Anadar X/III

12

Mother almost forbade Shara to take part in the fighting.

Almost.

The word mattered.

Because Mother did not command it.

Perhaps she could have. Not through rank. Not through any right of the Fiery Fortress. But through that quiet force with which she sometimes entered a room and reminded everyone else that she had seen wars when their grandparents had not yet been born. She could have looked at Shara and told her that she had to hold back, that a child beneath the heart was no place for heroism, that Anadar would not love her for putting herself and the unborn child into the first line.

She did not.

She only said, “Not at the beginning.”

Shara understood.

She hated it.

But she understood.

At the beginning did not mean never.

At the beginning meant that others were allowed to burn first.

Slonda.

Miene.

Sindra.

The light students.

The mind students.

The fire mages on the walls.

The Sondra in the rock passages.

Mother herself.

Everyone else.

In the first hours and then days of the inner defence, Shara did not stand idle, but she was held back. She coordinated fire groups, helped at bottlenecks, brought wounded from sections that threatened to fall, and stood where her voice was more useful than her strength. She hated the reason in it. It was one thing not to remain behind out of cowardice. Another to remain behind because the world was suddenly protecting something inside her that mattered more than her own pride.

But at some point Slonda grew tired.

Not visibly to everyone.

To Shara, yes.

He still stood straight. His voice remained calm. His hands barely trembled when he set signs. But his eyes grew deeper, and between two banishments he remained still for one heartbeat too long. That was enough. Slonda was not a young man, even if his power sometimes made one forget how much his body had to carry.

Miene and Sindra were exhausted as well.

The two daughters of Sinadie had done more in the past days than anyone should ever have demanded of students. Their light had taken the binding from dead things, torn lesser demons apart, closed breaches, disturbed circles, covered the wounded. But light was not an endless source merely because it seemed bright. Miene had begun to bleed from the nose. Sindra had to hold on to the wall after every third great line of light. Other students had already been taken out of the line because they trembled, wept or stared into emptiness.

Then Shara stepped forward.

Mother saw her coming.

She said nothing.

That was permission enough.

The great demons were the most important defence.

Not the dead. Not the mages. Not even Hoknf’s vortices, as terrible as they were. The dead could be burned, pushed back, guided, fixed in place. Hoknf’s vortices could not be prevented, but they could prepare for them, clear paths, relieve walls, throw flames into the breach as soon as he weakened.

The great demons were different.

If they came too close to the walls, they tore stone from the foundations. They devoured fire or hurled it back twisted. They leapt across ditches, carried dead things up the walls, broke gates, disturbed circles, shattered entire sections with a single blow. One single great demon could undo the work of a hundred defenders if allowed to act too long.

So they had to be banished.

Not killed.

Not defeated.

Taken out of the world.

That was another kind of battle.

Slonda could do it. But Shara was skilled at it in a way that surprised even Slonda.

Perhaps because she understood fire.

Perhaps because she had never learned to regard demons only as theory.

Perhaps because the child inside her reacted to the nearness of these beings long before she herself fully sensed them.

Shara did not banish like Slonda.

Slonda worked with patience, signs, time and a deep understanding of thresholds. He found the point at which a being was bound to this world and loosened it, as cleanly as war allowed. Shara was more direct.

She was good at it.

Very good.

But she too needed time.

And time was what the Fiery Fortress no longer had.

The defenders had found two ways to slow the demons.

The first was direct banishment. Slonda, Shara, Miene, Sindra, sometimes another light student, sometimes Xiodrie when the world became thin enough in the right place. It was effective, but each time it cost strength. One had to bind the demon, endure its resistance, disturb or bypass the summoning circle, hold one’s own line while all around arrows, fire, stone, screams and dead things reached the wall.

The second way was Mother.

Mother shifted entirely to finding the summoners.

She did not always stand on the wall. Often she was in one of the upper rooms of the fortress, before maps, before bowls of water, before stones, before signs others could not read. Sometimes she simply stood there with closed eyes and then named a direction, a distance, a sign in the terrain.

“Behind the third black rock.”

“Beneath the broken slope.”

“Three circles. One incorrectly set. The middle one holds the demon.”

“Now.”

Then troops moved.

Sondra through rock passages.

Dark elves in the night.

Fire mages through hidden exits.

Mind students along shadows no one else would have noticed.

Sometimes they came too late.

Sometimes they died.

Sometimes they reached the circle.

And when they reached it, the summoning became a risk for the summoners themselves.

Mother found.

Others coordinated.

The troops destroyed.

It worked.

Not always.

But often enough.

They held the enemies back. They inflicted losses on them. Heavy losses. Summoners died. Mages died. Lines of dead were burned. Demons were banished before they could break walls. More than once Shara saw an enemy attack stall only because somewhere behind the line a circle broke and a being was suddenly dragged back, in the middle of a leap, in the middle of a strike, in the middle of a roar.

Many defenders still had scruples about killing their brothers and sisters.

Still.

The first days had been terrible.

Fire mages saw wind mages, earth mages, water mages, minds, people from schools that had once been part of the same order. Some attackers were deluded. Some coerced. Some perhaps had never understood where Hokn`f was leading them. And yet now they stood before the walls of the Fiery Fortress, protected by dead things, guided by summoners, beside demons.

Scruples did not fade at once.

They bled out.

With every fallen friend.

With every breach.

With every defender torn from the wall by a mage on the other side.

With every demon a summoner sent into a group of young light students.

In the end, what remained was not hatred.

Hatred was too hot to last long.

Necessity remained.

That was worse.

What wore them down most was the silent army.

It did not seem to grow smaller.

Of course it did. Shara saw fire destroy entire groups, saw earth bury them, saw light cut bindings, saw Sondra hack them to pieces and dwarves smash their legs. But Hokn`f kept refilling the ranks. The dead did not come only from the graves he had opened. Fallen attackers were taken as well when possible. Sometimes even defenders, before their comrades could retrieve them.

