The
Wall was opened and the vanguard of the Emperor’s army marched through it. The
handful of Portalians who had been guarding the wall were scattered or captured
and a space was found just beyond the east gate for a camp to be set up. Colonel
Valerian posted guards at regular intervals around the encampment and sent out
several reconnaissance parties. His conversation with Viola and her team was
brief: he didn’t seem very interested in how they had opened the gates – he was
now more concerned with how he could defend them.
Messengers were sent back immediately to Visnea,
where General Titanius waited with the rest of the expeditionary force. It
would take a couple of days for them to march to the gate and it was essential
that the vanguard could keep control of the Wall at least until the Emperor
came.
Kath had now negotiated an agreed point when
she could go: when the Emperor relieved them, then she would make her way back
to Visnea and then onwards to home, reversing the route she had taken to get to
the Empire, more than six months before. There had been raised voices and
emotional blackmail, both overt and covert, but Kath had stood her ground. She pointed
out that after the Wall there would be no need for a Dwarven Magic scholar.
From then on, she would be redundant. She was free to go home at last.
Viola, however, did have one more thing that
she wanted Kath to help her with. She wanted to enter the sphere and check that
the taint was safely imprisoned. Kath agreed, with great reluctance, that she
would do this last thing before she left them.
After a long discussion with Valerian, he let
Viola have the space inside the wall evacuated, but only for a short time and
if they left the gates open.
The guardian sphere sat on the floor, white
and motionless. Potentilla stared at it
suspiciously, while Viola shooed away the few remaining troops.
‘Do you think that the Wall can go on making
these for ever?’ asked Potentilla.
Kath walked round the sphere, thinking.
‘Well, it couldn’t do it forever… I would
have thought that the time distortion magic alone must be amazingly costly. We
only know of three though, so we might be close to capacity, I suppose, but I
have no idea ’
‘Do you think that they can be shut down?’
‘When they’re empty maybe, because I think
then they are pure energy, but I’m not sure what would happen if you collapsed
folded space with something solid inside it…’
Potentilla mimed a big explosion, her legs
splayed and her arms stretching up above her head. She said ‘boom!’ rather solemnly.
‘Possibly’ said Kath, sighing, ‘but I don’t
want to find out’
Viola came over to join them, paying no
attention to the strange position that Potentilla was now in.
‘We need to enter this very carefully’ she
said.
‘Really?’ muttered Kath, ‘I’d never have
thought to do that…’
Viola ignored her and glanced sharply at
Potentilla. There was a very brief pause and then Potentilla stepped
confidently forward.
‘I’ll
go first this time’ indicated Viola, ‘and we must be prepared to get out as
quickly as possible’
Potentilla looked disappointed, but lined up
behind Viola, as if queuing for a pie. Kath hung back, hoping that she wouldn’t
be needed.
‘And then you Kath’ said Viola, ‘we’ll need
you to have a look around’
Kath smiled sourly and mumbled ‘of course we
will…’ under her breath.
Viola had one more look at the outside of the
sphere, but could see nothing strange about it. She jumped up into the hollow
hidden space behind the sphere, closely followed by her two companions. There
was a buzz and then they disappeared from the view of anyone in the Wall.
The
inside of this sphere was exactly like the guardian’s further north except that
it was much smaller. There was a room, barely twenty foot square, with just five
green empty pods, each one created as before, apparently entirely of
light. There was room for a sixth pod,
but no sign of it. Instead there was a strange red-green puddle on the floor
about the size of a small ornamental pond. Its surface resembled an oil slick
from which all but two of the spectrum colours had been removed. The red and
the green smears circled each other in an extremely unstable way. They were all
convinced that the puddle was getting bigger. Certainly, no-one wanted to go
anywhere near it.
‘Well’ said Viola, ‘it looks like we know the
fate of the taint…’
Kath
peered at the puddle with a mixture of fascination and revulsion.
‘This is what happens when blood mixes with
sap, I suppose…’ she said
‘I wonder if it’s safe?’ asked Viola
‘It doesn’t look very stable, certainly’
mused Kath, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rising.
‘Now would be a good time to turn off the
sphere…’ suggested Potentilla
Viola nodded and took a step backwards
towards the sphere’s exit.
‘We can only do that from outside, though’
she explained
Kath looked away from the puddle and up at
Viola.
‘What?’
‘Do you know how to switch it off, then,
ma’am?’ asked Potentilla, looking a little shocked.
Viola looked very pale, as if she were in
pain, but didn’t reply. Then she jumped back out of the sphere, without even
looking at her companions. Kath and Potentilla shared a moment of alarm and
then leaped out as quickly as they could.
They found Viola standing rather forlornly in
front of the sphere. She had her arms
folded, fortunately, and didn’t look as if she was about to do anything.
‘That was scary, Vee’ remonstrated Kath, ‘we
thought you were about to turn the bloody thing off!’
