There was a pit of twisted metal, lights flickering at the edge of vision like shifting eyes, a veil of corpse light between grey buttresses, high, narrow tables festooned with dust among a maze of shadows. Then to one side they saw the jar, vast, bound about with hoops of steel. Once having noticed it, they could not look away again, for in it something lived.
Something without colour, without shape. Something which had no right to be, no natural thing. Something which might have been drawn from the depths of an unknown space, too unfamiliar to be horrid, too strange to be totally terrifying. The horror and terror it evoked were of a different kind, a discrepant order. It was there. It knew. It had found them. Now it spoke to each.
‘Medlo. Come. We will go to Rhees. I have Separated them all, all the ones you have reason, good reason to hate – mother, uncle. You can see for yourself what is left of them, enjoy the sight. You may drink what is left of them like wine, Medlo. You may rule in Rhees. Medlo, Prince. Only lay down that which you carry, Medlo. It is only a burden. You don’t need it. Alan, Medlo. Alan will be there, too.’
Medlo’s voice dried in his throat. His hands left the strings to hang limply at his sides. He saw Rhees in the brightness of spring, the lawns jewel-green in morning light, River Einnit sparkling beneath the sun. From the streets came laughter. He was dressed in the honour cape of the King, and beside him was Alan … Alan …
‘Terascouros, you are old, so old. Bones creak and body aches. We don’t need it anymore, Terascouros. In me you can live forever. No pain anymore. No body at all. Roam the world, Terascouros. I will give you Sybil for a slave, what is left of her. You may go where you will, see everything, know everything. You have only to stop singing, Terascouros. Only to stop singing.’
Terascouros could feel all her bones, each one with its individual pain. She was old, too old. And yet her restless mind did not wish to go into nothingness, did not wish to die. Ah, to know everything. Ah, to wander and learn without pain …
‘Jaer, I will take all those others inside of you away. You don’t need them. It is you who are important, Jaer, not them. I can take them, and you can go back to the tower. Ephraim will be there, and Nathan, and it will all be easy and simple, with the sun warm on the tower steps. I am the Gate, Jaer. I am the Ahl di. You have found me. You have done enough. Give them all up, Jaer. Give them up:
Jaer trembled. Ephraim and Nathan were both pleading with her. She was weary, weary of the journey, the uncertainty, the inhabitants within who built of her a pattern she did not understand. She was weary of voices and quests. It would be good, so good to be a child again …
In Orena, Jasmine walked in chains, her eyes upon Thewson where he stood upon the wall. Behind her, Sybil rode upon the dragon beast and screamed to Thewson in a voice of jagged metal, ‘The Sword, Thewson, and the Crown: Put them down, and we will let you have this woman, this child. You may take them to the Lion Courts, Thewson. They call your name in the Lion Courts, to make you Chieftain. No one else. They know of your renown, of your courage, your battles. They have cried Thewson’s name along the god trail. Come down and give us the Sword, the Crown in exchange for these.’
And Lithos called to Leona where shfe and Hazliah hung across the battlements, staring in fury. ‘I will take you to Fabla, Leona, for she lives. Come down and set your talons into this pretty meat I have for you, and I will take you to Fabla once again. Get the Vessel for us. Trade it, Leona.’
The voices of these two struck Leona in whiplashes of sound. She screamed only once, a gryphon’s scream, heard it echoed by Hazliah. Together they lunged upward from the walls, mindless with rage. Thewson could not have held them longer. He bowed beneath their screams, hearing the same sounds coming faintly from the north. There Hazliah’s kindred beat toward the city, returned from wherever they had taken the Remnant. Still other cries of fury came from within the city, and those remaining of the gryphons wheeled out from the Temple tower into the battle which tore the sky above the city walls.
Serpent beast and gryphon met above the towers, air shrilling along bat wings, clawed feet slashing, venomed stings snapping and recoiling. Blood rained on the city from their meeting as membranes ripped into tatters; beasts fell in sprawled dragon shapes upon the roofs of Orena. Crippled gryphons planed down, struggling to veer away from the wall of ghosts. Individual battles broke from the mass to spiral away across the valley. Below, the people of Orena poured from every building to stare above them. Onto the walls the Sisters came in their gore-spattered hundreds, standing together in song beneath the blood-curtained sky.
Sybil and Lithos dismounted from their dragon beasts, gestured them upward to join the fray, laughing mockingly as Thewson clenched his fists to hammer them upon the stones. His eyes were locked upon Jasmine’s. He tried frantically to devise some plan for her rescue. Bells were ringing. The song rose in power. There was the sound of battle, screaming,
