“A… chance, Lady Magos?” Count Ricardo du Bellenesse repeated cautiously.

  “I am going to draw this wall around the lands around Sanamar. This is going to take me a few hours. I will put two gates in those walls, to the north and the west, walls that will be framed by the horns of the aurochs there, for use in your future.”

  His eyes turned helplessly to the massive horns, each of them over twenty feet long, carried along on floating disks of silvery Force Magic, like nothing he had ever seen.

  “These walls are more than tall enough and thick enough to keep away the eater hordes, and the gates will also be designed to withstand them. I intend to build one up here, if you care to wait a few minutes and examine it for yourself.”

  “I should be honored, Lady Magos,” he managed to get out, looking around. “If I may be so bold to ask… what are we expected to do with this land?”

  It was an extremely valid question. Nothing grew here, save the most hidden scraps of vegetation that the Eaters couldn’t dig out.

  “When I am done putting up the wall, I will depart for Dereth,” I went on. “I will return before dawn. I expect the entire population of Sanamar to be waiting for me by the pits where the two Aurochs died at that time.

  “Do you understand my words at this time, Count Bellenesse?” I asked him sharply.

  He bowed his head instantly. “I hear your words and will see that they are obeyed, Lady Magos,” he complied instantly.

  I nodded slowly. “I said I am giving you and your people a chance here, Your Grace. Princess Kristie honestly would leave you here to slowly wither away without a shred of guilt or regret on her conscience. However, the largesse that is coming will not come free. There will be something expected of you for it, but since that is also in your own best interests, you will not find it very burdensome, and it will harken back to what might be called truly worthwhile martial endeavors on your part.”

  I could see the surprise clearly cross his face, before he concealed it. “I see. And what does the Kingdom of Freehold seek to gain from this, Lady Magos?”

  “Nothing, Your Grace. I am doing this without prior knowledge or permission from the Kingdom, merely taking my personal time to do something I deem is proper and necessary for some people who are innocent of their king’s machinations… and forgiving enough of those who are not so innocent to go forward.

  “Incredible foolishness, I know, but that is what it is.” I glanced his way, and his schemes and questions froze in his mind. “Don’t try to take advantage of me with this. I know exactly what I am going to do, how I am going to do it, and there will indeed be work on your part. What you do with this chance is up to you, but it will be worth it.

  “Now, let me do what I came here to do, and be content that I hold no ill will towards you or the people of Sanamar. Remember that before the dawn, I want them all at the pits where the two great Aurochs died, and that is all.”

  “Yes, Lady Magos.” He bowed again and withdrew politely, unwilling to test my patience or my power, which was a wise decision.

  I continued my slow pace of putting up my walls, about a grand one mile per hour, but it was enough.

  I’d still be back in time for the daily Resurrections. Light and easy work.

  ------

  The gate crackled with lightning, and the great stone disk rolled quietly away from the opening, hundreds of tons of stone moving aside and leaving a broad opening for traffic to pass through.

  Count Ricardo du Bellenesse stared at the great horns framing the Thunder Gate, and watched with the others as the lever was pulled down, and counterweights of stone cycled, gears wrought by nothing but pure will turned, and the round stone rolled back into place along its track.

  He had seen enough castles and siegework built to know that it was a marvel of engineering, and this Lady Magos had built it right before his eyes, stone moving like water and settling perfectly into place and form under his gaze, pulled right up out of the ravaged stone beneath his boots.

  As she glided slowly and steadily on, her mind obviously elsewhere, he took the stairs up to the top of the long walls, leaning on the narrow battlements to look over the land outside.

  There were no Eater hordes coming. The two Great Aurochs had likely trained them to stay away from them, if nothing else. The grated surface of the wall-top, a strange luxury, extended away from him. The design would allow water and ice to run off of it and increase traction, he was certain.

  A wonderful yet simple complication that would cost far too much money to make normally, here done effortlessly.

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  She had erected two great pits, covered them with Illusions so that none noticed them, and lured the behemoths that had bedeviled the survivors of Sanamar for an entire generation into them, in the end killing them effortlessly.

  So quick, so easy, so… simple.

  That fool of a Hunnit, thinking they could capture and force such a woman to do their will? He deserved what was done to him, and that was without her killing the Aurochs!

  The fact that she was very likely among the Isparians who had killed Varicci and the Royal Household, well, that was another matter. Whether that was an honorless ambush and assassination or a courageous and well-struck raid depended entirely on one’s opinion of the king.

  He was a Bellenesse, and while he had left the family holdings and upheld his oaths to the prince and later king here, his opinion of the man wasn’t all that far from that of his rebellious kin, only he had not had it in him to forswear his oaths and rebel at all.