That struck the fortress harder than any breach.

When Hokn`f tore open a gap with his enormous vortex and the silent army poured through it, it was as though not an army but a river of death pressed against them. They could halt it. They could dam it, divert it, burn it, push it back. But never long enough. Somewhere something always remained stuck. Somewhere something came through. Somewhere someone had to kill a body that had long been dead while a living enemy attacked beside it.

That was Hokn`f’s greatest weapon.

Not force alone.

The exhaustion he created.

Manador saw it.

It troubled him more than he said.

He knew that the walls of the actual fortress were many times stronger than the outer defensive rings. Those rings had been designed to buy time, break enemies, disturb their order, use the terrain and raise the price of every step. The inner walls were different. Older. Anchored deeper in the black stone. Shot through with fire lines that had not been fully awakened for generations.

But even strong walls could fall if enough dead were thrown against them.

And enough demons.

And enough madness.

After several days of battle came the attack that made the third wall impossible to hold.

It began at sunrise.

Or with what still looked like sunrise, for the sky had long been full of smoke.

Hokn`f struck first.

Not frontally at the centre, as many had expected, but at a place where the third wall ran between two black ribs of rock. The access there was narrow, easy to defend, but if it broke, it opened a path into the space between wall and main wall. Hokn`f knew that. Or his advisers knew it. Or Marabar had seen it. It did not matter.

The vortex came.

Great.

Darker than before.

With sand, ash, bone dust and red embers inside it, as though it had not only absorbed something of the moon drops, but transformed it into rage. It struck the rock rib first, tore loose stone free, hurled it against the wall, then hit the wall itself. Fire lines flared, held, flickered, held on.

Then came the demons.

More than ever before.

Small beings first, at the edges, to bind the defenders. Then larger ones. Three at once. Then a fourth, half stooped, with a maw too wide for its head. One struck the wall, one tore at a gate, one was hit by light immediately and staggered, but not enough. Slonda and Shara stood at two different points, both already in banishment, both bound. Miene held a line open. Sindra nearly collapsed and was held up by two students while she continued to give light.

“One more,” said Slonda.

Shara did not hear him.

She saw only the demon before her, saw the space around it, saw the place where fire could take hold, not on its skin, but on its anchoring. She burned. The being roared. Xiodrie, somewhere behind her, screamed a name or a word that should not have been a name. The line tore.

The demon vanished.

Shara fell to one knee.

No time.

The next came.

Meanwhile, the silent army pressed against the breach Hokn`f had struck. Body after body. Not disorderly this time. They came in dense packets, covered by vortices, shielded by living mages, with larger bodies at the front that simply filled burning oil trenches with themselves. The Fiery Fortress threw fire into them, much fire, but the mass kept pressing on.

Manador stood on an elevated platform and watched the battle.

He saw the line.

He saw the exhaustion.

He saw that the wall still stood.

And that it was nevertheless lost.

A stubborn man would have held.

A desperate man would have hoped.

Manador was both.

But he was also Dean of the Fiery Fortress.

He gave the signal to retreat.

Not loudly.

Not in panic.

Three red fires rose above the third wall.

Then one in white.

The defenders knew what it meant.

Retreat to the final defensive line.

To the main wall.

To the Fiery Fortress itself.

The retreat began at once.

Not cleanly. The fighting was too fierce for that. But orderly enough. The dwarves held the lower bottlenecks. Sondra struck into the flanks. Dark elves fired from elevated cover at summoner guards. Fire mages laid barriers. Light students withdrew in groups, always holding one line, always covering another.

As a diversion, the attack on the summoners came again.

This time not from a single rock crevice.

From three.

Small troops, hidden for hours, perhaps for days, broke out behind the lines. Fire struck circles. Mind blades hit protective signs. Sondra leapt over dead things, cut hands, throats, binding staffs. A troop of dwarves rammed iron wedges into the ground, and two summoning circles warped as though the stone beneath them had suddenly ceased to be willing to carry them.

The demons stalled.

Not all of them.

But enough.

One froze in the middle of a leap and was struck by Miene’s light. Another turned roaring in the wrong direction. A third lost its shape for a few heartbeats, and Slonda, panting, pale, but still upright, used the moment and banished it with a movement that looked more like a cut than a spell.

At the same time, the Fiery Fortress covered the silent army with a massive amount of fire.

Not as a targeted strike.

As a wall.

Flames ran over the wall, fell into the breach, struck from prepared channels and ate their way through the pressing bodies. The smell was appalling. Burned flesh, old dust, wet earth, bones, hair, leather. Even many attackers drew back.

The defenders withdrew.

To the last wall.

To the mighty walls of the Fiery Fortress.

But the enemy gave them hardly any time.

Before they had truly reformed, the first attacks began.

First through demons.

They had used the withdrawal of Slonda and Shara, the brief moment in which the banishment lines were interrupted, to advance. Two smaller ones reached the foot of the main wall and were shattered there by fire. A larger one drove one claw into the stone, pulled itself upward and received a light blade through the arm. It did not fall. It kept climbing.

Then Slonda and Shara reached the wall.

Slonda panting.

Shara gleaming with sweat, her face pale, her hair stuck to forehead and cheeks. She looked as though she needed to sit down. Instead she stepped beside Slonda, raised her hands and began to banish.

The demons slowed.

Not weak.

Not harmless.

But slower.

That was enough for fire to seize them, light to cut them, earth to throw them off balance.

Under the cover of these first attacks, however, the silent army had already advanced to the walls.

It now stood below.

Dense.

Dark.

Waiting.

Body against body. Bone against flesh. Armour against shroud. Living mages behind them. Summoners farther back. Hokn`f somewhere among them, not always visible, but perceptible like pressure in the air.

Manador stood on the battlements of the main wall.

Sinadie beside him.

She said nothing.

She did not need to.

He knew what she was thinking.

He knew it because he was thinking it himself.

They could not win this battle.

Not in the long run.

