Hodakai stared at Jarvorus, frozen in astonishment. Was that a
dracona
voice? Calling to him? Or to Ar?
A few moments later, from another part of the underrealm, he heard another voice.
Help
us
—
anyone
—
!
Hodakai cried out silently, recognizing that voice.
Jael!
he cried weakly.
He heard Jarvorus whisper in amazement,
She
lives!
Maybe we can
do
something,
maybe we can! We must try!
Hodakai, I must find the ifflings! And you must find a way to help! Use every spell you know!
And then Jarvorus was gone, leaving Hodakai staring in disbelief.
* * *
The iffling-child was the first to hear the cry of the false-iffling, and there was something in its voice that made the iffling-child listen, and believe, and finally carry the cry back to the flickering, dying powers of the iffling-parents. Hearing, they seemed to burn just a little brighter, a little stronger.
—
When the One
breaks
through
—
—
The change will come
—
—
For the Enemy
—
—
Or for us
—
—
And when the
Mountain is
opened
—
—
Comes
our time
—
—
Our hope
—
—
The last
—
And thus began the journey of the flames through the underrealm—a slow parade of guttering candle-flames, moving toward the place where they hoped the Dream Mountain would appear, and where at last they would die, if it did not.
* * *
Hodakai began, hesitantly at first, to probe outward with the spells of communication that he had never used to reach anyone except Rent. But he was a
rigger,
by God; he could do this! The underrealm was a place of frightful chaos, but he found that he could, in fact, probe open small pathways. With increasing boldness, he searched farther and farther from the Cavern of Spirits, to see if he could find a window, a way to see, to call, to hear news, to find out what Jael was doing.
He heard Jael, but could not see her. But one thing he did see, opening up to his view as if through a long telescope lens, was the vale where the dragons were battling. He listened to the cries and chaos of battle, and was appalled to realize that the dragons were being deceived by the same spells of illusion that he had used right here!
If he could shout loudly enough to make himself heard, perhaps he could help just a little, after all.
* * *
In the Dark Vale, Farsight paused in his struggle against the airborne enemies, too many of which had turned out to be ghostly apparitions, rather than living drahls. He thought he had heard a shout, through the noise of battle—a shout that had a peculiar familiarity to it, a cry for help. A . . . human voice . . . in his undersense.
Jael?
He listened intently, to see if he could catch it again, thinking how very odd it was to be underhearing a voice that was not his brother Windrush's. He didn't hear Jael's voice again; but a short time later, he heard a different voice—also human!—a little louder.
You
are being deceived!
Go below and free the others!
You are wasting time!
Go into
the dungeons!
Farsight was dumbstruck by the voice. Go below, to the dungeons? Wasting time? Who was saying that? And he suddenly realized, with the terrifying power of a revelation, how right the voice was. They had become so entangled in their fight here in the sky that they had forgotten the purpose of their attack: to strike at the Enemy's heart.
"You three!" he cried to a trio of dragons who had just burst through an exploding illusion of enemy warriors. "Fly with me! Downward to the dungeons!"
They were not that far above the ground to begin with, but Farsight realized, as he leveled off over the chasms, that in the crevasses of the vale right below him, creatures were stirring in the shadows. Many of them were dragons!
Yes!
called the voice at the edges of his thought.
You
can free them! The
bindings
are weakening!
You can
break them!
"Spread out! Search the dungeons for our brothers!" Farsight shouted to the three flying with him. He slowed, peering and listening over the chasms. He heard a dragon cry, off to his left—a familiar cry. He drew a breath of astonishment and turned to find its source.
He heard the voice again, bellowing: "SHE LIVES! THE ONE LIVES IN THE DREAM MOUNTAIN!" And at last he spotted a grey-green dragon laboring to fly low over the dungeons, shouting down to the captives.
Farsight was so astonished that he could not speak until he had flown to the other's side and gazed at him in disbelief. His brother looked terrible—battered and wounded, and struggling just to stay airborne. "WINGTOUCH!" Farsight roared. "YOU're ALIVE!"
