L. Modesitt - Imager's challenge

The voices diminished, and I trusted that was because they were ascending the tower through an internal staircase. Through the spyglass, I began to study the top of the tower. For a time, I saw no one at all.

Finally, Ryel appeared, standing against the crenellated southern wall of the tower. He gestured expansively, pointing toward one of the placarded trees. I eased the telescope farther left, catching sight of a face I did not know, then another.

Where was Dulyk? I kept scanning the tower, but I still could not see the younger Ryel as the other four High Holders clustered around Ryel and gestured in slightly varying directions, presumably toward different trees.

Abruptly Dulyk appeared beside his sire, holding what looked to be a small golden tree of some sort. That meant there were at least six people on the top of the tower, all High Holders.

Did I dare go ahead?

I lowered the telescope. Did I really have any choice? My opportunities were few, my resources fewer, especially if I did not want overt signs pointing back to me and my family. As Master Dichartyn had pointed out, unless there was proof, people could surmise, but they could not act against or through the Collegium, Council, or Civic Patrol.

Based on my experiments with the walls of the old mill, I’d decided against even trying to image out the mortar. That wouldn’t collapse the tower, and it would warn people. I needed to do what was necessary quickly-and all at once. Unfortunately, I hadn’t practiced my technique extensively, not the way Maitre Dyana would have wished, but how did one really practice destroying entire buildings in a city where one’s duty was to protect the people and their dwellings?

As I concentrated on imaging out whole sections of the base of the tower, I focused on drawing energy from everywhere around me, but especially from the gardens and the stream. My mouth was dry, and I was all too conscious of a strange stillness that had descended upon the estate as if time had slowed to a stop, even every sound frozen as if part of a portrait that held not only colors and shapes, but sounds, energies, textures-everything that comprised the world.

Rising into the pale blue sky to the north, seemingly all too close, was the tower. While the tower seemed to shudder, it did not move. I forged more links, some to the stream, some to the trees, others to whatever might take those thin unseen image-wires.

The base of the tower exploded, with huge chunks of stone spinning outward. The sound was so great that there was no sound at all, only a tremendous sense of pressure that enfolded me and my shields. Fragments of stone crashed into my shields.

I could feel myself being hurled backward, then rolling downhill.

Blackness surrounded me . . . but not for all that long. Then I was looking upward, if at an angle from the base of a oak, toward where the tower had been. Dust had settled out of the sky onto a pile of rubble. Absently, I noted that all the damage to the tower and terrace appeared to have been to the south. There were a few gashes on the stonework of the south wing of the chateau, but little more. The terrace walls and the lower section of the staircase had partly collapsed as well.

My back and legs felt numb, but they seemed to work as I worked my way into a sitting, and then a standing position. As I half expected, my entire skull throbbed, and my vision blurred, with whitish stars flashing before my eyes intermittently.

Suddenly I was chilled to the bone, and my entire body began to shiver. I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other as I started back toward the wall and the western part of the stream where I’d entered the estate.

One step, then another, and a third.

Abruptly hard rain began to fall, except that it wasn’t rain, but tiny droplets of frozen water, an ice rain, and I realized that I was still holding the telescope. I fumbled it inside my cloak and inside my waistcoat, not wanting to leave it behind. At that thought I almost laughed.

I’d just imaged a disaster, a certain indication of an imager, and I was worried about leaving a telescope behind?

As I tried to move faster, I began to hear again, and the loudest sound was that of the guard dogs howling, but it wasn’t the baying of dogs seeking a quarry. It was a different howl, one almost of fear. I could but hope that they remained in their kennel and fearful for a time longer.

By now the sun had dropped behind the hill to the south, and I could hear cries and voices from the terrace, women’s cries mostly. I hurried onward, my boots crunching on what seemed to be icy sand, and I realized that I was fully exposed to anyone who looked my way, because I had no shields, and there were no trees and no bushes near me, just a form of icy dust that did not quite swirl under my unsteady boots. From what I could tell, no one had looked my way, or if they had, they hadn’t raised an alarm.

As I neared the gap in the walls where the stream left the grounds, I knew I could not re image the bridge I’d used to enter. I’d just have to take my chances with the stream. I was having enough difficulty walking and could not even raise minimal shields as I staggered down toward the pair of walls flanking the stream. When I got there, I realized I didn’t have to worry about a bridge. The stream was frozen solid.

I did have to worry about the ice, though. I slipped and fell twice-hard-before I struggled to my feet outside the wall. Walking uphill toward the mare was hard, but the ground underfoot outside the wall was not icy or slippery.

Even so, it took much of my remaining strength to clamber up into the saddle, and my entire body continued to shake as the mare began to walk back uphill, southward through the twilight toward L’Excelsis. The ride back to NordEste Design was precarious, not because the mare was fractious, but because I could barely manage to stay in the saddle.

How long it took, I didn’t know, only that it was late twilight when I turned the mare into the open courtyard gate of NordEste Design. I must have taken half a quint to cover the last fifty yards to the stable. That was the way it felt.

Seliora had appeared from somewhere and was standing beside the mare. She helped me down. Her face seemed to move nearer and then away.

“Done . . .” I managed.

Then darkness, not that of twilight or night, but another kind, dropped over me like instant sunset.

I woke up stretched out in a bed in an unfamiliar chamber. Seliora was sitting beside me, her face pinched in worry. That I could see even though she appeared blurred.

Seliora bent forward. She held a tall glass of amber liquid. “It’s lager. I know you like wine better, but Mother says the lager will help you regain your strength sooner.”

Weak as I was, I wasn’t about to argue as she helped me sit up and I began to drink. Some of the fuzziness in my sight diminished by the time I’d finished the lager, and I didn’t feel as though I’d topple over if pushed by the slightest of breezes. I also recognized the chamber. It was the room where I’d changed into exercise clothes when I’d first gone in the wagon to study the Ryel estate.

Seliora tendered something like a sweet cake. “Eat this.”

Whatever it was, it also helped within moments, and I began to think I might actually recover.

“I was so worried,” she finally said. “It got later and later, and darker and darker.”

“It’s over.” I didn’t have anything that Master Dichartyn would have called proof, only a solid inner certainty.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she finally asked.

“I can, and I will, but would you mind if we included your mother and grandmother? I’d rather not go through it twice, and they should know.”

Seliora smiled, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for asking.” She studied me. “You have some color. You were shivering and shuddering. You were as pale as ice.”