The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(131)

“Jeslek...” Anya's voice was calm.

“I will do this, and you cannot stop me. Even Sterol could not. Now ... do as I say.”

“As you wish, overmage,” conceded Anya. “As you wish,” echoed Fydel.

Cerryl watched with eyes and senses as the unseen darkness concentrated in the rocks beneath the two full mages and as the reddish whiteness rose from the depths, rose and spread around them-one tendril seemingly drifting sideways, uphill toward the stone underneath the students.

Without a word, Cerryl began to create his own shields. As he did, he could feel another presence beneath the ground, and his eyes went sideways. Lyasa nodded. Neither spoke.

A sense of heat built up around him, and the chestnut gelding sidestepped, tossing his head slightly and whuffing twice. Cerryl absently patted his mount's neck. “Easy ... easy.”

Trying to hold an order shield was never easy, and doing so on horseback while the earth rumbled was even more difficult, but Cerryl had no doubts that Jeslek was either testing them-or trying to set up an “accident” to remove one student mage. Either way, it didn't matter.

He focused on channeling order around them and chaos back toward the massive concentration that Jeslek raised from deep beneath the ground, so far down that Cerryl could not even sense from where Jeslek gathered such forces.

Rrrrrrrrrr...

The chestnut whickered and tossed his head, stepping sideways once more, toward Anya's mount, a black mare that bared her teeth at the gelding.

“Easy ...” murmured Cerryl. “Easy.”

“Darkness ...” whispered Kochar. “Darkness on us all.”

“Chaos, more likely,” replied Lyasa tartly. “Keep working on your shields if you don't want to roast.”

Slowly, the underground chaos concentration shifted westward, away from the lake, and the fountain in the spring dropped to mere seething bubbles, even as the concentration itself swelled. Cerryl's head was throbbing, yet he dared not release the shields, not with all the power raised by Jeslek.

He darted a glance sideways, catching sight of sweat streaming down Lyasa's face, and a grim expression on Anya's more distant face.

Gurrrr... rrrrr...

Cerryl's mouth opened as the ground trembled, and then trembled again. His eyes went beyond the immediate hillside to the west of the lake toward the lands of Gallos-except a line of hills seemed to be rising more than a kay away. Were they actually rising? Rising above the once-higher nearer hills?

He swallowed. The ground was rising, and steam billowed from cracks in the rocks wide enough to swallow a mount and rider.

His senses went full back to the shields, now an intertwined effort of both full mages and the three students. The more distant line of hills continued to rise, and the ground around the lake began to ripple ever so slightly.

Another geyser spurted skyward from the center of the lake below, then collapsed as suddenly as it had risen. A sickening, sucking gulp followed, with a curtain of steam clouding the lake momentarily. More hot rain cascaded around Cerryl, then dispersed, as did the mist, to show an empty and steaming lake bed-rent by a fissure a half-dozen cubits wide.

Still the hills to the west continued to rise, groaning, trembling, thrust up skyward by the welling of chaos from beneath, that chaos loosed and chevied earthward by the overmage.

Jeslek and his mount were like a statue, a statue frozen by the power of the forces welling from and around the white-clad and white-haired mage.

Rivulets began to gurgle down the hillside to the north of Cerryl rivulets formed from the quick-melted snow. The ground rumbled once more, and to the south, the misted hills lurched upward.

Cerryl drew from the chaos that flowed away from the central tap drew and channeled it around him and the others, funneling it back toward the overmage in an effort to push chaos away from the order shield that he and the others-mostly Anya and Lyasa-held.

The Highway trembled ever so slightly, as the hills to the north of them shuddered upward, as chaos and steam twisted together and wreathed the new mountains-to-be.

The late afternoon sun was almost touching the tops of those steam-shrouded hills before the shaking of the earth subsided to a mere grumbling.

Cerryl's head ached, and stars flashed before his eyes, half from the effort of holding shields and half from struggling with his mount. Not that he blamed the chestnut, not as scared as he had been, wondering whether he would see another sunrise.

“Eat something from your pack, you idiot,” hissed Lyasa, “before you fall out of your saddle.” Her face was pale.

“You better do the same,” he answered in a raspy voice, grasping for the small ration pack.

The hard cheese and dried bread helped-after he moistened his mouth and lips enough to be able to swallow. The. flashing stars before his eyes slowly vanished, but he was conscious of being light-headed, and the food didn't remove that sensation.

Jeslek, who had remained almost like a statue, abruptly turned his mount as though no time at all had passed. “You see, Anya, Fydel- it's not all that difficult to raise chaos through the ground, and mountains with it. Still... we must protect the highway-and that will be your task-and that of the students.” Jeslek's sun-gold eyes flashed at the three younger mages. “For a first try, your shields were not bad, but you'll all have to do better than that.” Jeslek turned to Klybel. “Now, overcaptain, let's return to the Highway. We will proceed into Gallos.”