Bloodring

Chapter 23

When I was a thousand feet lower on the mountain than the searchers, I stopped, dropped the box holding my blades, and pulled the blood-encrusted cloak over my chilled body. I drank two full bottles of water, braced against a tree, relieved myself and found a big rock to beat the locked box into smithereens. I took all my fear and frustration out on it, and it was a twisted, shattered mess when I stopped. I only quit then because I was afraid I'd damage my stuff inside.

Once it was open, I slipped the amulets around my neck, which had a soothing effect on the nerves vibrating in my flesh. More calm, I considered the handcuff chain. All I had that would weaken the steel was my fire amulet and the simple mental trick I had just discovered with the tigereye crucifix. I picked up a small pebble from near my feet, wrapped it with the fire amulet in a corner of my cloak, and pressed them together against the handcuff lock, heating the stone and directing it inside with a simple mental push. The granite melted, bubbled, and folded itself into the lock with a hot hiss that burned a hole in the conjured leather and blistered my fingers before I dropped it. The lock didn't open so much as dissolve and separate, liquid rock and metal dripping on the ground.

Hands free, I tossed the steel cuffs, pulled off the ratty battle gloves, and sucked on my fingers. When they hurt marginally less, I ate the candy bar while inspecting my weapons. The walking-stick sheath had suffered a long slice down the inlaid wood and was missing a small garnet cabochon that had decorated the tiny ring near the hilt. The blades were crusted with dried blood and needed cleaning and oiling, and also some time against a grinding wheel in the hands of a sword master. The longsword was nicked in two places and the kris edge had slivered, ready to form a two-inch-long chink.

I whirled both. They made a satisfying sound in the cold air. "Not great, but not bad."

From the landing site, I heard the cry go up. I was found out. I wondered how long it would take Eli to «discover" my trail. "A saddle and whipped cream?" I asked. My teeth showed in a grin at the images that suddenly came to mind. "I owe you, Eli Walker," I said to myself, "but maybe not that much."

I whirled the longsword again and knew if I needed to defend myself, they'd all better be clean, at least. I rinsed the blades one by one in snowmelt, scraped them with moss I found beneath a tree, and polished them on the cloak's lining. As I worked, the sugar high from the candy bar and the adrenaline flare from my escape burned out, leaving me exhausted, in pain from hundreds of small lacerations, bites, claw cuts, and bruises, groggy headed, and teary eyed. I was worn out, hungry, dirty, blood caked, and hurting.

Eventually, I could find and heat a springhead pool with an incantation, could steal food when I got near humans, could go among them wearing the glamour I had used at the swap meet, could start over somewhere new. If I got away. But where should I go? What in the name of the Most High would I do? I was trapped from above by men with a helicopter and guns, and from below by the town. I'd have to move at night. On foot. I couldn't make my way to any of the nearby roads or trails, as every traveler would be searched. Heading south meant passing close to the town—not the brightest thing I could do this week. It would take me two days to circle around the Trine and head back north, on a mountain where the resident Darkness had already had a taste of my blood, a thought that caused a soft gong of warning to sound in my head. But I could deal with that—whatever that was—later. Either way I went, I needed transportation. I thumbed on a healing amulet to lessen the ache of my battered body. I really needed two or three, but they might make me sleepy.

Homer's scent was carried on the breeze blowing down the Trine. He seemed to be on the move, as his scent was touched with sweat and hunger, but he was too far away for me to get to him, and suddenly I missed him. Loneliness slid through my ribs into my lungs like a demon-iron stiletto. I couldn't go back to my apartment for more supplies, because that was the first thing they would expect. If I stole a horse anywhere, they'd know it was me. And night was falling. I was toast.

But below me, only an hour's travel time away, was the mound of amethyst. Power I would need. I sheathed each of the weapons, pocketed my gloves, tied the strands of the dobok together at my breast, tightened my boots, threw on my torn cloak, and struck out south.

I reached the site of the mound just before sunset. I could hear voices on my trail. Eli the tracker hadn't promised not to chase me down, only to give me a head start. Generous of him, under the circumstances. I knelt near the mound and started to dig.

