Miranda looked at her son and realized he was trying to make them feel that something had been accomplished. ‘Only if they don’t mind spending the next two or three generations in mud huts.’ She looked across the plain and saw that fires were being lit as evening approached. ‘Maybe some cooking and a short rest will help some of them.’ As fires appeared across the horizon to the east at first and then to the west, she said, ‘There are so many.’
‘Millions yet to come,’ said Pug. ‘We’re going to lose most of them.’
‘We don’t know that, Father.’ Magnus pointed. ‘I’ll go and help to open another rift to the new world. I’ll go through this portal and fly myself miles away, and open another—’
‘We have six spread out all over that region. It’s going to take them weeks to find each other and establish some sort of communication.’ He looked around. ‘We can’t wait too much longer to send the Light of Heaven through.’
‘Will he go?’ asked Miranda. ‘He seemed determined to be the last through when I talked to him.’
Magnus smiled. ‘I think he’s going to have to fight General Alenburga for the honour.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Pug said quietly. ‘The last to go through…’ He looked at the campfires now springing up in all quarters. ‘Anyone who waits to be last through will die here, Magnus.’
His son said nothing.
Varen trudged along the road, watching the Black Mount rise up, getting larger by the hour yet somehow seemingly never closer. ‘That is really big,’ he said to himself.
At least four times in the last hour he had destroyed small bands of Deathknights, but he sensed he was overmatched as he crested a rise and saw a full hundred of them riding out of a dell. Wishing he had some of his toys from his old study in Kaspar’s citadel in Olasko, he conjured up an illusion he hadn’t tried in years. It was an old stand-by and easy enough to deploy. Any Tsurani would have stopped to examine the massive old dead oak that was suddenly sitting by the side of the road, but the Dasati had no idea the tree was as alien to this world as they were. They rode past and when they were safely down the road, Varen reappeared as the tree illusion vanished.
Continuing along he wondered how long it would take him to reach the edge of the sphere. Perspective was difficult, for the featureless sides gave him nothing by which to judge scale. It might be a mile on the other side of the next ridge, or it could be five miles.
Then suddenly it was dark and his lungs started to strain as his ears rang and his eyes burned. It also felt as if the grandfather of all thunderclaps had exploded right above his head.
And then hands gripped him.
Varen saw a pair of Deathknights had an iron hold on each of his arms and were propelling him forwards, expecting him to be incapacitated. But he had been inside a Dasati dome before and knew what to do, and suddenly he could breathe easily. He let the Deathknights pull him along what had up to minutes ago been a countryside road out in the bright sun. Now it was a pathway shrouded in darkness and even as he watched the leaves on the trees on either side of the road begin to blacken and shrivel.
‘Oh, this is so clever!’ he shouted.
The two Deathknights tightened their grips and one looked at him. He was the first to die.
Varen simply reached inside the man with his mind and stopped his heart. ‘Oh, I love this place!’ he said to the still-upright Deathknight. The warrior let go of Varen and drew his sword, and Leso realized he had been speaking Tsurani. He spoke in Dasati: ‘I said, "Oh, I love this place!"‘ The Deathknight raised his sword to strike and Varen held out his hand and another encompassing cocoon of green, life-devouring energy engulfed the Deathknight.
Varen was motionless as the Deathknight died. Others nearby saw the single human standing with two dead Deathknights at his feet and ran to attack him. Varen easily snatched life from each of them until there was not a living Deathknight in sight.
‘I never used to be able to do that!’ he exclaimed, delighted at his new-found power. ‘It must be this place!’
He looked around and adjusted his perception, and everywhere he looked he could see life energy rushing in towards the centre of the great sphere. ‘That’s where I need to be,’ he said.