They made ready at once. Lobon lifted the wolves onto the backs of two winged mares; Meatha mounted, then Lobon; and they were leaping skyward into the moon-silvered night, flying light and fast across a cold, quick wind. To their left rose Eken-dep, its white glacier touched by moonlight; then suddenly against that mass of white a small, dark silhouette appeared in the sky, moving fast toward them. Kish? All of them startled.
But Kish would not come alone now that she had lizards to fight beside her.
Then they saw it was not a lizard but a winged one coming on fast and riderless, flying free. Michennann, cutting the wind in great sweeps of her wings, coming at last to join them.
But now behind Michennann, peppering the sky, the lizards appeared beating across the face of the glacier. The sense of Kish came predatory and cold. The winged horses needed no urging, they fled above the wild peaks; and the lizards followed, settling into a steady pace, but never drawing closer. Michennann winged near to the white mare who carried Meatha. How scarred she was from battling the lizards. There was a welt across her neck and down her side, and her silver coat was torn with deep scratches. But the sense of her spirit was warm and close, and all enmity between them was now gone and only sympathy remained.
When at last they drew near to Tala-charen, Meatha could feel its power—and feel Lobon’s quickening interest. The dark stallion Lannthenn, who carried him, swept close to the peak and the others followed, hovering so close for a few moments that wingtips nearly touched the cave entrance, and they could see into the cave where Ramad had stood. Meatha shuddered with the power of the place. Here the runestone had split; here Seers had come suddenly out of Time to receive the broken shards.
The cave floor was translucent green like the sea. They all thought how that floor had split, the very mountain split to swallow the bones of the gantroed, then had closed up once more. They thought of Ram and Skeelie there, two young children caught in a clashing of powers that shook all of Ere—that changed all of Ere—and that had brought them here this night on a quest to undo that splitting. It was impossible not to think of the Luff’Eresi, impossible not to think of them as gods, and wonder as men had wondered for generations whether it had been they who had placed the stone in this cave; and whether their powers had touched the stone the night of the splitting.
Then the winged ones banked and swept away, leaving Tala-charen behind.
Beyond Tala-charen they began to hear rumbles from the land below, and twice they saw explosions of fire in the mountains far to the north. They were flying over mountains still, but now the desert lay ahead, a white smear against the sky; and soon they saw the foot of the peaks had begun to curve northward skirting the vast white dunes. It was not long afterward that they saw the pale granite cliff tilting to the sky. Then they were over the white dunes, gleaming like snow below them. They began to stare downward between the horses’ beating wings, searching among the closer dunes for the small green valley. Behind them, the lizards paced them, never varying their distance; and Kish watched them.
To the north among the mountains, red smoke rose into the moon-pale clouds. Flame belched from a far peak, then was still. They could hear earthshocks, some of them faint as a whisper. All eyes searched the dunes below, searched the black half-moons of shadow deep between dunes, for the valley and for the gleam of the crystal dome. And they could feel and sense more than earthshocks around them: other powers were gathering, too, those awakened by the dark Seers, and those nurtured by the light. Both were alerted and building, clashing crosswise against one another, drawing strength from that very clashing. Drawing strength from the rising need of the Seers and the desire to control the fate of the stones. For the stones were like a magnet now to all the forces that rose across Ere. The forces of good swelled and drew in around the little flying band, and the powers of dark drew around the warrior queen, whose evil was older than Time. And the powers, by drawing close, strengthened yet again—just as, below the flying bands, the powers of the earth itself broke into new fissures as the earth cracked, and so built to crescendo.
Along the coastal countries, shocks came so harsh they brought down houses and outbuildings. Fissures opened across the fields, and terrified animals stampeded. A ewe with a lamb ran blindly into a crack opening a hundred feet deep. The river Urobb flooded its banks just above Sangur and drowned a small village in its sweeping tide. The bloodthirsty Herebians, many of them wounded and beaten by Carriol, backed off from warring and thought of returning home—but only to wait for the holocaust that seemed imminent and that would give them sure victory. For well they remembered past upheavals. Always, the Herebians had risen first and strongest after the wild heaving of the land. Always, the Herebians had taken the spoils as other men cowered in fear before volcanoes they thought were the gods’ wrath.
Kearb-Mattus gathered his scattered forces. He did not let them draw away to wait out the holocaust as they wished, but sent them riding hard toward Carriol’s border, for what better time to destroy Carriol than when accompanied by the violence of the land itself. And while his main band rode toward Carriol, Kearb-Mattus himself with fifty troops rode hard for Farr, where his scouts told him Kish’s cults marched, led by the adolescent Carriolinian upstarts. So they thought to help defend the border of Carriol! He had not known until an hour before that they had had the nerve to fetter those among them who held to the ways of Kubal and to Kish, and to lock them into the old villa at Dal and bar the portals with stone and mortar. Brash, snivelling . . . Kearb-Mattus smiled and thought with heat of killing the two young Seers who led that crew. He knew them. Oh, how he would pleasure himself by their deaths, those two that had so defied him—fracking brats—before he took Burgdeeth two years ago. Those two that had destroyed the training of the Children of Ynell there in the drug-caves of Kubal. They would die now, and painfully.
*
Lobon saw the emerald valley first, hidden in a moon-shaped crease between dunes, visible only because the crystal dome reflected moonlight. They could not have missed it in any case, however, for a sense of power had begun to draw them, the sense of the runestone there. They feared for that runestone now, for Kish was close behind. Lobon turned to look back at her. Her lizards were massing close around her, as if for attack. But still she kept her distance. Lobon leaned between the dark stallion’s wings as he swept down over the valley, a shadowed niche now between the silvered dunes. The dome glinted, then lost itself as their angle of descent steepened, then gleamed again; once it reflected Ere’s moons just before they came to earth.
They came down onto heavy grass. The winged ones folded their wings along their backs and stood facing the crystal dome. Behind and above them, Kish’s band drew close, sweeping over and back. Lobon could feel power strong now from the stone that dwelt beneath the dome. How had it come here? How had the dome come here? And who was the white-haired child? He did not dismount from Lannthenn’s back, nor did Meatha dismount. She looked across at him in silence. Her fear and her exhilaration shook him. They could feel the powers gathered around them, could feel the earth’s trembling, could feel the intolerable weight of Ere’s very existence balanced in this moment.
Inside the crystal dome, the white-haired child paused, then came slowly to the crystal door and pushed it open.
She came up to Lannthenn’s side, carrying a sheathed sword, the sight of which made Lobon start. She wore a second sword. And she held her right fist clenched against her chest. She was tiny, surely no more than seven. Her hair was snow white in the moonlight, her thin shift hardly enough to keep off the cold, though she was not shivering. Her eyes looked, in the moonlight, as golden as a wolf’s eyes. As golden as Anchorstar’s eyes, Meatha told him. With effort the child lifted the sword. Lobon stared again at the hilt, felt weak and strange, took it from her and unsheathed it, sat holding Skeelie’s sword. How had it gotten here? “Where is she?” he whispered, glancing past the child into the dome, but he could see no figure there, caught no sense of her.