Then high into the middle airs he arrowed, and even as he rose the shields of his craft seemed to come alive in the hands of their wielders, twisting like serpents till the sunfire they ensnared found focus upon him. To the few who dared look a moment longer he seemed to vanish for a moment, as if he had met the fate of so many that day. Yet Kermorvan, as he sped back among his ranks, saw him still hanging there at the heart of the glare, shining like a shape new-cast in white-hot gold. On the balcony of the Gate the Ekwesh too stared at that terrible sight, and many cast themselves headlong, hiding their eyes. But she whom they cried to, tall and pale, made no move to look away. The white gems of the corselet drank in the whole force of that fire, and from them the gem of his gauntlet, till his whole arm blazed with the terrible radiance of contained power. A moment more, and it would have consumed him; but in that moment he acted. Louhi shrank back; she screamed aloud, and her arms flew up as if to ward off a blow. It availed her nothing. Out from that glowing shape, as the fingers flashed apart, burst all that pent-up force, in a single incandescent shape; and in its path, straight and fast as if to shatter mountains, flew the devastating hammer.
Kermorvan, forewarned, reached the shieldwall and threw himself down among his followers, crouched down with covered eyes. Yet the flash of light they saw even through tight-shut lids, so white it seemed to burn deep into the depths of their minds. Thunder crashed about them, the very air seized them and shook them and threw them half scorched upon the steaming earth, as it twitched and shivered beneath them like the hide of a branded beast. The drum-beats of avalanches resounded through earth and sky as the faces of cliff and slope crumbled and slid away beneath that single overwhelming blow, that violent impact upon the face of the world. Yet through it, above it, louder than any voice they had ever heard, it seemed to all who were there that they heard that last desperate cry echoing still, a shriek of anguish and defeat and ultimate, infinite loss, like lightning it leaped from sky to earth and back again, and rove the air asunder; but whether they heard it with their ears or in their hearts few cared to say.
Elof heard it. A searing blast hurled him skyward so high, so fast, the breath was crushed from him; and when at last he could breath again, the air lanced thin and cold through his straining lungs. It stung his scorched skin unbearably, and the sunlight, brighter sharper, fell on him like a sleeting shower of needles, as if to flay him for his presumption in having channeled its power. Something was happening to him, something frightening, as if the shrieking winds were shredding the flesh from his bones like leaves from dead branches, as if he was being torn apart and reformed. He groped for understanding, but that convulsion of nature, and ringing through it that last terrible scream, had shivered his thoughts like thin ice. His wings had shielded him, and they were ragged now, they hardly bore him, and yet he felt unable to fall. It was as if only fragments of him were left to float upon the wind, a ragged shred through which a clear light could shine. But it was a strange light, at once limpid and fiery, and it seemed to well up, out of the infinite abyss below. Visions it bore with it, visions and truths, clear sights of things that had been, that were taking shape even now, or that might yet be, all weaving together in one vast coil. In wonder he perceived that coil, and gazing upon it knew that slowly but surely, as he once had crafted a sword, the many strands were being twisted into greater strands, and those strands hammered together into one bright infinite shaping, one awesome work of craft. No vision lingered, though he grasped at them as might a child at butterflies; he glimpsed them only, as one might through the gaps in a tattered tapestry draped across a wide casement. But he saw enough to grasp one truth. He himself was that tapestry. Seconds passed, perhaps, before he knew he was falling once more; but they might as well have been hours.
As he turned over in the air, the clearest vision of all came to him. His tortured eyes, and more than his eyes, looked down upon the churning sea, scattered with jagged shards of ice, fragmented, melting, and at its margins a great scorched scar upon the land. There the fortress of the High Gate had stood; but it was gone, and the very ridge it was built upon. The mountains that flanked it still stood, but their faces had collapsed in rubble into the yawning gap. And through that gap, bounding like a horse newly freed from harness and stall, the sea came rushing in. Down it crashed from heights to depths in falls and rapids of awesome height, tumbling the shattered mountain-ribs like fine gravel, spitting brilliant spray skyward as if to mock the force that had lately held it in icy bonds. Into the upper reaches of the Yskianas, still frozen, it spilled, and further and further downstream the ice bulged up from beneath and exploded into floating shards as the dark waters swelled.
