Emrael lost count of the number of skirmishes he and his men had fought on their way to the Tryllan temple. What he did know was that nearly a third of his men were dead, left to rot in the streets as they retreated.
The summer sun drained their legs of energy as they ran for leagues. Sweat ran down their faces beneath padded helmets and armor. Only the injured lagged, however, and were loaded quickly into wagons when they did. The soulbound weren’t particularly fast, but never seemed to tire, and Emrael’s wounded could only march so quickly. By the time the Iraeans had marched a league, the soulbound would catch them and force another fight. Once or twice, a contingent of Westlanders had fought with the undead monsters.
Emrael led each battle himself, fighting until he was delirious with exhaustion. Most canteens had long since run dry, and stopping to refill from the water barrels in the supply wagons was out of the question. At least half of his company of Royal Guardsmen were dead or riding the wagons with the other seriously wounded.
He laughed in exhausted relief as he finally caught sight of Jaina up ahead, waving to them from the entrance to the timeworn but still-solid walls of the temple fortress. He heard many sighs of relief all around him, and they all picked up their pace without needing encouragement. Legionmen from Jaina’s advance party manned the walls with crossbows as the wagons bearing their wounded and supplies went through the stone archway at the corner of the compound. Emrael’s bowmen and the bulk of the foot soldiers followed while Emrael, his Guard, and Third Battalion formed a loose shield wall behind them. Nearly an hour had passed since they had last been attacked by soulbound, but Emrael didn’t believe for a minute that they had given up the chase. In fact, it might have been his imagination, but he thought he heard a rumbling shuffle of thousands of their tireless feet pounding their way down a nearby avenue. Absent Gods send they didn’t have any Westlander bowmen with them this time.
“Hurry through!” he shouted at his men. “Push, push. The bastards are almost on us!”
Sure enough, less than five minutes later, a small cloud of dust preceded a horde of soulbound charging down the avenue directly at them. The monsters howled and screamed as they ran in their shuffling gate, wildly swinging their heavy, rusted weapons. The greater part of Emrael’s men had made it inside, but there was no way they’d all make it in safely without another fight. Trying to hide behind wooden shields only worked so well against the fearless, inhumanly strong soulbound. And now that the majority of his men were inside the walls of the temple grounds, those outside the wall would be cut into mincemeat—including Emrael himself. They had no more explosives, and dragging the rest of his forces back out of the safety of the walled temple compound to fight a pitched battle was out of the question. Emrael would have to do something himself.
As Emrael stepped out from behind the protection of the shield wall, he shouted to the twenty or so mages that had followed him. “Timan, give me Yirram and a few more, and you take the other Stonebreakers to the other side of the avenue. We’ll bring down enough buildings to block the road. That should give us time to retreat and secure the walls of the compound.”
Timan nodded and assigned Daglund and seven other men and women to Emrael quickly, leading the rest down the avenue in the other direction. Emrael and Yirram, the blocky Imperator Stonebreaker who had trained him often in recent months, wasted no time in finding the largest stone building on their side of the street, a huge six-story edifice made of white limestone.
Yirram immediately began inspecting the stone walls at the ground level that supported the enormous structure, running his thick, meaty hands over the stone the way another man would touch his lover. “The trick will be weakening the stone just enough that it will tumble, but not immediately. These rotten buildings could collapse any which way, crushing us all if we are not careful.” He gave Emrael a long look, a sardonic slant to one corner of his mouth. “Which means that you should stand back while I work.”
Despite his exhaustion and the impending danger, Emrael chuckled. Yirram wasn’t wrong, but they didn’t have time for one person to bring down the entire building. Already they could hear the stomping feet of soulbound drawing nearer.
“No time for you to dally, Yirram,” Emrael joked. “You start here, I’ll begin weakening the other side. If we cut clean through the front wall here, weaken the sides, and leave the rear wall intact, it should collapse right into the street like we want. Leave a good bit solid toward the back and I’ll give it a push when we’ve got everyone clear.” He jogged to his side of the building and called out to the rest of the team of mages—two more Ordenan Imperators and six Iraean apprentices—asking them to watch the perimeter of the building.
