'I do,' she said. 'And I also remember the one I made to your father. Ill be there to take care of you.'
Galaeron nodded, then looked skyward. 'Hear me now, people of Shade. Follow me now, for the Return is at hand!'
The silver horse tail vanished, and nothing else happened. Aris's cries faded to muffled groans. The companions swam to the riverbank and dragged themselves to shore. Vala and Malik set Galaeron's broken ankles. Then, with Vala cradling him in her arms and Malik carrying Takari, they started around the head of the butte to see what could be done for Aris.
They were just passing the waterfall when Malik pointed across the pool, to where Jhingleshod was dragging himself to shore. The knight had finally snapped Galaeron's sword belt and recovered his legs. As they watched, he pulled his two halves together and slowly began to work his flesh like clay, kneading it and pushing it together, filling in the gaping hole opened by the elf's spell. He glanced across the pool and glared at Galaeron, then looked skyward, to where a shadowy ribbon of darkness was beginning to swirl down out of the heavens. Tiny flashes of silver and black began to streak back and forth between the end of the ribbon and a pair of specks streaking southward across the sky.
As the companions watched, the specks resolved themselves into tiny cone-shaped figures, the dark ribbon into a long line of bat-winged mounts, each carrying a murky rider armed with a long death-spewing lance.
At last, the phaerimm had their fill of running. They spun on their pursuers, and in a flurry of spellcasting, set the sky alight with flame and magic. A dozen riders vanished into the maelstrom and came tumbling out the bottom, their mounts reduced to charred husks of wing and talon. Still, the riders behind never faltered. One raised his hands, and with a quick gesture, opened a hole in the fiery barrier before them. The rest whirled through the breach on their dark-winged mounts, pelting their quarry with black bolts from their lances. One of the phaerimm started to writhe about madly and began to drop-then vanished in a mote of spell light. Taking its lesson from its companion, the second creature also teleported away, leaving the bat-riders to wheel through the air in swirling pinwheels of darkness.
A shadow fell over the butte, then Malik gasped, 'By the One! A mountain is falling from the heavens!'
Galaeron looked up to see the summit of craggy black peak hanging upside down above them, just low enough that its jagged tip divided the rising sun. On top of the overturned mountain sat a murk-swaddled city of shimmering black walls and ebony towers, trailing wisps of shadow and layered in bands of hazy black cloud. It was swarming with hundreds- if not thousands-of bat riders, all circling the city in a mad wheeling stream, trailing pennants of royal blue and amethyst and black-red ruby, tipping their lances and performing wild acrobatics for hordes of cheering, gem-eyed citizens gathered along the dark ramparts.
'There is the help Evereska needs,' Vala said. When Galaeron did not respond, she looked into his eyes, her brow furrowed in concern. 'Galaeron, you should be happy What's wrong?'
Galaeron did not know how to answer. After breaking his word twice in one day, he had expected to feel disgraced, even corrupt or evil. Instead, he merely felt hollow-hollow and a little cold. Vala's expression grew hard. 'Galaeron?' He just looked away.