When I had seven fist-sized chunks of amethyst, each pulsing so slowly I feared they would stop between beats, taking my heartbeat and life with them, I stood. After rinsing them off, I tucked them into my dobok and drank more water. With the stone against my flesh, the pain of my myriad hurts lessened to bearable, and I felt more lucid, more prepared to strike off west and circle the Trine. First, however, I leaned against a tree and opened mage-sight to position each of the searchers.

There were twenty-one. Three carried charmed objects, making them asseys, one was out in front, moving downhill fast, likely Eli; and one glowed bright rainbow hues. Thadd. The kylen was just behind Eli. My own personal posse, chasing an armed and dangerous mage. I could smell them on the wind, human sweat and kylen blood, like a bakery. My stomach growled and I chuckled at my body's confusion; I patted my stomach, saying, "I'm supposed to mate with him, not have him for dinner." Though that presented interesting possibilities. I dropped the sight and took a deep breath.

Sulfur. In a single motion, I threw back the cloak and drew my sword from the walking stick. Adrenaline pumped once through my heart, slammed into my muscles, nerves, and bones, and my mage-sight reopened. I saw it. Saw them.

Where before there had been twenty-one forms, now there were dozens. They hadn't been there only a moment before. They hadn't. And then I saw a glimmering tracery of red fading from the hills. Half-breeds and humans bound to Darkness had been using a moving shield much like mine—evaporating red strands, shaped in a semicircle, corresponded to an ambush of the group chasing me. I hadn't seen them, smelled them, or sensed them. If I had blended the senses into a scan, would I have spotted them?

A shot rang out. And then hundreds, reverberating through the peaks. Screams echoed. The smell of anguish, blood, and death touched the breeze.

I stood in indecision. This was a perfect chance for a mage on the run. I could be miles away by the time they… The thought dropped away as I looked at the sun propped on the nearest peak. It would be dark in less than a half hour. Swarms of spawn would join the attack. By dawn, there would be nothing left to chase me. And humans couldn't call "human in dire," because they had souls. If they died, it was no skin off a seraph's back. They'd just go to heaven in a blaze of soul-bright glory or to judgment in a tuft of smoke. No one would help them. No one would help Thadd. Or Eli.

I almost swore, stopping myself just in time. Drawing on the amethyst next to my skin, I turned and raced uphill toward the battle. Overhead, I heard the rotor of a helicopter blade and felt the wind of it in my hair just as I spotted the conflict. The battle was a thousand yards from the mound and the amethyst. They had been close to retaking me.

The posse was situated on both sides of a small, twenty-foot cliff, a precipice I had skirted, but that they were rappelling down, making good time. Until someone shot the human who still hung, dangling midway down the cliff face, gently banging against the rock wall. Two more humans were dead at the crown of the rock face. The rest of them clustered at the base of the cliff, all except for Thadd and Eli, who were now behind me. The smell of human fear and blood was hot and pungent. The underlying scent of bowels that had released in violent death wafted through, dropping with the cooling air.

The Darkness was circled around them, three at the cliff top, creating cover fire as the rest darted to both sides closing in a pincer move. I dashed left, hard toward the heart of the Darkness. I jumped a fallen tree, rich with lichen. Splashed througli a small, Whitewater creek, breathing hard and deep. I saw the first Darkness.

They looked human, wore human clothes, jeans and flannel shirts and boots, but with mage-sight wide open and battle lust burning bright through my bones, they glinted red and black, swirls of Power and intent, black-fire eyes and mottled skin. All were spelled. Three carried demon-iron blades at their sides—daywalkers, leading the attack on this side, three in a cluster. They would move in groups of six if possible. That put three on the other side, closest to Thadd. One of them spotted me and grinned, showing pointed teeth.

Unlike the one with labradorite eyes, these walkers' eyes were untouched with blue, gleaming agate red. I filed this little tidbit away for later consideration. Fear pumped energy through my veins, riding adrenaline bareback. I sucked a breath and screamed, a loud, long battle cry. Without thought, without plan, I raced toward them. They leapt toward me, blades high.