Emrael put his hand to the pouch on his belt and drew on a charged coil he had snagged from a supply wagon in their hasty retreat to the temple compound, as his armor had long since been depleted. Demolishing a wide swath of stone at the front of the building was simple enough, though the building groaned ominously each time he destroyed an arm’s-width portion of stone. Weakening the stone on the side of the building was far more difficult. Weaken even one section too much and the whole building would crash down on their heads. Much of the sweat now rolling down Emrael’s forehead had nothing to do with physical exertion, or even the physical toll of working with so much infusori.
Yirram finished well before he did—the man had been practicing the mage Art for decades, after all—and helped him on his side. Finally they finished and Emrael called to the other mages as they exited the gaping rectangular entrance to the building where large doors would have once stood.
Soulbound were just visible down the avenue, perhaps two hundred paces to the north and west. Screams and the clash of steel on shields told them that fighting had already started to the south where their men had formed a shield wall to block the wide street. They didn’t have much time.
Emrael led the way down a side alley to the rear of the enormous building they had just weakened. He issued quick orders for the rest of the mages to stand back while he and Yirram prepared to bring the building down for good.
As Yirram put his hands to the building’s rear wall, his large muscles bulged and rippled as if he were going to push the building over with brute physical force.
“Wait,” Emrael barked. Yirram looked at him quizzically.
“Listen,” Emrael said.
The shuffle of the soulbound grew louder and louder, but because they traveled as a mindless herd, they kept to the main avenue where their Malithii masters drove them. The mages were relatively safe in their alleyway.
“Wait for the Malithii to reach the building. Might as well take out some of the bastards while we’re here.”
They hardly breathed as they watched a dense mass of soulbound begin to pass the other end of the long alleyway to the side of their building. When they judged enough had passed that their Malithii masters were likely nearby, Emrael nodded to Yirram, who put his hands back to the stone wall. An instant later, Emrael felt a burst of infusori flow from the Imperator’s hands. A loud crack made them all flinch involuntarily, and then the building in front of them groaned ominously.
“Run!” Yirram shouted, putting a hand to Emrael’s back to give him a shove. They sprinted back toward the temple compound, but a few of the mages were too slow. A pretty red-haired young woman Emrael didn’t know by name and Daglund had been at the far side of the alleyway farthest from the temple compound and thus had the farthest to run.
Most of the building collapsed into the wide avenue just as they had planned, undoubtedly crushing hundreds of soulbound and hopefully their Malithii masters with them. A large portion of the rear wall had stayed intact, however, and now rebounded as the rest of the building snapped away from it.
Emrael felt as much as saw the large section of stone wall begin to tip back toward them. Daglund and the redhead had no chance to outrun the thousands of pounds of falling rock.
Emrael turned as quick as thought, already pulling the last of the infusori from his coils as he reversed course. He met Daglund and the redhead just before an enormous stone block fell on them. Emrael stretched his arms above his head and poured infusori into the stone at the exact moment that it made contact with his fingers. Infusori washed through the falling stone in a wave, turning it to sand even as it fell on them.
He was buried to the neck in the resulting enormous pile of powdery sand, and Daglund to the shoulders. Only a shock of auburn hair showed where the pretty young mage had been. Daglund struggled free and began digging her out frantically as Emrael thrashed, trying to create room to dig himself free. The other mages were there in a few moments that felt like years.
“Alsi!” one of the other Iraean mages cried as she leapt to help unbury the redhead. They finally uncovered her face, which was covered in snot, drool, and caked sand as the poor girl coughed and struggled for air. At least she was alive. That was a win in Emrael’s book, considering that the alternative would have been a puddle of gore under a large heap of limestone.
Now exhausted nearly to the point of delirium, Emrael stopped struggling as Yirram and another Imperator dug him free, yanking him out by the shoulders when they dug down far enough to get a grip on him. He stumbled as he climbed down from the small hill the sand had created, and finally his legs gave out.
Yirram was there to lend a hand again. “Sweet Sisters, lad. I have never seen anything like that,” he said as he hauled Emrael to his feet. The bulky Imperator waved one hand over his head to mimic what Emrael had done. “Do you even know how stupid that was?”
Emrael smiled through the exhaustion that made him want to empty his stomach. “No, not really. Guess this makes me the best Stonebreaker in the group now, eh?”
Yirram chuckled. “Long way to go yet, boy, but you will be showing me that trick again if I have to throw rocks at you every day for the rest of your life.”
Emrael grunted a chuckle and turned to where the others had just freed the red-haired girl, Alsi. “She okay?”
