What have I done?
He sat for a moment longer before rising and moving away, no longer able to stay in her presence. Of all the outcomes he had imagined, this one had never occurred to him. He had believed she would do what was needed to help the Four Lands because that was what she had done in life as the Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Order. He had been so sure she would set everything else aside so that she could save the world into which she had been born. She might not be happy about what he had done or eager to embrace his insistence on bringing her back from the life she had chosen for herself, but she would still do the right thing because that was what she had been trying to do ever since she had ceased to be the Ilse Witch.
He had never imagined she could come back as the very thing she had sought to escape. He had never imagined Mother Tanequil would return her as such.
Or that she would embrace this new identity and willingly become the very thing she hated. Or that she might have plans of her own that would be more terrible than the plans of Tael Riverine.
But she did, and they were.
He caught Mirai’s eye where she stood behind Austrum in the pilot box and signaled for her to join him. She came down quickly, moving through the steady rain across the windswept deck to where he waited at the port rail.
“What is it?” she said on seeing his face. “What did she say?”
He leaned close. “It wasn’t what she said, it was what she intimated. She is enraged at what has been done to her, but she is caught up in the persona she has been given and feels her former self being stolen away. She has become the Ilse Witch reborn, and she hasn’t the strength or the means or even the will to change.”
“But she will stand with us and fight the Straken Lord? Or does she refuse us completely?”
He closed his eyes, wiped the rain from his face, and looked at her anew. “She does not refuse us, but she does not ally with us, either. She cares nothing if we live or die. She will stand against Tael Riverine, and she says she will destroy him. But even that will not be enough for her.”
“Then what?”
He gripped her shoulders. “She intends to take his place.”
Eighteen
The second attack on Arishaig by the demon hordes was launched just before midnight on the same day as the first. It came against the south and west walls once again, but with fresh ferocity. The creatures swarmed out of the darkness bearing grappling hooks and scaling ladders and threw themselves against the stone and iron of the fortress with such determination that, for a few terrible moments, Keeton thought his soldiers would be overwhelmed. Setting fire to fresh oil in the ditches, forming tall walls of flame, failed to deter them. Even the presence of the warships attacking from overhead did little to slow their assault. They came at the walls in wave after wave, shrugging off arrows and spears and missiles fired from slings and launchers. They fell dying and their fellows simply climbed atop them, lifted a little closer to their goal atop the piles of bodies.
But Keeton had brought flash rips to the walls and mounted them at regular intervals. They were illegal everywhere, but there wasn’t an army that didn’t possess them. And since the Federation had pioneered their manufacture, they had them stockpiled in secret caches throughout the city. Conventional weapons, however powerful, had not proven strong enough during the previous attack, and Keeton was not about to let legalities and Druid prohibitions stand in the way of saving his city and its people.
His decision was quickly vindicated by the results. When the flash rips fired on the attackers, dozens of the creatures simply vanished in ash and smoke and flame, disintegrating under the concentrated power of multiple diapson crystals. Strikes into the thickest clusters broke the momentum of the attack and sent it reeling away in spite of its vast numbers. Keeton thought maybe this would be enough to put an end to the attack for the night.