Time dilated, slowing to a thick syrupy consistency, and I saw every movement with complete clarify; each shift and its consequences flitted through my mind, with time enough to consider and discard dangerous repercussions. I threw the walking-stick sheath at the first one, tangling his legs. Pulled a throwing knife and spun it at the second one. The blade caught the light, glinting.

The walker in the middle leaped high and past me. My sword clanged against his blade, throwing sparks. An instant later, I heard the throwing knife hit home and the leaper land. I drew my kris. Battle lust raged up and through me.

I shouted, blades ringing, paraphrasing a battle chant, "And they joined battle with them in the vale of the Trine! The men of war went to battle. Behold, I have given into thine hand the Dragon of Darkness, and his land: Begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle." The words were like bullets filled with holy water, like the hand of God himself wielding a weapon.

The daywalker who had tripped on my walking stick writhed on the ground at the scripture. I danced over him, slicing him along his sword arm. The smell of sulfur and acid filled the clearing, harsh and burning.

The other daywalker spun beneath my longsword, laughing, and he shouted back, paraphrasing only one name, "And the Lord said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle: for I will not give thee of their land for a possession; because I have given Ax unto the children of the dragon for a possession."

Fear welled up in me, a deluge of terror. I faltered, hearing scripture from his foul mouth. A cut scored along my knuckles and down across my elbow. Deep in my mind, I heard a voice, the bell-like tones of another. "He dares to profane the holy words!"

It was the Being of Light in the mountain. "Even the Dark One knows scripture," I shouted, hearing her voice in my mind, meeting his blade with every clash. "Yet now be strong… says the Lord; be strong, oh, Thorn, enfant de Lolo, the high priestess; and be strong, all mages of the land, says the Lord, and fight: for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts!"

Riotous energies boiled up through me. I screamed with all the wildness of my heart. And I stroked and cut, sliced and hacked, moving from the swan into the clawed lion rampant, into the eagle. The clash of mage-steel and demon-iron rang through the clearing.

I heard the voice of bells in my head and repeated the words she gave me. "When thou go out to battle against thine enemies… be not afraid of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee. Be not afraid of the king of Dragons… be not afraid of him, says the Lord: for I am with you to save you, and to deliver you from his hand."

I drew blood with a reverse Zorro, scoring my blade across his thigh, over his ribs, and up across his face. For just an instant, he staggered, black blood on his clothes and flesh. "Die, demon. Die!" I shouted, thrusting with the kris. The curvy blade ripped through his shirt and into his chest. It hung there, the long nick caught on a rib. I spun away, letting momentum force the blade from his bones with a hard, grating rotation. Something snapped. Bone parted and broke. Muscle ripped. The hilt came away empty. The kris blade was gone, broken off inside him. Blood frothed with bubbles. It splashed my face, burning, and I roared with laughter, the sound like trumpets on the hillside.

The daywalker who had tripped thrust up with his blade. I drew a throwing blade and countered, sweeping his weapon up and away. With a single thrust of the sword, I pierced his heart. Disconnecting the throwing blade from his ribs with a twist, I whirled, cutting high as he fell. The sword took off his head in a gusher of black blood. Letting the momentum of the blade continue, I stepped forward and removed the head of the one I had disabled, the one who had chanted scripture at me.

They looked proper that way, headless and twitching. A black mist of sulfur and brimstone filled the clearing, burning my delicate nasal passages and the pathways to my lungs. The breath caught in my throat.

"Yet now be strong… says the Lord," the bells said in my head, " and fight—for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts."

I cut off the head of the last one. Blood was everywhere. It had splattered the ground where I stood, my chest heaving with exertion. It had sprayed my clothes, which steamed with acid. Burns and sword wounds slashed my skin. I screamed a cry of victory, blades outswept at my sides, head back, mouth to the sky. My cry echoed all along the hills. From high up, hidden in the rocks, the lynx screamed with me.

As the sound of victory died, another sound followed. From the hillsides all around came scream upon scream of challenge. I sucked in a breath and looked up. Dusk had fallen. Devil-spawn ringed the hills all around. Three-toed, clawed, scaled spawn with built-in blades in place of fingernails.