Alsi herself nodded even as she continued to cough and retch. “Just need some water,” she rasped.
“Let’s get back to the compound then,” he said. “Four-rank formation, Alsi in the middle. There are going to be stray soulbound and perhaps a Malithii or two between us and the gate.” He waved a hand tiredly at where the alley they were in ended in a stone wall. They would have to venture back into the main avenue to get to safety, as the walls of the compound were too high to scale quickly.
When they reached the main avenue, they found dozens of dust-covered soulbound lurching about in a rage. Many of them sported several crossbow bolts shot by the Iraeans guarding the temple compound but still wandered about looking for something to kill, not yet having bled to death.
Emrael let the others take the lead, content to be in the second rank, tired as he was. They moved swiftly and quietly, striking down soulbound only where they had to.
As the group emerged from the haze of dust fifty paces or so from the temple gate, several crossbow bolts flew toward them as a cry of alarm was raised.
“Don’t shoot, you Fallen idiots!” Emrael screamed hoarsely. “Don’t shoot, we’re friendly!”
Another bolt flashed in their direction as he shouted. A jolt of panic coursed through him as he thought it would take him full in the chest, but the Iraean mage just in front of him moved just enough to take the bolt instead. It hit the man in the upper arm and stuck there, likely having struck the bone.
Emrael caught the injured mage as he fell, but stumbled and nearly fell himself. The man cried out in pain as Emrael lowered him to the ground, and quickly lost consciousness. He would probably lose the arm, if he didn’t die before they got him to safety.
Fallen Glory, what Emrael would have given for a Mage-Healer.
The commotion caught the attention of a group of soulbound that had been hacking away at the ranks of Iraeans still defending the gate in a shield wall. A dozen or so of the beasts turned and lumbered straight at the mages with him, who had no shields to protect themselves. The mages in the front ranks parried the powerful soulbound blows desperately as they met their charge, and in the blink of an eye the soulbound were right in the middle of their formation.
Emrael was forced to abandon the injured mage as a soulbound charged straight at them. He didn’t have time to draw his weapon, so he ducked the wild swing and used its momentum to redirect it, tripping the soulbound with one leg as it passed him. He had his weapon out in a flash, battle rage giving his spent muscles renewed strength. His sword cut cleanly through the soulbound’s neck as it tried to regain its feet. The monster collapsed, its spine severed.
A scream to his left made him whip his head around in time to see one of the Iraean mages spitted on a soulbound’s sword, its vicious thrust having punched straight through his leather and metal plate armor. The soulbound tried to shake the mage’s body from its weapon with powerful heaves of its arm. The fatally wounded mage gasped in pain, blood flowing from his mouth and the wound in his gut. Emrael screamed in rage as he swung his own blade.
His tired body wasn’t obeying him perfectly anymore, and his aim suffered for it. Instead of taking the soulbound through the neck as he intended, the last two inches of his sword lodged in the soulbound’s skull. The soulbound dropped instantly, taking Emrael’s weapon with it.
He dropped to the ground, reaching for his hilt. A whoosh of a weapon slicing through the air above him made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He had just avoided being chopped in half by pure chance. When he couldn’t shake his sword free, he rolled as quickly as he could to regain his feet, drawing the short sword at his side. The soulbound that had just tried to split him in two lunged to grab Emrael with an impossibly strong two-armed bear hug, tackling him back to the ground.
Emrael’s nostrils filled with the fetid stench of the half-dead soulbound as he struggled in vain to free his arms from the monster’s grip. The soulbound atop him no longer tried to use its weapon either, opting instead to bite with broken, yellow teeth at Emrael’s neck, where only a thin collar of chain mail protected him. He pushed with all his might, even dredging up the last vestiges of infusori left in his body to fuel his strength, but couldn’t break the monster’s hold on him. A piercing pain and warm wetness on his shoulder told him that the soulbound had broken skin.
A calm came over him, Jaina’s years of training kicking in when he needed it most. Rather than try to fight with brute strength, he elevated his hips, put one foot under him, and twisted violently so he was now on top of the soulbound. He was still locked in its arms, but now he was free to pull his head and neck away from his attacker. He spun to the side, finally freeing one arm, though he had to drop his short sword to do it. He put his free arm into the soulbound’s neck, keeping its teeth away from him. Its tight grip limited his breathing, however, and was so powerful that he thought his ribs might break. He needed to get out of this thing’s grasp, and evidently nobody was going to do it for him.
