"Here, Nix!"
Scores of the creatures swarmed them. Nix climbed to all fours, the creatures tearing at his flesh. He could barely see, so thickly they flew before his face. He stood, flailed through a fog of them.
"Keep talking!"
"Here, over here, here," Egil said.
Nix grunted against the pain, killed the creatures where he could, and kept moving. He took care only to protect his eyes. Egil met him halfway and Nix stuck his hand into the priest's makeshift bag. He felt the wand and pulled it free, taking a bite on the hand from one of the captive creatures. He touched the wand's end to one of them and, without hesitating, touched the glowing end first to Egil then to himself. When his skin started to tingle, the magic taking hold, the swarm of creatures shrieked and fled off, perhaps sensing the unfolding magic.
Bleeding, gasping, the two of them stared at one another as their human forms sloughed away and they transformed into creatures small, scaled, and winged.
Nix's vision was not normal, nor sharp-eyed like the gull's form, but was instead a field of reds, oranges, yellows, blues, and blacks, and it took him a moment to realize that he was "seeing" temperature differences. He adjusted to the new sense as best he could, shrieked at Egil, and took wing to the west. He hoped the magic would last long enough to get them to the sea of glass.
Of course, he wasn't sure what they'd do if they caught up with the sylph. They'd be stuck in the form of the scaled, winged creatures. Nix supposed he could annoy them to death with his shriek.
Anticipating Egil's commentary, he rebuked himself.
Damned gewgaw s, he thought.
The sylph bore Rakon and his sisters west, back over the cracked earth of the Wastes, knifing through the sky at speed. Rakon stood in the center of the sylph's swirl, supported by an invisible pillow of air.
Winds howled and gusted all around him, the sylph ecstatic in its joyous, rapid flight. Rakon, too, was exultant. He held the Horn of Alyyk in his hands. Made by Abn Thuset, a note blown from the horn was said to break the strongest of binding wards.
Perhaps Abn Thuset had intended to use it on the great ward of the Wastes, as a way to unleash the Vwynn on Afirion enemies. Perhaps the wizard-king had used it to free the creatures bound in the Wastes from time to time.
In the end, Rakon didn't know and didn't care. He only knew that, if the secret histories he'd read were correct, he could use the horn to free Abrak-Thyss and save his house.
Pressure built in his mind as they neared the center of the Wastes — his sisters' growing fear laying siege to his mental defenses. The drugs he'd given them must have been wearing off. Rusilla and Merelda had proven enormously resistant to his alchemy. Their terror gnawed at the edges of his mind, haunting his consciousness.
They floated beside him, arms and legs limp, their hair and dresses spread out gently on the invisible bed of the sylph's winds. They looked like spirits, archons descending from the Three Heavens.
He regretted the sufferings his sisters must endure, but he knew they would accept them in time, as his mother had. He'd enter into a false marriage with the more fertile of the two, and soon the Norristru line would be renewed, and his position, and that of his house, would be secure for another generation.
The sylph gusted over the Wastes, covering miles in moments. The setting sun reddened the sky to the west. Minnear would rise full soon after sunset. The Veil between worlds would thin to a wafer.
Ruins dotted the landscape below him, the gravestones of the dead civilization that no histories named. Ahead he saw the ring of ruins encircling the sea of glass. It glistened red in the setting sun, an ocean of blood.
Vwynn coated the ring of ruins like flies on a corpse, thousands of them, lurking in what shade they could find among the jagged bones of stone. They must have crept forward to occupy the ruins after the caravan had left. And yet none dared touch the glass. Yet.
They looked up, eyes glittering, and let out a collective snarl as the sylph descended onto the sea of glass. The winds of the sylph faded and Rakon put his feet down on the smooth surface. He felt the pressure of the Vwynn's regard like a physical thing. It was all around him, thick in the air, their anger a weight on his person.
The fear projected by his sisters grew to panic, infected him, sped his heart. The Vwynn, too, seemed to feel it. It, too, was thick in the air. Motion in the dark places in which they sheltered spoke of their agitation: growls, snarls, the scrabble of claw on stone.
"We'll need to leave immediately after freeing Abrak-Thyss," Rakon said to the sylph.
The wind whispered the sylph's agreement.
Rusilla's voice sounded in his head, penetrating his defense, a desperate plea from far off. Don't… Rakon.
He turned to look down on Rusilla. Tears leaked from the corners of her wide eyes. Her forefinger lifted, as if she were trying to point at him accusingly.
He kneeled, took her hand in his. "I must. You'll forgive me in time."
She replied with nothing but fear.
"You tried to use those tomb robbers to help you. Did you think I didn't know? They're dead now, Rusilla, killed by the eater. No one can help you now."
The tears flowed unchecked down his sister's face. Again the raised finger.
He stood, his expression hard. "You lost this chess match, sister. And now you'll do what you were born to do. Both of you."
He took the Horn of Alyyk in his hands and turned away from his sisters. The magic in the horn caused his hands to tingle. He walked toward the location on the glass where his spells had located the prison, his tread loud on the glass.
The Vwynn fell silent. The winds died completely, even the sylph overwhelmed by the moment.
As he walked, Rakon intoned a phrase of awakening in the Language of Creation. In answer, the horn vibrated in his hands.
The Vwynn moaned.
Rakon put the horn to his lips, aimed its bell at the glass surface before him, and blew. Shimmering air poured from the horn in a swirling column, the recoil pushing him back a step. The long, low note emitted into the charged air made his teeth ache. The vibratory energy struck the glass, cracked it, shattered it, and put a furrow in it deep enough for a burial. The impact threw millions of tiny glass shards into the air and they fell in a tinkling, musical rain. Scores fell on Rakon, cutting his hands, his face, his scalp. He cursed, shielded himself as best he could with his cloak.
"Sylph!" Rakon called.
"Yes, master," the sylph said, surmising his command.
The wind swirled around Rakon, formed into dozens of vortices that collected the shards and expelled them away from Rakon.
Rakon ignored the pain of his flesh wounds, ignored the warm blood dripping down his face, braced himself against the recoil, and blew another note. The magic of the horn deepened the gash in the glass. The air around him filled with more shards, filled with his sisters' fear, with the pensive terror and anger of the Vwynn. The sylph protected him from the rain of glass and he blew another note, another, digging deeper into the strata of the dead civilization, putting a deep scar on Ellerth's face. Another note, another shower of shards, and he saw what he sought, what his researches had told him he would find.
A metal cylinder lay revealed at the bottom of the gash. Engraved glyphs covered it entirely, the straight lines of the characters a script Rakon did not recognize. Staring at the characters made his head ache.
Movement in the hills around him, all around him: the Vwynn edging closer. He had to hurry.
His sisters' terror grew incoherent, a cloud of fear polluting the air of the ruins.