They could prolong it. They could make the enemy bleed. They could banish demons, burn dead things, destroy circles, hold walls, order retreats. Perhaps they could buy days. Perhaps less. Perhaps more, if the world was merciful, which it rarely was.

But win?

No.

Not like this.

Not against this mass.

Not against Hokn`f’s madness, Sahretûn’s patience, Marabar’s calculation and a silent army reborn from every graveyard.

Slonda came to them, breathing heavily.

Shara beside him.

She laid one hand against the wall, not from weakness, perhaps she told herself, but to find her footing. Her belly was large beneath the armour and the adjusted garment. Far too large for this place. Far too visible between fire, blood and stone.

Manador looked at her.

“How long can you still endure this?”

Slonda wanted to answer.

Shara beat him to it.

“As long as we must.”

Manador looked down at the dead before the wall, then to the demons gathering again, then to the lines of summoners behind them.

“So forever.”

Shara twisted her mouth.

Not quite a smile.

“If necessary.”

“Then we need a miracle,” said Manador. “Or several.”

Sinadie looked to Slonda.

“Do you know where your brother is?”

Slonda’s face hardened.

“No.”

“Where is Anadar?”

The question barely remained in the air for a breath.

Then Shara cried out.

Everyone turned to her.

She was still standing, but only just. One hand clung to the stone of the wall, the other lay on her belly. Her face was twisted with pain. For one terrible moment Manador believed an arrow had struck her, an invisible spell, a splinter, anything.

“Shara!”

Sinadie reached for her.

Shara shook her head, but the next pain forced her to her knees.

She was not wounded.

Not from outside.

She bent over again, breathing in bursts, and sweat ran over her temples.

Mother came up from the stair.

She saw Shara.

She saw her belly.

She saw the faces of the others.

And in her voice there was no surprise.

Only the bitter recognition of another moment that took no account of war.

“Her labour is beginning,” said Mother.

13

Anadar did not know how much time had passed.

Perhaps hours.

Perhaps days.

Perhaps none at all.

In Sahretûn, time had never been entirely reliable anyway, but this time it was not because of the city. This time it was because of him. He had sunk so far into himself that the outer things had lost their claim to reality. The room was still there, somewhere. The bed, the walls, the black stone, the reddish line in the floor that never quite went out. Perhaps summoners entered. Perhaps they left the room again. Perhaps someone stood before the door. Perhaps the city waited for him to move.

Anadar did not perceive it.

He sat on the floor.

Cross legged.

His hands loose on his knees.

His breathing calm.

Not the forced breathing of a mage before a difficult spell. Not the prepared gathering before a circle, not the concentration on a sign, a formula, a thrust of will. It was deeper. Simpler. More dangerous.

He did not search before him.

He searched within himself.

He had let himself sink through the thoughts that held him, disturbed him, pulled at him. Gnok. Shara. Sahretûn. Naaarstr. Marabar. Mother. Slonda. The child. The Fiery Fortress. The books. The half truths. The abyss. Again and again they had come, and again and again he had not pushed them away, but let them pass by him.

Until something became still.

Not empty.

Still.

And in that stillness lay a peace Anadar had not expected.

Not a happy peace. Not comfort. Not release. Rather a place where everything in him that fought stopped, for one moment, considering itself the most important thing. He felt his body. The floor. His breath. The beating of his heart. Beneath that, something else. A point that was not heart, not mind, not magic in the ordinary sense. A centre. Or the memory of one.

He went deeper.

To where the spark had been.

Not the great Anadar. Not the Master of Fire. Not the man with the sword, the demon, the reputation, the guilt, the battles. A child in the straw. Cold. Hunger. Slonda, freezing. The wish not to survive himself, but to keep his brother from dying. No formula. No sign. No knowledge. Only need. Love. Answer.

There he remained.

And in the most peaceful moment he had known in a long time, the question returned.

Not as in the dream.

Not from the darkness.

Not from somewhere outside.

It suddenly stood in his mind, clearer than ever before.

How will you decide?

Anadar breathed in.

This time he did not startle.

The question had not become louder. Only nearer. Not more urgent. Only truer. And now, in this depth, he recognised something he had never recognised in the dream.

He felt who was asking.

Gnok.

Not only Gnok as he was now, bound, blinded, broken and yet still carrying one last spark of hope within him. Also Gnok from earlier times. Gnok as witness to the first mistakes. Gnok as guilt. Gnok as love for Maraà. Gnok as warning. Gnok as chain.

Before Anadar’s inner eye an image formed.

Gnok.

Then Shara.

Shara on a wall.

Shara in fire.

Shara with his child beneath her heart.

What is your decision?

Now Anadar understood.

Not everything.

But enough.

Gnok was not only a prisoner.

Gnok was a means.

Sahretûn kept him alive in order to keep Anadar. Not from mercy. Not from respect. Not even as negotiation. Gnok was the hook on which they had fastened him. As long as Anadar stayed, Gnok lived. As long as Gnok lived, Anadar stayed. As long as Anadar stayed, Sahretûn could surround him, shape him, feed him, test him, lull him, provoke him, seduce him, break him or transform him into something that perhaps one day would believe it had chosen freely.

He was Gnok’s life insurance.

And Gnok was his chain.

Mother was bound to Gnok.

Slonda was bound to him.

Anadar himself was bound to him.

That made him vulnerable to blackmail.

And then there was Shara.

Not as a second chain.

As truth.

Shara did not need him so that he could feel good about himself. She did not need him as an excuse, as duty, as negotiation. She was not a means to hold him. She was the place within him where magic did not come from control, but from connection.

In that moment Anadar understood his decision.

He did not think further.

For the first time in his life, he cast consciously.

Not as a mage.

As a wizard.

No sign.

No word.

No circle.

No building of fire, no reaching for a school, no step through a prepared path. He did not reach for magic. He opened himself to it. He issued no command. He became direction. Not place to place, not body through space, but will toward connection.

Shara.

The spark answered.

The world vanished.

Not dark.

