shook every ornament in the hall to the floor. The fighters around her cringed and protected their ears from the thunder-shock; the doors rocked, but did not open.
'Fight it down, girl,' Tarma cautioned her, and Kethry visibly wrestled her own temper into control; if she lost to it, she had warned Tarma, she would be prey to the stored anger.
Kethry closed her eyes, took three deep breaths, then faced the obstacle again. 'Oh no,' she told the doors and the spell that was on them, 'you don't stop me that easily!'
Again she called the lightning, and a third time -- and on the fourth, the doors burst off their hinges, and fell inward with a crash that shook the floor, cracked the marble of the walls of the Great Hall, and rained debris down on all their heads from the ceiling. None of which they particularly noticed, as they stormed into the throne room --
To find it empty.
Jadrek cursed, with a command of invective that astounded Kethry, and pointed to where a scarlet and gold tapestry behind the throne flapped in a current of air. 'The tunnel -- it was walled off years ago -- '
'Figures that the little bastard would have it opened up,' Stefan spat. 'Think, man -- where does it come out?'
Jadrek closed his eyes and clenched both hands at his temples, as Kethry tried to will confidence and calm into him. 'If the records I studied are right -- and I remember them right,' he said finally, 'it exits in the old temple of Ursa, outside the city walls.'
Tarma and her chosen riders had already spun around and were sprinting for the door, and Kethrywas right behind them. Because she had already laid most of the spell on them, it was child's play to invoke the guises she'd set for just this eventuality -- even while pelting down the hall as fast as her legs could carry her. They were exceedingly simple illusions, anyway -- not faces, but livery, the scarlet and gold livery of Char's personal guards, exactly as the guise she wore was garbed.
They didn't have far to run; and Hawks now held the main gate and had forced it open, so there was nothing to bar the path to their allies. As they pounded into the torch-lit court behind the main gate, a dozen Shin'a'in-bred horses, driven by Warrl, and led by Tindel, galloped past that portal. Their iron-shod hooves drew sparks from the stones of the paving, and they tossed their heads as they ran, plainly fresh and eager for an all-out run.
Which was exactly what they were going to get.
As the horses swirled past the Palace door, the Hawks ran to meet them, not bothering to give Tindel the time to bring them to a halt. Instead they mounted on the run, as Tarma had taught them. Even Kethry, the worst rider of all, managed somehow, grabbing pommel and cantle and getting herself in the saddle of the still-cantering gelding she'd singled out without really thinking about what she was doing.
'Where?' Tindel shouted, over the pounding of hooves as they thundered out the gates again, leaving a panting Warrl to collapse behind them. This was no race for him and he knew it.
'Temple of Ursa -- ' Tarma yelled in reply, and Tindel cut anything else she was about to say off with a wave of his hand.
'I know a quicker way,' he bellowed.
He urged his gray into the fore, and led them in a mad stampede down crazy, twisting alleys Kethry had never seen before, a good half of which were just packed dirt. Festival gewgaws and dying flowers were pounded to powder as they careened through; once a tiny hawker's cart -- thankfully unattended -- was knocked over and kicked aside; reduced to splinters as it hit a wall. Kethry's nose was filled with the stench of back-alley middens and trampled garbage; she was splashed with stale water and other liquids best left nameless. Her eyes were dazzled by sudden torchlight that alternated with the abyssal dark valleys between buildings. She got only vague impressions of walls flying past, half-seen openings as they dashed by cross streets; and the pounding of hooves surrounding her throbbed like the pounding of the power at her fingertips.
Then, a startled shout, a wall that loomed high against the stars, and an invisible wall of cooler air and absolute blackness that they plunged through -- still without a pause --
Then they were outside the city walls, continuing the insane gallop along the road that led to a handful of old, mostly deserted temples, and beyond that, to Hielmarsh.
The moon was full; it was nearly as bright as day, without a single cloud to obscure the light. The fields and trees before them were washed with silver, and the horses, able now to see where they were going, increased their pace.
Kethry urged her beast up to the front of the herd, until she rode just behind Tarma and Tindel. She gripped her horse with aching knees and tried to see up the road. The temple couldn't be far -- not if it was to be reached by a tunnel.
It wasn't. The white marble of a building that could only be the temple in question stood out clearly against the dark shadows of the trees behind it -- at this pace, hardly more than a breath or two away.
