Dracvadrig eased the girl’s mind, soothed her, brought her on toward Pelli artfully until at last she crouched between the mare’s wings complacent in her righteousness, lulled by the knowledge that she alone would save Ere. She urged the mare on with authority, pressed her on in spite of the mare’s stubbornness. And as Dracvadrig lured the girl, he began at the same time to circle Aybil’s dark tower. The stone was theirs now. Soon they would have the second stone. Soon all of Ere would lie at their feet. Already Zandour was done for, and next Pelli would fall, then Farr, Aybil, Sangur. And then—then they would destroy Carriol, with greatest pleasure.
Dracvadrig came down atop the broken tower. His reaching feet knocked away broken stone walls so stone tumbled and clattered onto the old iron bed in the top room of the tower, open now to the sky. More stone fell into the black lake from which the tower rose. Along the shore of the lake, the cults slept peacefully.
*
Zephy and Thorn, restless, shaken by the vision of Zandour, slept at last, but for what seemed only moments before the winged ones near camp spoke to them. Thorn felt Zephy stir. He rose and lit the lamp. She stared up at him vaguely, her brown eyes huge with sleep, then roused herself and sat up. She had been dreaming of Meatha. She shared the disturbing vision with him, but it fled quickly before the urgent voices of the winged ones. The dragon comes. The warrior queen comes. The dragon sits atop the tower like a buzzard, the dragon that killed our brothers.
They Saw the dragon hunched atop the tower. It must wait until dawn. Thorn said. I would battle it in daylight, not in darkness. Even with the Seeing, not in darkness.
Yes, the winged ones said, it will sleep now. See, it is turning itself back into a man. It will lie with the woman there, and we will keep watch.
Zephy let the vision of the dragon go. She felt the more urgent vision was with Meatha. She let it flood her mind once more. Thorn felt her distress, took her hand, and sat calmly and silently sorting until at last he had joined her in the vision, knew her alarm as she watched the mare Michennann wing through the night sky, heading straight for Pelli, Meatha sitting straight and tense between her beating wings. “What is she . . .” Zephy began. “What does she carry? What . . . ?”
“The stone!” Thorn said with sudden conviction, gripping her hand so tightly she winced. “Zephy, she has the stone, she has taken it from the citadel.”
“The runestone? But she can’t, she—”
He stood up and hung the lamp from the tentpole. Light caught across his red hair, across his bare chest. He looked down at her, still scowling with disbelief and anger.
“The master Seer would never let her,” she said stupidly. “Never send one alone . . .” She did not want to believe what he was telling her. She looked up at him until at last she had to believe. She tried to touch Meatha’s mind and to know Meatha’s intent.
She could sense great calmness from Meatha, a sense of lightness, a sure, purposeful feeling that what she was doing was necessary and right, was essential to the salvation of Ere. She Saw truth in Meatha’s purpose: She knew well enough that the master Seers would never let the stone leave Carriol—knew in this moment so close with Meatha, that to carry the stone into battle, to wield it in battle, as Ramad of the wolves had once done, and with it vanquish the Kubalese troops and their dark companions, might be the only sure way to stop the slaughter and to destroy Kubal. She felt uneasy at the theft of the stone, but she felt with Meatha the urgency and lightness, too. She looked up at Thorn. He was watching her intently. They must trust Meatha for a little while, bear with her for a little while. Give her fair chance, not withhold their trust from her. Not yet.
Thorn gave her a questioning look, nodded at last, then blew out the lamp and lay down beside her. Almost at once he was snoring. Zephy scowled at the ease with which he slept, and she lay worrying for a long time. Should she alert the council? Thorn had withheld his judgment in this in deference to her. She felt unease at the strength of Meatha’s power. And yet if Meatha was right, if the fate of Ere could lie in that one stone carried into battle—Zephy sighed and tossed and could not sleep. And knew, beneath all her arguments, that she must be silent at least for a while. She could not do otherwise. She could not betray Meatha so easily.
She slept at last, restlessly, tossing, then woke again before dawn to find Thorn wakeful beside her, both of them gripped as one in a vision that lifted and excited them, and brought hope. They Saw sleek, fast-running shapes slipping into Zandour and felt the sense of them lusting to destroy dark warriors: wolves, flowing into the ravaged villages, seeking out the drunken, sated Kubalese troops and killing them. Dozens of wolves killing silently then moving on to kill again.
*
Dracvadrig the man sat atop the broken tower seething at the vision of wolves. Wolves! Great Urdd, how he hated wolves. Fury overwhelmed him at their slaughter of RilkenDal’s troops. They could not waste troops on wolves. Writhing with fury, he grew nearly without volition into the dragon form, forgot the girl who slept among boulders there on the sea cliff, forgot Kish sleeping in the iron bed near him, thought only of the destruction of wolves. Hunched atop the tower, he spread his wings onto the night sky and leaped into darkness to circle once then head for Zandour, left Kish sleeping.
He came down on Zandour screeching with such fury that the very dawn seemed made of dragon screams, swept low back and forth above the hills. But below him lay only emptiness. No wolves to be sensed or seen. Nothing. He dove and raked to death a dozen surviving Zandourian troops and their mounts and tore apart their camp, but his heart wasn’t in it. He could think only of wolves and of his own thwarted fury. He snatched one of the horses aloft and carried it back toward Pelli, sucking its blood as he flew, crushing it in his terrible anger.
He returned to the tower to consume the rest of it, spitting the heavier bones into the lake below. The sound of his eating soon woke Kish. She stared at him, half with repugnance, half with fascination, as the horse’s head disappeared. “So you save the head for last.”
He smiled a bloody smile and sat digesting horse in silence, hating the wolves in secret. Where had they come from, those cursed wolves?
Kish said nothing, but as she watched him eating, she felt his thwarted fury growing around her. She slipped inside the armor of his blocking as cleverly as the serpent slips between stones. She sat quiet, soon Seeing his thoughts clearly. “Wolves!” she hissed. “How did they come without your knowing! How did you let them! Why didn’t you . . . ?”
He was sated with horse, his belly distended, in no mood for a tirade. He hunched up across the top of the tower in his haste to be away from her, snarled at her once, then launched himself heavy as lead. He would find somewhere else to digest his breakfast, where he could have peace and silence.
*
When Dracvadrig did not return, Kish went down through the dark tower, treading ancient stone stairs around and around past tiers of battered cells where bones lay rotting inside. The drawbridge was down, lying broken and crooked across the black water.
Soon she had passed through the ancient wood and stood at the far edge, surveying her encampments beneath a muddy sky. She saw the four hide tents that housed Carriol’s Seers, but she went not to those tents, but to the tall, elaborate bower that her people had raised for her.
There she dressed herself in the finery kept ready for her, then called the cultists out of sleep to gather before her. The queen was come, the warrior queen. After ordering the Carriolinian Seers bound and brought to her, she stood scowling impatiently, waiting for her orders to be carried out, for the cultists hardly stirred. They seemed as confused and mindless as a batch of chidrack. What was the matter with them! Only a handful moved toward the Carriolinian tents, then even they were held back forcibly by their neighbors. Kish stared at them, unbelieving, then brought powers down on them that sent them to their knees. But still they would not move to fetch the Seers. Their eyes blazed with the old reverence when they looked on Kish, but they would not do her bidding.