Not bright.

Only gone.

Anadar suddenly stood on the walls of the Fiery Fortress.

Directly beside Shara.

For one heartbeat, no one understood what had happened.

Not even he.

The world struck him with full force. Smoke. Fire. Screams. Stone beneath his feet. Wind full of ash. The roaring of demons. The crash of bodies against walls. The smell of burned flesh, hot metal, dust and blood. He saw Manador. Sinadie. Slonda. Mother. He saw lines of light over the battlements, streams of fire between rocks, dead bodies at the foot of the wall. He saw demons clawing at the parapet.

And he saw Shara.

She was kneeling.

One hand on her belly.

Her face twisted with pain.

Sweat on her skin.

She screamed.

Not because of a wound.

Because of labour.

Anadar stood there, as surprised as everyone else. For one brief moment he was certain he was still dreaming. The abyss. The voice. The decision. Perhaps this was only the next part. Perhaps he would wake at once, in Sahretûn, on the floor of his room, trapped in the same question.

Then a gigantic claw reached over the parapet.

The dream ended.

Instinct became action.

Anadar turned.

He gathered his will.

Not as before. Not through words. Not through the prepared paths of a fire spell. He did not reach for a formula. He did not search for a sign. He only saw the being, saw its pressure on the wall, saw the space it occupied, saw the line by which it was here.

And released his energy.

The demon was torn from the wall.

Not burned.

Not banished.

Pushed back.

With a violence that frightened even Anadar.

The being flew backward, struck another body, crashed down and tore dead things with it. The impact made the stone beneath Anadar’s feet tremble.

A second demon pulled itself up at another place.

Anadar raised his hand.

No flame.

A thrust.

Space itself seemed to push it away.

This demon fell as well.

So effortlessly.

Too effortlessly.

The others looked at him.

Not relieved at first.

Horrified.

Because they saw that he had changed.

Slonda was the first to speak.

He stood a few steps away, pale, panting, marked by exhaustion, and yet in his gaze lay something dangerously close to joy.

“You arrived at the right time,” he said dryly.

Anadar looked at him.

His brother.

Alive.

Real.

“Tell me this is not a dream.”

Slonda breathed out heavily.

“It is too loud for that.”

Anadar turned his head.

Mother stood there.

For one moment she did not see him as the man who had appeared from nothing on a besieged wall. She saw him as the boy who had once stood before her, as the student, the son, the danger, the hope, the guilt. Everything lay in her gaze.

Anadar wanted to say something.

“I...”

He broke off.

For in his gaze lay everything as well.

Gnok.

Sahretûn.

The decision.

Mother understood.

Not at once.

But then.

Her face changed. Pain passed through it, so sharp that Anadar almost felt it physically. She knew what his arrival meant. She knew whom he had left behind. She knew what this choice had cost.

A tear ran down her face.

“You chose rightly, my dear,” she said.

It was not comfort.

It was forgiveness.

Or the beginning of it.

Shara half straightened.

Only half, because the next pain came, and she seized Anadar’s arm with a strength that almost frightened him more than the demon. Her eyes found his. In them lay so much at once that even the battle grew smaller for one breath.

Joy.

Relief.

Disbelief.

Anger.

A great deal of anger.

“Where were you?” she hissed.

Then she pulled him to her and kissed him.

Hard.

Brief.

Furious.

Alive.

Anadar wanted to answer.

Then the demon he had just pushed back climbed up the wall again.

Anadar turned halfway, raised his hand and hurled it down once more.

“I was occupied,” he said.

Shara stared at him.

“Occupied?”

“Captured and occupied.”

“That is not an adequate answer.”

“I had little time to prepare a better one.”

Another demon rammed itself against the wall.

Anadar turned, felt the line, let the thrust come, and the being was pressed back to the ground as though an invisible fist had struck it.

Mother was the first to truly see it.

Not the effect.

The manner.

No fire sign. No circle. No word. No structure as with a mage. The force was not raw, not chaotic, not even especially loud. It was simply there, as though Anadar had stopped commanding magic and begun standing in the same place with it.

Recognition passed over her face.

Slonda saw it as well.

He said nothing.

Perhaps because he was too tired.

Perhaps because, for once, words failed him.

Shara seized Anadar’s face with both hands and forced him to look at her.

Another pain went through her, but she clenched her teeth.

“You take care of the fight here,” she said.

“What?”

“I have an idea.”

“Shara, you are in labour.”

“I noticed.”

“You should...”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

Anadar closed his mouth.

She kissed him again.

Shorter this time.

Then she let him go, turned to the stairs and went down, slowly, tense, with one hand on the wall, but with the unshakable determination of a woman who granted even her own body only limited authority to give orders.

Sinadie called two students over.

Manador looked at Anadar.

Then at the enemies.

Then back at Anadar.

“Good,” he said. “Then let us hope you truly were occupied.”

Anadar had no time to wonder.

His arrival had triggered something.

Or perhaps it had only happened at the same moment in which the attackers gathered their final pressure. Below in the field, the silent army moved. Not in waves. In masses. Huge demons now ran toward the Fiery Fortress, larger than those that had come against the walls before. Summoning circles glowed far behind the lines, more strongly protected than ever before. Marabar was somewhere down there, Anadar felt it more than saw him.

And Hokn`f grew.

Not physically.

Not truly.

But in the air around him, sand, ash, wind and red embers gathered. The vortex forming around him was greater than anything that had yet struck the Fiery Fortress. The silent army pressed forward as though given a single will. Mages formed up behind them. Demons roared. Circles flamed. The world before the fortress became movement.

Manador stepped to the battlements.

He looked old in that moment.

Not weak.

Only old enough to know when a defence became the last.

Then he raised his voice.

“Well, children.”

The fire mages on the wall heard him.

The light students.

The mind students.

The Sondra.

The dwarves.

The dark elves.

Slonda.

Anadar.

All who still stood.

“Make ready. Our final battle is upon us.”

Anadar stepped beside him.

