Chapter 145: A Narrow Rescue

"You are good," the mage said. He was breathing harder. "Better than I expected."

"You’ve said that already."

"I mean it as a compliment."

He swept the staff in a wide arc. A wave of cold slammed into Emeric’s side and sent him sprawling. He rolled to his feet. The frost had caught his left arm, and it hung numb and stiff.

The mage lifted the staff again.

"Now," he said. "Hold still."

The totems pulsed. All three remaining. The cold hit Emeric’s whole body at once, a crushing, total cold, and every muscle locked in place.

His sword stopped in mid-swing. His legs stopped. His jaw stopped.

No.

The mage stepped forward, almost gently, and studied him.

"There," he said. "That is more like it. I will admit, it is a relief. For a moment, I was worried."

He raised one gloved hand and reached for Emeric’s face.

Move.

His whole body strained. Nothing happened.

Move. Move!

The cold pressed down. The glove came closer. And in the center of his chest, the hollow place where the Void lived stirred and opened one eye.

VOID AFFINITY (D)

[Emergency Action Available.]

[The paralysis is a force. Forces need something to push against. If you have nothing for it to push against, it has no buffer. I would try using yourself as that buffer.]

He didn’t understand. He reached in anyway.

Nothing.

He emptied himself.

It was the strangest thing he had ever done. He pulled everything out of his muscles, his nerves, the stiff locked weight of his arms, and he let it fall into the hollow, and the hollow took it. The frozen pressure that gripped him found no hold. It slid across a surface that wasn’t there.

His fingers moved.

The mage’s hand was an inch from his cheek. Emeric’s right arm swung up, faster than thought, and caught the mage’s wrist.

The man’s eyes went wide under the hood.

"That’s not—"

Emeric’s knee slammed into his stomach. He folded. The staff fell from his hand. Emeric twisted the captured wrist, spun, and drove his elbow into the side of the mage’s head. The hood flew back. A thin, pale face, with eyes the color of old ice.

The mage staggered and hit the grass on one knee.

"You," he gasped. "What are you?"

Emeric kicked the staff away. It skidded across the frozen grass and came to rest against the nearest totem stake. He raised his sword.

"Let them go."

Behind him, the orc moved.

Emeric caught it from the corner of his eye. The massive shape swayed, rocked on its feet, and straightened. The cold had slipped off the nearest edge of the clearing when the first totem fell, and the orc had been fighting it with every ounce he had. Now one leg, and then the other, came free of the white.

He took a step. Another. The limp arm swung.

"Mine," the orc growled. It was barely a word. It was a sound from deep in his chest, a thing with no language in it. "Mine to kill."

"Stay back!" Emeric shouted.

The orc didn’t. He hurled himself across the clearing, club raised, bellowing.

The mage looked up. For an instant, Emeric saw real fear in his face.

"Not today," the mage whispered.

He smashed his open hand against the ground. A line of black cracked across the grass, a seam in the world, and light ripped open beside him in a tall, crooked slash. Wind howled out of it. The edge of it tore at his cloak.

"Stop him!" Emeric yelled.

The orc’s club came down. The mage twisted. The club clipped his shoulder, and bone cracked, and the man screamed. But he was already half through the gap.

He looked back once, at Emeric, with eyes gone bright and strange.

"The Hand will know of this," he said.

Then the portal folded shut, and the club struck empty earth. A cloud of frozen dust billowed up and drifted slowly across the clearing.

The orc stood there, chest heaving, club buried in the ground.

The remaining three totems died together.

Emeric didn’t remember deciding. He ran. He touched each stake, one after another, and the Void opened and swallowed them. The bone crumbled. The humming stopped. Where the last one had been, there was a smell of cold and ozone and the wet green scent of cut grass.

The silence that followed was enormous.

Then, behind him, someone gasped.

It was Ashe. His whole body jerked, as if a string had been cut. He staggered, sword falling from nerveless fingers, and dropped onto his hands and knees in the wet grass, coughing like a drowning man.

"Ashe!"

Emeric was there in two strides. He caught the lieutenant under the arms.

"My lord." Ashe’s voice was a raw croak. "My lord. It’s you. You came."

"I came."

"I knew you’d... I told them... I said, if we can last long enough..."

"Don’t talk."

All around them, the clearing was coming apart. Tomas dropped to his knees, shield clattering. Hale fell flat on his back, staring at the sky. Corbin was weeping, openly, hands pressed over his face. Doss rubbed at his arms in a daze. Pell had curled into a ball, shaking.

Brokk lurched upright and began to swear in a long, furious, unbroken stream of dwarvish.

"I’ll take that as him being well," Emeric said.

Lirael didn’t fall. She lowered her bow, very slowly, and put the arrow back in her quiver, and looked at him with eyes the color of old moss.

"Thank you," she said.

She said nothing else. She didn’t need to.

The fight at the tree line was ending too.

Gaius had put his back to a tree and was holding three wolves at bay with a sword in each hand. Merrick had finished a boar and was helping Perrin to his feet. Brennan, white as a sheet, had killed something with too many legs, and was staring at his blade in a daze.

When the last totem fell, the beasts hesitated.