For all her uneasiness with heights, something different was stirring in her now: a desire to lift wings and fall out into that glorious gulf of darkening blue air beneath her. A smile crossed her face at the realization that Dragons, like any of the more common soaring creatures of the world, preferred to drop from a height rather than to work for altitude. (And why not,) Hasai said, stretching wings lazily inside her and admiring the view himself. (Why waste energy, or man-ipulate field, when you don't have to? This is a fine height. Not as high as the Eorlhowe, to be sure, but a respectable height—) "There it is," Torve said, his voice very quiet. Segnbora glanced up from the glacier.
High to the west, above the vista of Adine peak behind them, past Esa and Mirit and the long sleek flank of White-stack, had risen a slim crescent of Moon. To its right, and lower, a point of light glittered: the Evenstar. Quickly Segn-bora looked upward along the silver-blue curve of the Sky-bridge. . and forgot to breathe.
It had come out as silently and suddenly as the Moon. The Skybridge, half of a curve before, was whole now. The new part of the span did look to be made of the sky — cerulean blue, transparent, yet very much there. And at the span's end rose Glasscastle. It was like a castle in an old story, a place built for pleasure rather than defense, fanciful and wide-windowed and fair. Halls and high towers pierced the upper air; slender spires were bound together by curving bridges and fairy buttresses. Everything, from the wide-flung gates at the end of the bridge to the highest needle spire, was built of the same airy crystal as the bridge.
The evening sky could plainly be seen through walls and towers. The fading hues of the sunset — rose, gold, and deepening royal blue — were reflected from them, pale and ghostly. Yet there was nothing fragile about the place. Glasscastle stood as immovably founded on the air as if on rock. It reflected the sunset colors, the icy light of the Moon,
and even the frozen gleam of the Evenstar, but cast no shadow.
"Not a moment too soon," Herewiss said, his voice hushed, as Sunspark stepped up to the peak again, completing their circuit of the mountaintop. All around the barrel of the peak burned a line of blue, the circle within which the spell would be confined. Herewiss dismounted and stood for a moment with Khavrinen in his hand, gazing up at the crystalline appa-rition.
"Beautiful," he said. "But from now on, that's all it's going to be." He struck Khavrinen,'s point down into the snow at the foot of the bridge, and looked up the curve of metal, raising his arms—
— and stopped, squinting upwr ard. "Who's that?" he said. Everyone looked. Segnbora's stomach constricted at the sight of the lone dark figure approaching the end of the metal part of the span, a tiny shadow against the twilight.
"I don't believe it," Herewiss said, in the voice of someone who does believe it, and wishes he were wrong. "I don't — LORN!"