and forefinger making a right angle with the rest of the fingers curled half fist. Every detail of the sculptors’ vision had been intricately included. Yniss was depicted as an old elf, age lines around the eyes and across the forehead. His long full hair and beard were carved blowing back towards and over his right shoulder.
Romantic idealism had led the sculptors to depict the God’s body as toned and muscled perfection. There was the odd age line but nothing to really divorce the body from that of a pure athlete. A single-shouldered robe covered little more than groin and stomach, leaving open the bunching shoulders, stunningly defined arms and powerful, sandal-shod legs.
Though there was no colour other than that of the marble itself, Rebraal always stared hard at the slanted oval eyes, their powerful lines and clever use of the temple’s light and shadow making them all but sparkle with life.
The majesty of the statue, though, was all mere dressing for its purpose. The scriptures of Yniss spoke of him coming to this place to give life to the world and construct the harmony that made the elves, gave them long life and showed them the beauty of the forest and the earth. Yniss had channelled his life energy along forefinger and thumb into the harmonic pool, from where it spread throughout the land, bringing glory where it touched. The scriptures laid down the exact design of Yniss’s hand for the sculptors who came after him, their precision ensuring the flow of life energy was forever unbroken. Pipes concealed within the statue’s thumb and forefinger fed water from an underground spring into the pool beneath the statue’s outstretched hand.
Rebraal believed the harmony was what kept him alive, though the scriptures were vague on the consequences of disruption, save that it would cause disaster. Perhaps the forests would wither or elves would die. It mattered little. While the Al-Arynaar lived, no one would damage the harmony, either by accident or design.
Rebraal knelt before the statue and in front of the thirty-foot-wide crescent-shaped and sweet-smelling pool into which the waters of life energy fed. He placed his hands firmly on the stone and bowed his forehead to touch its cool surface before lifting his head to look into Yniss’s eyes and pray again for his miracle.
Selik, commander of the Black Wings, had travelled much of eastern Balaia since the death of Lyanna, Erienne’s abomination of an offspring. He’d seen what the child’s filthy magic had done to his country. He’d seen smashed towns and villages, ruined fields and livestock corpses strewn across flattened pasture, rotting where they lay. He’d seen forests uprooted and levelled, rivers flood plains and lakes double their size, drowning all they touched. And he’d seen where the earth had opened to swallow the land, leaving great scars on the landscape that seeped death and disease.
And worse than the ravaged countryside was the suffering in those towns and cities where people still lived because they had nowhere else to go. In Korina, the extravagance of earlier years had come back to haunt the capital. With farm produce from outlying areas all but gone and no sensible provision for grain storage, the population was reliant on the remnants of the city’s fishing fleet. But it was in a pitiful state. Less than thirty seaworthy vessels remained, the wreckage of the rest still lying among the smashed docks. But Korina’s population exceeded a quarter of a million and even with the huge outflow of refugees to inland towns, they were fighting a losing battle.
The population had survived a harsh winter but were now close to starving, and though the storm and flood waters had receded, their legacy was disease and rats. He knew it was the same throughout Balaia. With four exceptions: Xetesk, Dordover, Lystern and Julatsa.
Magic. Travers, his leader when the Black Wings he now led had been formed, had been right all along. Though magic did superficial good, it upset the natural balance. And where its hand had been then abandoned, people suffered and died. How fragile Balaia was and how blind so many had been to that fragility. But magic had always had the capacity to create disaster and now no eyes were closed to that fact. The evil child and her untamed magic had blighted a whole continent and left the innocent to struggle with the consequences.
And where were the mages now? Guilty by association, they had fled back to the safety of their college cities