The soldier was headless, then half a staggering man, then two quivering legs with nothing above them.
The fire roared like a dragon through the rest of the invaders, tumbling those it did not turn to ashes. Swords melted away in crumbling hands, men shouted then fell silent, and the reek of burnt flesh rose thick around the Lady of Dusklake as she strode forward.
The last soldier fell with a despairing, bubbling scream. She watched his flesh melt from his bones amid greasy smoke and looked down the empty, ashen street to be sure she had destroyed every last Thentan.
In the distance, along the road, something glowed in the night. She willed the crown to take her to it—and found herself looking into the angry eyes of Rammast Tarangar. The glow of the magic that had brought him was still fading around his limbs. He snarled at her in astonishment and a ring flashed on one of his hands as he raised it and made a punching motion at her.
A magic that would have twisted her into a toad-thing plucked at her limbs; the crown told her what it was, shattered it, and sent a withering ray at the Lord of Grand Thentor.
Rammast staggered back, alarm clear on his suddenly pale face, as a ward around him was overwhelmed and cast down in an instant, and the ray bored in at him, clawing at his arm, side, and shoulder.
Gasping and enfeebled, Rammast cast a dispel of his own, banishing the blight the crown had sent him. Aerindel smiled grimly and smashed him to the ground with a stabbing thrust of force. Watching him writhe as ribs snapped and he grunted and sobbed in pain, she mustered all she knew of what the crown could do, and bored in at him again, seeking to see into his mind.
Rammast’s frightened eyes filled her vision. He gibbered like a mindless thing in fear of her as the crown carried her through his pain, hatred, and awareness of the hard ground beneath him… and on into what he had been thinking about, and where he had been.
A vision unfolded in her mind: his vision. She saw a great company of armed warriors, harness creaking as they filed through a narrow way in the mountains. Gods above! She was seeing the main army of Grand Thentor, invading the other end of Dusklake, hard by her castle—through the narrow, perilous Glimmerdown Pass!
The vision was shattered. The crumpled turf before her was bare; Rammast had managed to work a magic that tore him free from Dusking and her scrutiny, and whirled him away to safety.
Aerindel shrugged. She had to be gone from here herself— to the windswept top of Mount Glimmerdown, forthwith!
“To will it is to do the deed,” the crown whispered, as seductively as any lover … and she found herself standing elsewhere, on bare stone with a cool breeze sliding past. She was on the mountaintop where her father had triumphed, so long ago. There were faint saddle-creakings and the snort-ings of restive horses from the dark cleft below her.
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, downwards. 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 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 were lucky.
They were hurrying in the cleft below her, now, and a man who’d been screaming abruptly fell silent. Sworded by his own 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, and fought to stay awake.
A yellow haze was rising behind her eyes to blot out the night. “Down,” she whispered, trembling on the stones, “go down upon them all. Let not aThentan 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 mountaintop and fetched up against a jagged knob of rock. The dust-shrouded ruin of the pass gaped in front of her as she retched, sobbed, and spasmed uncontrollably. Despite her tumblings, the crown seemed welded to her temples, and by the faint light it 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. Memory showed her boulders bouncing and rolling down the side of High Glimmerdown, but 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. He’d heal and take up new spells and magic weapons, before he came seeking her.
No, he’d be in his tower. Tarangar Tower, highest turret of the frowning stone fortress of Thentarnagard, at the very heart of Grand Thentor. Lying on her face on the stone, head throbbing, Aerindel wondered if she could still farsense.
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 the tower behind her apart.