Beneath them, death stormed forward.

Before them, the wind grew.

Behind them, somewhere in the depths of the Fiery Fortress, Shara carried his child into a world that was fighting for its survival.

Anadar raised his hands.

Not as a mage.

No longer only as a mage.

And around the Fiery Fortress a battle ignited unlike any the world had ever seen.

14

They all felt it at the same time.

Not as sound.

Not as light.

As change.

Something shifted in the battle. Not in the lines, not in the walls, not in the armies, but beneath them. In that depth where magic no longer broke apart into schools, but was only force, will and decision.

Then they saw it.

Anadar stood on the battlements of the Fiery Fortress.

And the demons were being pushed from the walls.

Not burned. Not painstakingly banished as before, not bound by lines of light, not held back by circles that threatened to break under the violence of the summoners. He raised his hand, and a being that a moment before had hung from the parapet with both claws was hurled back as though the world itself had decided it was not allowed to remain there.

For one breath, even the attack faltered.

Defenders and attackers saw it.

Slonda saw it.

Mother saw it.

Hokn`f saw it.

Marabar saw it.

Gochad saw it.

And each understood something different.

For the defenders, it was hope.

For Hokn`f, it was challenge.

For Marabar, it was warning.

For Gochad, it was the beginning of the true game.

The great finale was no longer far away.

It had begun.

Gochad and Marabar made ready.

Not for small summonings. Not for those crouched beings one threw at walls in order to find weak points. Not for demons that could be driven back with enough fire, light and courage. They prepared the many horned ones. Beings whose summoning allowed no mistake. Beings with whom a wrong name, a blurred line, a command given too early did not merely kill the summoner, but tore everything around him with it.

Demons that could themselves summon smaller demons.

Marabar stood in a circle of black powder, blood and moon dust. Around him, summoners knelt. Some sang. Others held their hands over their ears, even though the chant came from their own throats. Gochad stood a little farther back, without haste, his eyes fixed on the walls. Behind him waited men of Sahretûn, bald, tattooed, heads lowered and teeth sharp, as though they were not witnesses, but tools waiting only for the right hand to take them up.

The first many horned demons appeared.

They did not come from smoke.

They came from an error in the world.

A tear, a black kink in the light, then bodies. Large, heavy, with several horns curving from their skulls like crooked crowns. One had four. One seven. One nine. Their skin was not uniform, but seemed composed of different darknesses. They opened their mouths, and from those mouths crawled smaller beings, thin, fast, armed with claws, as though the battle itself were giving birth to its next stage.

They ran at once against the fortress.

Only to see that the man on the wall possessed a force that had not been seen in the world for a long time.

Anadar stood between fire and smoke.

He did not seem large.

Not like Hokn`f, who down in the field kept growing within his storm. Not like a commander. Not like a prince. He stood narrow on the stone, the clothing of Sahretûn still on him, his face pale, his eyes awake, and around him there was nothing of the familiar language of mages. No formulas. No signs. No loud gesture.

He saw.

He understood.

He pushed back.

A many horned demon reached the wall, drove both arms into the stone and pulled itself up. Anadar raised his hand, and the air around the being contracted. It was not hurled away like the smaller ones before. It was too heavy, too deeply bound, too strongly pressed against the world. But it faltered. For one heartbeat. Then for a second.

That was enough for Slonda.

That was enough for Miene.

That was enough for Sindra.

Light struck the demon. Mind blades cut into the binding. Fire rose from the wall and enclosed it. Anadar pressed, Slonda loosened, Shara was no longer there, and yet the banishment held.

The being was torn back.

Not destroyed.

Banished.

But behind it came three more.

Down in the field, Hokn`f drank more than one moon drop.

Fontal saw it from a distance.

From saw it as well.

Hokn`f no longer held the vial like a remedy, not like a reserve, not like something to be used with caution. He drank as though he were finally taking in what had always been owed to him. One drop. Then a second. Perhaps more. No one near him dared stop him.

The storm around him grew.

Sand, ash, dust, bone splinters, sparks and red embers were torn into the air. The air bent around him. Mages drew back. Dead were lifted from their feet and yet dragged farther forward. Hokn`f stood at the centre of the violence, and for one moment he almost no longer looked like a man, but like the will of a storm that had learned to consider itself righteous.

The silent army charged.

No longer in waves.

In one single dark pressure.

Everything would be decided today.

The defenders prepared themselves.

On the walls, final orders were called. Manador stood with his hand raised, Sinadie beside him, her hair loosened by the wind, her eyes hard. Slonda panted, but he remained upright. Mother had vanished. Or perhaps not vanished. With Mother, one never knew whether absence was not merely another form of preparation. Zars and the Sondra spread out through the inner paths. The dwarves closed the lower accesses. The dark elves moved to where shadows held longest.

And Shara went.

Again and again, the labour pains forced her to stop.

The pains came more often.

Harder.

They tore through her body as though the world wanted to pull her in two directions at once. One hand lay against the wall, the other on her belly. She breathed through her teeth. Sometimes she stopped, bent over, her forehead against the stone, and waited until the spasm eased. Then she went on.

As she walked, she stripped off the armour.

First the bracers.

Then the breastplate, whose buckles were almost impossible to loosen with trembling hands.

Piece by piece she left it behind, not carelessly, but without hesitation. Metal, leather, protection, rank, war. In the end, she wore almost nothing but the white underdress, soiled with dust, sweat and blood, and over it a loose cloak she could barely keep closed.

She left the Fiery Fortress through a tunnel that led to the headland.

The passage was old.

Older than many walls above.

Damp from the sea, dark, smelling of salt and stone. Behind her, the fortress trembled beneath the attacks. Dust trickled from the ceiling. Once an impact shook the tunnel so violently that Shara fell against the wall and remained there because a new contraction forced her down.

She pressed one hand to her belly.

“Not now,” she whispered.

The pain did not answer.

It came.

It remained.

It went.

Shara breathed.