Desperate, he touched the soulbound’s bare skin with his hand, opening himself to its life source, intending to kill the monster by absorbing it as he had done occasionally with human opponents.
When he opened himself to the soulbound’s life source, however, he recoiled involuntarily, shutting off all contact as quickly as he could. Even still, he began to retch at even the brief exposure to the creature’s putrid, corrupted life source. Worse, he was left with the distinct impression that the person within this twisted creature felt everything—felt its own body decaying, felt the pain of every injury, sorrow at what it was forced to do by the Malithii controlling its soulbinder. It was still a person, trapped in a living nightmare.
Emrael snapped back to reality. He didn’t have time to pity the soulbound, who was still squeezing the life out of him and attempting to sink its cragged teeth into his exposed flesh.
A boot stomped near Emrael’s head and a sword flashed just to the left of his face, spearing the soulbound through the eye. The grey-skinned creature sank back to the ground with a sigh, finally releasing him.
“No time for lying about,” Daglund said, pulling Emrael to his feet by the collar of his armored vest. All of the soulbound who had attacked them were dead, but there were more already clambering over the enormous heap of rubble behind them. Daglund began to pull Emrael toward the safety of the temple compound, where all of the Iraeans had finally made it inside the walls, but Emrael resisted.
“Wait!” he barked, pulling free of his guard’s steadying grip. He stumbled back to where he had dropped his sword, wrenching it from the soulbound’s skull with a whip of his arm. He secured his short sword as well and resheathed both quickly before he jogged back to where the mage who had taken an arrow to the arm still lay unconscious. Emrael felt his pulse to make sure he was still alive and called Daglund and another Iraean over to carry the man to safety. He followed them to the gate, where three ranks of shields still held, waiting for the party of mages to make it back to the compound, which encompassed dozens of buildings that surrounded the ancient Ravan temple.
Jaina, a concerned expression on her face, met him as soon as he was through the ranks of shields. “What took you so long?” Then, when he stumbled on one knee, she put a hand to the blood running down his arm and said, “Where are you bleeding?”
“My neck,” he said, lurching to his feet. “One of the soulbound bit me. Can you believe that? Is there somewhere I can rest? I can barely see straight.”
Jaina, however, was already shouting for a healer to bring boiling water, distilled alcohol, and some bandages. She pulled him into a nearby building and sat him down on a crate while she continued shouting until two Legion healers came running with the supplies she had demanded. Emrael’s serving man, Jorim, came running as well, fresh clothing and travel rations in hand.
“It’s only a minor wound, Jaina,” Emrael said, confused at the ferocity with which she was removing the armor and clothing covering his bite wound.
She looked at him, her dark eyes haunted, her mouth set in a worried frown. “No, Emrael. Soulbound can transmit terrible diseases with their bite. We must disinfect it immediately.”
He grimaced. Disinfecting was going to hurt. “The alcohol will take care of it?” he asked hopefully.
She pulled the cork from a glass bottle of distilled alcohol that the healers kept for just such an occasion. “No, but we have to try. If we do not get you to a Mage-Healer within three days, there is an even chance you will die of a terrible fever. Even if you do not die, your mind might be ruined forever. It happens every so often in the Imperial Army. Most often, those that are stupid enough to wrestle with soulbound do not live to worry about the illness.”
“Daglund seems to be fine now,” Emrael suggested. “Couldn’t he just Heal it?”
Jaina shook her head. “He is a decent battlefield Healer, but nowhere near experienced enough to burn away a disease safely. Not until we have no other choice.”
She pulled Emrael’s armor from him and accepted a stiff-bristled brush from a healer, while the other healer bathed the wound with a cloth and warm water.
“You will not enjoy this,” Jaina said, pity in her eyes. She turned to the two healers. “Hold him still.”
“I’ll be fine, Jaina,” he said, waving them away. “I don’t need to be held.”
She raised one eyebrow skeptically, but shrugged and poured a good quarter of the bottle of alcohol over his shoulder before starting in with the brush.
Emrael had to choke back a scream when the alcohol burned its way into his shoulder, but when the brush began scouring the chewed-up flesh, he felt his head spin and his vision faded.