A snap sounded behind me. I whirled, bringing both blades up and across, a defensive move. It was Thaddeus. "You are one weird, crazy mage, you know that?" he said, a gun in each hand, eyes blazing chrysocolla, still angry. More than angry. Raging. "Do you know how many there are on the hillsides? Do you?"

I laughed, the sound ripping through my chest, full of despair and challenge, both. "A lot. Too many. Your bullets filled with holy water?"

"Yeah. From the Dead Sea. We all carried special ammo. Not that it helped much."

"You're still alive, aren't you?" I said, chest heaving, lavender light blazing from my amulets. Beneath its palliative and strength was a growing, distant pain. "How many bullets?"

I followed Thadd's eyes around the hills, long shadows striping the ground, the sky a lovely shade of navy above. One star showed, hanging over the waning moon. All at once, the spawn's screaming stopped. An eerie silence fell on the clearing. Half a hundred of their eyes watched us, hungry. I counted the human and half-breed attackers. One walker was still alive, and fifteen Dark humans. Of the original posse sent to capture me, ten were left.

My fear, which had lightened for a moment, was a heavy stone of terror. Time, which had been so fluid, felt unyielding now, as ungiving as granite. As one, the spawn leaped down the mountain toward us. "Not enough," Thadd said, slamming his back against mine. Three shots sounded. "Call a seraph."

"I can't. Not yet," I said. "I'm not in danger dire. The posse isn't innocent. They struck an unarmed mage. If I call, you'll all die too."

"Gabriel's tears," he hissed. "We'll die anyway." Spawn reached us. Blades whirling, back-to-back with the Hand of the Law, I shifted into the move called the winged warrior. I drew blood and screamed a battle cry I hadn't remembered. "Jehovah Sabaoth!" echoed through the hillsides. "Jehovah Sabaoth!" For a single instant, the Darkness paused. And then they fell on us.

There were too many. Analytically, I knew I would die.

On another level, I was quaking with fear. On a third level, the demented level of a maniac, I was raging with fury. I would not give up. Not to these things. Three went down as I took their heads. The ground beneath us was perilously slippery with demon-blood. My battle boots smoked with the acid.

"Over there," Thadd said, pointing his blade south to the cairn of stones. "Up high."

"Yeah. But step where I step," I shouted as I ran toward the mound. "It's booby-trapped."

"Of course it is," he said, tone caustic. "Why not?"

Thadd raced at my left, shooting two spawn fast. As he changed clips, I took their heads, opening a path. As one unit, we raced to the cairn. Eli stood atop it, bleeding in a hundred places. I jumped up first, landed high, finding footing at the tracker's back. Thadd landed beside me and set his feet. His riding boots were smoking and made sticky sounds on the stones as he positioned himself. My battle boots instantly cooled and sealed against the acid of blood. I hadn't even noticed their protection until now.

Thadd fired three quick shots, dropping three. The hoard was upon us. I stabbed the first that bounded up the cairn, sliced his head from his torso. When he fell, he landed on a booby trap and his body exploded. Blood flew. Spawn screamed. And we fought. From uphill, Durbarge and six others raced. As I cut, I saw one more of the posse fall.

Time seemed to drag, as if it had a weight and pressure all its own. My arms tired, muscles growing heavy, slowing with fatigue. I was weakened, and hungry; adrenaline could fuel me for only so long. Though I had been partially restored when Raziel saved me, partially healed when I called on the Mountain, that healing was long gone. And still the Darkness came, humans and half-breeds in the mix. The height of the cairn slowed them, forced them to move up one by one or in small groups. Two humans triggered a booby trap and pieces went flying, taking with them a dozen spawn. That helped. But it wasn't enough.

"Why don't they just shoot us?" Eli shouted.

"Don't give them ideas," Thadd said.

"They have plans for us," I said. "Really, really bad plans."

"Well, crap," Eli said, shooting a human.

The mild expletive seemed wildly funny. Laughing together, we fought the pawns of the Power of the Trine as my fear gathered and throbbed and the night deepened. Shots rang through the peaks nearby. Blades flashed in the gathering night. We cut, and hacked, and killed. The air was full of the stench of Darkness and death, of rotting spawn meat and sulfur. The mountainside pealed with the screams of the wounded and the dying and with the ring of steel. Four more booby traps exploded, scattering body parts.

