, as though he shared with her a concern no one else could fully see.

Manador worked almost without pause.

Sinadie as well.

The two of them conferred, wrote, received messages, sent out new ones. Roto saw them several times in a room with maps on which stones lay, small flame signs, lines to the north and east, markings at roads, rivers and cities. Once they argued quietly. Not with hostility. More like people who saw the same danger and did not yet know which part of it would bite first.

Slonda, by contrast, seemed to be taking care of the daughters who were here in the school.

Above all Miene and Sindra.

Roto did not understand much of it. He was no scholar, no great mage, and he had learned early that it was healthier not to pretend one could judge things that were beyond one. But he saw the two young women in exercises different from those of the fire students. Slonda stood nearby, calm, white haired, with the patience of a man who did not need to grow louder because he knew that time listened to him anyway.

Miene and Sindra practised with light.

Or with thoughts.

Or with something Roto could not name.

Sometimes the air around them stood too still. Sometimes a shadow flickered in a place where no shadow should have been. Once he saw Sindra raise her hand and a falling cup seemed to hesitate for one heartbeat before it continued falling. Roto decided not to ask.

He had seen enough to know that the world was changing in a way simple men were better off not explaining too quickly.

After some time he learned that Klaast and Isidre would set out for Tandor.

That surprised him.

Not that someone was setting out. Everyone was setting out or arriving. But that Klaast of all people was to leave the Fiery Fortress. The earth mage seemed these days like a man who had only just grown used to standing beneath more gazes than he liked. Isidre, on the other hand, seemed ready to leave at once. Her red hair was tied back, her gaze alert, her hands already with the packs, as though she knew that hesitation was only another form of wasting time.

Roto approached them before they departed.

Son and Indra stood with him.

Since the farewell of the Kaula, the two women had spoken less than usual. They too had changed. Perhaps not as visibly. But Roto noticed it. They had remained closer to one another, had often looked out to sea, and sometimes fell silent in a way that was not empty.

“You are going to Tandor?” asked Roto.

Klaast nodded.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Isidre looked at him.

“Because there are people there who need to know what has happened.”

“And because some paths become easier from there,” Klaast added.

Roto scratched his chin.

“Do you need company?”

Klaast looked surprised.

Isidre did not.

“Do you wish to leave this place?” she asked.

Roto looked around.

Across the courtyard. To the students. To the messengers. To the towers. To Manador, who was just speaking with two mages and looked as though he had not slept properly in days.

“I think I am mostly in the way here.”

Son looked at him.

“You are often in the way,” she said.

Indra smiled.

Roto snorted.

“Then at least it is nothing new.”

Klaast studied him for a moment.

“We can use company.”

“Good.”

“The road will not be without danger.”

“People say that about every road shortly before it becomes unpleasant.”

Isidre nodded curtly.

“Then pack.”

They set out together.

Klaast, Isidre, Roto, Son and Indra.

The farewell from the Fiery Fortress was brief. Manador gave Klaast final instructions. Mother spoke with Isidre, too softly for Roto to understand anything. Slonda said farewell to Son and Indra with a courtesy that was almost sad. Roto was handed provisions by a young fire mage and given a look by an older mage that told him not to eat those provisions in the first two days.

He pretended not to have understood it.

Then they rode north.

The road first led through land that still carried the breath of the sea within it. Wind from the coast, salty smell, gulls above the rocks. Later the land became quieter, wider, less shaped by fire and sea. The Fiery Fortress sank behind them, but not entirely out of thought. Roto had the strange feeling that every step away from it was at the same time a step toward something that would in the end lead back there.

They made good progress.

Klaast spoke little.

Isidre spoke only when necessary.

Son and Indra often rode beside one another, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind the group. Roto usually kept to the middle, not because he considered himself the centre, but because from there he could best hear when someone in front decided something and someone behind noticed something.

About five days after they had set out northward, they encountered a column of mind mages from Zoordak.

Roto saw them from far away.

A long line on the road, not like an army, but not like travellers either. Too ordered. Too quiet. Grey, dark and light robes, several wagons, several pack animals, banners without much flutter, as though even the signs of these people did not wish to draw attention to themselves. Some were old, some young. Some carried staffs. Others book chests. Some had the gaze of people who saw more than Roto found comfortable.

All of them were on the way to the Fiery Fortress.

The two groups halted.

Klaast spoke with an older mind mage whose name Roto did not understand or forgot immediately. Isidre stood beside him, arms folded. Son and Indra watched silently. Roto did the same, only less elegantly.

When the mind mages moved on, he watched them go.

“That was a lot of them,” he said.

“Yes,” said Isidre.

“All to the Fiery Fortress?”

“So it seems.”

“And that is normal?”

Isidre looked at him.

“No.”

Roto slowly nodded.

Then he too began to understand that something was probably brewing.

Not merely a difficulty.

Not merely a dispute between schools.

Something larger.

He waited until they were on the road again, then rode beside Isidre.

“All right,” he said. “What is actually happening here?”

“That is a long answer.”

“We have road ahead of us.”

Klaast, who was riding in front of them, turned his head slightly.

“We will bring the earth mages to the Fiery Fortress as well,” he said. “At least those who are willing to come.”

Roto looked at him.

“Why?”

The question came so directly that Son exhaled softly behind him.

Isidre gave him a brief glance as though checking whether he truly knew no finer way to ask dangerous things. He did not.

Klaast answered anyway.

“Because at the last Conclave we learned things that make it necessary to prepare.”

“For Hokn`f?”

“Among other things.”

“Among other things is rarely good.”

“No.”

Klaast reined in his horse a little until Roto was level with him.

“Your good Hokn`f seems very eager to reach for power.”

Roto grimaced.

“He is not my good Hokn`f.”

“You come from Ashambrat.”

“That does not mean I like everyone who sits high there.”

Klaast nodded.

“Then all the better.”

Roto thought about it.

It fit.

He did not want to examine it further because it already fit. Hokn`f. The man who had been steering Ashambrat for some time. Who always carried order before him like a banner beneath which he gathered everything useful to him. Who never had to reach loudly for power because he acted as though it fell into his hand out of duty.

Yes.

It fit.

“What has he done?” asked Roto.

Klaast was silent for a moment.

Isidre answered.

“Enough that we should not wait until he stands before our gates.”

Roto looked north.

The road stretched before them through the land, bright beneath the sky, innocent as every road that did not yet know who would march upon it.

“And Sahretûn?” Son suddenly asked.

Klaast and Isidre exchanged a glance.

Roto did not like that at all.

“Sahretûn is back,” said Klaast.

Roto had already heard the name. In the Fiery Fortress. In half sentences. In conversations that broke off when someone came closer. He had understood that it was not a place people spoke of lightly.

“Back from where?”

“From where it should have remained,” said Isidre.

That was not a good answer.

But it was enough to know that a better one would probably have been worse.

For a while they rode in silence.

Then Roto said, “So we are fetching earth mages.”

“Yes.”

“So they go to the Fiery Fortress.”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

Klaast looked ahead.

“After that we hope we are enough.”

Roto snorted softly.

“That is not a plan.”

“No,” said Klaast. “But at the moment it is the beginning of one.”

Roto nodded.

He could live with that.

A beginning was better than standing still.

Behind them, the column of mind mages continued southward, toward the Fiery Fortress. Ahead of them lay Tandor, earth, old alliances and people who had to be convinced that the time for comfortable waiting was over.

Roto straightened in the saddle.

He did not know exactly what was coming toward them.

But he began to understand that he was no longer in the way.

He was on the road.

7

Manador, Sinadie, Slonda and Mother knew that the time for waiting was over.

Not because a message told them so.

Not because a messenger had ridden through the gate with the final proof.

But because all signs pointed in the same direction.

The world was drawing together.

