He shrieked in rage.
They were too late. Too godsdamned late.
And he had no idea how much longer the transmutational magic would last.
He plumbed the mnemonic fragments stuck in his mind by Rusilla, searching them for the location of the Norristru manse. It was the only place Rakon could go.
He found it right away, both its location and appearance, half a league to the west of Dur Follin, a series of squat, interconnected towers perched like an unlanced boil on the edge of a steep escarpment called the Shelf.
He shrieked at Egil, beat his wings, and arrowed west, as fast as their new forms allowed. Before long they could no longer outrun the sunset, and the day cast a final, coruscating blaze of red and orange across the sky before fading to night.
At once Nix's vision improved. The landscape below him was blue and black, the occasional holes that led down to the Vwynn's particular Hell glowed orange. Otherwise the Wastes were little more than a void, a lesion on the face of Ellerth. They flew on, their small bodies exhausted.
In time he tasted pepper and felt a familiar ache behind his eyes. It intensified as they flew, finally coalesced into haunting, terrified screams, a woman's screams. He heard them as though at a great distance, and at first he thought them the aftereffect of the storm of memories that had exploded out of the memory eater, but soon realized they weren't memories at all. They were too sharp, too acute, as jagged as the Wastes below. They were Rusilla's or Merelda's, invisible currents of terror that lodged in his mind and scarred his psyche, a trail of fear floating in her wake like psychic breadcrumbs.
He glanced over at Egil, his friend's scaled form knifing through the air, the membranous wings billowing like sails with each beat. The priest's slit, reptilian eyes were somehow still Egil's, and somehow still communicated the priest's pain.
Egil shrieked and Nix echoed it, their own cries sorry echoes of Rusilla and Merelda's. For the moment they could do nothing but endure, follow the fear, and use it to fire their need to catch Rakon and stop him. He pressed on.
Minnear rose, crawling into the sky until the pockmarked disc of its full face dominated the sky near the horizon.
The Thin Veil.
They had little time, but they'd already almost cleared the Wastes.
Ahead and to his left the blue-black of the jagged, broken Wastes gave way to a smooth sea of reds and oranges — the warm, stinking miasmic stretch of the Deadmire. They were close to Dur Follin. Soon he saw dots of red sprinkled on the horizon, the mage lights and watch fires of the city. He shrieked again and Egil answered in kind. To his right, the blue-black serpentine line of the Meander wound across the terrain, vanishing temporarily into the dark blot of the city, only to reappear on the other side to feed the Deadmire, its cool blue consumed by the steamy, organic heat of the swamp's red.
Following the invisible road delimited by the terror of Rusilla and Merelda's mental emanations, they angled northwest. The city soon came into clearer focus, west and east, rich and poor, divided by the thick line of the river. Ool's clock dominated the skyline on the near side of the city, its sharp, smooth surfaces a dark blue in Nix's vision, and the waters of the clock's perpetual cascade — the water's motion which powered the clock's workings — a lighter azure. The arc and towers of the Archbridge soared into the sky.
Seeing the bridge, remembering the huge, smooth blocks they'd seen in the ruins of the Wastes, Nix felt certain the same hands had been at work on both. The bridge had to be left over from the civilization that had died in the Wastes, the sole intact monument to a people who'd been destroyed, or who'd destroyed themselves. Considered that way, the bridge seemed not so much awe-inspiring as melancholy.
They wheeled over the city, high above its cracked and crumbling walls. Street lamps lit the maze of streets here and there, populated by the red blobs of pedestrians and animals. He looked to the Warrens and would have smiled had he been able. The absence of street lamps did nothing to dampen the sea of red that thronged the streets and alleys. People, animals, life. The Heap's decaying organic matter glowed red, yellow, and orange, a mountain of brilliant color. For the first time, he thought the Warrens possessed its own kind of beauty, a warm, stubborn glow of red, orange, and yellow, a beauty that birthed people like Mamabird.
Be that kind of man.
He would.
He was, or so he hoped.
They winged over the Archbridge, with its dozens of shrines and hundreds of faithful, and to the western bank of the Meander. The bridge was the terminus for the ordered spokes of the roads that divided Western Dur Follin into the Temple, City, and Noble Districts. Large manses, expansive plazas, and parks dotted the streetscape. Far fewer people filled the streets.
From up high, Western Dur Follin struck Nix as a lovely museum, a kind of tomb, enjoyable to look at, but devoid of life, absence the beautiful reds and yellows of the east.
As a boy, he'd craved a life across the Meander, amongst the clean streets and manses. Hell, as a man he'd wanted it, which is why he'd suggested to Egil that they buy the Slick Tunnel.
But he didn't want it anymore. He wasn't that kind of man. He was the kind of man who lived in the filth, heat, and beautiful decay of Eastern Dur Follin. He swooped over and past the wealth.
He realized that Rusilla and Merelda's mental screams had gone quiet. They must have lost consciousness or given up.
Or worse.
The city disappeared behind them, giving way to a patchwork of tilled land and farmsteads, the terrain sloping ever upward as they moved away from the Meander.
Ahead, he saw the steep escarpment traders called the Shelf. More than a long bowshot tall at its highest point, the Shelf served Dur Follin's wealthy as a location for their country homes, away from the hubbub of Dur Follin, a high perch from which they could look down on the city. It stretched a full league, running roughly north to south, and only two passes cut their way through it — the Neck and Zelchir's Fall. Otherwise, it presented only a sheer face of cracked, water-stained limestone.
A tingling ran the length of Nix's body. He recognized it immediately and mentally cursed. The magic of the wand was expiring. He shrieked at Egil, who must have been experiencing the same feeling, and the two of them sped through the night air as fast as their leathery wings would bear them. They needed to at least reach the top of the Shelf. If not, they'd have to leg it to the Neck or Zelchir's Fall to get up the escarpment, and that would add hours. Nix angled upward to get a better view. He'd know the Norristru manse if he saw it: its image was graven in his brain by memories not his own.
And there it was. Below and ahead Nix saw the cold stone walls and four squat towers of the Norristru manse, perched on the edge of the escarpment, as if the entire building were hanging on to the stone to prevent a fall over the edge.
Nix shrieked and started to descend. The tingling he felt sharpened to needle pricks. He had only moments.
The manse was part of a large walled compound that covered acres of gardens, orchards, and outbuildings. Even from a distance Nix could see that the whole of it was ill tended: gardens overgrown, walls crumbling, statuary toppled. Even a portion of the manse's roof had been removed or fallen into ruin. One corner of the upper floor stood exposed to the elements, the roof beams like ribs, the whole overlooking the cliff, the distant lights of Dur Follin.
Motion drew his eye: blobs of red distinct against the cold blue-backs of the cliff face — Rakon, his sisters, the hulking form of the devil. They flew in a swirl of blue winds provided by the sylph.