"I can't see," Eli shouted. "Where are they?"

Without answering, I thumbed on four light amulets and tossed them to the ground.

"Remind me I owe you a hot-oil massage and sex in a hot tub, mage," he said. I felt Thadd's reaction but didn't look around. In a circle around us, six spawn attacked as one. Spawn were fast but stupid, easily dispatched. They won in battle through sheer numbers, not tactics. By one battle estimate, a thousand spawn died for every mage.

When a lull came in the combat, Durbarge and three others reached us, jumping up on the lower stones of the cairn. I dropped my arms, too tired to hold the blades at ready. My breath was an arrhythmic pain, my heart ached with each beat. My skin stung from splatters of acid blood. With my mage-vision, I estimated fifty bodies.

"Is it true that mages can call for seraphic help?" Eli shouted as rock shards fell.

"They hit her when she was unarmed," Thadd shouted back, shooting two more, again changing magazines. "That makes us evil or something. And this is my last magazine."

Durbarge looked around at that. He had taken a blade in his right eye. It was gone, his face engraved with agony, gore spilling down his face.

"What about me?" Eli said. "I let you go. Doesn't that make me innocent? 'Cause I'm bleeding like a stuck pig over here."

"Yeah, and I put your things in easy reach," Thadd said.

I laughed, the sound wheezing. Durbarge computed both comments. I could see an intent to shoot me form, and I spun my longsword. The thought entered his mind and passed on through. Any mage was a better warrior than he, and he knew it. Self-preservation saved him. I whipped the sword in an arc, back under my arm. Belatedly, his eyes widened.

We would all die without seraphic help. I needed to call on them, even if this time it meant I'd die, but I couldn't. No innocent was near death. I had to wait until Thadd or Eli was mortally injured. Compulsion held my tongue.

"They will take you in a single rush this time. You must call on my wheels." The words belled in my mind.

"Your what?" I said, as spawn circled us.

"Call on them. Call on the navcone. Call on my wheels."

"That helps a lot," I muttered raising my blades. "They're going to hit us all at once," I said. No one refuted me. Eli sighed and drew a hunting knife. Its blade was nearly as long as my shortsword had been. "I have an idea, but I need to… meditate." I had almost said conjure but caught myself at the last moment. I didn't think Durbarge would "suffer a witch to live" if he caught me at my gifts.

With a weary sigh, I folded my knees and sat on the cairn. A black opal was near my boot, but I was too tired to move. Blood and pain throbbed in my veins like vinegar and whiskey, dulling and enervating. I closed my eyes and opened a mind-skim on top of the mage-sight. The world ducked and spun around me. The hot taste of acid and chocolate rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down.

To my side, the mound pulsed once, here, not-here, a lavender energy I didn't understand but had used. Had made my own. In time with it, my amulets pulsed, and energy flowed into me. Guiding the tempo and rhythm, my blood beat at one with the mound. I breathed, and my breath blew out a lavender mist. Beside me, Thadd glowed all the shades of tourmaline, and I smelled the reek of kylen excitement and fear. He could suddenly see the amethyst too. I felt his lips press together to stop whatever he wanted to say.

The rest of the scripture that described the creature trapped in the bowels of the mountain emerged in my mind. She gave it to me, the words belling clear and ringing. "And there appeared in the cherubim, the form of a man's hand under their wings. And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubim, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the color of a gem stone. And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it… And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, 'O wheel! And everyone had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a human, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.

"Use the otherness of the blended scan," she said. "The otherness…" And her voice fell silent.

My mind was still sluggish, my fatigue marrow deep. I was close to collapse. I struggled to find the moment in my memory when the sight had changed, to isolate the otherness I had experienced when I blended the mage-senses.

"Blasphemy," another voice tolled. "Humans and mages cannot do this. Only the archseraph and his senior winged warriors can do this thing. And only after they are paired with a cherub."

"She has bound herself to my wheels," the Mistress' voice rang.