Sahretûn had returned. Hokn`f had let his mask fall. The dead walked through the world again. Demons were no longer only memory, warning or forbidden script. They attacked. They were summoned. They were used. And somewhere in the south, a pyramid had fallen that was older than the order of the schools.

The unholy alliance that had formed there would not remain in the south.

Mother knew that.

Slonda knew that.

Manador knew that.

And Sinadie knew it as well, even if her gaze often went to her students, as though she were inwardly counting how many of them had still been children when all this began.

They would come north.

Not perhaps.

Not someday.

Soon.

And whatever stood in their way, they would subjugate or destroy.

In the first days after the Conclave, the Fiery Fortress seemed like a place that was waking and hardening at the same time. Gates were checked, supplies counted, old chambers opened, signals renewed, watchtowers manned, messengers sent out. Maps lay on tables, on walls, on floors. Chalk signs covered stone slabs. Students were divided into groups. Teachers who for years had only taught suddenly wore armour again, its leather grown stiff.

Manador barely slept.

Sinadie no more than he did.

Mother seemed as though she needed no sleep, yet even in her one could see another weight. Not weariness. Memory. She had seen too many attacks, too many cities fall, too many alliances made too late. Now she moved through the fortress, speaking softly with Manador, with Slonda, with Sinadie, sometimes with no one at all, and wherever she was, people grew calmer and at the same time more serious.

Slonda was more restless.

He hid it badly.

Not from Mother.

Not from Manador.

Not from himself.

“He should have found a way by now,” he said once, when they stood over maps in one of the upper rooms.

Mother did not look up.

“Anadar?”

“Who else?”

“He will find it.”

“You say that as though it were certainty.”

“No,” said Mother. “I say it because it is necessary.”

Slonda laughed bitterly.

“That is not the same.”

“For Anadar, sometimes it is.”

He did not answer.

His brother was missing. Not dead, not free, not reachable. And this not knowing gnawed at Slonda more strongly than he admitted. It was not only worry. It was guilt, old and new. He had wanted to protect Anadar, had often not understood him, had trusted him, lost him, found him again and now lost him once more. And Sahretûn was no ordinary enemy. Sahretûn could not only kill people. It could twist them.

At last Mother placed a hand on his arm.

“He will appear.”

Slonda looked at her.

“And if not?”

Mother was silent for a moment.

“Then he has a reason.”

That did not help him.

But it kept him from speaking further.

There was too much to do.

Against the dead, fire and light were suitable. On that, everyone agreed. Fire destroyed bodies, light severed that dark binding which held them upright. Sinadie’s daughters, as the students of the School of Light in the Fiery Fortress were now affectionately called, trained to exhaustion. Miene and Sindra often stood at their head, not because anyone had ordered it, but because the others followed them. They were young, but no longer childish. Not after what they had seen and learned.

Slonda took over their training where Sinadie’s teaching ended.

He showed them no great wonders.

Not at first.

He showed them thresholds.

Limits and banishments.

The difference between a body and the force that moved it against death. The point at which a banishment did not have to destroy, but could release. The moment in which light did not burn, but separated. Some understood quickly. Others were frightened because they felt how close some of these exercises lay to things that would once have been forbidden to them.

“You are not learning in order to dominate,” Slonda told them. “You are learning in order to end.”

He said that often.

Perhaps also to himself.

With demons, it was more difficult.

Much more difficult.

Slonda could banish. He knew that. He had seen enough, read enough, stolen enough from Sahretûn or paid enough there to know he was not helpless. But powerful demons in an attack were something different from a bound name in a chamber or a half loosened being in a circle. He could not banish many at once. No one could. Not without preparation. Not without price.

So knowledge had to be distributed.

Not everything.

Not to everyone.

But enough.

He worked with Sinadie, Mother and Manador on simple banishment forms that could be used even under pressure. No perfect circles. No long formulas. No tricks for scholars. Quick signs, call points, light blades, fire breaks, mental barbs. Things that would not necessarily destroy a lesser demon, but would throw it back, disturb it, tear it from a binding or open it for one decisive moment.

One moment could be enough.

In the Fiery Fortress, one learned quickly that a moment was often everything.

The daughters practised with light.

The fire mages practised with flames.

The students of the Mind who arrived from Zoordak a few days later brought another kind of sharpness with them. They came more quietly than the fire mages, less visibly, less loudly. But as soon as they practised with the mind blade, everyone who watched understood why Mother had summoned them. The blades were not made for flesh alone. They cut where will was bound to form. They could work against the dead. Against lesser demons as well. Against summoners when they stepped too close to their own bindings.

When the column from Zoordak came through the gate, everyone became aware of how quickly time was passing.

There was no more practice time.

Only preparation.

A few days later Klaast and Isidre returned.

With them, the earth mages.

Not all of them.

But many.

More than Manador had expected.

More than Klaast himself had dared to hope.

The zealots had stayed behind, to no one’s surprise. Those who preferred to sit in the purity of their old certainties rather than fight in a place where fire, light, mind, earth, Sondra and who knew what else would stand side by side. Yet the greater part of the earth mages followed the call of their Dean. Some out of loyalty. Some out of duty. Some because they believed the reports. Some because they no longer considered Klaast a man who warned of danger without reason.

Klaast looked exhausted when he rode through the gate.

But he no longer looked uncertain.

Manador noticed that at once.

“You brought many,” he said.

Klaast dismounted.

“Not enough.”

“That is what every sensible man says before a siege.”

“Then apparently I have become sensible.”

Isidre stood beside him, dusty, tired, red hair fallen loose from its tie. Son, Indra and Roto came behind them. Roto looked up at the fortress as though he were still deciding whether to be impressed or offended.

“We met mind mages on the way,” said Isidre. “Have they arrived?”

“Yes,” said Sinadie. “And they are already integrated.”

“Good.”

“Good is a large word,” said Manador.

“Then useful.”

He could live with that.

The earth mages were immediately included in the defence plans.

Manador and his fire mages taught them the basics of fighting in the Fiery Fortress. Not because earth mages could not fight. But the fortress was no ordinary place. Its walls were not only walls. Its towers did not stand by chance. Fire lines ran through the stone. Old passages led to places opened only in emergencies. Courtyards could become traps, stairs bottlenecks, parapets channels for flame.

The earth mages understood walls.

The fire mages understood the fortress.

Together they became more dangerous.

They worked on tactics with which they intended to hold the attack as long as possible. Earth barriers before the outer gates. Fire channels between the first wall rings. Light groups at elevated points to break the dead. Mind blades at bottlenecks. Mobile troops of Sondra as soon as they arrived, even if at that time no one yet knew when and how many would come.

No one said openly that they probably could not win this battle.

Everyone knew it.

The army in the south was growing. Hokn`f was gathering dead. Sahretûn had sent summoners. Perhaps demons. Perhaps worse. The Fiery Fortress was strong, but it was not a world. It could fall.

But if it fell, then not cheaply.

That became Manador’s sentence.

Not proclaimed aloud.

Not written on banners.

But in every council, it lay beneath the words.

We sell ourselves dearly.

A few days later, a column appeared on the southern horizon that at first no one could identify.

The guards reported movement.

Not mages.

Not riders.

Not dead.

As they came closer, white could be seen.

Many white figures.

Several hundred.

Sondra.

And with them Shara.

Heavily pregnant.

For a moment the Fiery Fortress stood still.

Not truly. No fortress stands still when war is coming. But the news ran faster than any messenger. Shara was back. Shara was coming with elves from the desert. Shara lived. The pyramid had fallen. The Sondra had left it. Hokn`f’s army was in possession of the moon drops. A demon had rammed the walls. Marabar had been there.

And Shara carried Anadar’s child beneath her heart.

Manador met her in the outer courtyard.

Sinadie beside him.

Mother came shortly after.

Slonda as well.

Shara dismounted slowly, with the dignity of a woman who would not allow anyone to help her before she herself decided it. Dust lay on her. Her face had grown narrower. Her eyes harder. But when she saw Mother, something changed. Not weakness. Only a brief crack in her posture.