Then she went on as well.

At the end of the tunnel, she stepped out onto the headland.

The sea lay on both sides. Grey, wild, driven by wind. The Fiery Fortress rose behind her, a dark heart of stone and fire, and before her the narrow land stretched toward the rocks at the edge. The noise of battle was here both farther away and more immense. Muted by the walls, carried by the wind, broken by the sea. She heard screams, fire, stone, the roaring of demons, the deep thunder of Hokn`f’s storm.

She saw enormous demon heads rise above the walls.

She saw light strike.

She saw fire lines.

She knew Anadar was standing up there.

Not only he.

All of them stood there.

All of them held.

And she had little time.

Shara ran to the centre of the headland.

There, where the ground became flatter and the black stone lay beneath a thin layer of sand and salty dust, she sank to her knees and began to draw circles.

Not beautifully.

Not like a summoner of Sahretûn.

Not with Marabar’s cold precision.

Her hands were too tired for that, her body too much in upheaval, her breathing too uneven. But she knew the form. She had seen it. Not learned it in the usual sense. Remembered it. In the Hall of Memory. In images that had not only been the past. In lines that had lain there for precisely this moment, hidden between fall, flight and balance.

She drew.

An outer circle.

A second.

Twelve points.

Then the thirteenth, not outside, but within the line itself.

She paused.

Yes.

That fit.

A contraction came.

She curled over, both hands on the stone, her forehead almost to the ground. Her breathing grew rough. For several moments she could not see, not think, not count. Only pain. Pressure. Body. The child, who came whether there was war or not.

When the spasm eased, she heard a sound.

Not from the sea.

Not from the fortress.

She lifted her head.

Dead came from a side access of the headland.

Not many.

A small troop.

Silent.

Armed.

More than enough.

Perhaps they had come through a hidden path. Perhaps Hokn`f had sent them to test every line of escape. Perhaps it was chance. In this battle, there was no longer any difference.

Shara had no weapon.

No armour.

Only the knife for the summoning.

And in that moment, the next contraction came.

She could not stand.

The dead came closer.

One raised its sword.

Shara swallowed.

The undead’s head flew off.

Not through fire.

Not through magic.

Through a blade.

A Kaula stood behind him.

Large, heavy, silent, as though the rock itself had spat him out. Then a second. A third. More. They came onto the headland, not in haste, not with battle cries, but in that deadly silence Shara already knew. Their weapons were in motion before the dead understood they were being attacked. Bones broke. Arms fell. Skulls were shattered. One undead turned toward Shara, was struck from two sides at once and sank to the ground in pieces.

The Kaula did not look at Shara for long.

One only inclined his head.

Then they stalked on.

Quiet.

Deadly.

Searching for more enemies.

They too were here to fight.

They too were here to die if she did not hurry.

Shara looked back at the circle before her feet.

One line was smudged.

She renewed it.

Her hands trembled.

She began the summoning.

Not with the voice of Sahretûn.

Not with their claim.

Not with their hunger for possession.

She did not call in order to dominate.

She called in order to force a balance no one else would restore willingly anymore.

She knew she was staking everything on one card.

She thought of the Hall of Memory.

Of the images.

Of the moon drops.

Of Zars.

Of the pyramid.

Of the words she had not understood until the ground gave way beneath her and the sky carried her.

Balance.

She remembered the name she needed.

The highest demon.

The thirteen horned one.

Not the strongest in the simple sense.

Not the loudest.

Not the cruelest.

The highest.

The one who was not simply summoned.

The one who had to acknowledge.

Shara stood.

For one moment, she managed it.

She raised her hands over the circle.

The sea grew quieter.

Or she no longer heard it.

The battle moved away.

Or she sank deeper.

The name passed over her lips.

Not loudly.

But whole.

The air above the circle darkened.

The stone beneath her feet grew warm.

Then hot.

A new contraction tore her down.

She screamed.

Not like a warrior.

Not like a mage.

Like a woman whose body was deciding that no war in the world mattered more than birth.

She needed blood to complete the summoning.

She reached for the knife.

She was about to cut open her hand when she realised she was already bleeding.

Not from the hand.

The circle accepted what the world gave it.

A new spasm came.

Stronger.

Deep violence. Pressure. Opening. Pain that was no enemy and yet demanded everything from her. Shara could no longer keep herself on her feet. She sank back, pressed, gasped, cursed, did not pray, called no name, but clung to the edge of the circle as though she could keep the world from falling apart completely.

It went faster than she had expected.

Perhaps because it was time.

Perhaps because the summoning had opened the moment.

Perhaps because this child had been waiting for exactly this threshold all along.

Her daughter came into the world in the midst of a summoning circle.

Shara was weak.

Drenched in sweat.

Trembling.

The battle had vanished somewhere. She heard nothing now. Not the walls. Not the sea. Not the Kaula. Not the demons. Only her own breathing, hard and broken, and for one brief, terrible moment, no crying.

She took the child to herself.

Small.

Warm.

Slippery.

Alive.

“No,” whispered Shara. “No, no, no.”

She gave her the slap.

Once.

Then again.

The cry came.

Thin.

Angry.

Wonderful.

Shara laughed and wept at the same time, without knowing whether both were truly happening. With the knife she had brought for the summoning, she cut the umbilical cord. Her hands were clumsy. They trembled. She held her daughter to herself, pressed her against her breast, against her heart, against the only place that still made sense in that moment.

She did not know how long it had taken.

Perhaps moments.

Perhaps an eternity.

Everything around her was still.

Then she heard her daughter cry.

And only after that did she lift her gaze.

At the edge of the summoning circle stood him.

He looked almost human.

That was the most terrible thing about him.

Not his size. Not the darkness around him. Not the twelve horns that visibly rose from his head like a crown of night and ancient pain. The thirteenth horn was not seen like the others. It was no horn of bone or shadow. It was an empty point above his brow, an absence that weighed more heavily than anything visible.

His face was human.

Almost beautiful.

