Flow and Flame
Avolva must know her own strength down to the last featherweight. Only then may she surpass it at need—but beware, for the price is high.
—Idra the Farsighted of Dun Rithell
Jolted, shatter-shaken, the Jewel in my chest flaming like abandoned buildings or a well-prepared funeral ship, I could do nothing but huddle against Aeredh and hope I did not slip from the saddle. I was not even properly in it, sitting sideways, though thankfully I was not thrown over like a captive or a carcass upon a dray’s back. It was uncomfortable in the extreme, yet I did not care—for the awful metallic horn-howls all but ringed us, great spatters of snow flung in every direction as pale Elder horses packed into a tight herd, racing under the swiftly clouding sky.
Perhaps the Crownless knew I was not a strong enough rider to stay atop a horse at such pace, or perhaps he and his companions were well used to such flights. In any case, he held me with bruising force, so close we were almost one being atop a wildly plunging, fear-maddened animal.
As the hills receded and the Taurain swallowed our small group, the wolves of Naras dropped from the saddle at full gallop, shaggy inkblots exploding as they changed midair, landing in their other forms. They veered away, ringing us loosely; Yedras crowded upon Aeredh’s left and Daerith to Arn’s right with his bow unlimbered.
Thus we fled, the wolves providing a screen and a fear-maddened horse-herd galloping in the only direction allowed.
A medley of brass-throated cries followed, along with a tide of snarls. The orukhar rode great slumpshouldered quadrupeds, furred and vaguely canine instead of reptilian, and that night was my first glimpse of the dire vargen bred by the Enemy for his cavalry. Hulking and graceless, they were nevertheless capable of great speed and endurance, and their riders were not the small among orukhar either. The vargen were not quite as misshapen as the scaled things aiding in the wreck of Laeliquaende, but they were monstrous enough and called up sickening echoes of Tharos’s hunch-snarling, skittering speed.
Had there been any time or breath to spare, I might have been nauseated. But there was another danger looming; the night was cold, yes, but not cold enough.
The Taurain’s drifts were giving way.
A hard, high stringsnap was Daerith’s bow speaking, not upon a river’s heaving back but a sea of dingy white; past the bright spot of Yedras’s head was a flash of teeth and a thunderous impact as a wolf—I thought ’twas perhaps Soren, for no reason other than seidhr ringing inside my skull whispering his name—leapt to crash into a mounted orukhar, tumbling his iron-armored opponent from the saddle. The vargen snarled and veered away, suddenly free of spur or bridle-pressure, and bile-hot fear clawed at my dry, aching throat.
Our pursuers did not use their own bows—afterward, Arneior hazarded their reticence was not lack of willingness but orders to capture the prize as undamaged as possible. At the moment all I knew was the Jewel’s burning, and the fact that I was near-worthless during yet another battle.
And I hated it. Behind the sawing edges buried in my ribcage a spark guttered, waxed. By all the gods, I was so tired of fear, of being chased, of freezing and mounting dread and men shoving me about. I was also tired of Aeredh’s chin striking the back of my head as the horse nearly foundered, its hooves sinking slightly in sodden snow instead of landing light upon thin ice-crust.
Amid the terror and the ire, another emotion rose. The whole affair was ridiculous. Dragged from my home, pushed from place to place, hounded from the wreckage of two Elder cities, every scrap of freedom I could win or bargain turning to ashes in my palms, and the horrid, burning alien thing inside me, tormenting my flesh as it burrowed deeper—all of it, from first to last, finally reached boiling.
No. Not boiling. There was no flow in what I felt, only flame.
Be careful, my teacher Idra’s voice whispered amid the great stillness descending upon me. This is not a weirding to use lightly, daughter of Gwendelint.
Oh, my physical body was borne along at a furious pace, caged in an Elder’s arms and shivering with fearful rage. Yet all the rest of me turned inward, subtle selves slipping from their mooring with the ease of long practice. The world vanished under a silvergold glare, pitiless light flooding my inner vision, and if I burned in its killing glow, well, in that moment ’twas a price I was willing to pay.
My back arched, and Aeredh near lost his grip. Which is no insult to his strength—balancing upon the back of a maddened horse, holding it to a pace more-than-mortal while the Enemy’s creatures chased, and attempting to keep a volva before him in the saddle? The wonder was that we had not both been thrown within a few steps, and every hoof-fall afterward a miracle.
Especially when I bent as if stretched spinecracked upon a barrel-hoop, my arms rising stiffly to cloud-smeared sky. Moonlight brightened, streaming upon softening snow, yet also took on a strange aureate cast as if summer or harvest had ripened the silver fruit of night.
I whisper-screamed, fingers cramping as inked runes and bands blazed upon my wrists. The cry attempted to form words, but I had not the breath. Instead, the Old Tongue tolled in my brain like a vast bell, bursting free in every direction.
Before, I could only ask, negotiate, persuade. Now I wrenched a flood of seidhr from a place alien unto me, bending it to my will with sheer fury.
And the sky… answered.
The waning Moon above us swelled, a spreading hood-haze swallowing nearby stars. Columns of glittering light jabbed earthward, not fork-branching as lightning usually does but straight as a good heavy Northern sword driven into soft turf. Where the falling light-spears touched the snow was flung away, flash-hissing into steam, and stinking rags of orukhar flesh burst in strange patterns from the lips of holes scorch-carven into the Taurain’s skin, punching through wintersleeping grass and stabbing deep.
Very like the pillars, Daerith said afterward, in Nithraen’s forest-gallery.
Arneior would only say there was a great flash near to blinding her. One shard of falling light avoided Karas by a hairsbreadth, and he said it was neither warm nor cold though the shock sent him tumbling through melting drifts, his head ringing, before he gained his feet once more and kept running.
My hands fell, wounded birds. I almost slithered bonelessly from the saddle, but Aeredh cried out again in the Old Tongue; for all the immensity of that scream of effort, it went unheard after the flashes. Almost blinded, amid a storm of galloping, he still did not let me fall.
And well it was that he did not, for though the seidhr had struck down plenty of orukhar upon their furred, snarling mounts, it did not touch the liches. Fortunately the spike-helmed horrors were mired in the sudden softening of the Taurain’s winter floor, and their own mounts could not match the speed of white Elder horses, galloping mad with terror toward a dark line upon the horizon.
Dorael.
We were so close, and yet upon those plains the sight of a destination is deceptive. And even long-limbed, silk-maned mounts bred by the Elder, given strength by the presence of their owners, could not run forever.