Mother stepped to her and placed both hands on her face.

“You live.”

Shara nodded.

“The pyramid does not.”

No one said anything at once.

Zars stepped beside her.

In white, dusty, calm, a leader without a pyramid and without visible doubt.

“The pyramid has done what it was built to do,” she said.

Manador regarded her.

“And now?”

Zars looked up at the Fiery Fortress.

“Now you do what this fortress was built to do.”

That was not comfort.

It was a challenge.

The news the Sondra brought was bad.

Worse than many had feared.

The fall of the pyramid was no ending. It had strengthened Hoknf. His army was already on the way north. Students of the Mind from Zoordak stretched their thoughts toward it and confirmed what the Sondra reported. A great movement, heavy, dark, growing. Many mages. Summoners among them. A mass of dead behind the army, growing larger with every place they passed. Hoknf missed no opportunity to open graveyards, plunder battlefields, desecrate graves. Everything that had once been a body could become march again for his order.

The Fiery Fortress reacted at once.

The Sondra were not treated as strangers.

That surprised many.

Perhaps even the Sondra themselves.

Yet the integration proceeded almost eerily smoothly. Fire and Sondra complemented one another better than anyone had planned. The fire mages worked frontally, hard, destructively. The Sondra moved between lines, used gaps, cover, height, shadow, sudden strikes and silent withdrawal. Where fire mages held a wall, the Sondra turned it into a trap. Where Sondra bound an opponent, fire mages opened the space for flames.

Shara often stood between both groups.

Not as commander in the formal sense.

But as bridge.

The fire mages knew her. The Sondra respected her. Zars spoke with her, Manador listened to her. Sinadie watched as Shara, despite her pregnancy, moved from map to map, courtyard to courtyard and exercise to exercise, and at some point said softly to Mother:

“She will not spare herself.”

Mother looked at Shara.

“No.”

“Should we force her?”

Mother smiled faintly.

“You can try.”

Sinadie thought about it briefly.

“No.”

Again a few days later came the next surprise.

This time from the north.

The guards reported a troop, then a column, then more than that. No closed army, but enough that the gates were opened again and the courtyards cleared.

Dark elves.

Many.

At their head, Prince Zarad.

With them dwarves.

And Xiodrie.

She did not come like a messenger proud of her task. She came like someone who had been on the road too long and had seen too much to still take pleasure in a successful mission. Her face was sharp with exhaustion, her clothing dusty, her eyes awake.

Manador stood at the gate when they arrived.

Zarad bowed briefly.

Not deeply.

But honestly enough.

“We heard the world was trying to end again,” said the prince.

Manador looked at him.

“And you wanted to watch?”

“No,” said Zarad. “Not this time.”

The dwarves behind him laughed roughly.

It was the first honest laughter the Fiery Fortress had heard in days.

Xiodrie stepped up to Slonda.

“You need help.”

Slonda looked at her.

“Many have been telling me that lately.”

“This time it is true.”

“That too.”

From that day on, Slonda and Xiodrie went out together.

Not far at first.

Then farther.

They scouted the surroundings, not only with human eyes. Slonda searched for movements, for breaks in what wanted to come. Xiodrie searched differently. Wilder. In smells, shadows, restless animals, dust lying wrong, crows flying up too early, dreams reflected in water.

Together they saw more.

Hokn`f’s army was moving north.

Slowly, but not slowly enough.

It consisted of many mages, more than Slonda had hoped, less ordered than Hokn`f probably believed. There were summoners among them. No demons, as far as they could see. Not openly. Not marching. Not in the way Bronbt had shown before the pyramid. That reassured no one. Summoners carried possibilities with them, not only beings.

Behind the army moved the mass of the dead.

It was growing larger.

With every graveyard.

With every abandoned village.

With every old battlefield.

With every place where Hokn`f found something that had once been human and now was meant to continue walking for his order.

When Slonda and Xiodrie returned, it was already dark.

Manador, Mother, Sinadie, Klaast, Isidre, Zars, Zarad and several others waited in the map room.

Slonda did not speak at once.

That was enough to change the mood.

“How far?” asked Manador.

Xiodrie answered.

“A few days’ ride.”

No one moved.

“Demons?” asked Mother.

“None visible,” said Slonda.

“Summoners?”

“Yes.”

Zars closed her eyes briefly.

Not from fear.

From confirmation.

“Dead?” asked Sinadie.

Xiodrie laughed once, without joy.

“Many.”

Slonda stepped to the map and placed three stones on the southern road.

Then a fourth.

Then he slowly pushed them toward the Fiery Fortress.

“They are coming,” he said.

It was not spoken dramatically.

Not loudly.

Not like an invocation.

Precisely for that reason, it struck them all.

Manador looked at the map.

Then he raised his gaze.

“Then we finish the preparations.”

“No,” said Mother.

They all looked at her.

She stood at the edge of the table, her hands calm, her face very old and very alive at once.

“Now they only begin.”

Outside, wind struck the walls of the Fiery Fortress.

In the courtyards, fire, light, mind, earth, Sondra, dark elves and dwarves trained deep into the night. Signal flames burned above the towers. In the chambers, beds for the wounded were prepared. In the cellars, doors were opened that had not been opened for generations. On the walls stood guards, looking south.

Now they all knew.

It would come down to one final rising.

To one last battle for the fortress.

And the Fiery Fortress no longer waited to see whether war would come.

It waited only to see when.

“If only Anadar were here.” A sentence they all kept saying.

8

Marabar was not entirely satisfied with the course of events.

That annoyed him.

Not because dissatisfaction was foreign to him. Quite the opposite. Dissatisfaction was useful. It kept the mind awake, prevented comfort, sharpened the eye for deviations. But this dissatisfaction had an aftertaste Marabar did not like.

Surprise.

He had underestimated Hokn`f.

Not completely. He would not insult himself that far. He had never considered the Master of the Winds harmless. A man like Hokn`f was dangerous because he considered himself necessary. Such men reached for power not from joy, not even from greed alone, but from the conviction that order must collapse without their hand. That made them useful. Directable. Predictable in the broad lines.

Or so Marabar had believed.

The pyramid had fallen.

Of course not through Hokn`f alone. Marabar was not foolish enough to be deceived by the noise of a storm. Only Bronbt had tipped the balance. Only the demon’s appearance had finally turned the battle in favour of the attackers. Without him, the Sondra might have held longer, perhaps days, perhaps more. The pyramid had been old, prepared, fitted with paths and safeguards that compelled even Marabar’s respect.

Yet Hokn`f had come dangerously far.

Too far.

The vortex with which he had driven against the walls had no longer had anything to do with ordinary wind magic. Marabar had seen many mages, strong, brilliant, mad, arrogant. He had seen masters who believed an element obeyed them because it had once knelt before them. He had seen fire mages set cities ablaze, earth mages open walls, water masters suffocate entire troops, mind mages imprison people within themselves.

But this vortex had been different.

Not because of Hokn`f.

Because of the drops.

Moon drops.

Before the battle, Marabar had for the first time seen how Hokn`f truly used them. Not as a remedy. Not as a reserve. Not as a precious liquid around which legends gathered. As an amplifier. As fuel. As something that removed the boundary between average force and catastrophic effect.

That fascinated him at once.

And unsettled him just as quickly.

A mediocre mage did not become wise through them. Not more controlled. Not deeper. But dangerous. Very dangerous. A man who otherwise possessed only force suddenly received impact. An ambitious man was given a tool. A desperate one was given reach. A fool was given the possibility of causing damage far beyond his own measure.

Hokn`f was no fool.

That was the problem.

The vortex that had raced toward the pyramid could have taken on a great demon. Not banished it. Not destroyed it. Not truly subdued it. But stopped it. Occupied it. Driven it aside. Bought time. And sometimes time was all an opponent needed to turn a bad position into an open one.

