Cool water. Little pinpricks of cool water, no apparent pattern.
The smell of rust, faint on the breath of a fresh breeze.
The sound – the sound of rain upon flagstones. That was the first conscious thought: it was raining. Raining, from a white-grey sky.
Lathenil looked out to the horizon. He turned to every other horizon. As far as he looked across the sky, he could see only the soft grey clouds of midday Summerset, bearing a light, cool rain.
He heard a mad laughter in his ears – felt it convulse his chest – heard a rush of footsteps behind him, strangely insignificant – felt the water on his face warm and swell – began to fall toward the ground, but felt a pair of arms bring him up short.
"Lathenil," said a woman's voice, one that he felt ought to be more familiar to him. "Can you hear me?"
"Phynaster..." he whispered, emptied of the laughter.
"Yes," said the voice tremulously. "The gods heard our cries. Raised heroes to deliver us. Now they've given my brother back to me."
He turned his head in a flash. It truly was Cilandrin. He had feared sorely for her, he knew – Sunhold had early warning, the guard had said, with the weariness of one who'd given tidings to a thousand as desperate as Lathenil had been. If they aren't with the Summerguard, it's almost certain they're here. There, in the Crystal Tower. Cilandrin was the only one left outside the keep, the only one in danger.
His mind's ear heard again the rising roar through the branches, imagined his father-
"Lathenil! Stay with me! We're safe... the daedra are gone..."
He forced himself to look into Cilandrin's round face. "I was there," he said. "Crystal-Like-Law. They brought me across the strait from Firsthold – the runeway, before the daedra found it – but I was kept to the Firsthold quarter. I never saw..."
"There'll be time for that, brother. But now, we go back to the shrine and bear them the good news."
Lathenil, in some sort of half-automatic reaction to the notion of being hosted, saw the state of his clothing and was amazed at the things his nose must have become inured to. "Not before I see that I'm cleaned up first," he muttered, disgusted with himself.
"There, you see?" said the Stendarr priestess who laid out the table, beaming in a satisfied way that, as the faint lines on her face were beginning to show, ran counter to her usual expression. "The clear sky is a welcome sight, but a cool rain has more arguments to make than by sight alone."
"Very well, Fiorana," said the youthful male mage beside her, allowing himself the first roll of softloaf. "I'll allow my studies haven't spared me much time for Restoration; I commend you that strength."
Cilandrin, smiling faintly, shook her head in a kind of disbelief. "Still, it wasn't precisely the first time I'd tried her theory. And it was all we could do at first to persuade you we weren't dremora. But it worked. That's the point."
"I suppose I ran?" said Lathenil bitterly.
"Well – yes," admitted Cilandrin. "But you didn't have so much as a dagger. It's lucky you did run."
"And the lack of a dagger spared us too much trouble when we managed to close in on you," said Fiorana drily.
No weapon, no, and nothing but scholar's robes on his back – at the Tower, they'd requisitioned everything of utility. But he had some power of destruction. In itself, it wasn't much, but he could have filled the ranks. In not fleeing, he might have given others heart who could measurably fight, and...
This tower will stand so long as our courage does, he remembered the Sage Rynandor assuring them a week before the onslaught. Yet how quick they had been to cast aside the crucial qualification! There stood Rynandor at the battlements covering the Queen's passage to safety; that way Lathenil had glanced for one moment of guilty hesitation, and sped away as fast as his feet could carry him.
"I might have tipped the balance," he said, an acrid lump in his chest. "The Crystal Tower might still stand. But I ran."
The mage stared so that he needed effort to swallow before he spoke. "Don't be absurd. That battle was lost before it began, never mind any question of it hanging on a hair's breadth."
"Beridor, by the way," said Fiorana, before another silence could yawn beneath him. "You've been introduced before, but I don't suppose it registered. He's a student of the Ancient Magic – conducting ley line research."
Lathenil felt himself drift into pedantry and wholly welcomed his return to that realm. "Which ancient magic is that, exactly?"
Beridor grimaced. "Actually, the proper name is Dawn Magic – the magic of the Dawn Era – but needless to say, we prefer to avoid that term until we can be assured the Camoran heresy is thoroughly rooted out."
He felt a nudge from Cilandrin. The nudge of a plate of herbs and fresh cheese, to be precise. He must have been eating like a starving beast till now, yet at this meal he'd managed to forget food entirely. "That's what they used in Lady Arraneyla's circle, Lathenil," she said, her smile having gone from distant to downright exuberant. "That's what closed the rifts."
Lathenil frowned; he needed to sort something out before this conversation ran away with him. "Camoran, though. I remember someone – at the Crystal Tower–" (he turned his mind forcefully away from the path it was taking)– "I remember someone making some sort of scholarly point about the Hart-King and his mistress. All the frantic asking and guessing in the Atrium – I suppose it stood out. Does that have anything to do with – with the daedra?"
"Ah!" said Beridor. "Forgive me, Cilandrin – perhaps he is as sharp as you say after all." (How often did this fellow hasten to the conclusion that other people were dullards, Lathenil wondered.) "Yes, precisely – their son, Mankar Camoran, led the Mythic Dawn – I suppose that's 'the red-robes' to you," he added irritably.
"Yes," said Lathenil, recalling one of the favorite books of his youth, making sense of things he'd merely accepted as oddities before now. "The Hart-King did after all traffick with daedra, didn't he?"
"Debatable," said Beridor. "Derived from a popular work which is little more than a fanciful horror story with a historic veneer. And it certainly gets one crucial point wrong: the Camoran Usurper was of course a Bosmer of Valenwood, but by all accounts, his son had the look of an Altmer. His mother, by reliable sources, not only gave him his appearance, but – crucially – had the blood of men in her veins."
"Er – crucially?" Lathenil supposed it must have something to do with Mankar Camoran's creed, but he couldn't see what.
"I should say so. Almost invariably, the Mythic Dawn agents we've captured share this foundational flaw, when they're not men or beastmen outright. It's useful to know, isn't it, with so many still in our midst?"
Lathenil gave Cilandrin an exasperated look.
"Yes, brother," she said with good humor, "he is one of those Thalmor headcases, but so is Lady Arraneyla at that. I can't hold it against him too strongly."
After a moment's hesitation, Lathenil decided to let the matter lie; after all, he did have several questions more pressing.
First: "Well, then. What of the sealing of the rifts?"
And, savoring the taste of the food for the first time in weeks if not months, he let himself be swept away in the current of conversation, putting no hand to the rudder, so grateful to be out from under the fiery sky and the specter of Destruction that he saw no need to consider where they might be bound.