The Raven Collection

The crews pulled away strongly, heading for a shore apparently barren of landing sites. But rounding a spit hidden from shipboard view, they beached on a narrow stretch of shingle, away from which a path climbed up and disappeared through a cleft in the rocks. Ren’erei helped Erie

‘Not far now,’ she said. ‘Just one last climb. The crew will bring up all your things.’

The path was well kept, its steps long, carefully carved and shallow in the rise, and it wound up in a deliberately gentle incline overlooked by birch trees.

Looking back down the stairway, Erie

Beside her, Lya

‘Are you all right, darling?’ Erie

‘Yes,’ she affirmed. ‘Will you do the walking song again?’ Erie

‘I step with my right foot,

And the left follows on.

If I do it once again,

Then the journey soon is done.

If I don’t move my left foot,

Then the right one gets away.

If I don’t move my right foot,

Then just here is where we’ll stay.’

Repeating the words over and over while they stepped and double-stepped, Erie

‘One day, it’ll be your turn,’ said Erie

Lya

‘You’re not doing it right. Mummy, sing it again.’

‘Just once more, then,’ said Erie

Lya

Chapter 3

Four years after the last Wesmen had withdrawn, the College city of Julatsa had returned to something like its old self, with one significant difference.

Ilkar stood on one of the few undamaged sections of College wall and turned a full circle, his shoulder-length black hair drifting in the light breeze. On the city’s borders, the Wesmen’s wooden fortifications had long been stripped away to use in rebuilding homes, businesses, municipal offices and the scores of shops and i

Ilkar shook his head slightly at some of the new architecture. The kindest word to describe much of it was ‘enthusiastic’. Yet no one could deny the energy that the rash of twisted spires, white stone domes and flying buttresses exuded. They had been built with tremendous verve but Ilkar couldn’t help but wonder what those builders thought now.

Their desire and that, perhaps misplaced, enthusiasm had run out at the gates of the College. It hadn’t started that way. In the immediate aftermath of Wesmen withdrawal, the devastated College had been the city’s focus as it struggled to come to terms with its trauma. There had been a recognition of the scale of violence visited on the College and in the early months, new building work had forged ahead. Quarters, administration, kitchens and refectory, a long room, the old quadrangle and a library - sadly empty but for a few of Septern’s texts, brought there by Ilkar himself following the closing of the Noonshade rip - had appeared from the rubble.

But the job was enormous and, as more Julatsans returned to the city, attention turned quite rightly to its infrastructure. The trouble was that with life able to begin again, it was easy to turn away from the College and forget the work that was still needed there.

Ilkar couldn’t. His circle ended with a view down over the new library. He couldn’t argue with the quality of what had been done but it left them so far from having a functional college. And vital to it was the building that should occupy the black, scarred, jagged hole, three hundred feet wide, that dominated the centre of the College.

The Tower.

Ilkar knew that what lay below scared the city builders and tradesmen. Gods, it scared him sometimes, but for him it was the enormity the crater represented that was the fear. At its base, covered by an impenetrable black mist, lay the Heart. Buried as Julatsa fell, by Barras, the old elf Negotiator, and a team of senior mages, its raising was critical to the College’s return to power.

So much knowledge lay within. Not just key magical texts but, of greater immediate importance, plans and blueprints. Until the Heart was raised, they could not rebuild the Tower, ManaBowl, Cold Room or recovery chambers among others. And until he had enough mages, he couldn’t hope to raise the Heart.

Ilkar sat down on the parapet and let his legs swing. There was the nub of the crisis. Hammering echoed up to him. New paint sparkled in the sun under the clear blue sky, its odour fresh in his nostrils. Wood dust covered the stone flags that had been awash with so much blood.

But it would never be finished. There weren’t enough Julatsan mages to cast the necessary magic. Gods in the ground, there was barely enough experience to form a council but he’d done it anyway, just to give the place some structure. He didn’t particularly want to take on the role of High Mage but there was no other figurehead and at least his reputation with The Raven earned him respect and weight in negotiations.

He’d had to put out wider calls for mages. There had to be Julatsans scattered across the continents, those like himself who rarely visited the College but who owed their lives to it nonetheless. He’d even sent word into the Southern Continent of Calaius, to the elven homelands where so many Julatsan elves had returned over the years, bleeding Balaia of a crucial resource. The Gods knew what the state of their magic would be. Ilkar only hoped their Julatsan Lore training hadn’t lapsed with the passing of time. It was becoming increasingly clear that he needed them badly.