“It’s working,” Shamil muttered, feeling a thrum of satisfaction from Stielbek. He took them higher still, hopefully beyond the notice of any enemies, although Shamil wasn’t so naive as to think this mission would end without combat. Soon, the now familiar sting of airborne ash reached his nose, and he looked down to see the great monument passing almost directly below. Looking to his left and right he saw Vintress and Kritzlasch flying alongside and raised his hand, forming a fist in a prearranged signal, which they both answered in kind. In accordance with the plan, Lyvia would dive first in the hope that her swift-moving falcon would draw away any Maw beasts lingering in the cloud below. Shamil would follow with Rignar close behind, Stielbek carving a path through any opposition to reach their target.
Shamil shifted his hand to grip the whip’s handle. He had secured himself a bow and quiver full of crystal-heads from Ehlias’s stores but knew trying to aim and loose during a dive so steep and fast would be next to impossible. The black wing’s beak and talons would be their principal weapons today.
Vintress gave a loud screech as she folded her wings and plummeted into the drifted grey-black haze, with Lyvia’s sling trailing from her hand as they disappeared from sight. Shamil forced himself to wait the agreed-upon count of five very long seconds before sinking lower, Stielbek’s neck feathers fluttering against his visor as he drew in his wings, turned onto his side, and hurtled into the smoke, his course as straight and vertical as any plumb line.
As they fell into the shifting, acrid gloom, Shamil glanced back to confirm Kritzlasch was only a few yards behind before turning to peer into the onrushing sleet of embers and soot. His hand ached as he gripped the whip, and he expected some screaming, hellish visage to loom out of the chaos at any second, but their dive proved uninterrupted. Within the space of no more than five heartbeats, the smoke dissipated to reveal Sharrow-Met’s vast, stone features, still somehow beautiful despite their monolithic proportions.
Stielbek voiced a loud screech upon seeing the Wraith Queen’s face, and Shamil could hear the clear note of plaintive longing it held. The bird flared his wings as they drew level with the statue’s head, banking hard to circle the monument in a downward spiral. Shamil risked another backward glance, finding Rignar had raised himself up on the owl’s back, the shining orb of the onyx clutched against his chest. Shamil knew that for this to work, the mage’s throw would need to be strong and true, and for all his virtues, the man was no warrior. However, he had insisted that only he could cast the onyx and gave cheery assurances that he hadn’t yet failed to place a crystal where it needed to be and wasn’t about to start.
The lightning bolt lanced upwards just as Shamil began to turn away, striking Kritzlasch full in the chest and birthing an instant flower of black and red. The bird’s wings flailed as he tumbled end over end, casting Rignar from his back before colliding with the huge barrier of Sharrow-Met’s arm. There was no time to watch the owl’s corpse complete its fall. Stielbek retracted his wings and twisted before going into another dive, streaking down to lash out and snare Rignar’s falling body with his talons.
A sound that mixed thunder with the scream of a thousand demons caused Shamil to flatten himself against Steilbek’s back, feeling a blast of heat and an intense prickling to the skin. Stielbek banked steeply to the left as another ugly thunderclap sounded, a portion of Sharrow-Met’s granite shoulder exploding in a flash Shamil was sure would have blinded him but for his helm’s lenses.
Warrior instincts seized him then, all the hard lessons of the Doctrinate and recent experience of battle combining to have him unfurl the whip and deliver a swift backward strike. He saw the topaz tip flare bright as it struck something dark, a silhouette so unexpected in form he barely managed to comprehend the reality of it before it spun away, limbs flailing. He thought it might be one of the man-bats, but as the shape tumbled in Stielbek’s wake, then incredibly, steadied itself and flew in pursuit, Shamil saw no sign of wings. They were being pursued across the sky by a man, a man bearing a staff, the tips blazing white as they poured forth a crackling energy.
The impossibility of the sight caused Shamil to hesitate before lashing out with the whip once more, his confused amazement worsened by the fact that the man was assailing them with words as well as lightning. “Traitor!” he called out as he flew, voice impossibly loud and filled with a depthless rage. “You’ll share her fate this day!”
Something in that voice caused Stielbek to rear, spinning about as his wings beat to a blur. Shamil could sense the black wing’s fury, a roiling, bitter fire just as deep as that of the flying man. He soared closer as they hovered, staff blazing bright enough to reveal him as the bald-headed mage Shamil recalled so vividly from the day before.
“You think she still lives, traitor?” the Voice-mage asked in a frothing scream, and Shamil saw how his red-glowing eyes were fixed not on him but on Stielbek. “You’re a fool! A wretched remnant of her treachery!”
He spun the staff, the tips creating a blazing white wheel Shamil knew instinctively would soon give birth to another lightning bolt.
“She isn’t coming to save you!” The bald man’s face was every inch as bestial as any Maw beast as he shrieked out his final curse. “Die as she di—”
His words choked off as his rage-filled face formed into a blank, wide-eyed mask of utter astonishment, gaze locked on something in the sky beyond Shamil. Turning, he saw Vintress streaking out of the smoke, Lyvia raised high on her back as she whirled her sling. She had removed her helm, her face revealed in full by the glow of the mage’s staff, the face of a woman he insisted was long dead.
He managed to recover his wits just as Lyvia loosed the crystal from her sling, raising his staff to deflect the projectile. It somehow managed to survive the resultant explosion, as did the mage, but the force of it sent him into a chaotic spin. Lightning coiled and struck in all directions, Shamil’s heart lurching as he saw a blazing tendril catch Vintress before she could veer away.
The falcon screeched and spasmed across the sky, disappearing into the shadow cast by the vast statue. Rage burned in Shamil as Stielbek beat his wings and surged forward, closing the distance to the Voice-mage in an instant. He had almost steadied himself now, but not enough to avoid Shamil’s whip. It snaked out to coil itself around his staff, the tip blazing out its sorcerous energy as soon as it touched the intricately carved dark wood. Clearly it had already suffered great damage thanks to Lyvia’s crystal, for its blazing tips guttered out a final burst of energy before fading. The staff thrummed then shattered, leaving its wielder scrabbling in the air, a wordless scream forming on his lips that choked to a gurgle as the black wing’s beak bit deep into his chest.
Stielbek cast the limp doll of the mage’s body aside and soared higher as Shamil looked about desperately for Vintress but could see no sign. His whip trailed in the wind, and seeing the crystal tip destroyed and half of its length burned away, he opened his hand to let it slip away. A glimmer of light from beneath Stielbek’s bulk caused him to lean forward, where he saw Rignar still clutched in the bird’s talons. The mage had lost his helm, his gaunt, bleached face staring up at Shamil with imploring eyes. His mouth formed words that were lost to the wind, but the meaning was clear enough as he weakly raised the onyx in his hands.