His younger brother wheeled in the air and regarded him with equal amazement. Against the smoke and the gloom, WingTouch's sea-green eyes glowed, tired but undimmed. However badly hurt, WingTouch was more triumphant than beaten, by far. "Welcome to the dungeons of the Enemy!" WingTouch cried, wobbling as he swerved to avoid a wall.
"You're wounded! Are you able to fight?"
"Fight?" WingTouch muttered. "I AM fighting! We have lost FullSky—but he freed me before he died, and I have slain his killer! Come, help me free the others! The bindings of fear are breaking!" The battered dragon beckoned Farsight downward into the gloom of the dungeons.
Indeed, Farsight thought. The Enemy had been stalling them overhead, distracting them from their purpose! What better way to strike at the Enemy than to free his prisoners? "Wait, WingTouch!" he cried, and turned his voice skyward, booming, "ALL DRAGONS—DOWN TO THE DUNGEONS! OUR BROTHERS LIVE! WINGTOUCH LIVES! LEAVE THE SKY TO THE GHOSTS AND COME FREE THE PRISONERS!"
Following WingTouch, he plunged downward into the chasms, bellowing a cry of freedom to his imprisoned brothers.
* * *
Jael felt the change from the dungeons like a whisper of cool air reviving her in the heat of battle. Though she couldn't see what was happening in the Dark Vale, she could feel the dragons' defiance and joy, and could see its effects on the web. The Enemy's explosion of power was mutating, in a way she didn't think the Enemy had intended.
She and Ed and Windrush continued to attack the web, but not alone. Rippling waves of shadow were passing through the fiery network, each wave a burst of defiance or hope or freedom somewhere in the realm. Each wave weakened the web just a little, and the next a little more. The Enemy had channeled all of his power toward the Dream Mountain, thinking he no longer needed it elsewhere—but the web that carried it was weakening with every defeat he suffered, in the underrealm or the outer world. The web, incandescent with power, was brightening and stretching where it had once been strongest, like a filament about to burst.
Now was the time . . .
(
Windrush,
Ed
—
DRACONAE!
—
all
of your strength
—
NOW
!) Jael cried. Their answer came in the heady rush of adrenaline to her limbs, the strength to her wings, and she turned and hurtled with suicidal abandon toward the most blazingly bright strands of the overburdened web.
This time, when her claws connected, she felt not just the explosion of fire, she felt the strands stretch and then tear—in a great long rip, as the web parted from its own inner stresses, spewing incandescent fire into the deep darkness beyond.
And the dragon rigger flew headlong toward the distant, hazy form of the Dream Mountain, the filaments of power bursting against her claws like shears tearing through fabric—in a long, exploding stream of fire.
* * *
* TREACHERY! TREACHERY!
*
The center of darkness was shocked into disbelief that such defiance and irrational hope could be springing forth from every corner of the realm—challenging his structure of power!—surging into the tiniest tears in his web!—ripping at its fiber!—draining its unquenchable strength—!
* This cannot be! *
Exploding with bottomless fury, the Nail erupted with every ounce of his strength toward the Mountain of Fire, focusing only on channeling his power into the web that streamed toward those fires of creation.
He barely even noticed his own rising desperation. He was too preoccupied to swat at the dragon rigger that was hurtling through his web.
* It
will
be mine! It
will
be! *
* * *
Yawwwwwwwwwww!
screamed Ed as the spaceship plunged, shimmering and twisting, through the singularity. The parrot's voice quavered and turned deep and then booming-bass and then shrill as the abrupt spatial-transformation flashed through the net. It sounded as if there were two voices screaming at once, and Ar realized that one of them was his.
He had been shaking, and now he bellowed with joy as the singularity flashed away behind them, and their scalpel-prowed ship plunged into a new layer of the Flux, plunged into the underrealm, into the outstretched web-structure of Tar-skel, parting it in their wake like so many fraying strands of thread. It exploded around them with a terrifying electrical discharge, but they were moving like light itself now; and as they flew, it almost seemed that the web was tearing open
before
them, spilling its energy in a great cascade of fire.