And then the dead.

Hokn`f’s silent army.

Marabar had known the concept, he had given him the book. Of course. Necromancy was no new discovery, even if the schools liked to persuade themselves that everything forgotten had vanished only because they had burned the books, hidden them or burdened them with pious prohibitions. Moving the dead was not an art Marabar admired. It was coarse, dirty, often unstable and of unpleasant aesthetics. But it had one advantage that could not be denied.

Mass.

A dead soldier feared nothing.

A dead servant doubted nothing.

A dead mage asked no questions.

And an army of dead was difficult to demoralise because it lacked all morale.

Hokn`f had made more of it than Marabar had expected. Not only a weapon against the Sondra. Not only a battering ram made of corpses. He had also bound his own allies with it. Whoever stood in his camp saw the enemy before him and the dead behind him. Desertion was not forbidden. It was made impossible.

That was crude.

But not stupid.

Marabar had to admit that he had underestimated him.

He did not like that realization.

It made Hokn`f more interesting.

And more dangerous.

Like all summoners, Marabar knew that none of this would truly bring down a great demon. Not permanently. Not if the demon was called correctly, bound correctly, guided correctly. A vortex could scatter. Fire could injure. Light could disturb. An army of dead could stop a body, perhaps even bury a lesser demon beneath mass.

But demons were not the true danger.

Not for Sahretûn.

The danger lay elsewhere.

An attack on the summoners themselves.

That was what Hokn`f’s new power meant.

A demon might be bound by storm and dead long enough for a summoner to lose his circle. A vortex could destroy lines. A heap of dead bodies could flood protected spaces. A wind master strengthened by moon drops could break a summoning circle from a distance before the demon was even meaningfully guided, or even attack the summoner himself.

That was dangerous.

Not because Hokn`f understood Sahretûn.

But because he did not need to understand it.

A peasant did not need to comprehend the architecture of a tower in order to knock out the right stone.

Marabar stood on a cracked ledge of the pyramid and looked down into the valley.

The battle was over, but the place was still full of movement. Mages searched the lower levels. Hokn`f’s dead carried crates out. The Sondra were gone, dead or vanished. Marabar suspected the latter. Too few corpses. Too many open possibilities. A people such as this did not build a pyramid without sewing escape routes into its defeat.

That had to be watched.

Hokn`f stood farther below among his people.

He looked exhausted.

But not broken.

That was regrettable.

The use of the moon drop had visibly attacked him. Marabar saw it in the way he sometimes breathed too slowly, in the way his hand briefly remained at his throat where the vial had lain, in the way his gaze was too bright when he gave orders. Such power always took something. The question was only whether it took more than it gave.

With Hokn`f, the answer was still open.

Marabar liked open answers when he himself posed them.

Not when others embodied them.

A young summoner stepped behind him.

Not too close.

He had learned.

“Lord of Sahretûn, Marabar.”

“Speak.”

“The crates are being gathered. The vials are more numerous than expected.”

“Undamaged?”

“Most.”

“Good.”

“Master Hokn`f demands that they remain under his supervision for now.”

Marabar smiled.

“Of course he demands that.”

The young summoner waited.

“And?”

“He said he led the attack and forced the breakthrough.”

“Did he?”

“In part.”

Marabar did not turn around.

“Then it would be discourteous to contradict him at once.”

“Should I understand that as consent?”

“No.”

The young summoner fell silent.

Marabar continued to look down at Hokn`f.

“Make sure we know how many vials there are. Make sure we know where they are stored. Make sure we remain nearby, but not in such a way that Hokn`f feels watched.”

“And if he has them moved away?”

“Then we know where.”

“And if he uses them?”

Marabar smiled again.

“Then we learn.”

The summoner bowed and went.

Marabar remained alone.

For a moment he thought of Anadar.

The contrast was remarkable.

Hokn`f reached for power by turning everything he touched into a tool. Dead, mages, fear, allies, enemies, even his own limits. He was not subtle, but he was consistent. One could work with him as long as one understood his direction. But the more moon drops he received, the less certain that direction became. Power did not change men like him. It merely made more visible what had always been inside them.

Anadar was different.

Not less dangerous.

Different.

Anadar stood before power and still asked what price it had. He thought too much. Felt too much. Clung to people who could be used against him. Precisely for that reason he was shapeable. Or destructible. Perhaps both. Sahretûn could make something of him, if he was not broken too soon.

Hokn`f, by contrast, could not be shaped.

Only directed.

And even that was no longer simple.

Their tool had grown teeth.

Marabar would have to report to Gochad.

Not dramatically. Gochad despised exaggeration when it was not used deliberately. But completely. The moon drops. The silent army. The vortex. The effect on the pyramid. The possible use against summoning circles. The necessity of not openly disempowering Hokn`f for the time being.

That was the most important point.

A simple takeover of control was no longer possible.

Not without risk.

Hokn`f would resist. Perhaps not immediately, perhaps not openly. But he would feel it if one placed hands on him too early. And a man with an army of dead, a growing following of mages, moon drops and wounded pride was not a man one humiliated without preparation.

So the summoners now did what they did best.

They remained patient.

Patience was not passivity.

Only stupid people thought it was.

Patience meant not seizing the opponent at the point where he had grown strong. Patience meant letting him run while the path narrowed. Patience meant giving him victories that made him more dependent. Patience meant counting the nourishment of his power, learning the language of his commands, observing the limits of his body, touching the people around him before he noticed that he no longer decided alone.

Hokn`f wanted to go north.

Good.

Then he would go north.

He wanted to attack the Fiery Fortress.

Good.

Then he would attack it.

He wanted to appear as conqueror.

Let him.

The Fiery Fortress would cost him strength. The Sondra had not been annihilated. The schools were gathering. Perhaps soon even more. Hokn`f would have to show his power before those walls. And every power that had to be shown revealed at the same time where it cracked.

Marabar lifted his gaze northward.

There lay the fortress of fire.

There much would be decided.

Not everything.

The finale did not belong to Hokn`f.

Not to the mages.

Not even to the demons.

The finale belonged to those who waited long enough to recognise when a storm was only noise and when it opened a door.

Behind him the pyramid trembled softly once more.

A late yielding in the stone.

Marabar turned and went down.

“Let Hokn`f believe he leads,” he said to the next summoner waiting for him.

“And if he truly does?”

Marabar stopped.

For one moment his smile was gone.

“Then we make sure he leads in the right direction.”

“And after that?”

Marabar looked to the dead carrying the crates of moon drops out of the pyramid.

“After that,” he said, “we will see how many teeth our tool still needs.”

9

Hokn`f was aware of his power.

And it did him good.

Not like wine. Not like praise. Not like the small everyday confirmations ordinary people had to warm themselves by. This was deeper. Clearer. Truer. The fall of the pyramid had not made him powerful, he told himself. No. That would have been a false interpretation. The fall of the pyramid had only revealed what had long lain within him.

Power.

Leadership.

Necessity.

The others had now seen it.

At last.

They had seen how his storm had driven against the walls. They had seen how the sand vortex grew, how it tore the air apart, how it broke stone and resistance. They had seen that Hokn`f was not merely the man who gave orders while others died. He was the man who stepped into the core of the storm himself and forced the world to bow.

That had made an impression.

He had seen it in the faces of the mages.

Not only fear. Fear was easy to win. The silent army won fear as soon as it moved. The demon had won fear when it ran against the pyramid. No, what Hokn`f had seen in their gazes was more.

Respect.

Reluctant, perhaps.

Disturbed, perhaps.

But respect.

And respect was the beginning of obedience.

The silent army had proven its value as well. With it, one could storm a position without losing too many living forces. The dead did not complain. The dead did not hesitate. The dead did not ask whether an attack was sensible, honourable or necessary. They went. They fell. They rose again as long as enough of them remained. And when they finally broke apart, one replaced them.

