Thyran lay without moving or breathing. His face no longer looked like it had ever belonged to a human, and his throat was halfway caved in, but Vivian didn’t believe in taking chances. Kneeling so she didn’t fall, she took his head from his body, then stabbed Ulamir through the spot where his heart had been at some point. The bones put up no greater resistance than paper.
Everything was smaller after it had died.
That was one task done. She didn’t want the next one, the most vital, and what she wanted had very rarely mattered.
The few feet of mirrors between her and Olvir stretched to miles. He was in the same position, but light began to flicker around his hands where they clasped the knife.
Vivian couldn’t make out the light’s color, nor did she know what message she would’ve taken from it if she could have. Would Gizath’s power indicate the Traitor’s personality? Would Olvir just use what was available, unchanged? Was his mind slipping away as he sat there, with Gizath’s influence or not?
Another few limping steps left her sweating, out of breath, and dizzy from the effort. She suspected she’d sobbed in the process a few times. Tears were running down her cheeks. She only realized it when she tasted the salt.
Olvir was less than a foot in front of her. He didn’t turn at her approach. His hands were glowing orange. Vivian thought it might be a brighter shade than she’d seen from Gizath’s servants. She knew that she could be seeing it through the prism of her hopes.
There wouldn’t be a lot of time, if she was wrong about him.
She started to raise Ulamir, to hold the blade ready for the downward stroke. It wouldn’t be easy with a wounded leg, but it was the only method Vivian could see. Her arms screamed as she began to lift the sword.
No, said a voice in her head. It was a low alto, not remotely close to Ulamir’s, and yet familiar.
Her leg was healed in an instant, whole as if Thyran’s arts had never touched it. Vivian froze. Reflexes and training both told her to shift her balance, to find a firmer stance now that her body would let her. Amazement and confusion held her still.
Wait, the voice said.
Vivian had never heard the speaker before. The voice filled her mind, drowning out all else, but she knew it was only the faint shadow of a greater force. She wasn’t built to bear more than that. That echo was already power far in excess of any she’d ever encountered.
She’d felt a hint of it once, though. The presence had been far less immediate, it had been watching rather than speaking, but it had been with her at her Reforging.
* * *
Olvir recognized the speaker almost as soon as he’d worked out where he was. The confused distress in the mental voice struck him before any sense of awe could. Veryon, ancient or not, legendary or not, sounded similar to a dozen people Olvir had heard stunned by fire, flood, or banditry.
A lifetime in Tinival’s service told him how to respond.
“I’m not,” he said to the gem, calm but emphatic. “I’ll explain, I promise, but I’ve an urgent duty to perform first, one that I swear will harm nobody.”
He was still mortal: the effort he’d used to kill Thyran hadn’t left him seriously depleted, but Olvir could tell that his power was finite. Time was finite too. Each moment the storms lasted was one of more potential destruction.
I cannot doubt you,said Veryon, speech seeming as though it came a little easier now.I know not why that should be either. Yet I will wait.
“Thank you,” said Olvir and turned his attention to the task for which he’d come to the Battlefield.
The patterns of wind, rain, and cold were obvious now, as were the ways Thyran and Gizath had twisted them out of their natural paths. They shrieked at one another in reverberating echoes that fed on themselves and gained strength. Only a whisper had made it over the mountains, but following that back to its source was an easy matter.
Silencing the discordant core of the storms would simply require Olvir to shout louder than they did. The force was channeled into much more complicated forms than Thyran’s ties had been, though. Severed, those strands could lash about, uncontrolled—perhaps leading to some portion of the destruction that had happened after Thyran’s first defeat, perhaps causing other sorts of damage, perhaps dissipating harmlessly.
Olvir couldn’t take the chance. Slowly, clumsy at first but becoming defter as he went on, he found one of the individual notes and hushed it, then followed to the next. He felt Veryon within his consciousness during the whole process, observing with wonder as well as with disgust that the tangle existed in the first place.
The storms’ fury settled as Olvir worked. In distant lands, blizzard winds died. Patches of blue sky appeared among the clouds. People in camps or on battlefields peered up at them, wondering, not yet daring to hope.
One after another, the strands of stormy air drifted away.
That was nobly done,said Veryon at the end.Craft that any of my people or the Weaving Lady could be proud of—or healing that—The voice faltered.
“Thank you,” Olvir said again.
He sat back, only then aware of the Battlefield and the knife. He knew that Vivian stood behind him, waiting. Ulamir was in her hand, but she held the sword by her side, not ready to strike.
The blade might have reassured her, or she might have heard Olvir talking. He wished he could give her some other sign, but he would collapse the moment he stopped working. He didn’t want to stop, not just yet.
