The Lady of Dusklake looked down, hard-eyed, at the invaders she could not see, and felt rage building within her.
Across empty air was the sister peak to the one she stood on, High Glimmerdown; the moonlight showed her its ragged edge.
"Down," Aerindel whispered to it, gesturing into the cleft between the two heights. "Go down on them."
She gathered her will, pointed at the rocks across the pass, and gestured grandly, downward. A few stones broke free and fell, bouncing down out of sight.
There were crashes and startled shouts from below, but Aerindel did not hear them. She was swaying in the night, feeling suddenly weak and sick. She went to her knees to avoid following the rocks down into the pass, and clutched at her head. What was wrong with her?
She felt… strange. The Lady of Dusklake gritted her teeth. Whatever her malady, her realm needed her now, before those men with their swords got out among her sleeping folk, and stormed a castle that had no more than a dozen men awake to defend it… if she was lucky.
They were hurrying in the cleft below her, now. A man who'd been screaming abruptly fell silent- sworded by his comrades to keep from rousing her people, no doubt.
Aerindel clenched her fists, glared again at the rocks of High Glimmerdown, and hissed, "Down! Smash away the mountainside, and send it down to bury them!"
A red rain seemed to burst inside her head, and she was suddenly lying on her face on hard rock, as the roar of falling rock rose up around her, amid ragged screams from below.
The Lady of Dusklake clung to her own name, gasping in a sudden sea of confusion. Who was she? Where was she? She seemed to be drifting in mists, and folk wearing her crown were there too; she glimpsed them from time to time. All of them had sad faces, and looked weary and wasted. They grew older and more shriveled as she watched, wasting away…
She heard shouts and curses from below, and someone snarling to "Abandon the horses! We've blades enough to slaughter a dozen Duskan garrisons, you fools! Just get out of this pass before they can send us any more rockfalls! Move, damn you!"
Aerindel swallowed. She hadn't crushed them all. She raised her eyes again to the freshly scoured face of High Glimmerdown, much changed where rocks as big as cottages had broken away. She fought to stay awake.
A yellow haze was rising to blot out the night, rising behind her eyes. "Down," she whispered, trembling on the stones, "go down upon them all. Let not a Thentan man survive, to swing his sword in my fair Dusklake."
The crown surged again, and Aerindel felt pain in every joint as well as in her breast, head, and belly. She groaned aloud, trying to writhe on the stones but finding her limbs too weak to lift.
The stones were shaking, though-shaking with a deep, teeth-rattling roar that grew louder and faster and finally thunderous, as High Glimmerdown poured itself down into the mountain pass, stones shrieking like women in pain as the dust rose and the host of Grand Thentor was buried alive.
Aerindel bounced bloodily across the quaking moun-taintop, and fetched up against a jagged knob of rock. The dust-shrouded ruin of the pass gaped in front of her as she retched and sobbed and spasmed uncontrollably. Despite her tumblings, the crown seemed welded to her temples-and by the faint light it now began to emit, through no doing of hers, she saw that her hands were as wrinkled as those of an old woman.
The crown fed on its wearers, somehow. Aerindel held that thought for a time, but her wits seemed to wander again and again, memory showing her boulders bouncing and rolling down the side of High Glimmerdown, and she could not think of the next thing.
Just as she'd stood waiting in the feast hall, dreading the coming of Rammast but knowing no clever thing she could do.
Rammast. He could still be up to something! She had to see him, to know what he was doing. Coming to strike at her in her chambers at the castle, if she knew him-but not yet. She'd hurt him, at Dusking, and he'd go to banish the pain before anything else. Heal, and take up new spells and magic weapons, before he came seeking her.
He'd be in his tower right now. Tarangar Tower, highest turret of the frowning stone fortress of Thentarna-gard, at the very heart of Grand Thentor… that way. Lying on her face on the stone, head throbbing, Aerindel wondered if she could still farsee.
She could. It hurt-gods, it hurt!-but as the fires of agony clawed at her limbs and she whimpered and writhed on the cold stones of Mount Glimmerdown, she seemed to be flying through the night, seeking the dark sword of Tarangar Tower stabbing at the stars. There would be lights in its high window, she knew, and a darkly handsome lord working furiously to gird himself for her doombringing…
There! Like a Thentan eagle she swooped out of the night, racing up to those lighted windows, seeking the hated face of her foe. She saw him at last, striding across a room whose tables were littered with maps. He seemed to sense her, stiffening and peering at the window. She was past, by then, winging her way around Tarangar Tower and climbing, seeing the steep roofs of Thentor-town spread out below her down narrow, lamplit cobbled streets. She soared toward the moon, willing the crown to blast apart the tower behind her.
She saw it shattering into tiny rocks, bursting into a cloud of stones that would rain down on all of Grand Thentor, leaving behind a pit so deep that all Thentar-nagard would totter and then fall into it, sliding into oblivion shrouded in rock-dust… just as the Thentan army in Glimmerdown Pass had met its end.
"This thing can come to pass," the voice of the crown seemed to whisper in the ear, "but it is a very great thing. Doing it will consume a life."
"Many lives, I should think," Aerindel murmured aloud, her forehead resting on the hard stones of the mountain top.
"The life of a being who can wield magic," the crown whispered. "A being you have touched while wearing me."
"A deliberate sacrifice, then," the Lady of Dusklake said wearily. "Or a murder."
"If I can get no other essence," the crown told her, "I will claim the life-force of the one who wears me."
"So if I force you to bring down the tower," Aerindel said, 'Tarangar Tower will fall-but I'll wither and die here, on this mountaintop."
"The tower may survive if it bears strong enough protective magics," the crown replied. "I must feed soon in any case, or shatter."
Aerindel lay silent, cold fear slowly creeping through her. She had willingly chained herself to some evil thing that would be her doom. Picturing herself tumbling down the mountainside as a desiccated bag of skin with loose bones bouncing and rolling inside it, she forced her trembling limbs to move.
Snarling with the effort, the Lady of Dusklake moved her arms along the uneven stone, very slowly and very painfully. She was gasping and drenched with cold sweat when at last her fingertips touched the crown.
It tingled, but did not budge. No matter how hard she clawed and tugged at it, it seemed attached to her head. The Whispering Crown would not come off.
She rolled over, finally, to stare despairingly at the stars. She had slain men who did not matter, and crippled herself in doing so-leaving herself and her realm helpless against their real foe. All too soon, Rammast would return. Rested, and strong, and ready to slay- and she'd be lying here, too weak to do anything… and with the crown and here to sacrifice in doing the first mighty thing he wanted of it, he would endanger all the Esmeltaran.
She felt like crying, but Aerindel Summertyn had no tears left. Bleeding, bitten, half-shorn, and dressed only in tatters, she lacked the strength even to stand. She lay on Mount Glimmerdown and looked up at the bleakly twinkling stars, waiting for Rammast's sneering smile to come into view above her.