When she paused, Feldyn snarled and leaped at her. She went on at last, kept pushing in, the space so tight in places she had to squeeze. She could feel Feldyn’s pain sharply as he pushed through. The sounds of battle echoed behind them; then suddenly there was the sound of falling rocks. What had happened? She could make no picture come. Ahead she saw flame and thought fire ogres were there, too, then saw it was molten lava far below, that they had come through the tunnel to a ledge high along the side of a cavern. Where was Lobon? What was happening?
At last Crieba appeared, and Lobon behind him; and she went weak with relief.
“The tunnel was filled with ogres,” he panted.
“That noise, like falling rocks . . . ?”
“I pulled boulders down to block the tunnel. There were too many, we couldn’t fight them.” She felt his shame at having fled. She touched his cheek, and he put his arms around her. They clung together, let their need for solace take them for a moment, her face pressed into the leather of his tunic, the wolf bell hurting her ribs; and suddenly they were caught in a vision of a city on fire, men balding among burning buildings, then of winged ones above leaping through red, smoky sky—winged ones carrying dark riders, Kubalese riders; then the winged ones began deliberately to fall, smashing to earth, their riders under them. They Saw for an instant the whole of Ere torn with warring; then Meatha pulled away from Lobon, ceased to touch the bell, and the vision was gone. He let out his breath.
“They were fighting on the border of Carriol,” he said with fury. “Carriol’s armies are driven back to the border.” He had never cared, before, about Carriol. Not as he now cared.
They found a way leading downward, and only when they reached the floor of the cavern did they stop to rest. They could sense nothing following them. The air seemed fresher to their left, and they saw an opening in the far wall. They crossed to it, ducked low beneath stone, then stood staring upward with drawn breath.
Far above them in the roof of the cavern shone a jagged hole with a patch of sky beyond, sky gray with storm. As they watched, clouds blew across swept by fast winds. “There was a hole like that in another cavern,” Meatha said, “where I first met Anchorstar.” But this opening was so very distant.
To their right a crude stairway was cut into the wall, wide steps as if made for the use of fire ogres. They crossed to it and began to climb. The steps were scorched by ogres’ feet. The sounds of their footsteps made a scuffing echo across the cavern. They sensed that somewhere above them their ascent was noted, and awaited.
Then suddenly the wolves stiffened and began to stalk, and from around the bend ahead three fire ogres came shuffling, creatures awash with red flame. Lobon held the wolf bell high, and his power joined with the wolves—unfettered now by Kish’s answering power—to drive the creatures stumbling backward up the steps until they turned at last and shuffled into a high crevice. Surely they were more docile than the other fire ogres. Was it because of the bell’s power? Or was their little group together growing stronger?
Or perhaps these creatures were more used to humans and not so easily nudged to fury. Did men come here, then? And why?
They knew before they reached the top of the cavern that winged ones waited there, tied in small cells. Yes, men had been here. Dark Seers. For these were RilkenDal’s fettered mounts, captive and beaten and starving. They were of the bands from the far mountains that had been so long silent, they whose brothers were at this moment killing themselves deliberately in battle, to turn the outcome of the wars. Twenty winged horses waited, all of them scarred and stiff with wounds, burned from the fire ogre’s touch, their wings bound with leather cords, their heads tied to bolts in the stone.
When they reached them, Meatha and Lobon went sick at the sight of them. The horses were so thin and weak. They came away from their bonds walking stiffly, trying to lift wings grown heavy with disuse. Meatha’s hand shook as she began to dress wounds with the little birdmoss that was left. She applied the moss as tenderly as she could into the long gash on a white mare’s chest, wincing as the mare flinched with pain. She tore up the rest of her shift for bandages.
For four days they camped on the ledge high up the wall of the cavern. Lobon found grain in a cavern below, kept there by RilkenDal for the horses he took into battle. They found charred leather buckets by a water runlet and carried them countless times up to the winged ones.
From this height they could see lakes of fire strung across the cave floor below like a necklace. Above, through the high opening that was still so far away, they watched the first night as the sky darkened; then they crouched in the stalls away from the storm that broke with a terrible violence, drenching the cave. When at last the sky cleared and the sun shone weakly, the wind, twisting down into the cavern, was bitterly cold.
There was a constant but gentler wind, too, of beating wings, as the horses of Eresu worked at strengthening unused muscles so they could fly once more. Soon some of the horses began to descend to the floor of the cavern to drink, though they did not like going there. When the earth began again to tremble, they became nervous and would startle and sweep up into the heights of the cavern without drinking. Then on the third night a gusher of lava broke out of the cave wall below them and flowed in a river toward the molten lakes.
As the lava spilled onto the floor, fire ogres began to appear from fissures in the cave below and to move ponderously toward the lava river, then to shuffle along and around it in a cumbersome and terrifying ritual. A few turned away and came up the stairs toward the ledge, but two winged stallions rose and struck at them from the air with sharp hooves until the clumsy creatures fell to the floor below. The wolves killed a third with quick, striking slashes, then lay licking their burns. Lobon killed two with a rock and sent another over the side by tripping it. The flaming, twisting bodies lit the cave wails as they fell.
When the last ogre was gone, Meatha curled at once into the hollow of stone where she slept, trying to get warm. Crieba came to lie beside her, and she wished it were Lobon there. But when she caught his unspoken words and saw him watching her, she made a wall between them until he lay down at last beside a winged stallion to shelter from the wind that blew down on them in sharp gusts.
When Lobon woke, the wind was still. Moonlight touched the cavern from above; and the mountain was trembling in long, violent rumbles; that was what had waked him. All around him winged ones were up, balancing with open wings, for the ledge had become a turmoil of moving rock. Meatha clung to a dark stallion; the white mare pushed close to Lobon crying, Mount, Lobon! Mount! The shocks were violent, wave upon wave. The cave could shift or collapse, they could be trapped here. Lobon grabbed Feldyn and lifted him between the mare’s wings, and she leaped toward the hole above. He got Crieba mounted, felt the wolf’s fear. “Hang on with your teeth! Crouch between her wings and hang on!” He saw Meatha mounted and flung himself onto a pale stallion, grabbed a handful of mane, and felt the world drop away from him as he was swept away; felt wings fold tight around him as the stallion slipped through the hole; felt drowned by wind as the stallion beat his way out onto the open sky to make way for those coming behind.
They were free of the cave. Free. But they stood on unsteady, trembling ground; and then suddenly they were caught in a confusion of battle come out of nowhere, out of the sky all around them, no hint, no sense of it beforehand. Heavy wings beat at them, sharp-toothed lizards tore at them, diving, then wheeling away. Lobon had no weapon. The stallion he rode struck and bit. The sky was filled with lizards. Winged horses screamed. Lobon tried to see Meatha, felt teeth tear his arm. The sound of beating wings, of screams, of the earth thundering, all were mixed and confused. The stallion struck and struck, and soon below Lobon could see a dark smear of bodies on the moonwashed earth. Lizards? Horses of Eresu? Where were Feldyn, Crieba?