Emrael jerked awake to find Jaina tenderly dressing his neck, his shoulder, and the forearm that had been wounded days earlier. She put a warm hand to his chest, pressing him back down on the cot he had been moved to while unconscious. “Lie still a moment.”
The smell of distilled alcohol still permeated the air. Jorim and the healers were gone—they were alone in a small tent that had been set up away from the fighting at the gate, judging by the now-muted sound of bowstrings snapping. He no longer heard the crash of weapons on shields, nor the chorus of shouting that accompanied close quarters battle, so his men must have succeeded in blockading the gate opening.
Emrael sat quiet for a moment as his friend tended to his wounds, which now throbbed with a deep, burning pain, reliving the recent battle and his unfortunate encounter with the soulbound’s life source.
He looked up sharply as he recalled the crossbow bolt that would have hit him square in the chest had it not hit the mage in front of him instead. “Did Timan make it back?”
She nodded. “Yes, but he’s being treated. Took a cut to the leg. He will need to rest for some time.”
Emrael grimaced. “Jaina, I need you to find the man who shot at me as we approached the gate.”
She glanced at him, mildly surprised. “It was an honest accident, Emrael. We could hardly see and had been shooting at soulbound. Your troops are far from experts, besides.”
Emrael began to shake his head, but stopped as it caused a searing flash of pain in his neck. “Check the bolt lodged in the mage’s arm … I don’t know his name, but he took that bolt for me, Jaina. It was aimed directly at me, in the middle of the formation. Someone within our forces killed Darrain earlier, as we retreated from the square. Shot in the back. Looked like a Watcher bolt to me.”
Jaina’s jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed. She hadn’t known about Darrain. “I’ll look into it,” she said, her voice hard. She had liked the clever Crafter.
“Now,” she said, standing. “Keep your bandages clean and dry, and rest. I am going to look around the Ravan temple. Perhaps I can find something like Crafted healing aids.”
Emrael smiled. “I thought temple Craftings were too dangerous to go sifting through?”
She frowned and arched an eyebrow. “Assumption of risk is warranted in this instance.” Her eyes flicked to his bandaged neck. “You will die without intervention.”
Emrael’s smile faded. “And a Crafted healing aid would do the trick?”
She shook her head and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I do not know, but we should try. It will be difficult to reach a Mage-Healer in time.”
“Don’t bother, then. I’ll go down into the temple later. I can pull enough infusori from the Well to do more than a Crafting could.”
She wagged her head, thinking. “It is not the same, and will not heal you. It may, however, buy you a little more time, or keep you functional longer at the very least. The excess infusori may purge some of the illness the soulbound has passed to you, keep it at bay. It is worth a try.”
Emrael tensed his muscles in anticipation of pain and rocked himself out of the cot and to his feet. Sure enough, his neck and shoulder felt like they were on fire, and his forearm throbbed with a dull ache. He had almost forgotten about his arm.
“Let’s go take a look at the crossbow bolt in our friend’s arm first,” he said gruffly as he breathed deep through the surging pain.
He used his good arm to pull his boots on and shrugged on his armor with Jorim’s help, then walked out of the tent after stamping his feet a few times to make sure his legs would hold him. Absent Gods, he was tired.
As he followed Jaina out of the tent, a few nearby men—the injured and those tending them, mostly—raised a quiet cheer. Emrael waved to them as he passed.
Jaina finally stopped next to a large tent and held the flap aside for him. Inside, the poor Iraean mage who had been struck in the arm lay on a cot of his own, still unconscious. One of the Legion healers had cut the mage’s uniform away to expose the wound, the crossbow bolt still protruding from a puckered, swollen gash. Sure enough, the bolt looked like those the Watchers carried, dyed pure black.
Timan limped into the tent as Emrael and Jaina discussed treatment options with the healer, who wanted to amputate the arm to prevent infection and death. The mage’s arm had swollen significantly, but even still it was obvious that the bone had been broken by the crossbow bolt.
“You are not taking Boran’s arm,” Timan told the healer gruffly. “He is one of our best swords. Dairus can heal him, we just need to get back to the main compound. Assuming Dairus is still alive.” He looked to Emrael. “We have a plan to get across the river to your brother, right?”
Emrael grimaced. “Not yet, but we will.”
“And it has to be soon,” Jaina added.
Timan’s eyes flicked to Emrael’s bandages. “Why? What happened?”
“An alai’ahn bit him,” she replied.
