Totentanz

Book 3 Chapter V: Zu Spät

ZU SPÄT
German, "too late"

And the door below, it splinters
And the creature creeps inside
-- The Amazing Devil, That Unwanted Animal

Once, years and lifetimes ago, Karandren had burnt his hand. It was at the academy. Had it been an accident? He couldn't remember. His clothes needed ironing. The iron had been hot. For some reason he'd put his hand on it. The blisters had lasted for weeks.

As Karandren drifted back to himself his first thought was that someone had put a hot iron on his chest.

In the distance someone was screaming. He seemed to be floating above his body. The pain was the only thing that was real.

Suddenly he realised, I'm screaming.

That jolted him back to reality. His chest felt like it had been ripped open. He instinctively tried to press on the wound, and was surprised to find there was no blood.

Beneath him the courtyard's paving stones were uneven. The edge of one stone jutted into his shoulder-blade. Overhead the sky was blue. A cloud drifted by. Its shape reminded him of a cat. Outside the walls he heard carriages rattle by.

Slowly it dawned on him that the hole in the Veil had closed. Vanadel was gone.

Karandren pushed himself up on his elbows. The ache deep inside his chest was still there. It had only faded slightly. His magic felt weird. He tried to cast a spell -- a simple transformation spell to change the colour of his shirt, something so easy that a child could do it -- and his magic recoiled from him.

His throat was sore and scratchy. He coughed to clear it. Something rattled in his chest. Karandren froze. What had Vanadel done to him? Had cutting the time-loop caused actual, physical harm?

Unsteady footsteps approached. Karandren's head snapped round. He promptly regretted moving so quickly, because the world swam before his eyes. He blinked several times to clear his vision.

Diarnlan leant on the wall for support. She looked as awful as he felt. She straightened up and glared at him.

"What did you do?" she demanded after first giving vent to her feelings with a string of unprintable words.

"I may have made a slight mistake," he said faintly.

He recounted his meeting with Vanadel. Diarnlan listened with an expression of steadily increasing horror.

"You imbecile! Do you know what you've done? He's going to send the skrýszel while we're weakened! Can you use your magic?"

Karandren tried to cast a spell again, with the same results. He shook his head.

"Neither can I," Diarnlan said. "So all we can do--"

In the distance there was a tremendous crash. Both of them turned instinctively. Karandren wasn't surprised to see a huge black shape on the horizon.

They were silent. The world stood still. Then Diarnlan sprang into action. She leapt forward and yanked Karandren to his feet.

"We can't collapse the realm without our magic," she said. "Either we try to kill it without magic or we lead it on a merry dance around the city. Try to tire it out and give our magic a chance to return."

Karandren thought of the alternative: that if they both died the realm would collapse anyway. He decided not to suggest luring the skrýszel into the realm then committing a double suicide. Not yet, anyway.

"How do we get its attention and where do we go first?" he asked instead.

"We shouldn't have any difficulty getting its attention," Diarnlan said grimly. "Those things follow us everywhere we go." Sure enough, the shape was getting steadily larger. The ground shook with its footsteps. "As for where we go, you're the expert on Miavain."