A commander could hardly ask for a better tool.

All in all, the battle at the pyramid had gone excellently.

Of course there had been losses. Of course some attacks had been disorderly. Of course some commanders had hesitated, some mages had failed, some groups had not performed as one should have expected of them. But that was war. War revealed weaknesses, and whoever was wise used that revelation. The mages had now gone through a battle. They had seen blood, dead, demons, breaking walls, the inside of an enemy fortress. That made them more useful.

Battle experience counted for much.

More than the fine formulas of the Conclave.

More than the old rights of the schools.

More than the outrage of those who only complained about means once others had reached for them first.

Hokn`f smiled as he walked through the conquered camp.

Moon drops.

Very many.

Very, very many.

The crates had been secured, even if the summoners were showing too much interest in them. That had been expected. Marabar had worn the look of a man entering a new number into his calculation. Hokn`f had seen it. Of course he had seen it. The summoner was clever, but cleverness did not make him invisible.

The moon drops were among the most important results of this victory.

With their help, Hokn`f could work miracles.

Not miracles in the childish sense. Not the unpredictable intervention of a power no one understood. Real miracles. Directed. Planned. Usable. Force that could be brought into form. A reserve of possibilities. A means of turning limits into transitions.

The storm at the pyramid had been only the beginning.

Only an attempt.

A first proof.

He had not even known how far he could go. He had taken only one drop, one single drop, and yet the vortex had forced the walls of an ancient work to yield. What would happen once he understood the dosage better? When he strengthened the silent army more precisely with it? When he supplied selected mages with it shortly before an attack? When he used the drops not only as an amplifier, but as a tactical reserve, as a final reserve, as a blow no one expected?

The possibilities were wide.

Very wide.

Of course the appearance of the demon had turned the tide in favour of the attackers more quickly than would have happened without it.

Hokn`f granted himself that.

He was not blind.

Bronbt had been impressive. A being of raw violence that ran against stone as though stone were only an insolence someone had forgotten to clear from its path. Its horn had shaken the pyramid, and even Hokn`f had felt for a moment that a power was at work there that could not simply be grasped with the concepts of the schools.

Demons could be useful.

He would keep that in mind.

No more.

For usefulness was still a long way from superiority. A demon was a tool of the summoners, and tools could change owners if one understood how they were held. Perhaps not at once. Perhaps not with the great beings. But everything that could be bound had a weak point. Every chain had a lock. Every circle a line. Every summoner a body that bled when struck.

Hokn`f was already thinking further.

The Fiery Fortress.

It would fall.

Not easily. No. That would be asking too much. The fire mages were stubborn, well trained, dangerous within their own walls. Manador was no fool. Neither was Sinadie. Mother was there, and perhaps Slonda as well. In addition, other schools had probably gathered now, if the Conclave had set more in motion than Hokn`f liked.

But the fortress would fall.

It had to fall.

And once it had fallen, the dispute within the coalition would begin.

Hoknf knew that with the same certainty with which he knew that wind always found a path through gaps. As long as there was a shared enemy, tensions held. As soon as that enemy was broken, the claims would become visible. The summoners would demand their price. Marabar would smile and speak of order. Gochad would assert ancient rights. The mages who had followed Hoknf would demand reward, security, position. Some would doubt. Some would suddenly rediscover their scruples once the greatest danger seemed to have passed.

Then he would have to be quick.

Hard.

Unambiguous.

Perhaps he could not even wait until the war against the fire mages was completely over. Perhaps the next blow had to be prepared while the walls of the fortress were still burning. Whoever paused after a victory gave others the opportunity to turn that victory into a negotiation.

Hokn`f did not negotiate when he could take.

He smiled inwardly, certain of victory, while plans took shape in his head.

First the fortress.

Then order within his own ranks.

Then the summoners.

Not openly. Not immediately. Not crudely. Sahretûn was dangerous, and Hokn`f had no intention of making the same mistake so many before him had made: underestimating an enemy merely because one disliked him. No. The summoners would be needed. For now. Their demons, their knowledge, their ancient city, their arrogance. All of it was useful.

But useful was not the same as trustworthy.

Hokn`f had no intention of saving a world only to hand it over to Gochad.

On the road north, he stopped at every graveyard.

At every burial ground.

At every old battlefield reported by scouts.

At every abandoned village where names no one spoke anymore lay behind small stones.

The first few times, some of the living mages had still looked away. Some had withdrawn. Others had protested softly, not loudly enough for it to be courage, but loudly enough to tell themselves later that they had not remained silent. Hokn`f paid attention to such people. He memorised faces. Not all at once. But enough.

Then they grew used to it.

People always did.

At the first opened grave, they spoke of desecration.

At the fifth, they spoke more quietly.

At the tenth, they asked how long the stop would take.

At the twentieth, they sent men with shovels themselves.

Hokn`f watched this change with quiet satisfaction.

Morality was often only the name for a habit that had not yet been under pressure long enough.

The silent army grew.

At first he replenished the numbers lost at the pyramid. Shattered bodies were replaced, broken ranks closed, missing mass restored. But soon it was more than restoration. Much more. The mass behind the army grew larger, darker, broader. Dead farmers. Dead soldiers. Old bones from forgotten graves. Bodies that scarcely had form anymore, but were enough for simple tasks. Better preserved corpses were taken forward, marked with signs, ordered, assigned.

Hokn`f worked effortlessly.

Or so it seemed.

He knew it cost strength. Of course. Everything cost strength. But the moon drops changed the relation. What would once have been a limit was now only effort. What would once have meant exhaustion was now a question of allocation. One did not have to make every dead thing good. Only obedient. One did not have to execute every binding beautifully. Only stable enough to march to the Fiery Fortress.

He began to divide his silent army into groups.

Heavy bodies for the first pressure.

Fast bodies for breaches.

Bony ones for diversion.

Fresh ones for targeted attacks.

Mage corpses, where useful, under special supervision.

He had learned.

The pyramid had taught him.

Hokn`f often no longer rode at the head of the living army, but between it and the dead. There, where both orders touched. Before him marched mages, soldiers, allies, believers, the fearful, the ambitious. Behind him the silent army, which needed no conviction. He liked that. It was an image of the world as it should be.

Will in front.

Obedience behind.

And he between them.

As axis.

On the third day after the fall of the pyramid, he had them halt at an old graveyard beside an abandoned way station. The stones were weathered, the names barely legible, the enclosure half collapsed. A place that had been forgotten until Hokn`f made it useful again.

The graves opened.

He raised his hand.

The first bodies moved.

Some only as bones clattering up from earth and cloth. Some with remnants of skin, hair, clothing, personal ornaments. A child was among them. That made one of the younger mages retch. Hokn`f let the small body sink again. Not from pity. From practicality. Too small. Too brittle. Too disruptive to the morale of the living.

One did not need to cross every boundary at once.

Only the one that was useful.

The remaining dead joined the ranks.

Without questions.

Without accusation.

Without thanks.

Hokn`f felt the silent army behind him grow, and with it grew the certainty within him.

The Fiery Fortress would burn.

The schools would bow.

The summoners would learn that they were not the only ones who knew how to use ancient powers.

And if Mother, Manador, Slonda and all the others believed they could tear order from him with new seats, old rights and hidden schools, then they had not understood the meaning of this age.

The old world was over.

A new one had to be shaped.

Hokn`f looked north.

There, somewhere beyond dust, road and the coming dead, lay the fortress of fire.

He smiled.

“Onward,” he ordered.

The army began to move.

Living in front.

Dead behind.

And above all of it, the will of a man who no longer believed he was reaching for power.

He believed he was finally exercising it.

10

Fontal was tired.

Not merely exhausted.

Tired.

There was an exhaustion that came from the body. From too little sleep, too many long rides, bad food, wounds, dust in the throat, stiff fingers on the reins. She knew that exhaustion. Every mage who had ever completed a longer journey or a serious exercise knew it. One could endure it. One could sleep it off. One could eat against it. One could override it with will until the body eventually demanded what it was owed.

