Fordus stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded, as the bird wheeled above the desert, shrieking and smoldering. Below, the bandits hurled axe and spear and imprecation, but all bounced harmlessly off the rough skin of the bird, who pivoted slowly, ponder shy;ously, as though only recently come to its own body.
With another cry, the creature swooped awk shy;wardly. Its attack was predictable and slow, its sharp beak clattering against the shield of one of the bandit spearmen, a young man from Kharolis named Ingaard. Ingaard feinted and laughed, and the bird staggered back, preparing to lunge again.
With a defiant cry, Ingaard braced himself to hurl his weapon, but suddenly, as though the whole desert had fallen under a terrible, malign enchant shy;ment, the lad's feet slipped in the tumbling sand, and he fell on his back, loosing the grip on his spear. The condor's beak crashed against his uplifted shield, again and again until the tough hide tore and the great bird snatched Ingaard into the air, rending his flesh and hurling him into the molten slag.
The other bandits turned and fled, screaming.
Slowly the creature pivoted toward Tanila, its eyes glowing red and smoke rising from its dark, angular feathers. Again, it fanned its wings, and the hot fetid air swirled like a hurricane around the Plainsmen.
Tanila, enraged, lost her balance in the eddying sand, but Stormlight alertly stepped between her and the monster, raising the bronze buckler of one of the fallen bandits. With a shriek, the condor lunged toward Stormlight, lightning blazing from its black, depthless eyes.
The bolts flickered and danced around the elf, who braced himself as the smoldering bird struck him, stopping the searching claws with the little shield and pushing the monster back and away. There was a shattering sound, like porcelain or glass, and the great bird groaned and drew his head back, his long neck arched like a scorpion's tail.
For a moment the desert was silent, as though sound itself had passed through the fissures and vanished. Elf and monster faced one another in a desolation of sand and rising steam.
"Kill him!" Tanila hissed.
And then, with a cry that was no doubt heard at the gates of Istar, the condor lurched after Storm shy;light. The elf stepped back, then lost his balance as the great beast cleared the edge of the slag, for a moment grotesquely in flight above the desert. With another deafening cry the condor swooped, falling upon Stormlight and driving him to the ground amid a gauntlet of slashing talons.
Larken whistled for her hawk and snatched her drumhammer from her belt. Deftly stepping over a widening fissure, she raced toward higher, more solid ground, rifling her memory for a powerful music.
Stormlight fell to his knees, bent backward by the weight of the creature. The condor hovered tri shy;umphantly over the struggling elf, its claws digging at his rib cage, its neck arched for a final, fatal strike.
Stormlight cried out and glanced beseechingly toward Fordus …
Who was about other business entirely.
* * * * *
Fordus stood on a narrow natural bridge of rock and dried earth left by the lake of molten sand that bubbled and swirled on the desert plain. It was a thin strip of solid ground, untouched by the fire and magma, and narrowing slowly as the hot current ate against its foundations.
It was the country of his dreams: the fire, the lava, the dark bird.
He stood breathless, abstracted, until the shouts of his men awakened him.
Fordus was faced with a choice. Stormlight lay in the pocked and bubbling field, the condor over him, batting its burning wings, while Northstar, only a dozen feet away, stared desperately into the glowing liquid, calling plaintively for help.
Stormlight was in peril, it was plain to see.
But the condor …
Was Fordus's old friend, his dream-summoner.
And Stormlight. . . was dissident. A troublesome lieutenant. Whatever happened to him was in the lap of the gods.
Fordus rushed toward Northstar, pulling the lad from the lip of the widening chasm.
"My medallion!" Northstar cried. "The disk!"
Fordus knew what he meant at once. The religious pendant, given to Northstar on his naming night, was a bronze replica of one of the fabled Disks of Mishakal. Worthless to anyone but the devoted lad, it now hung by its broken chain from an outcrop shy;ping of rock scarcely a foot above the widening crevasse.
"Walk carefully toward the high ground!" Fordus shouted, leaning over the burning lake, his lean, muscular arm stretching toward the medallion, his fingers spread and extended. "Save yourself, North-star!"
It sounded heroic, like the stuff of Larken's poetry. It would make for a good song in the evening's Telling.
* * * * *
On his back in the middle of the steaming field, Stormlight pushed the bird away yet again.
His arms were seared by the hot metal buckler he carried, and the smell of sulfur and burnt rock singed his nostrils, rushed down his throat and into his lungs.
Once again, he tried to cry out, but the pain was unbearable, smothering.
So this is the way it ends, he thought, strangely calm, the smoke gusting into his eyes and the hoarse cry of the condor on all sides of him.
The dull, dry shriek of the bird was answered by a call more shrill, and suddenly, miraculously, the sky cleared over Stormlight. He blinked painfully, scrambled to his feet.
Lucas swooped toward the Red Plateau, the con shy;dor glowing and smoldering in pursuit.
Swiftly, gracefully, the little hawk banked in the air, dodging the heavier, clumsier bird with a grace born of a thousand hunts, of a year's reconnaissance in the desert sky. Blindly, furiously the condor fol shy;lowed, the ground beneath the path of its flight blis shy;tering and blazing at its passage.
The hawk flew a wide, looping circle and returned toward the field and Stormlight, the condor picking up speed, swiftly closing the gap until it seemed that Lucas would be caught, ignited, consumed by the fiery monster.
Then Larken, standing on a sloping rise, seeing the danger to her companion, battered her drum loudly, slowly, in the stately Matherian rhythms of high magic. The song began in an incandescence of words, an elvish tralyta that trailed off into a hidden language, into the words that bards speak only in whispers, and only to the gods.
But the little bard gave her song full voice, and at the margins of the lava flow, the red glaze darkened and crusted, cooling so rapidly that the sound of its shattering echoed over the desert.
Still the bard's song rose above the chaos and noise, the words completely unintelligible now, trail shy;ing into birdsong, into distant thunder and the rush of water, into the sound of the wind through^the nearby crystals.
The crystals themselves, at the edge of the Tears of Mishakal, were breaking to shards, crumbling silently to powder.
Lucas soared high above the cooling earth, then dropped five hundred feet through the smoky air, landing roughly on the sand and mantling, his wings spread over him like a tent, a canopy. The condor followed, a trail of flame in its wake, stretch shy;ing its glowing talons to strike.
Then, fifty feet above the floor of the desert, the monster collided with the power of the bard's song. Tanila whirled and shrieked and covered her ears.
For a moment, out of the corner of her eye, Larken saw the dark woman hobble toward the Tears of Mishakal, trailing black dust like a cloud of billow shy;ing smoke.
Then suddenly, spectacularly, the air went incan shy;descent.
The condor splintered into a thousand sparks, slowly raining deadly flame over the parched land shy;scape, the igneous rock, the cowering bird.