Chapter Twenty-Nine Kilkenny Aflame #3
Lyra and Asta were trembling with excitement as they watched, cheering on the witches as they led, and urged, and whipped the flock on, faster, tighter—and then it was fully under their control, every single bird seized with the passion of belonging and the desire to do more, fly faster, fly closer, fly as one entity.
And little by little the half dozen or so witches moved to the edge of the great wheeling flock and detached themselves from it, commanding it from outside, making it tighter and tighter and lower and lower.
They rode the racing air like the army of Genghis Khan riding their powerful little horses; they had a complete mastery of the elements.
“What are they doing?” said Asta.
A moment later, they all saw. The huge vortex of birds, helpless to resist, was spinning downwards and further down and then—Lyra gasped—driving down like a screw into the mountains below.
In the course of less than half a minute the entire flock smashed into the rocks, conscious of nothing except the desire to fly faster and faster; it wasn’t separate birds anymore, it was one entity, and air, water, earth, fire—it would have forced itself into any of them, crazed with longing, insane with desire.
And the witches circled above, watching as the ground heaved and seethed with blood and screaming and madness.
Those birds who hadn’t died at once saw nothing but carrion in the broken bodies of their kin, and fell on them with shrieks of savage greed.
The gryphons screamed their approval in long eagle cries that resounded from the mountains.
But: “Witches!” Lyra cried. “No! Oh no!” For she had seen two—three of them, engulfed by birds in the hideous melee and borne down into the rocks.
It was only when the tumult began to clear that she could see what had happened, and Malcolm and Asta, and Gulya and Keshvād too, cried out in dismay as the remaining birds tore into the black-clad bodies, soon to be displaced and torn apart themselves in the frenzy of madness and blood.
Prince Keshvād screamed and soared high, and then flew down in a long glide towards a flat-topped ridge ahead of them, sloping towards the tree line.
The gryphons followed, and the main body of the witches came after them.
By the time they reached the ridge, most of the noise was far behind them.
Looking back, Lyra could see only a few dark specks wheeling above the death-spot, and then one by one they too plunged down to take part in the feast, and left the sky clear and clean.
Keshvād landed first, and called his gryphons to come to order, rank upon rank of them in their strength and pride.
Gulya landed too, and Lyra and Malcolm, together with Asta, slipped down from her back to stand beside her as the witches came to join them.
Some were weeping; they had all seen their sisters borne down into the ground.
“Witches!” cried Prince Keshvād. “That was a noble action, daring, skillful, victorious. We salute you. Apart from your three gallant sisters, are you all safe?”
“Some wounds, Prince,” said Sala Riikola, “which we shall need to treat, because the birds will have been carrying pestilence and disease. We have herbs for that, but we need water and fire.”
“Can you get what you need from the trees below?”
One or two of the witches had been scouting along the tree line, and one spoke up: “Yes, Prince. There is a spring a little way further down, and dead wood among the trees.”
“Then we shall rest here till sunset while you do that. You have done us all a great service. That was the greatest flock of those foul birds in the whole of the Tien Shan mountains.”
“Destroyed by the memory of a dragonfly,” said Sala Riikola. “But look—is that Tilda Vasara?”
She was pointing to the southeast. Malcolm, looking that way, saw the tiniest movement in the sky, and at once felt his private aurora spring to life in response. Nothing changed in what he saw: a barely imperceptible shiver in the air, no bigger than a photon, it seemed at first, but there it was.
The attention of everyone else was focused on the approaching witch. She saw what had happened, and swooped down low over the carnage before flying up again to join her companions.
Malcolm sat down to keep himself from falling.
“What is it?” said Lyra quietly.
Malcolm’s eyes were closed. He said, “It’s a thing I see.
I call it the spangled ring. My private aurora.
Something sets it going, a tiny flash of light in the outside world or a jagged pattern in a carpet, and slowly it gets bigger.
It closes me down for a few minutes until it gets so big it just passes out of the visual field. ”
“Sort of migraine thing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to lie down?”
“No need for that. I just keep still.”
Lyra was desperate to ask Tilda Vasara about Pan, but the witches were eager to talk together, sorrowfully about their dead companions, excitedly about the dragonfly maneuver suggested by Lyra’s story, proudly about the enormous flock that they forced to destroy itself.
And they were anxious to hear from Tilda, so in return she began talking to them, urgently, passionately, angrily; Lyra watched and listened as her eyes flashed, her voice rang.
Asta calmly stepped up onto Malcolm’s lap and purred. He stroked her back. Lyra sat down beside him.
“Does it happen often, the spangled thing?”
“Not very often. Not regularly. Something outside me, out in the world, triggers it, and then I’m captive till it’s over.”
“Why ‘spangled’?”
“It sort of sparkles. Like the moon and her spangled sisters bright. Usually just in black and white, but I’m seeing colors now. First time for that. A deep blue under everything and bands of pearl white and maroon, I think…Hard to see it clearly…It moves, it flashes.”
His eyes were still closed. His face was flushed; Asta had stopped purring and just touched her face to his chin. He looked mesmerized; he looked both focused and dreaming.
“Creamy yellow,” he murmured. “Not pearl white.”
“Lie down,” Lyra said, because he looked as if he was about to topple over.
He did as she said and lay back on the rocks, putting one arm over his eyes. She took his other hand and he gripped hers firmly. It was curious, this feeling that she was protecting him, so strange that she thought about it closely. They stayed quiet and still. Asta lay soft between them.