And, when Simon and his Borderers, together with a detachment of Falconers, fought their way into the room with the control board that heart ceased altogether. For the capped men there, six of them, died together and the great board went dead with them.
Then the second battle began, for the skeletons from the gate turned upon the Estcarpian men. Warriors withered and died, but darts and swords could slay also.
Outside a storm raged over the barren land and inside, at last, that other and bloodier storm was stilled. Men wearied and sick of killing, men dazed from the deaths of those they held in close comrade or kinship, men unable to believe that this was the heart of Kolder and they had truly severed it with sword, dart and ax, drifted one by one into the hall where were the controls. “Kolder is dead!” Stymir tossed his ax into the air and caught its haft, to wave it in an exultant circle. Behind him others fired as they understood what had been done this day—in spite of cruel losses.
“Kolder is dead!” Jaelithe echoed him. With the witch and Loyse she had entered the hold as part of the rear-guard. “But the evil it has sown lives still. And this—perhaps others will rise to use this.” She motioned to the controls.
“Not so!” The witch had taken her gem from about her throat and held it out at eye level facing the board, “Not so, sister. Let us make sure of that!”
There was a flush on Jaelithe’s usually pale cheeks as she moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with the witch. Together they stared at the gem. The light in the walls had been slowly dimming, so that the chamber was dusky instead of brightly alight as it had been when they first found it.
But now there was suddenly bright sparkling on the board. Sharp explosions broke the silence. The sparks ran along the surface setting off more small explosions. A smell of burnt insulation rose in choking puffs and here and there the casing melted. Whatever energy the united power of the women released, it was fast stilling forever the controls the Kolder had used, perhaps not only to activate this hold, but to reach overseas in that web they had spun.
Simon said as much later when he waited with the captains and Ingvald for the last reports from those combing the now darkening corridors and rooms of the keep to make sure no enemy still lived.
“The web remains.” The witch sat a little apart, her face drawn and haggard from her efforts to blast the controls. “And, while Kolder spun that web, the materials—the hates, the greeds, the envies from which it was fashioned—were there before they gathered them into their hands and wove them into a net to take us. Karsten is in chaos and for a space that chaos has served us, because it keeps the eyes of the great lords there from looking north, but that will not last forever.”
Simon nodded. “No, it will not. Into the vacuum of no-rule will arise some leader and to him unity might come from fixing all the attention of those who would challenge him on a war beyond their borders.”
Jaelithe and the witch agreed as one; Ingvald also. The Sulcar captains showed interest but not greatly so.
“And Alizon?” Loyse spoke for the first time. “How fares the war with Alizon?”
“The seneschal has raged like a moor fire into their country. He has wrought better than even we thought he might. But we cannot hold Alizon, seething with hatred for us, any more than we can take Karsten under our rule. We of Estcarp want nothing—save to be left alone in our evening. For we know it is our evening, sliding into a night for which comes no morning. But these would make that a night of flame and death and torment. No man or woman dies willingly, it is in us to strive to hold to life. Thus if we have a night of war before us—” She raised her hand and let it fall again. “Then we shall fight to the end.”
“It need not be so!” There was that in Simon which refused to accept her reading of the future.
She looked from him to Jaelithe, then to Loyse, Ingvald, the Sulcar captains. Then she smiled. “I see that it is in you to will it otherwise. Well, Estcarp may go as Estcarp, but perhaps it is now a field in which we sow strange and different seed, and out of that seed may rise a new fruit. This is a time of change and the Kolder have only precipitated turmoil. Without the Kolder the elements remaining are those we have long known and so we may steady the balance for a space. At least I give you this, comrades-in-arms; this has been a quest of valor such as shall be sung by bards these thousand years until you would not know yourselves as the godlings you shall become. We shall take our victories one by one and have pride in them. And there will be no looking for the last defeat!”
“But there is an end to Kolder!” Ingvald cried out.
“An end to Kolder,” Simon agreed. “There are still battles ahead, as this Wise One has said—victories to be won.”
His hand went out and Jaelithe’s moved to meet it. In this hour he could not visualize defeat—or night for Estcarp. Or anything—save what was his.
