Then Tavi was clambering up onto the aqueduct, his face flushed with excitement. He gained his feet, glanced at Kitai, and said, "I don't want to hear it."
Kitai smirked but said nothing.
Isana turned to stare at Varg, who crouched at the edge of the room, red eyes gleaming in the dim light. "My word," she whispered. "It's… rather large."
"He is," Tavi agreed, putting a gentle emphasis on the first word. He glanced at Kitai, who was readying the last line, one braided out of several of her more slender ropes. "Even if we belay it, are you sure it will hold him?"
She paused to give him a brief and very direct look.
Tavi scowled but raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Kitai flung one end of the rope, which had been weighted with a heavy knot, out toward the far side of the aqueduct. The rope whiplashed down and around, completing a circuit of the aqueduct, and Tavi reached down to catch its weighted end as it came around, completing the circle. He passed it to Kitai, who knotted it off against the rest of its length, then flung the other end to Varg.
The Cane caught the rope, glanced at it briefly, and stepped forward to put one paw-foot into the loop on its end.
Then he whipped his head around toward the stairs.
Isana saw a half-dressed man rush up the stairway to the roof, bearing a spear in his hand. He looked around wildly for a moment, shocked at what he saw on the roof, but his eyes locked on to Varg, and he lifted the spear and cast it in one smooth, viciously powerful motion.
Varg twisted as though to leap aside, but his paw-feet slipped on the ice, tangled in the rope, and brought him down. Isana heard an ugly sound of impact, and a furious, inhuman snarl ripped through the night air.
"Varg!" Tavi cried.
The Cane regained his balance in an instant, and Isana could hear the claws of one paw-hand bite into the ice as he reached up and jerked the spear from his leg. It looked like a child's toy in the Cane's hands. Varg raised the spear to throw, but then seemed to hesitate for a second, and instead of casting it point first, he flung it in a sidearm throw, its heavy wooden shaft whirling.
The Guardsman tried to dodge, but it was the Aleran's turn to realize that the ice-glazed roof was treacherous. The man wobbled rather than springing aside, and the wooden haft of the spear hit him with enough force to physically throw him back down the stairway.
Varg spun and lurched toward the edge of the parapet, but as he tried to climb it and swing away, his wounded leg seemed to buckle beneath him. He flailed with one arm, trying to recover his balance…
… and grasped the naked stone of a merlon.
There was thundering detonation, like a miniature thunderclap, and the gargoyles on the roof leapt into instant, eerily graceful life.
The nearest wasn't five feet from Varg, and it leapt at the Cane. Varg fell back beneath it as it pounced, caught the vast weight of the gargoyle on his arms and his good leg, and flexed, still rolling. Such was the power in the Cane's enormous frame that the gargoyle was flung clear of the parapet and went sailing over the edge, thrashing wildly-until one of its misshapen limbs caught on the braided line that still dangled between Varg's foot and the stone of the aqueduct.
The weight of the gargoyle came down on the line, snapping it taut.
Varg snarled, scrambling desperately, but the ice shrieked as his claws were dragged through it, toward the edge.
The other three gargoyles flung themselves at the Cane.
Varg saw them coming and released his grip on the ice.
The rope hauled the Cane roughly over the parapet, just as the gargoyles slammed against the area he'd previously occupied. All of that weight hammered into the crenellation at the parapet's edge, and the stones, the gargoyles, and the Canim Ambassador plunged down.
The heavy rope, unable to hold so much weight, applied so suddenly, hummed in protest for a split second, then snapped, sending strands whipping through the air. There was a flash of fire on Isana's shoulder and she staggered backward and fell into the chilly water of the aqueduct's trough.
She was paralyzed for an instant, stunned by the pain. She looked down and saw that her dress had been sliced open as if with a knife. Blood flowed freely, soaking the arm of her dress. Hands seized her, someone called her name, then Araris was there, binding something around her arm.
Light rose up from below, sullen and red.
"Oh bloody crows," Tavi breathed. He whirled his head to stare at Araris, his eyes wide with panic. "Araris, he landed on the lawn."
Araris suddenly tensed. "What?" He rose, half-carrying Isana toward Tavi, and over the edge of the aqueduct she could see the lawn around the Grey Tower.
Fires burned there. No, not fires, because no true fire was ever so solid, so still.
Furies of fire had come to life. They had taken the form of some kind of enormous hound, almost the size of her brother's earth fury, Brutus. But, Isana noted dizzily, there were differences. Their rear legs seemed too short, their front legs too long, and their shoulders rose to misshapen lumps. Though they looked solid, they were made from raw, red flame, glowing a hostile, angry red. Flickering fires rose up around their shoulders and neck, like some sort of mane, and a pall of black smoke gathered around their paws and trailed behind them.
They moved suddenly and as one. Their heads turned, wolflike muzzles orienting. Isana followed the direction of their gazes, across the lawn to…
To the fallen form of Ambassador Varg. Two of the gargoyles lay shattered around him and unmoving, but the others had begun to twist and thrash their limbs, awkwardly attempting to regain their balance and renew their attack.
The firehounds opened their mouths, and the crackle and roar of hungry flames rose through the night air.
The bells continued to ring, and men began to emerge onto the roof of the Grey Tower.
Tavi's expression hardened and he traded a look with Kitai. Without a word, he leaned over and dunked his long grey cloak into the cold water.
Araris spun toward him, crying, "No!"
Tavi seized one end of the broken line that still trailed from the aqueduct and leapt over the side.
Isana took in a sharp breath as her son flung himself into the maelstrom of angry furies and steel below, but was still too dazed to do anything about it.
"Oh," she breathed, wondering briefly if he'd gone mad. "Oh, dear."
Chapter 36
Tavi slid down the slender single strand of the snapped braid of rope and wondered briefly if he'd gone mad.
He'd been fortunate, in that the rope had broken fairly near to its end, and he was able to slide down it until his feet were no more than ten or twelve feet off the ground. He slid on off the end into a fall and tried to absorb the shock of his fall with his legs, letting his body fall backward, arms spread to slap the ground.
It worked better when one wasn't wearing all the armor, Tavi thought, but at least the turf of the lawn was soft enough to absorb some of the impact. It knocked some of the wind from him, but he forced himself to his feet, drew his sword, and rushed to Varg's side, just as the gargoyles regained their feet.
He never hesitated or slowed his steps, but once more reached into the steel of his blade, aligning its substance with his will. He let out a howl as he closed on the nearer of the two gargoyles from its flank, and swung his blade low. A shower of scarlet-and-azure sparks flared where the blade contacted the stone surface of the gargoyle, and the steel of the gladius sliced through the granite as if it had been moldy cheese. The blow carried so much force as it passed through the gargoyle's leg that it spun Tavi completely around from one step to the next- in time for him to repeat the same movement, upon the second leg, to another shower of angry light and a scream of tortured stone.
The gargoyle toppled onto its side, arms thrashing-but Tavi had severed its original contact with the earth completely, and the gargoyle began to crumble, beginning at the stumps of its severed thighs, as if bleeding gravel.