But this was deeper.

Fontal was tired from what she had seen.

She and the mages who still followed her had passed through fire, even if it had not always been fire. Sand, dead, Sondra, demons, breaches, blood on pale stone, the Hall of Memory, moon drops in dead hands. They had fought a battle harder than she could even have imagined at the beginning. Not harder in the sense of more enemies or greater danger. Harder because the battle no longer allowed them to keep considering themselves good.

There was no mercy in this war.

And no release.

Not for the Sondra, who had fought to the death.

Not for the mages, who believed they stood on the right side and yet looked away more and more often.

Not for the dead, who were pulled from their graves.

Not for those who carried out orders, even though they had long known that orders were no longer enough to explain guilt.

After the fall of the pyramid, Fontal had expected that they would at least rest.

Not out of humanity. She hardly trusted Hokn`f with that anymore. But out of necessity. The army was exhausted, its order damaged, the mages disturbed, the dead had to be reorganised, the spoils secured, the wounded tended, the messages sorted. Even a cold commander would have needed a pause, if only to count his forces.

Hokn`f set out north almost immediately.

No pause.

No real contradiction.

No one had the strength anymore, or no one had the courage.

Perhaps by now that was the same thing.

With his new allies, what had begun in the valley of the pyramid had finally become an army. No longer merely a gathering of mages following a political command. No longer merely a campaign of schools that had understood too late what kind of man they had joined themselves to. Now summoners walked among them. Men with bald skulls, tattooed skin, dark robes and teeth that seemed too sharp when they smiled. They spoke politely. Too politely. They did not move like guests, but like people who regarded every camp only as temporarily foreign property.

Fontal feared them.

Not as she had feared the demon Bronbt.

That had been another fear. Ancient, physical, almost animal. Bronbt had stormed up the valley, and every being with instinct had understood that something was coming which could not be persuaded, not intimidated, not made tired.

The summoners were worse.

They looked at one as though they already knew which parts of the soul would break first.

Fontal knew that she stood on the wrong side.

By now the thought no longer came as an accusation.

It was only truth.

She stood on the wrong side.

But she also knew she could not simply change sides. Not without risking her people. Not without endangering From. Not without delivering those mages who still listened to her to the dead behind the army. Hokn`f had closed the ring around the Sondra, but in truth he had also encircled his own allies. Before them the enemy. Behind them the silent army. Beside them the summoners.

Whoever left died.

Whoever stayed lost something else.

Fontal hoped for an opportunity.

She did not know what kind.

A mistake by Hokn`f. An attack that tore the order apart. A moment when the Fiery Fortress was near enough and the silent army far enough away. A message. A sign. Perhaps Anadar. Perhaps Slonda. Perhaps Mother.

Perhaps no one.

The small spark of hope left to her was almost ridiculous.

But it was the only thing that kept her upright.

After many days on horseback, the land began to change.

At first barely noticeably. The dust grew darker. The grass lower. Bushes stood more isolated, bent by the wind, as though they had never truly believed they were allowed to grow here. Then the black stone emerged. Not as individual rocks, but as ground. Volcanic land, hard, barren, brittle, as though fire had frozen here long ago and forbidden the earth to become soft.

Fontal lifted her head.

At the lower end of the wide land, raised upon cliffs, lay the Fiery Fortress.

She had heard stories about it.

Of course she had.

Everyone had heard stories about it. The fortress by the sea. The School of Fire. The place where students learned to shape flames before they learned to fear them. A bastion, a defiant construction, a monument against storms, enemies and reason.

Yet the reality was larger.

Not necessarily higher, not more splendid, not more beautiful than the stories. Larger in meaning. It stood there as though it had never asked whether it was permitted to stand. Several rings of walls surrounded it, adapted to the black terrain, not built against it, but grown from it. Roads led down and up, only a few, narrow, difficult, easy to block. Everywhere cliffs, scree, edges, abrupt depressions, hardly any plants. To deploy an army here was possible, but not comfortable. And Hokn`f’s army had grown large enough that discomfort could become dangerous.

Behind the fortress stretched the headland.

Sea on several sides.

Grey, wide, restless.

Fontal saw the walls.

The towers.

The inner fortress lying higher, hard and dark against the sky, and suddenly she had the impression that this place had not been built to be beautiful. It had been built to give an answer.

Come.

Take me.

If you can.

She swallowed.

This would be no stroll.

Not with all the mages.

Not with the silent army.

Not with the summoners.

Perhaps not even with demons.

Even from a distance she could see the defenders on the walls. Points at first, then lines, then formations. Banners. Light signs. Fire pits. Movements too ordered to be accidental. The fortress waited. Not surprised. Not empty. Not intimidated.

They were prepared.

Fontal felt a dangerous, almost painful breath of relief.

Not because that was good.

Because it meant someone there had understood.

The army halted on the heights before the black terrain. Orders were shouted, camp sites assigned, troops shifted, scouts sent out. The silent army gathered farther back, a dark mass that looked even more wrong on the lighter land than it had in the desert. Dead between grass and stone. Dead under open sky. Dead that did not tire while the living dismounted and could barely feel their legs anymore.

Fontal dismounted.

From stepped beside her.

“They have prepared,” From said softly.

“Yes.”

“That is good.”

Fontal looked at her.

From’s mouth was hard.

“For whom?”

Fontal did not answer.

She no longer knew.

Perhaps it was good for the world if the fortress held.

Perhaps it was bad for her people if they were sent against these walls.

Perhaps both were true.

A messenger came to them.

Young. Nervous. He avoided looking directly at Fontal.

“Mistress Fontal. You are summoned to the briefing.”

“By whom?”

“Master Hokn`f.”

Of course.

“Who is present?”

The messenger hesitated.

“Master Hokn`f. Prince Gochad. Lord Marabar. Further commanders.”

Fontal felt something contract inside her.

So Gochad himself.

Not only Marabar.

The summoners were no longer accompaniment. They sat at the table.

“I am coming,” she said.

The messenger bowed and left.

Fontal looked across to the fortress.

From here it seemed both close and unreachable. Like an island of firestone in the midst of a world that was now advancing against it from every side.

Above her, a raven croaked.

Fontal lifted her gaze.

The bird circled alone above the camp. Black against the bright sky. It did not fly like an ordinary raven searching for scraps. It circled too high. Too calmly. Too attentively. Once it descended a little, as though wanting to examine the paths between tents and troops, then rose again.

Fontal followed it with her eyes.

A raven.

In an army full of dead, summoners and mages, a raven should not have drawn anyone’s attention.

It drew hers.

She turned away and went to the briefing.

Behind her, the raven continued circling above the army.

Before her waited Hokn`f, Gochad and Marabar.

And across the black rocks, the Fiery Fortress looked down, as though it had been expecting this moment for a very long time.

11

The first attack was a test.

At least that was what they said.

Hokn`f called it a reconnaissance of defensive capability. Marabar called it a necessary opening. Gochad said nothing at all, but looked down from an elevated position onto the walls of the Fiery Fortress as though he were not observing a fortress, but an old calculation whose result interested him without troubling him.

Fontal believed none of them.

A test conducted with dead bodies was still an attack.

They used that part of the silent army which consisted of barely more than bones, old remnants of armour, torn grave cloths and Hokn`f’s will. No fresh bodies. No valuable corpses. No dead that would have been useful for targeted breakthroughs or rapid advances. Only mass, noise, movement, pressure.

The army of bones began to move.

It streamed across the black terrain, stumbling, clattering, faster than any natural body in such a state should have been able to move. Between the rocks and fields of scree, they seemed like something the ground itself had spat out. A grey, white, dark wave of bones running toward the first defensive wall of the Fiery Fortress.

The answer came at once.

No warning shot.

No call.