‘Why do I know these things, Kath? How do I
know them?’
Kath shook her head and her anger evaporated.
She held on to Viola’s hand, squeezing it gently.
‘I think that it’s got something to with that
dream – you know, the one you had in Melloreis’
Viola shook her head and stared down at the
ground.
‘Maybe’ she said, ‘but I didn’t tell you the
whole truth – I’ve been having dreams like that for all my life’
Kath could think of nothing to say: she could
think of no explanation for either Viola’s insights or her dreams. She fumbled
for some suitable words. There was silence for several seconds.
‘I think you should switch it off, ma’am’
said Potentilla, ‘if you can’. She was looking decidedly queasy.
Viola turned to Kath.
‘Do you think it’s safe?’ asked Viola
This seemed to Kath to be an ambiguous
question: did she mean was it safe to keep it on? or was it safe to switch it
off? Either seemed extremely dangerous.
‘I have no idea, but if we cancel the sphere
at least we stand a chance of destroying the taint completely. And, if we don’t
then who knows what will happen if that puddle gets any bigger’
‘I agree’ said Viola, ‘but you two had better
stand back, just in case’
Kath retreated as far as she could, while
still being able to see what was happening; Potentilla, however, had to be
shooed away to some sort of reasonable distance.
Viola turned to the sphere and held her hands
up to her lips as if in prayer. Then, with the palms still held together she
flexed her arms slowly so that her tips of her fingers pointed away from her
and directly in front of her body. She separated the palms and moved her hands
out to the left and right as if an invisible force were pushing them apart. ‘katasbennumi’ she shouted, clapping
suddenly.
The sphere blinked out without any fuss, but
where it had been it was replaced by a strange whirl of green and red vapours,
like a sublimating rose. The cloudy
smudge began to rotate, propelled by the savage contrary motion of the two
colours. As the whirl speeded up it began to pull air in from the atmosphere,
then dust and finally anything that was not bolted or tied down.
Viola cried out and lurched forward, as she
was dragged towards the vapours. Kath rushed forward, desperately trying to
grab hold of Viola’s arms.
As the twin colours spun round and round a
greyish plug appeared in the centre of the whirl, almost like a scab trying to
grow on a wound. At first it grew slightly bigger, but then, quite suddenly, it
split open and a ragged blue tear opened where the plug had been. The vapours
rapidly began disappearing into the rent, and Kath was certain that beyond the
tear she could see an infinitely deep sky full of strange restless blue clouds.
Kath caught Viola’s arm just above the elbow
and held on grimly, not completely stopping her but at least slowing her down a
little. Kath looked out frantically for help. Potentilla was only a step behind
but she had stopped, as if she were looking down on the ground for something.
For some unaccountable reason, she unsheathed her sword. Kath was now terrified that they would all be
pulled into the pulsing blue fissure; what on earth was the stupid elf doing now?
Did she think that she could fight the entire Outer Void?
Potentilla grunted and rammed her sword into
the large crack that she had just seen in the floor. It was where two plates of
metal had been bonded together. The sword lodged itself tightly in the join
with a loud screeching sound. Potentilla held on to the hilt of her weapon with
one hand and tightly on to Kath with the other. She smiled fiercely.
‘Hold on!’ she yelled
The blue rupture had now swallowed up all of
the red vapour and was spinning faster and faster. Meanwhile, the three friends
were pulled ever more violently towards the other world. Potentilla’s sword
bent further and further over and Kath closed her eyes, quite certain that it
must snap. She just hoped that the end
would be quick and not too weird.
The green vapours now slipped into the blue
rent and as they did the blue hole began to shrink, like a plug hole closing as
water descended through it. There was a sound like a great exotic chord and the
green disappeared; with it the blue blinked out. All that was left was a
shimmering in the air, blackish and blueish like an aerial bruise.
The winds stopped and the three companions
were left lying on the floor, bedraggled but whole. Potentilla jumped up and pulled
her sword out of the crack. She inspected it carefully and then looked up, rather
sadly. The sword was bent completely out of shape. She banged it on the hard
surface beneath her and it split into two
– the shards clanged onto the floor.
‘Ma’am’ she said, ‘I think this sword must
have been faulty. Can I requisition another one?’
Viola and Kath stared up at her in
incredulity and relief.
‘You saved our lives’ panted Kath, ‘you mad elf’
Potentilla grinned from ear to ear and came
over to embrace her friends. She looked intently at Kath.
‘Does that mean that you owe me a favour?’ she
asked.
Kath shrugged, ‘well, yes, of course’ she
said, not really thinking very straight.
‘Good’ said Potentilla, ‘here’s the favour that
I want…’
‘What?’
Kath asked, confused and exhausted.
‘Don’t go’ said the elf, and, of course, after
that, she knew that she couldn’t.
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