Sad, perhaps.

Or so old that grief and patience had become the same.

He looked directly at Shara.

Not at the blood.

Not at the circle.

Not first at the child.

At her.

Then he knelt.

One knee in the circle.

The highest demon lowered his head before a woman in a bloodied white underdress, who held her newborn child pressed to her breast while behind her the Fiery Fortress burned and the world stood at its final wall.

His voice was quiet.

And yet she heard it everywhere.

“Queen of Sahretûn, Shara,” he said. “What is your desire?”

15

What happened then, no one had expected.

Not the defenders.

Not the attackers.

Not Hokn`f.

Not Marabar.

Not even Mother.

Anadar stood on the battlements of the Fiery Fortress, hands raised, breath shallow, gaze fixed on the demons that hurled themselves against the walls once more. He pushed them back. Not all at once, not without effort, but with a force that had changed the rhythm of the battle. Where before one great demon at the wall had been enough to throw an entire section of defenders into panic, now it took more. Much more.

Anadar held them.

Slonda banished.

Miene and Sindra kept lines of light open, though their bodies barely still obeyed. Sinadie stood behind them, one hand on the shoulder of a student who had begun to tremble. Manador called commands. Fire ran across the wall. The dwarves struck at hands and claws that came over the parapet. Sondra threw themselves between light and smoke, appeared, killed, vanished again.

For now, everything was still battle.

Then the first demon faltered.

Not because Anadar struck it.

Not because Slonda closed his banishment.

It simply faltered.

A many horned being that a moment before had driven both claws into the stone of the wall raised its head. Its mouth opened. No roar came out. Its body trembled as though someone had cut a string inside it. The horns on its skull flickered in the air, not like fire, but like an image losing its hold.

Slonda lowered his hand.

Anadar looked at him.

Slonda looked back.

The demon dissolved.

Not with a scream.

Not with one last blow.

It did not fall. It was not dragged back. It broke apart into black dust that lay on the wall for one moment and then was carried away by the wind.

A second demon, farther down at the foot of the wall, suddenly turned around.

The summoners screamed.

Fontal heard their voices through the beginning silence. Shrill. Furious. Disbelieving. One held both arms into a circle, as though he could hold the binding fast with his hands. Another repeated the same command again and again, faster, more desperately, as though language itself were to blame for nothing obeying anymore.

The demon took a few steps toward the summoners.

Not quickly.

Not attacking.

Only free enough no longer to go in the direction into which it had been forced.

Then it too dissolved.

A third collapsed in mid run. A fourth stood upright, looked toward the sea as though recognising something there that no one else could see, and vanished. The smaller beings that had crawled from the mouths of the great demons suddenly stopped screaming. Some fell apart. Others dug claws into the ground, as though they wanted to stay, but were not permitted to. Then they too were gone.

The battle faltered.

Not completely at once.

One arrow still flew.

One dead body still crashed against a gate.

One fire mage hurled a flame at something already no longer there.

Then silence spread.

All at once.

Unnatural.

So still one could hear the wind.

So still one could hear the sea.

So still one could almost understand the desperate calls of the summoners, who spoke ever new names, opened new circles, threw fresh blood onto the ground and still achieved nothing.

Nothing came.

No tear.

No shadow.

No horn.

No demon.

Marabar stood motionless amid his circles.

His face was no longer polite.

Gochad slowly raised his head.

For the first time he did not seem shaken, but attentive in a way that unsettled even his own people. He did not look to the walls. Not to Anadar. Not to Hokn`f. His gaze went farther. Beyond the fortress. Toward the headland.

Mother stood on the wall and saw the same thing, not with her eyes, but with something deeper.

Her face turned pale.

“Shara,” she whispered.

Anadar heard the name.

He wanted to turn around.

Then the army below moved.

Hokn`f.

The Master of the Winds swelled to his full size. Not in flesh. Not in bone. But the storm around him became immense, grew beyond him, tore dust, ash, broken weapons and black earth into the air. The demons might fall silent. The summoners might fail. The dead still stood. His silent army still stood. And he himself still stood.

Hokn`f raised both arms.

“Forward!”

The silent army surged on.

Or meant to.

The first step came.

Then the second.

Then a flute sounded.

Softly.

Very softly.

And yet it was heard across the entire field.

A small melody, scarcely more than a thread of sound drawn through the silence. No march. No signal. No music of war. Something far more complicated. A sequence of notes that folded around one another, loosened again, returned, as though someone had forced the breath of a bird, the rustling of grass and the laughter of a child into a single melody.

The silent army faltered.

Hokn`f jerked his head around.

The dead stood still.

Not all in the same way. Some froze mid step. Others lowered their weapons. Still others slowly turned their heads as though listening to something that went deeper than Hokn`f’s command. The great mass that a moment before had pressed against the walls suddenly stood there like an army that had forgotten why it was dead.

The flute played on.

On an open place in the middle of the battlefield sat Morgut.

No one knew how he had come there.

Perhaps the raven had known the way.

Perhaps Morgut had found paths no one saw, because no one expected a boy to be able to walk through an army of dead if only he played the right melody. He sat on a flat stone, legs drawn up, the flute at his lips, his gaze half lowered, as though he were not playing for Hokn`f, not for the fortress, not for the world, but for the dead themselves.

His fingers moved quickly.

Surely.

Almost mockingly.

Fontal stood only a few dozen steps away.

She had seen the raven.

She had waited for a sign.

She had hoped without knowing what for.

Now she knew.

Morgut had the silent army.

Not disturbed it.

Not distracted it.

Not confused it.

He had it.

Completely.

Hokn`f understood it as well.

His face twisted.

Rage.

Disbelief.

Humiliation.

The storm around him began to waver. Not because he lacked strength, but because his order was breaking. Demons gone. Summoners useless. Silent army taken from him. And there, in the middle of the field, sat a boy playing the flute.

Hokn`f could no longer hold the vortex.

The storm collapsed in on itself.

