here!”
It was wreckage, everywhere wreckage. Ischade cast about her in the woods, with
the wind blowing everything to wrack and the trees creaking and groaning in the
gusts. A stream ran there, and it was clear water around its edges, but its
center was blood; and in the center of the blood was a thread of black, like
corruption.
She knew where the attack came from. She clutched her cloak about her to shield
herself from it as best she could and ran with her back to the wind, trying to
find the lost soul whose refuge this was. A little bit of hell had crept in and
settled in the meadow. A great deal of it was not that far away, and there was
in a place this numinous a great deal of what it could use, if her enemy was an
utter fool and let it in.
A tree gave way at the roots and crashed down, taking others with it, showering
her with its ruin. She had no magic in this place. She had nothing but her mind,
and that was unfocused, chaotic as this place was chaotic: she was the worst of
helps for it, a raw Power without a center of her own, an existence without a
reason. It was the worst of places for her to come.
The ground quaked. Thunder rolled and a voice pursued her without words, a
shrieking shout that impelled the winds and stung with mortal cold.
She stumbled upon a tumble of rocks, a little rise, a place where a guardian
waited, faceless, selfless, a pale shape that shone with inner light and its
hands glowing more terribly than its face as it lifted them to bar her way,
light against her black, certainty against her doubt. It had had a name once,