Aine watched the Pattern-tower in the slowly-brightening light, the play of shadows over the stone, the way the subtle colors of the stone shifted as the light changed. Cuinn wrought well, even with no one to guide him.
She was stalling, and she knew it. Better to admire the beauty of the outside of the tower than go inside and subject herself to what the interior had become.
That was unfair to those who waited for her, though. Like them, she had been a voluntary prisoner within those walls for thousands of years—and now that chance, or what passed for chance when one dealt with living magick, had freed her, she was their only contact with the world they were all still fighting to save.
She rested a hand on the chill, rough-hewn granite and closed her eyes, sensing through the stone to the space beyond it. The tower was small—only four Loremasters at a time had been able to kneel on the polished floor to yield up their magick and their souls at the Sundering—yet the interior often gave the impression of being much larger. It was larger, in a sense, since the floor represented the whole Realm, and every bit of magick therein.
I am still stalling. Grimacing, Aine reached out again, and Faded into the tower, staying as close to the wall as she could.
As soon as the cool semi-darkness had closed around her, she crossed quickly to the cushion she had brought in a handful of days ago and dropped into a wreath position. Not that sitting was any more comfortable than standing, but something about what was happening to the Pattern made it hard to stand upright for long.
Once she was settled, she steeled herself and made herself look around the chamber. If she blinded her magickal vision, she knew, all would be well. She would see the circle of granite blocks, polished on the inside where they were rough on the outside; the torches would be in their brackets, extinguished now because of the harm done by the magick that powered them; the small round window built to frame the moon would frame only a circle of pale dawn light.
But she was not here to be blind to reality.
Magickal vision overlay one reality with another; the floor of the chamber, which looked like black crystal but was in fact a representation of the whole Realm, drawn here and compressed so it could be guarded by the Loremasters who had survived the great battle with the Marfach, was swollen and turgid with the uncontrolled influx of ley energy from the human world. The web of silver lines and blue within it pulsed, straining to contain the living magick being created where the ley energy touched the air and soil and living beings of the Realm. Each line was the soul or the body of a Loremaster, stretched to the utmost.
The slightest use of Aine’s own magick, or that of any of the Loremasters, risked upsetting the precarious balance of forces. This ruled out communication by d’aos’Faen script written on the interface between the Pattern and the Realm, as they had once managed; still less could Dúlánc manifest and converse with her.
“What news, chairidi?” Aine whispered.
Stilling herself, eyes closed, hands resting palms up on her thighs, she waited. Waited for the echoes of 2,000 years spent woven together with her fellow Loremasters to resonate like a harp-string played by the wind.
Their answer was long in coming; the sun brightened, the spot of light from the window moved.
It comes. The words formed themselves within her, as they had when she had lived among them, but fainter. All we can do is hold, to the very end of our strength.
“What news of the Demesne of Purgatory?”
More time passed, more sunlight was spent. We can no longer hear them.
“Surely they have a plan.” Aine’s throat tightened. “This was our design from the beginning.”
Just for a moment, Aine thought she heard Dúlánc’s laughter. A design untested and flawed. Yet it is all we have, now. The chorus of voices was weary, yet there was a core to it as unyielding as sun-forged truesilver. We will not yield. We will stop time itself, if we must, within the Pattern.
Aine’s mouth dropped open. “You will be trapped with it. Forever.”
If we must.
How could he be so calm?
But you must be ready if we fail.
* * *
“I don’t like it down here, Jason. It’s creepy. And it’s wet.”
A girl’s voice cut through the fog shrouding the Marfach’s mind. All three of its minds struggled toward awareness, grasping the voice like a lifeline.
“Trust me.” The voice that answered was light, unctuous. Footsteps approached, two sets, pausing every once in a while to kick away debris. “I used to come down here all the time, between trains, junior year. You wanted to go someplace no one would find us, right? This is it.”
Hunger. Starvation.
A nervous giggle. “Yeah. That’s what I want. How long do we have?”
“Couple of hours, easy. Capitol tour doesn’t end until 4:00, maybe 4:30, then it’ll probably take them another 10 or 15 minutes to figure out we aren’t with the class.” More footsteps. “There used to be a mattress down here...”
“I bet it’s as wet as everything else. I say let’s do it right here.”
A gasp, a groan. “Jesus, Sydney, don’t... oh, fuck, yes...”
No words passed between the Marfach’s three persons. None were necessary. The male and the female loathed the abomination... but only it could inflict enough agony on their prey to feed them.
To prepare them for Purgatory.