No attempt to show the attackers that they were prepared.

A storm of fire broke from the walls.

It did not simply come down from above. It came from slits in the stone, from grooves in the black rock, from embedded lines Fontal had not noticed before. Tongues of flame lashed across the approaches, broad swathes of fire opened between rocks, and from the towers came focused blasts so bright that even the summoners in the camp narrowed their eyes for a moment.

The army of bones fell apart.

Not slowly.

Not under heroic resistance.

It was swept away.

Bones burst, pieces of armour glowed, old skulls split apart, rib cages turned to black dust. Where individual bodies came through the first wave, the second struck them. Where some dragged themselves out of the flames, earth mages from hidden cover brought rocks crashing down upon them, or light students cut the bindings that still held them.

The attack could have ended there.

It did not.

Because the defenders did not wait.

Before Hokn`f could issue a new order, turmoil broke out in the middle of his coalition’s camp.

A fireball struck between two rows of tents.

Not by chance.

Not blindly.

It hit the area where reserve troops of the wind mages stood and messengers were being kept ready. The explosion tore men to the ground, hurled poles, cloth and burning leather into the air. Screams followed. Horses tore themselves loose. A second burst of fire came not from the wall, but from a cleft in the rock at the side of the camp. A hidden fire team had nested there, had waited for hours or days, and now struck into the very order of the attackers.

Then it was gone again.

Back into the rocks.

As though the mountain itself had spat fire.

From the very first moment there was no waiting on the part of the fire mages.

No cautious manoeuvring.

No defence that merely reacted.

The Fiery Fortress used its terrain with ruthless precision. Every path downward had been measured. Every rock could be cover or trap. Every hollow could swallow troops. Every ledge could suddenly cast out light, fire, arrows or mind blades. The defenders did not leave it to the attackers to choose when the battle began and when it ended. They forced them to attack by punishing stillness.

That was what enraged Hokn`f most.

Not the losses.

Losses were material.

But the fact that Manador denied him the initiative.

By evening of the first day the bones were almost entirely lost, several sections of the camp were damaged, two supply lines burned, and one unit of wind mages had been hit so severely that it was useless for the next attack.

Hokn`f continued to call it a test.

No one contradicted him.

But no one believed him.

On the second day they committed more.

Not everything.

Not yet.

But enough to turn the test into war.

Vortices rose from the camp of the wind mages and drove against the outer positions. Mages from several schools advanced in closed groups, protected by shields, moving earth barriers and dark signs of the summoners. The silent army followed them in broader lanes, this time not only bones, but fresher bodies, faster, heavier, better bound. And among them ran demons.

Smaller ones at first.

Crouched, horned beings with arms too long, too many teeth, movements too quick. They leapt over rocks, ran up walls, hurled themselves against gates and ledges, searched for gaps, tore with claws at anything standing on the battlements.

The Fiery Fortress answered.

Light struck the first.

Mind blades the next.

Sinadie’s daughters stood on elevated points, Miene and Sindra among them, and their light was not soft. It did not fall like morning. It cut. It separated. It struck the smaller demons where binding and body touched one another, and for a moment one could see that these beings were not simply flesh, but forced form.

Then came the mind blades.

Students from Zoordak, pale with exertion but clear eyed, wielded them at bottlenecks. The blades passed through claws, throats, shoulders, joints. Not always deadly. Not always banishing. But disruptive. Maiming. Opening. And when a small demon stumbled, fire struck into it.

Fontal saw one of them fall to the ground in three pieces.

It kept screaming.

Until a light student struck its sign.

Then it was gone.

Not dead.

Gone.

She did not know whether that was better.

The larger demons came later.

They were used more cautiously. Not many. Not yet. But each one changed the battle. When they came too close to the walls, the stone trembled. One tore open an entire outer parapet with both arms. Another devoured fire and spat it back black. A third pushed through a gap although five fire mages were burning it and two earth mages were casting rocks down upon it.

Then Slonda came.

Or not only Slonda.

One could barely see Slonda.

He stood on an inner rise of the second wall, white haired, narrow, almost too calm for the raging around him. Around him lay signs that did not endure long. They flared, trembled, fell apart again, were set anew by his hands and vanished once more, as though in this battle they could survive only for moments. Beside him stood Xiodrie, dark, wild, her hair whipping in the wind. Her hands drew shapes in the air that Fontal did not understand, and yet she sensed that she did not cast like a mage of the schools. Xiodrie did not reach for order. She reached for cracks.

Around Slonda, light students and mind students worked. Some Sondra laid small signs of moon colour on the stone, quickly, precisely, without looking up. Miene stood a little lower at the wall, hands raised, her face pale with exertion. Beside her, Sindra held open a line of light that reached from the wall to Slonda’s circle.

The great demon that had just torn down the parapet faltered.

Only for one heartbeat.

But visibly.

Its claws dug into the stone. Its head snapped around as though it had heard something not meant for ears. Then the air around it bent. Fire no longer struck directly into its body, but around it, into the places where its form was bound to this world. Light no longer struck its skin, but the space from which it hung.

The demon roared.

The summoners in the camp answered at once. Three of them threw themselves into their circles, hands pressed to the ground, voices sharp, fast, full of compulsion. The binding held. Not well. But it held. The demon drove its claws deeper into the stone and pulled itself forward again, step by step, against Slonda’s banishment.

Miene sank to one knee.

Sindra shouted something that vanished in the noise and strengthened the line of light.

Slonda raised his hand.

Not high. Not dramatically.

Just enough.

“Now,” he said.

Xiodrie struck both fists into the ground.

The signs of moon colour flared. Miene’s light rushed through them, Sindra’s line tore itself around the demon like a glowing thread, and Slonda’s banishment closed. For one moment Fontal no longer saw the body of the being, but something behind it. Hunger. Form. Compulsion. A name that was not spoken and yet came under pressure.

The demon reared up.

Then it was torn back.

Not hurled away.

Not killed.

Taken out of the world.

Banished.

Where it had stood a moment before, only a black imprint remained in the stone, smoking.

The defenders did not shout in triumph.

They had no time.

Because in the same moment, behind the attackers’ lines, a second fight broke out.

From a fissure in the rock that the summoners had taken for a natural crevice, a hidden troop burst forth. Fire mages first, then Sondra, two mind students and a dwarf with an axe almost as broad as his chest. They were not many. Perhaps twelve. Perhaps fewer. But they came at the right place.

Directly behind the summoners’ protective circles.

The first blast of fire struck a circle from outside and tore the lines open. A Sondra sprang through the smoke and cut off one summoner’s hand before he could renew his banishment. A mind blade drove through the back of a second, not deep enough to kill him at once, but deep enough that his voice broke. The dwarf struck a stake of black wood from the ground, and the circle beside it went out as though someone had taken away its breath.

For one moment the entire summoning line staggered.

The demons at the wall felt it.

One of them stumbled. Another turned against its own flank until two summoners forced it back, screaming. A third did not dissolve, but its form flickered, and the light students on the wall used the moment. Blades of light struck into its binding, fire followed, and the being was driven back into a hollow where earth collapsed over it.

Marabar reacted first.

He did not stand where the attack struck, but his hand shot up, and three black signs opened between the summoners and the hidden troop. A Sondra was torn back as though an invisible claw had seized her. One of the fire mages caught fire, not from outside, but from within, and threw himself screaming to the ground. The mind students drew back, pale, bleeding, but they had done what they had come to do.

The summoners were forced to release their demons.

Not entirely.

But enough.

Several circles were hastily closed. Others broke off. Dead were drawn in to fill the gap. Living mages cast shields while the hidden defenders were already retreating back into the cleft in the rock. Two did not make it. The rest vanished as swiftly as they had come.

What remained was disorder.

Not much.

But enough for the Fiery Fortress to banish the next demon before it reached the wall.

Fontal saw it and understood why this defence was so dangerous.