“Shit,” Timan growled, eyes now pinched with worry. “I will gather the Captains right away. We will be at the temple in an hour to plan the next move.”
He turned to leave immediately, but looked back once as he reached the tent flap. “I have two of the Guard tailing you today, even in the camp. Make it easy for them, would you? And do not allow them to take Boran’s arm. I will let Daglund have a run at him before we resort to that.”
The Legion healer didn’t look happy. “I can keep him alive a few days, but he’ll need to ride in a wagon with the other seriously wounded.”
Emrael grunted. “Begin planning a move, please, for all of your patients. We’ll likely move again sometime during the night.”
As he and Jaina strode out of the tent, something occurred to him and he looked to Jaina, his eyes wide. “Soulbound can’t see any better than we can in the dark, can they?”
She shook her head. “No, and it’s common practice in the Ordenan army to move at night, as the Malithii struggle to organize their Mindless in the dark. They can do it, but not easily.”
Daglund and Alsi—still covered in stone dust from the mishap with the collapsing building—turned out to be the members of the Royal Guard assigned to follow Emrael today. Emrael and Jaina walked the perimeter of the compound so Emrael could see the measures they had taken to barricade several gaps in the compound wall. Most had been shored up with blocks of stone piled into the gaps, but here and there holes had only been stopped up with broken supply carts, camp equipment, anything that had been on hand. Such poor defenses would never hold against the mindless ferocity of the soulbound, even with men stationed all along the walls, crossbows ready to decimate the enemy. Even with solid walls, however, they had no supplies and wouldn’t last long. Their best hope lay in moving across the river before the Malithii could herd the bulk of their army here.
They reached the portion of the compound where Darmon and his Watchers had set up their tents and were seeing to their hundreds of wounded. Rows and rows of cots filled with men wrapped in blood-soaked bandages filled the broken buildings, streets, and small square where they had set up their camp. Darmon himself walked the lines, a bandage around his head. When he saw Emrael approaching, he bowed deeply, and the Watcher officers with him followed suit.
Despite his show of humility and the Watchers’ valiant efforts in the earlier battle, Emrael had to suppress a surge of anger when he saw his old enemy. He of all people knew that their war with the forces of the Fallen would require him to ally with anyone willing, but that didn’t mean all was forgiven. Certainly not forgotten. A Watcher crossbow bolt had been one arm away from punching through Emrael’s heart a few hours ago, after all.
“One of my mages has a Watcher crossbow bolt in his arm, Darmon.”
Darmon’s eyebrows drew down in concern. “It has been an awful day, Emrael. Thousands of my men are dead, thousands more wounded,” he said, waving his hands in a wide arc. “Mistakes happen, Emrael, but I assure you—”
“It was aimed at me, Darmon,” Emrael growled, stepping closer to stare up into Darmon’s eyes. “My best Crafter is also dead, a bolt in her back. A suspicious man might wonder whether a bastard like you has ulterior motives in forming an alliance with an old enemy.”
Darmon’s face blanched as he saw the rage in Emrael’s eyes. “Emrael—”
Emrael’s mouth tightened.
“Ah … Lord Ire…”
Emrael nodded slightly, and Darmon continued, eyes wide with caution. “I’ll look into it myself. I swear on the Faceless Gods and on my life, my pledge was made in good faith. But … it’s possible that the Malithii have an agent among my men. I’ve seen devices they use, Craftings that give them a measure of control over their victims.”
Darmon had the grace to look embarrassed. He had used variations of mindbinders when he had helped the Malithii take the Crafters at the Citadel hostage.
Emrael took a deep breath, breaking his stare to look around at the Watchers. Nearly everyone had some wound or another. They had fought well, Darmon included.
“We call them mindbinders,” Emrael allowed grudgingly. “I’ll assign a pair of my surviving mages to you. They’ll know how to check your men for such Craftings. Have you seen the Malithii use them often?”
Darmon shook his head as he ran his hand along his jaw. “They seem to have very few. I only saw their most senior priest use them, and usually on high-value targets.”
Emrael looked over at Jaina. “As you suspected.”
Darmon looked worried. “I wouldn’t have thought to see one here, particularly on a soldier. Whoever placed it would have had to do so well ahead of time and would have had to anticipate that I’d be here, with you. Either that, or—”
“They’re still here,” Emrael finished grimly. “Inspect your men carefully, Darmon. I will hold you accountable for any further incidents, mindbinders or no. Darrain was a friend.”