He looked after them, and to his sight time and space merged and became one. Down the river of days he followed their surging progress, and watched the ending of a land. Wider they spread, smoothly, slowly, and up bank and barrier the darkly gleaming line rose; there was no wave, no wash of devastation, only a smooth slow devouring. Water-side and island seemed to shrink and sink down into the sparkling maw of the waters with scarcely a wash of foam, grasses waved their heads to the flow as they had to the wind, till they were swallowed up. Trees at the river-side stood straight even as the waters climbed their trunks; only at the last, like men awakening in a sinking ship, did they flail their dark heads frantically. Their fear availed them nothing; they too sank. But down to the haunts of men that fear was swiftly borne, by the waves that lapped at wharf and wall, boomed at water-gates and shook bridges. Bells rang from tower to tower, bronze voices that sang their warning peal all along the shores of that once mighty country, till it seemed that the whole land quivered; back and forth they swung, as if the waves themselves were ringing them. Even in the Horns of the Bull they swung, in the towers that crowned the Strength of Kerys, telling of a subtle foe that neither outermost wall nor highest bastion could bar, of the cool darkness that even now was filling the docks, swinging ships at anchor, swelling channel and canals like riven veins. With many voices they sang, but one word only was their message to all men, from furthest farmstead to the streets of Kerys the City itself; and that was/fee/
It was heeded. Those fled, who could; and most fled in time. Men who had boats took to them, but large numbers were sunk by the frantic fugitives who sought to struggle aboard. Others fled mounted or on foot, in carts and carriages, or with what conveyance they might; but it was little enough they managed to take with them. Many farmers drove their beasts inland, but some not far enough; for at the first the Yskianas rose as fast as a weary man might run. It met the tributaries, and drove back their flows. Into the crevices of the fire-mountains it spilled, recoiled in steam and patiently, insistently, washed once more. The defences that Elof had created with such care it touched, tried and found wanting; into their depths it sent a probing tendril, and even as the tiny garrison escaped it was lapping the dark blood from its rough-hewn stone. Down it came to a green island whose crown still smoked and smouldered, and the little mammuts among the rushes squealed and trampled their way to the high ground; nobody dared set foot there now, and they were safe. Wider and wider it spread, that Great River no longer a river; men fled to north and to south, as the sundering waters rose between them. They saved their lives; but the land and realm of which once they had been a part was engulfed at their heels, and lost beyond recall. The peril of the Ice was lifted from the world; but upon the land it had corrupted, and upon the city at its heart, the mightiest that then was in all the world, a still greater cleansing was come. But already Elof s eyes were gazing far beyond it; for the hunger of the waters was not yet sated, and the cleansing not yet at an end.
Chapter Twelve
- The Coming of the Spring
So much came to Elof in his vision, and many things else both near and far; perhaps among them he saw also what passed beneath him, as he drifted among the uppermost reaches of the airs. But for an account of that, whatever its origin, the chronicles must answer. Awesome as were the forces he had unleashed, the armies gathered among the hills had escaped them. The Kerysmen, almost a league away to the north and westward, were well sheltered by the intervening hills; but it seems that the light in the sky and the terrible blast that followed were too much for them. They were brave men, but they had fought too long and hard against forces they scarcely understood; almost to a man they took to their heels, and those few captains who sought to restrain them were borne along in the rush. And in the end that was as well; for they were not cut off from their homes and kin by the rising waters.
The men of Morvanhal might have been less fortunate, had they not heeded Elof s warning and been crouched down behind the shieldwall. Those among the duergar wise in such arcane matters believed that the shields had mirrored more than light that day; for it was certain that such strange metals as were bound within that hammer could unleash a hundred unseen deaths if ill-handled. But none who were there, save perhaps Ils and her folk, guessed anything of this. It is told in the chronicles that even as the roar and thunder of the riven land abated, and the earth grew still again, the first gusts blew of a mighty gale that scoured the smoke and dust from the air, and for a few minutes left the skies clear. Then the bravest among them ventured to peer shakily over their shield-rims, marvelling at the catastrophe that had occurred and even more at their own preservation. And as they gathered courage and stood up upon shaky limbs, humbled and fragile in the face of so vast an event, they saw that outside the shelter of the shields the snow and frost had been scorched from the hillside, and withered grasses were steaming in the sun. Their wonder grew when they perceived that all around them, upon every hill as far as the eye could reach, even beyond the possible reach of that blast, it was the same. The cloud that had maintained that wintry landscape was gone, blown apart and dispersed; and so no less was the will that had created it. Only then, with a shaky lift in their hearts, did they begin to understand.
