On the decks of the sailing vessel, frost was forming.
They landed directly in front of the pass leading into the Valley of Rhenn, placing themselves between the Elven defenders and the Jarka Ruus. He could feel a million eyes watching, all fixed on the airship, but no one came toward it. By now the Quickening was coated with frost from bow to stern, from her decks to the tips of her masts, turned as white as a ghost ship.
The Ilse Witch had changed, too. She had gone from a tattered gray shade to a ghostly white.
Then, abruptly, she began to move. She seemed to float across the main deck to the rail. Before her, the gate leading off the ship unlatched of its own accord, and she passed through the opening without slowing. She was twenty feet off the ground, but she stood in midair and then slowly descended to the plains below. She did not speak to Railing and the others. She did not even look at them.
“Railing!” Mirai hissed, shock reflected in her voice as she pointed.
The witch, having reached the ground, was walking directly toward the army of the Straken Lord. As she did so, she left footprints coated with frost in the grass.
Challa Nand wasted no time. With Austrum beside him, he anchored the ship and threw out the rope ladder. Hurrying from one crewmember to the next, he ordered them off the ship. The Rovers went first, then Woostra, then Skint; finally the Troll lifted Mirai bodily from the pilot box and beckoned Railing after them. Down the ladder they all went, trying to move silently, casting anxious glances at the spectral figure still moving away from them and at the skies where the dragon continued to circle.
On the ground, Railing turned toward the valley pass. Austrum and the other Rovers were already rushing for safety. Skint and Woostra were only a few yards behind. Challa Nand tried to take Mirai’s arm, but she shrugged him off, making it clear that she could manage on her own. Railing, a few steps back, saw the big man glance at the Highland girl, shake his head in surprise, and hurry on.
That was when the boy turned back, unable to resist the urge to know what would happen.
A short distance away, just beyond the Quickening, Grianne Ohmsford’s dark reincarnation was confronting the hordes from the Forbidding. The creatures were massed before her, thousands strong, all of them staring with wonder and uneasiness at this strange being, their eyes shifting back and forth from her to the Elves to the dragon circling overhead. Their growls and snarls and hisses were muted almost to silence. Some had moved back warily.
The witch wraith was not moving at all.
Railing could hear the calls of his companions, urging him to get away. But he stayed where he was. His mind was made up. He would see for himself what he had brought about by trying to bring back Grianne Ohmsford. He would not run and hide.
Seconds later Mirai was at his elbow. “Get out of here,” he said.
She dismissed the suggestion with a shake of her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. What’s she doing?”
Stubborn to the end, he thought. “Waiting, I think.”
So it seemed. With foreknowledge of what was fated to happen, perhaps. He could feel it in his bones.
In moments the Straken Lord descended astride his dragon. The great beast seemed even larger from this new perspective, coming down like a mountainside and landing with an impact that shook the ground and reverberated across the grasslands. Its face was ruined on one side, its eye gone and the pit ragged and raw. Steam leaked from its nostrils and maw, huffing out with each breath—an indication of the intensity of the fire that burned in its inner furnace.
But it was the Straken Lord that riveted Railing Ohmsford. The boy had never seen anything like him. He was huge, even when compared with the Trolls with whom he had spent time on their quest for the missing Elfstones. As black as coal, with spikes sticking out all over his powerful body, he had the look of something conjured in a nightmare and brought to life. He was holding a huge black scepter, and his eyes were fixed on the witch wraith.
Railing could hear the calls of his companions, frantic now, warning both Mirai and himself to run, but he paid them no attention. Instead, he moved forward, skirting the hull of the airship so that he had a clear view of both the dragon and the witch. He watched as Tael Riverine slid down the dragon’s scaly hide to a carefully lifted foreleg that waited to lower him to the ground and advanced on the witch.
“I sense your presence!” he roared. “My Queen-to-be, my promised gift! Where are you?”
“I stand before you, Tael Riverine,” the ghost-white witch replied, her voice ringing out.
The Straken Lord stopped where he was, staring. “Do not lie to me, crone. Reveal her!”
“No one lies to you. No one trifles with your foolish dreams. This is what you wished for. Now you have your wish. What will you do with me?”
“You are not her! What sort of game is this? I feel her to be close! You hide her somewhere!”
The anger he was experiencing was evident in his voice, raw and edged with bitterness. He was advancing again, drawing nearer to her. Railing thought that if she spoke again with words that displeased him, he would use his iron staff to smash her into the earth.
But the witch seemed unperturbed, still standing in place, calmly watching him draw near.
“Long ago, you took me prisoner and collared me like an animal,” she hissed at him. “You tried to discover the extent of my powers. You tried to make me your Queen so that I would bear your children. You failed. I escaped. I returned to my own world and found a place in it where I could forget you and your dark plans. But even though decades have passed and things you cannot begin to comprehend have changed, you still cling to your foolish dream. You still think to make me yours.”
She gestured expansively, arms flinging wide, particles of frost and ice flying into the air about her like a miniature storm. “Well, Tael Riverine, here I am. Don’t you want me?”
“You are not Grianne Ohmsford!” The other screamed it as if it were a personal affront, as if it had been deliberately planned to thwart his purposes and deprive him of his due.
Behind him, the dragon stamped the earth and breathed fire onto the grasslands, setting patches of vegetation aflame. The Jarka Ruus surged backward in response, stumbling over one another in an effort to remain safely clear. Smoke from the dragon-fire rolled across the plains in black clouds.
“Well, in that you are both right and wrong,” replied the witch. “I am here and I am not here. The truth is beyond you, and my patience with this business is at an end. Since you do not wish for me after all, I can admit that I want nothing of you, either. But one of us must give way and I think it must be you. What I want matters most.”
Was he seeing things, Railing wondered, or was the witch wraith growing larger? “We should go,” Mirai whispered in his ear, taking hold of his arm and pulling on it.
“You beg for your life, do you?” Tael Riverine stood rock-still not six yards away from her.
The witch laughed. “I beg for nothing. What I need, I will take. And what I will take is your place as ruler of the Jarka Ruus.”
For a long few seconds, the Straken Lord stared at the apparition, attempting in vain to take her measure. In the vast sweep of the plains, where even an army of hundreds of thousands could not manage to fill the emptiness, Tael Riverine might have recognized the danger. But the demon’s life had been long and hard and filled with other dangers, and his pride convinced him that this was just one more.
“It is you, isn’t it?” he said at last. He bent forward to peer closely at her. “You’ve become a hag, a gathering of cloth and smoke, a bit of nothing. You are Grianne, but changed into this … thing. Once, I would have made you my Queen. Now you are not worthy.”