  Well, there was no rebelling now, only making sure men like Varicci didn’t step into power again, or deal with the likes of the Raven Hand, Freebooters, and Nuhmudira. There were plenty of nobles who played games of power and would eagerly embrace any chance to rebuild their strength and claw back status and power in the face of the other Isparians and the people of the Freehold. Dealing with devils was part and parcel of the price of being noble in their minds, and peace was a sign of the weak.

  Well, he’d made sure a fair number of them were permanently at peace, now. Ruthlessness in pursuit of not upholding vendettas that had no meaning were not something he was going to subject the people to after a generation of suffering, even with Viamontian resilience and readiness to fight.

  What would happen at the dawn?

  Count Ricardo du Bellenesse, reluctant Hand to Varicci II, and now the grim leader of Sanamar by dint of putting to the sword those other nobles who had grasped for their chance at a crown and power over their fellows, looked out over the ruin they’d made of this pastoral landscape with the madness of the Fiun, the Eaters, and the Red Bull.

  The evils of Viamont had ruined this land. It was bloody apparent the other Isparians didn’t want them on Dereth, ruining their land as well, and he could not blame them.

  What this daughter of the deserts wanted of them tomorrow morning, he didn’t know, but he was going to make certain the people of Sanamar were there.

  -------

  I shimmered into distance a fair distance from the graves, just in case they had something nasty planned.

  There were a couple thousand people there, most of them in civilian attire, the women outnumbering the men significantly, as did the children. I was noticed soon enough, walking in from the west as I was and the white of my attire easy to see in the light of the dawn.

  They parted before me as I walked through them, afraid, residual arrogance at my lack of blue skin knuckling under at the silver of my eyes and the power swirling about me. The earth and sky were humming faintly at my arrival, they could feel magic crackling over their skin, and the ground casually leveled itself out perfectly straight around me as I skated an inch above it.

  “You will be joining me for the Salute to Aru this morning,” I informed them with Magevoice, my gaze fixed to the east, barely glancing at them come out there in what remained of their finery. “Aru is a deity of the sun revered on many worlds for His kindness and guidance to mortals. You are here to bear witness to what He is going to help you do.”

  I did look down very deliberately as I finished that.

  They could not help but do the same, their gazes falling on the veins of whiteness snaking in all directions across and through the stones beneath them. The graves of the Aurochs were clearly the source of the whiteness, and the clever among them noticed that the pits were indeed basically right in the very middle of the massive area I’d enclosed in with the walls I’d put up the day before.

  Vivus. Massive amounts of vivus from two very magical creatures who had sucked in massive amounts of power and life from the land here, and in dying, had been Burned en vivus, and in so doing, given so very much of that power back.

  “Here are the words to the Salute to Aru.” I flicked my hand casually, and the Holo lit up in very large letters above me, shocking them with how casually I put the Illusion up. Their lips moved as they read them silently.

  “We begin.” They all took deep breaths.

  “Dreams of the wind at dawn…” I began the easy, gentle cadence, and in spite of their reluctance and nervousness, they recited the words along with me.

  Beneath my feet, I felt magic begin to tremble. The Sublime Chord I’d been humming subvocally began to rise, and Hope began to bubble in the air. Their words grew stronger and smoother as they felt it.

  “A new day has begun.

  Light chases back the dark, and the future lays before us.”

  Golden lights began to swirl and glow in the air, and a faint breeze began to blow. The Salute began to rise as their eyes widened in wonder at what was streaming across their souls.

  “Will it be something bright and new?”

  Rays of sunlight could be seen streaming in from the east above us, rapidly falling, lowering upon us as below something began to rustle and to grow with old, old magic. Heads tilted back, eyes closed, but the words to the Salute blazed before them regardless.

  “Walk the road before you now, and leave the night behind,

  Today is a new day, and the light comes to warm you all.”

  Rings of Primal Druidic power radiated slowly out from around me, pulsing as the streaks in the rock seemed to light up for a faint moment, and then went dark, changing as the waves swept out and past them.

  They felt it all.

  “Let go the shadows, and behold the sun!

  The Light has come, as ever it must.”

  Life boiled and bubbled, and what had been taken from the Land, then returned to the Land, gushed up, rising up towards the coming light above. Their joined voices rose towards the final line with the uncounted numbers who had and would join their voices to Aru at the moment of dawn.

  “Behold the new day!”

  Sunlight came down and blew across the old fields of Sanamar in golden glory, and the Land rose up to embrace it.

  Green grass rose out of stone that degraded into rich black soil, flowers erupted here and there. Butterflies launched themselves into the air above us, as bees and beetles shook free of the soil that had held only the faintest dusty remnants of them, now returned to life and being as aspects of the ecosystem that had been destroyed here.

  Life rose out of everything and everywhere around them, spilling out and away from the graves of the dead Aurochs, and the fields of Sanamar blossomed with life once again.

  ============================

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