One of the first afoot was Kermorvan, and though he was as awed as any by the spectacle of such utter devastation he turned at once to see that his people were safe. He helped Ils up, her wounded leg stiff beneath her, and kept her hand clasped tight in his own as he gazed around that shattered scene; and he it was who first voiced the hesitant hope that was slowly swelling to a certainty in all their minds. "A great change is come upon the world!" he cried, his clear voice carried upon the wind. "The balance is turned back! The power of the Ice is swept away!"
And down that wind as though in answer, as if he had heard those words or perceived them in his vision, came Elof. Spiralling from the sky he fell like a moth from a candleflame, whirling and tumbling like one of his own plumes upon ruined and smouldering wings. They saw him at once by the trail of smoke he left. Down over their heads he glided, black against the red of the sinking sun, and crashed onto the hillside above in a sprawl of limbs. Up the hill they streamed after him, his friends to the fore, though they dreaded what they were sure they would find. But some long strides away Roc, who was first, stopped, hesitated, whispered "Is that him?"
For the man who lay upon the scorched grass, arms and legs outflung, had skin darkened to the hue of old bronze, and hair of purest white. "Ah!" breathed Ils, her voice choked and hoarse. "He might almost be that Watcher… Fool! Of course it's him! But… living?" As if hearing her somehow, the man stirred, moving his legs slowly, and Ils cried out; beneath them silver gleamed against the black ground, and a slow trickle of blood ran from the rags of his clothes. Forgetting her own pains, she hastened to tend him; and found, when she did so, that the anklets set in his legs had shattered, violently as it seemed, and the fragments were gradually working loose from his wounds.
"He lives, then; but what more?" demanded Kermorvan, returning with men bearing a shield lined with blankets, and bending over the anxious knot of figures. The gale was blowing ever more strongly from the south, a warm wind rich with the promise of rain, and heavy clouds were rising over the southward hills. "Will he waken?" Ils looked up at him, her huge dark eyes troubled.
"The wounds to his legs are healing already; his burns not so, but we have salved them… But as to wakening, well…" The first shadows of the night touched the hillside, and she sighed. Above the noise of the torrents a distant rumble sounded in the sky. "His eyes are open, as they were from the first. I think he has heard all we said to him - but he does not seem to understand. It is as if he looks elsewhere, at things we cannot see; and we are not real to him."
"He has flown too close to the sun," said a deep voice quietly from behind them. "That man may not do, and yet live."
Kermorvan jerked upright. An awful chill had lanced through him at the very sound of that voice, and he knew at once whose it was. The huge figure that stooped beside him had not been there only a moment since; and though from the huge rough-shafted spear the man leaned upon he had the look of a warrior, no one in all the army wore such a long and dusty mantle of midnight blue, nor such a wide-brimmed hat. But even had Kermorvan been a man of less swift thought, that chill would have warned him.
"
You
!" he said, his words forming thick as blood upon his tongue with the wrath that welled up within him."
You! Raven
! And well you are named, coming to settle upon a battlefield, and batten upon the fallen! May you fall in your turn, you callous crow of carrion, and drag down all your kind with you! Your kind, that in their eternal squabbling trample unheeding upon the brief lives of men!" He waved a furious hand at the devastation in the vale below. "Why could you not have prevented
that
, friend of men that you claim to be? Why could you not save
him
, at least, rather than come prate above him? What better have you wrought, with all your endless wars? Your kind or the Ice-kind, one Power is as bad for mankind as another! Why will you twist and turn the world this way and that between you? A lasting curse upon the whole pack of you! Why will you not leave men be, to live their own lives?"