Darmon looked like he wanted to say more, but wisely held his tongue. Emrael was in no mood for anything but agreement from Darmon and his ilk.
“I want you and your officers to meet me and mine at the temple building at the center of the compound in an hour. I’ll have orders.”
Darmon saluted sharply, and the Watcher officers with him followed suit.
Jaina immediately shepherded him to the temple itself, obviously anxious to search for a Crafting that might be of use in healing Emrael’s wound. The temple’s outer foyer had been left unoccupied and the door to the temple itself remained closed—only a mage could open it, after all, and those who weren’t injured or otherwise recovering were undoubtedly assigned to the walls. Daglund and Alsi silently took up positions at the single door leading into the foyer from outside while Emrael crossed straight to the infusori-activated doorway.
“We do not have much time, Emrael,” Jaina said as he opened the doorway with a quick pulse of infusori. “Stay in the temple as long as you can, and hold as much infusori as you are able. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it will heal you.”
They descended the stairs into the ancient Ravan temple. The inscription in the walls began to glow before they reached the bottom landing, almost as if the ancient structure were greeting them. As soon as he entered the temple, he felt the tingle of infusori all around him. He started down the hallway of the temple, pulling infusori in greedily, letting its energy wash through him. The immense amount of power coursing through him didn’t take away his pain and soul-crushing weariness, but it made them easier to live with.
“What is your plan to get across the bridges?” Jaina asked as she followed him down the temple hallway. “The Malithii and Watchers still obeying them will undoubtedly move quickly to secure them, or even destroy them. If that happens, we will die.”
Emrael slowed until he could see Jaina as she walked beside him. “We’ll move as soon as it’s dark. Standard box and wedge, five ranks deep, bowmen then horse in the center. When we get to the bridges, we’ll have the bowmen hit them with crossfire at angles while our pikes push theirs. We’ll have to move fast to keep from being taken from behind by soulbound, but I don’t see what else we can do. If we stay, we die. If we run, we die. And our men trapped to the south die as well. A lot of us will die anyway but it’s our only option that entails some chance of success, so we’ll hit it hard. Or did you have a better plan up your sleeve?”
When Jaina glared at him silently, he grumbled, “Exactly.”
Though he already had the pulsing power of the temple’s infusori Well flowing through him, he walked purposefully down the long hallway to the last room, where he knew the book of visions waited for him. He could not have said why he felt the need to go so far into the depths of the temple—he didn’t plan to spend time perusing the book of visions. His Captains would be waiting for him, not to mention the preparations for the impending battle. The power within him seemed to grow in intensity as he walked deeper into the structure, however, and he figured that if a little infusori might help him, a lot of infusori had a better chance still.
He locked eyes with Jaina as he stopped at the doorway to the chamber that held the book of visions. “How long do you think I need to stay down here?”
She shrugged. “Hold as much infusori as you can. If it is going to work, ten or twenty minutes should be sufficient.”
He pulled harder at the infusori surrounding him, filling himself with so much that he felt every element of his being vibrating in time with its pulse. Jaina watched, and though she showed no obvious emotion, he knew her well enough to see that she was nervous. Why should she be? He felt better than he had in ages, injuries or no.
He smiled, touching her shoulder briefly as he stepped into the room holding the book of visions. He was already here, he might as well take a quick look.
The moment he stepped through the doorway, a solid metal door he hadn’t known existed slid out of the doorframe behind him. Jaina sprang back into the hallway with a yelp as it slammed shut, only narrowly avoiding being crushed.
Emrael was left in the room, alone with the book of visions. He looked around with wide eyes, a sudden surge of fear pushing him to a state of heightened alertness. The copper-inlaid script in the walls stopped glowing, plunging the room into darkness. Only a small pattern of angular script in the ceiling continued to glow, but did almost nothing to light the room.
“Absent Gods,” he muttered to himself as he edged back toward the door.
This felt all too much like one of the visions, particularly the one of the Fallen himself that had been forced on him by way of the mad Prophet, Savian. If Jaina was making any noise on the other side of the wall, he couldn’t hear it. He put his hand to the cold metal surface of the door after he backed up into it, sending a surge of infusori to open it as he would have any of the other doors in this place.
Nothing.