The fortress did not merely withstand.

It reached into the hand that was choking it.

The summoners learned quickly.

Fontal had to grant them that.

After this attack, they no longer let the demons charge blindly. They protected their circles better. They placed living mages around themselves, then dead, then both. They moved their summonings farther back, where the fortress’s fire troops had more difficulty reaching them, and laid additional signs against attacks from the rocks.

But that had its price.

Every circle that protected themselves was missing from the attack. Every dead body guarding a summoner was missing at the wall. Every mage covering a back could not strike forward.

The Fiery Fortress was not only a wall.

It was terrain that bit back.

From rock passages no one had found on the attackers’ maps. From clefts that had looked like natural cracks. From underground ways that were apparently older than the outer walls. Small troops of fire mages, Sondra, mind students and sometimes dark elves struck into the camp, hit summoners, destroyed circles, threw flames into supplies and vanished again before the silent army could encircle them.

Once a troop suddenly stood barely thirty paces from Marabar.

For one brief moment the camp became still.

Then the summoners themselves intervened.

Marabar remained calm, yet around him black light broke from three protective signs. Two Sondra were hurled back. A mind student sank to her knees, blood from nose and mouth. A fire mage threw a flame that was torn aside by something invisible. Then dead came from both flanks, and the troop had to withdraw.

But the damage was done.

Not physically.

Strategically.

From that moment on, the summoners had to devote a considerable part of their strength to their own protection. Protective circles. Guards. Dead as buffers. Mages as shields. Every banishment they cast for themselves was missing from the attack. Every demon that waited for a command while its summoner stabilised his own circle gave the defenders time.

The Fiery Fortress forced even Sahretûn to be cautious.

That was perhaps its first true victory.

The silent army had difficulties as well.

Hokn`f had believed the dead would flood the outer defences. And they did, in part. But the fire mages and their allies had learned. By now they knew how to steer the dead without committing to an open exchange of blows. They did not always throw fire frontally, but drove the bodies into false paths, into hollows, onto brittle ground. Earth mages opened narrow cracks, just deep enough to make ranks stumble. Light groups destroyed the bindings of individual knots, so that whole clusters of bodies became disoriented for moments. Sondra cut legs, not heads, and left bodies behind that blocked the way for those following.

It was not beautiful.

But it was effective.

Hokn`f had to intervene himself.

Again and again.

When an advance became stuck, his vortex came. When a breakthrough threatened to fail, sand and black dust rose. When the defenders burned a ramp of dead, he threw a storm over it, smothered the fire, hurled new bodies forward. He had grown large in this war, larger than his own body, a will of wind moving across the field and striking breaches where others saw only losses.

But every intervention cost him.

Fontal saw it.

Perhaps others saw it too.

The moon drop gave him strength, but it was not clean. After every great vortex, Hokn`f seemed emptier for a few breaths, then brighter, then angrier. As though after each use, something in him were not simply exhausted, but hollowed out and immediately filled again with a more dangerous fire.

He did not notice.

Or did not want to notice.

At the end of the second day, the first defensive wall fell.

Not completely destroyed.

Not overrun in a single triumph.

It became impossible to hold.

Manador gave the order to retreat in time.

Everyone who looked saw that.

The defenders did not break. They withdrew. Sondra covered the movements. Fire mages laid burning barriers. Earth mages made the paths collapse behind them in three places. Light students kept the dead away until the last wounded had passed through. Then they withdrew into the second ring.

The first wall fell.

And took many attackers with it.

When Hokn`f’s army finally stood where the defenders had still stood that morning, the ground was burned, broken, set with traps and full of dead who did not rise again.

Before them lay the second wall.

Larger.

Better protected.

Higher in the terrain.

And obviously prepared.

The attackers had expected many things.

Fire.

Defiance.

Strong walls.

Manador’s stubbornness.

But not such efficiency.

Not this kind of resistance, which did not display bravery, but made every step costly. Not a defence that knew it did not have to prevent every attack, but only poison every success.

On the third day the true struggle began.

The attackers changed their tactics.

They protected the summoners better. They no longer placed the silent bodies ahead merely as mass, but as moving walls around the circles. They sent smaller demons forward alone less often and called larger, more dangerous beings whose banishment took longer and bound more strength. The mages attacked in more concentrated fashion, no longer everywhere at once, but at selected points. Hokn`f no longer used his vortices only as anger, but as tools to strike breaches and fill the moment afterward at once with dead.

The defenders answered.

Every breach became a trap.

Every captured courtyard a burning basin.

Every apparent retreat a cut into the flank.

Manador did not command from a throne. He was on the walls, in the courtyards, at the bottlenecks. Sinadie stood with the light groups and sent her daughters where the darkness grew thickest. Slonda and Xiodrie did not hunt every demon. They chose. They waited until a great one pushed too far forward or a summoner placed too much force into a binding. Then they struck.

Zars and the Sondra made the terrain into a net.

Dark elves under Prince Zarad came at night.

Dwarves held deep accesses no dead thing passed without shattered legs.

Mind students stood pale and trembling in the intermediate rings and cut bindings until some of them could stand only with help.

The battle was not decided.

It was spent.

Man by man.

Body by body.

Circle by circle.

Wall by wall.

On the fourth day, the second defensive wall fell.

Again not as collapse.

As decision.

Manador saw that it could no longer be held. The flank was too badly damaged, two demons had eaten too deep into the southern section, and Hokn`f’s vortex had struck a breach large enough to press the silent army through. A stubborn man would have held until everyone there died.

Manador was stubborn.

Not stupid.

The retreat to the third ring began before sunset.

Ordered.

Bitter.

Costly.

The attackers pressed after them, but were driven back three times. A fire passage ignited beneath their feet and swallowed an entire group of dead. Sondra burst from a side tunnel and killed two summoners before vanishing themselves. A light group banished a lesser demon directly in the breach, causing the attack to falter for precious moments.

Then the third ring closed.

The attackers stood before it.

Closeness was no victory.

They understood that now.

The Fiery Fortress did not consist of one wall.

It consisted of layers.

Of terrain.

Of fire.

Of people who knew they could withdraw without fleeing.

Still, the attackers came closer.

Day by day.

Step by step.

The outer slopes lay behind them. Two defensive walls had fallen. The black earth was covered with fire, blood, ash and broken bones. The silent army had shrunk and been filled again. Demons had been banished, wounded, torn back or called anew. Mages died on both sides. Sondra vanished into passages and did not always return. Dwarves carried wounded into the depths. Dark elves shot from shadows until the summoners began to fear even shadows.

There were hardly any pauses.

The nights no longer belonged to rest, but to repairs, new circles, recovery of wounded, sorting of dead, quiet attacks, counterattacks, fire signs in the sky. The days belonged to the great advances.

The losses were high.

On all sides.

But Hokn`f’s army was gaining ground.

The Fiery Fortress now lay closer.

Its true walls still stood. High, hard, defiant, with the inner fortress above them like a glowing heart of stone.

Yet between the attackers and that heart there were now fewer rings than before.

Hokn`f saw that.

Marabar saw it.

Gochad saw it.

Manador saw it as well.

And each of them understood something different in it.

For Hokn`f, it was proof.

For Marabar, opportunity.

For Gochad, patience.

For Manador, time bought.

For every wall that fell had purchased something.

Hours.

Strength.

Wounds.

Exhaustion.

Understanding.

And perhaps, if the world was not yet entirely lost, enough time for what still had to come.

On the evening of the fourth day, Fontal stood on a conquered section of the second wall and looked up toward the third ring.

Above her, the raven circled again.

It had survived the battle.

Or had never truly been part of it.

Fontal looked at it while below the silent army was being reorganised and somewhere a demon howled in a circle.

“Hurry,” she whispered, without knowing whether she meant Morgut, Anadar, Mother or some hope that did not yet have a name.

The raven croaked.

Then it flew toward the fortress.