The Castle Of Hape. Caves Of Fire And Ice. The Joining Of The Stone

In the sky above the crystal dome, the battle was bloody, a winging, whirling melee of winds and confusion. Kish swept her band in again and again to attack the winged ones and Meatha, while Kish herself drove mercilessly at Lobon. And as Kish called on the powers of the creatures of darkness, those spirits reached out to give purpose to the winged lizards: made warring, lethal creatures of them, all claw and teeth and canny in their maneuvering, slashing and twisting away to divert Meatha. The white mare bore streaks of blood across her coat and wings, and Meatha’s arm was torn. Nearby the warrior queen parried and bore down on Lobon. She slashed, cut Lobon’s shoulder, and swept away beneath Lannthenn to come at him from behind with her ready sword. Lannthenn dove and doubled back; Lobon struck, but Kish was away, quick in the air, eluding him. As the forces clashed and the dark strengthened, the earth below shuddered, and the very boulders shifted, ringing out like death music, Along Pelli’s coast a protrusion of land broke loose and fell into the sea, gentle hills rumbled and cracked apart. What power was this, to so shatter the land? All took heed, but no one yet understood except Kish, and those who fought beside her.

In Farr, Kearb-Mattus let some of the cultists escape his troops in order to surround and take captive the young Carriolinian Seers; soon his troops were ushering Zephy and Thorn and five other Seers down from their mounts, to be bound, to be tied one to the other, then to be force-marched off ahead of the horses toward Dal, and toward the villa-turned-cell where they had left earlier captives. For that villa, too, had fallen to Kearb-Mattus’s men and was now a perfect place to give, with slow, increasing torture, the final death rites the Kubalese leader so anticipated.

Neither Thorn nor Zephy looked up as they marched, nor looked at each other, but their minds were locked as one—angry, desperate—seeking a plan of escape.

*

Lobon struck a telling blow across Kish’s face, another strike that drew blood from the lizard. He saw Meatha skewer a lizard then jerk her sword free as the heavy creature fell. Below them now bodies lay, dark splotches across the meadow and dunes, some lizards, some horses of Eresu, sprawled across the pale sand. Kish was on him again. He parried, forced her back; Kish’s lizard clawed air, she gripped its neck, off balance, and he thrust forward quickly—too late Lobon saw her strategy, too late cried out to Lannthenn and felt the stallion take her sword in a mortal spot.

They were falling, the stallion barely able to use his wings, blood gushing from his torn chest; he was like a crippled bird. Lobon’s heart filled with love for him, with sorrow, and with terrible fear for the stones. Lannthenn fell to earth in a twisting, crippled spiral, went to his knees and was down as Lobon leaped free.

From the crystal dome Jaspen watched, Feldyn and Crieba immobile beside her. She made prayer for Lobon, violent, strong prayer; she had done so constantly since the battle began. She was the child of Cadach, the tree man, the youngest child of five, though no two were born in the same generation or in the same place nor, for that, of the same mother; but all choosing to make right again the sins of Cadach. This was her gift, this guarding of the stone that now held all of Ere’s fate in balance.

Soon behind her, come at the force of her prayer, towering figures made of light rose from the stuff of the crystal dome as if that crystal were but air, figures unclear in their dimension, and their wings all woven of light. They watched the battle, watched the great horse Lannthenn fall and die; watched Kish, the warrior queen, descend to the meadow where Lobon stood awaiting her, holding the stone and the wolf bell as bait.

Kish’s eyes burned with hunger for the stone, but she remained mounted. Around her, lizards dropped out of the sky to slither in the grass, circling Lobon. Above, half a dozen lizards drove Meatha and the white mare back, attacking again, again.