"Foolish, she," came the answer.

The world fell away. Light, sound, smells, textures, blasted at me, smothered me, flailed me like barbed chains, rolled me like rapids, and trapped me there, dying. I fell, retching. My heart beat once.

And I fell and fell and fell and fell. My heart beat a second time.

On one level, in one place, I landed on the stone cairn. Felt the bones in my hand break, shatter, splinter, into hundreds of calcite shards. Purple light flared. The rocks beneath me shook, vibrated, and began to slide. One shifted and slid over my broken hand. My heart beat a third time.

In the other place, I glimpsed a river of lava, heat, energy, life, and death, and blood, and birth. It flowed to me, through me, and was gone. What are wheels? The boulder ground my shattered bones. Pain spiraled up, pulling me back. My heart beat twice more.

Below me, I saw a glimmer, a shine, a gold so pure, it was self-sustaining energy, trapped, hidden, shielded, beneath a layer of otherness. The otherness stood outside the world where my hand was broken, secluded, isolated in a sea of calm. A sea so black and textured it was like black velvet viewed on a moonless night. A place, but not a place. The next universe beyond this one? The space between universes? Between dimensions? The next dimension beyond where I existed? It wasn't within my understanding. My brain wasn't equipped with the necessary synapses to appreciate or comprehend it.

I threw up. Instantly I was back in the world I knew, my hand trapped beneath a boulder so massive, no mage could have moved it. Pain, a lissome agony, streaked up my arm, paralyzing me. My heart beat a sixth time. I gagged again as the pain reached new, unheard-of peaks of torture. I realized the earth was shaking. Earthquake.

On the hillsides, Darkness raced at us, streaking blobs of reddish black. "Tears of Taharial," I whispered, not caring that I was heard. I was trapped.

The cairn below me shifted again. The boulders slid and tumbled. The flesh of my hand was shredded, the bones ground to dust. I screamed. Time shifted. Thadd picked me up and threw me across the clearing. I landed in a tangle of spawn, sending them bowling away.

I cupped the remains of my hand against my chest and pulled the blade from my nape, whirling it once over my head, spitting stomach acid and partially digested chocolate. From beneath the cairn, navcone rose into the air. Navcone was gold, tons of gold, twisted and spiraled in perfect circles, hoops of energy that sparkled and spun and sang with joy. If pure energy could laugh, it roared with laughter. And I knew what it was. It was part of a machine.

As if moving in slow motion, Durbarge flew through the air and fell beside me, bones broken. Thadd landed at my other side, nimble footed and reeking of kylen.

From the mound only yards away, and from the oval glen beyond, lavender light pulsed, throbbed, pounded, a beating heart of life pouring through the soil and grass and trees. The ground shifted. Fire erupted like lightning. The earth rose and the accumulated soil of decades, rolled from the top of the new hill and tumbled to the ground. And still the mound and the glen lifted.

Amethyst, a single, narrow, pulsing, faceted amethyst the size of a football field, appeared through the falling soil. It sang, it choraled, a paean of joy and hope and life.

And its eyes opened. Glowing amethyst eyes, like the eyes along the Mistress's body. That was her name, the Mistress. Mistress Amethyst. Holy Amethyst. And these were Amethyst's wheels. I quoted the rest of the scripture from Ezekiel about the cherubim. "Their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about."

The eyes, hundreds of eyes, thousands upon thousands of them, blinked and looked at me. The weight of the stare was the weight of the world. The song of the wheels changed key and hummed a softer tune, an audible caress I could feel across my skin as if I lay naked in a summer field. It felt alive.

Above me the navcone rolled, altered its plane, and slid through space as if it weighed nothing. It impacted the lavender stone. Cracks showed through the amethyst, shattered fragments as useless as my hand. The gold navcone settled around the damaged stone tip with a soft, broken snap.

The navcone was the navigation nosecone of a ship.

Sweet Hail Mary. The amethyst I had been drawing upon was a ship. The eyes smiled at me. The ship crooned, pianissimo, a gentle lullaby melody. The lavender stone behind the nosecone clicked and separated into two hoops. Purple light discharged from the skin of the stone like lightning. It separated again and formed four, again and became six. A seventh circle lifted from the center and whirled and whorled. The other wheels began turning, gyrating. Each wheel within a wheel sang a different harmony, a chorus, a hymn.