Something ponderous was giving way in the web. Before he could begin to understand it, there was a tremendous shaking convulsion in the Flux, as though the bottom had just dropped out of a vast ocean. The web was disintegrating before them. It was dumping an incredible fountain of power into a yawning emptiness, an even deeper layer in the Flux.
Eeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiii!
Ar screamed to Ed, to Jael if she could hear, to the universe. He didn't even know why; it was a scream that just erupted, an exhilaration out of nowhere, an explosion of such joy that he almost didn't see what was ahead of them in their path—until Ed's frantic cry,
Look
-
k-k! Hawwwwwwww!
Look-k-k
! made him squint ahead through the exploding light.
It was the distant, silvery shape of a dragon, raking open the web in a plume of fire as it hurtled toward them.
* * *
* Impossible! It cannot be happening! *
The error was too great, too profound. He could not have made such an error! Somehow it had all turned wrong, wrong, in his stroke of triumph. His final blast of power was destroying the very structure that it was supposed to be completing.
This was not how it was supposed to happen!
In the Dark Vale, the prisoners' bonds were falling away. His own servants were weakening, his hold on them slipping; some of them were blinking through newly opened eyes, turning and freeing the very ones they'd been holding prisoner!
This was not how it was supposed to end . . .
The Mountain of Fire was slipping out of his grasp, and all of the power in his sorcery was pouring into a great emptiness, streaming away, dissipating into nothingness . . .
* NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O—! *
He was losing it all . . . but he would not lose without taking the Damned One with him!
* * *
At first, all she could see was the explosion racing before them, the web spilling its power with tremendous, jarring bursts of energy. But it was not just the web they were tearing; the web was interwoven with the fabric of the underrealm itself, and it was impossible to tear one without the other. A bottomless blackness was yawning open beneath them, and it was into that abyss that the lightning-fire of the web was emptying.
(
My God, where is it
going, where
is all
that power going?
) she breathed.
From Windrush she sensed amazement and bewilderment. (
Out of the realm,
) the dragon whispered. (
Out of the realm. Jael! Look!
)
(
Hawwww!
)
Above the abyss, a curious tableau was forming, as though focused through a very strange lens. Ahead, the Dream Mountain was emerging from a mist, radiant in its translucence, a diamond-white fire burning in its center, with a shining speck streaking out of it. Something made Jael glance behind her at the Black Peak. The wound in the Flux there was closing, the glowering sun vanishing. Between the two mountains, illuminated in a strange dawnlike light, was a vision of a blasted valley that could only have been the Dark Vale. Above it, Jael saw tiny tongues of dragon fire and heard shouts of hope and joy. And farther beyond, across a distant plain that seemed to lie in another realm altogether, she glimpsed marching toward the Dream Mountain a tiny parade of flickering flames, which looked as though the slightest breeze might extinguish them. (
If-flings,
) she whispered.
But in the heart of the Dark Vale, something was happening that made her clench with fear. Something was spiraling open in the fabric of the underrealm, a window opening, and through it she glimpsed darkness and flames. This was not the nothingness of the abyss below, but a writhing, coiling darkness filled with a living malevolence. She felt a moment of stark revulsion as she glimpsed that
thing;
but the darkness and flame were flattening and twisting, and coiling out into the web . . . coiling out into the rift and the nothingness beyond.
She began to feel a rising wave of relief. In a moment, it would be gone, forever. She raised her sights to the Dream Mountain.
(JAEL!)
The dragon's voice shocked Jael alert with terror.
(What
—
?)
(
Uurrrrrrrruk-k-k-k
—)
Above the rift, the flaming darkness had suddenly turned and snaked out a whip of light-devouring fire. It was streaking through the underrealm, coiling toward Jael. She could not speak or act. She could only watch, frozen, as it sped toward her, curling out in a great arc to ensnare her, and Windrush, and Ed.