Not all at once, but in heavy, ugly surges. Dust sank. Ash rained down. Pieces of bone clattered to the ground. Hokn`f stood in the dying wind, seeming larger than a man and smaller than ever before. No commander anymore. No master of order. Only a man from whom a child had taken the dead.

He started walking.

Not running.

Not casting.

Step by step.

Furious.

Toward Morgut.

Morgut kept playing.

A single note bent upward.

Fontal moved.

Now.

This was the moment she had been waiting for without knowing she had been waiting precisely for it. No command. No plan. No safe escape. No protection for her people. No great change of sides with raised banners. Only a back. Hokn`f’s back. His storm gone. His attention fixed completely on Morgut. His power in ruins, but still dangerous enough to kill everything that stood before him.

Fontal was closer than the others.

Closer than Hokn`f knew.

She drew the knife.

Not her mind blade.

No great spell.

A knife.

Small.

Dark.

Firm in her hand.

For one heartbeat she thought of everything that had led her here. Of the Conclave. Of Anadar, who had shown the truth. Of the Hall of Memory. Of the Sondra, who could not be taken prisoner because they preferred to die. Of From. Of her mages. Of the children she perhaps could not save. Of the wrong side on which she had stood for too long.

Then she struck.

From behind.

Hard.

Beneath the rim of the skull.

Into the brain.

Hokn`f stopped.

His body understood it before his mind did.

His hand rose as though he meant to reach for the knife, but it found only air. His mouth opened. No command came out. No storm. No final great word.

Only a soft, wet breath.

Then he collapsed.

In that moment the silent army broke as well.

Not through fire.

Not through light.

Not through banishment.

Through the end of the one who had bound it.

Bodies fell. Ranks sagged in on themselves. Bones came apart. Fresh corpses dropped to the ground like puppets without strings. Weapons slipped from dead hands. Across the entire field, an army fell back into the earth from which it should never have been raised.

Morgut played the melody to its end.

Not solemnly.

Not sadly.

He set one final note.

Bright.

Brief.

Brazenly mocking.

Then he took the flute from his lips and looked across to Hokn`f’s corpse.

On the wall, Anadar stood motionless.

Slonda beside him.

Manador slowly lowered his hand.

Sinadie closed her eyes.

Mother breathed out as though she had been holding her breath for a long time.

Fontal stood over Hokn`f, the knife still in her hand, blood on her fingers, and waited for horror, guilt, collapse.

None of it came.

Not yet.

She only felt that at last she no longer stood on the wrong side.

Then she lifted her gaze to the Fiery Fortress.

And far behind the wall, on the headland, a newborn child screamed into a world that, for one single breath, had become still.

Epilogue

Anadar looked out into the valley.

Before him, in the meadow, his daughter was playing.

Maraá.

That was what Shara and he had named her.

The child ran barefoot through the high grass, laughing at something Anadar could not see, and stretched her hands toward the little lights dancing between the flowers. Not fireflies. Not sparks. Fairies. Real, tiny fairies, scarcely larger than petals, moving from blossom to blossom and pollinating the flowers as though it were the most self evident work in the world.

Perhaps by now it was again.

Magic was returning.

Not everywhere in the same way. Not loudly. Not in one great miracle everyone could have named. It seeped into the world like water into dry earth. Into some valleys more strongly than others. Into old forests. Into forgotten springs. Into places where people had loved, fought, sacrificed and been born.

And above all here.

In this valley.

As though it drew magic to itself.

Or as though they did.

Anadar.

Shara.

Maraá.

Not far from their house stood a round domed building of pale stone, half overgrown with vines and flowering tendrils. Mother lived there. Farther back, on a low hill, rose a slender tower, in whose upper windows light often still burned in the evenings. Gnok had made himself comfortable there.

Mother and Gnok said they were too old to live together.

No one believed them.

Shara and Anadar had built themselves a house.

Not large. Not splendid. No tower, no hall, no monument. A house with broad windows, with a bench before the door, with herbs along the path and a roof on which small white flowers grew in summer. Shara had insisted that it not become a fortress. Anadar had not objected.

Several years had passed since the great battle.

The world had grown calm.

Not healed.

Not fully yet.

But calm.

Others now guided the fate of the schools, the cities and the realms. Others argued in Conclaves, wrote laws, renewed alliances, healed old wounds or tore open new ones. Manador, Sinadie, Slonda, Fontal, Zars, Klaast, Isidre, Morgut and many others carried their part in it.

Anadar heard of it.

Sometimes.

He interfered less often than many had hoped and some had feared.

Shara stepped beside him, placed one hand on his shoulder and looked out toward their daughter, who was just chasing after a fairy and almost tripped over her own shadow.

“She is going to cause trouble,” said Shara.

Anadar smiled.

“She gets that from you.”

“From me?”

“Certainly.”

Shara looked at him from the side.

“You once magicked yourself out of Sahretûn onto a besieged wall.”

“That was necessary.”

“Of course.”

“And you jumped from a tower while heavily pregnant, five hundred metres into the depths.”

Maraá suddenly stopped.

She turned her head as though she had heard something no one else could hear. Then she raised her hand. The fairies around her paused. For one tiny moment, the valley became very still.

Anadar straightened.

So did Shara.

Maraá laughed.

Then the fairies flew on as though nothing had happened.

Anadar and Shara looked at one another.

For a long time.

Then Shara sighed.

“The end?”

Anadar looked out into the valley again.

The flowers glowed in the wind.

Somewhere in the distance a voice called, perhaps only memory.

He smiled.

“I do not think so.”

Nachwort: An alle die es bis hierhin gelesen haben, danke, euch 3. Wenn ihr Kommentare habt, dann schreibt sie hier drunter, ich werde sicherlich bald die Geschichte wieder offline nehmen, sobald ich anfange sie zu editieren und überarbeite. Jetzt weiß ich wie die Geschichte ausgeht und was ich wie am anfang schreiben muss um noch mehr zu verstecken.