Tones of blessing enwrapped me, brushed my skin, penetrated to my muscles and nerves and into my bones. And even deeper, into my cells, my very genes, my spirit. I closed my eyes and threw back my head. "Darkness attacks," I told it, speaking aloud.

Behind my closed eyes, I saw the ship fire weapons into the hillside, into the attacking Darkness. The weapons were light and heat, yet neither, the fine, laserlike beams a gavotte across the mountainside. The ship rose, still firing, and altered its plane, climbing over the blasted ground of the sepulcher where it had lain, land that had once been a clearing.

Yet the earth still shook and the rumbling had grown. Suddenly, I knew what I was hearing. An avalanche. The ice cap had shifted. Broken. It was racing downhill, thousands of tons of ice and rock and debris, to bury the town. "Thorn! The ice pack!"

Mistress? I thought.

"It is of no matter. You are safe. The rest is of no importance. They are humans."

Shock swept through me. I raised up from the ground. Even in the night, I could see the avalanche approaching, a thunderous roaring of white and death to my blended scan. There was something I could do. I could call "mage in dire" now… But there wasn't time.

I threw back my head, flung open my arms, dropping back into the otherness. And once again, I heard my heart beat. Lavender light pulsed. Power lanced me, speared me, damaged me as it passed through me. I studied the wheels for two heartbeats. Light, brighter than the sun, sang inside me.

"What are you doing, little mage?"

"What I have to," I yelled back.

I called on stone.

In a place that was here and not-here, I understood how the wheels, the ship, worked, what directed it-them. The eyes, all the eyes turned to me. My heart beat a fourth time. On the hillsides all around, I saw Darkness dying. Being burned and drained and killed all around me, their energies warping, bending, shattering, as the bones in my hand had shattered.

The ground vibrated beneath my feet. My heart beat again. I looked into the eyes on the wheels and twisted with my will. Wordless. Without incantation. With only my need and desire and fear for the town, for the people I loved. With only my knowledge of stone. The wheel gyrated. Pulsed once in time to the beat of my heart.

A light brighter than the sun reached out from the navcone. Navigation cone, my mind whispered. In a single sustained burst, it melted the ice cap.

The thunder of avalanche ice became the rushing of Niagara. An entire sea of water, a tsunami of destruction raced toward the town.

My heart beat again. A second burst of light followed the first. Steam, hotter than the fires of hell, rose and hissed and divided and separated. The avalanche of snow that had become a sea now steamed into a cloud. My heart beat. Rain started to fall. Heavy, drenching sheets of rain. My heart beat.

I was suddenly back in the clearing. Beside me, Thadd stood, his gun sweeping. I smelled battle and death, blood and spawn, ozone and sulfur and rain.

I felt, I knew, the thoughts of the Darkness, the spawn, the few remaining humans, the walkers… and the Dragon standing in the mouth of the cave. My heart beat. The Dragon that smelled of Lucas' blood. The chain it held in its hands. Links from Mole Man's chain…

The wheels turned and fired again, the energy of creation gathered, braided, wove itself into a single beam of Light and otherness. Darkness howled with anger, shrieked with pain as the Light weapons of the wheels killed them by the thousands. My heart beat.

My chin rested in wet, chilled soil. Rain pelted me, forming runnels and creeks and currents that sparkled and gurgled. I found the energy to lift my nose out of the water and roll over, my face to the heavens. Darkness fled and died. The smell of death and defeat and victory and rain blew over me. My heart beat.

Mage-heat blazed up in me. Need and want were colors, rich and glorious and yet, somehow, meaningless. Desolation welled up in me. I sobbed, once, as my heart beat.

I released the ship, Holy Amethyst's wheels. We had won. We had won.

Suddenly, the sky above me was filled with seraphs. They shouted and sang, a song of a thousand bells. I felt, more than saw, Raziel settle beside me. I took a breath. We had won.

My heart beat. And I knew no more.