The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [199]
He glances over at the other chair. Sweat streams down Megaera’s face, running over unseeing eyes, and her tension flows toward him. He turns away and flings himself at the second fleet; six broadbeamed brigs.
This time a ray of flame probes at his thoughts, lances toward him, yanks at his holds on the winds. His defenses flare, deflect the fires, and he regains his grip on the winds. But the flames lance again. With those flames, for an instant, comes the image of a thin, tormented face surrounded by chaos and fires. The wizard’s face is all too human.
Creslin swallows and seizes his winds again. Flames lash against the clouds, angling the gales away from the ships, keeping the worst of the tempest from the white vessels.
Creslin slams the mid-winds toward the six ships.
The thin-faced Wizard’s image stands between the winds and the attacking fleet, and each time that Creslin turns his forces to begin hurling the ships onto the sodden sands, the flames flash toward him and twist the winds with the scouring heat of the desert—or the demons’ hell.
With a wrench, Creslin seizes the heart of his tallest storm, twisting the fires within and channeling them toward that ship from which the fires have flown. Lightning forks from the sky and toward the seas, narrowly missing the tall ship standing farthest seaward.
Flames lash back at him, flames stronger than any he has seen. He reaches for the strongest of the mighty high winds, wrestling them and their lightnings back down the path of flame.
Aaaeeeiii . . .
The White Wizard, the most powerful he has ever faced, is gone, and the white haze shreds. The winds blow unchecked.
Creslin is gasping, swallowing, as he sits in the chair.
Again Lydya offers him the redberry and he sips slowly, refusing to look at Megaera, feeling too strongly the strains and forces that rack her as she wrestles with the high winds. An edge of darkness pulls at him, but he resists, pushing it away . . . somehow.
Too soon he is back upon the winds, nudging, tugging, unleashing fire and ice, ice and fire, until another seven ships lie tossed across the rocky beaches well south of the Black Holding.
One tall ship remains, shuddering, trying to run for the high seas as the winds howl. But the whiteness holds tightly to the vessel, and the winds whip uselessly through bare masts.
Creslin seizes the heart of the winds, and as they howl, the mist and swirling vortex solidify into a funnel of blackness. That blackness strikes and then collapses across the storm-ripped sea where a ship had stood.
“. . . ooo . . .”
. . . hurts . . .
Creslin’s muscles clench under the impact of Megaera’s pain even as he realizes that off the shores of Recluce, only debris and bodies float. The great White fleet has already begun to turn and to run for the safety of the stormy Northern Ocean.
Megaera is unconscious, and Lydya has stretched her out on a pallet brought from inside the cot.
“She’ll be all right,” the healer responds to Creslin’s look.
Creslin’s guts are in his throat, and he seizes the redberry, swallows it, then resettles himself.
“No!”
But the caution from the Black mage is lost as Creslin hurls himself across the skies toward the last great patch of whiteness. As his thoughts race northward, he regathers the storms and calls on all of the high winds, the great black-steel tides of the skies. Ignoring the flashing silver before his eyes, ignoring the fire that sears his limbs, ignoring the single image of the dying White Wizard—an image that he will hold forever—he turns the fury of the north upon the defenseless chips of wood on the sea below.
“Nooo . . .”
He disregards the plea, lashing the sea into a tempest from which none will emerge. Wielding the winds and the lightnings, he is the storm. Riding the black-steel tides of the high winds, he is the god of old Heaven . . .
. . . back . . . please. . . best-beloved. . .
Back?
. . . best-beloved . . .
He shudders, forcing himself out of the storm, out of the ordered focus of power, climbing