— and abruptly, with a deathpain that shot down her right arm to her heart, that wing-shadow tore away from the cliff, casting a shadow of its own, impossibly coming real. —
The second wing tore free, another pain. She saw webs that gleamed like polished onyx and struts rough with black sap-phires. Then came the terrible length of tail, the deadly spine at the end of it whipping free, lashing outward, poised above her to protect. And after the tail, the taloned forelimbs, their diamonds flashing in the blinding Firelight. A neck, the great head, glowing eyes burning not silver now but blue, lean-ing down over her and glaring past her with impartial chal-lenge at Reavers and Fyrd and the dark something that ap-proached— "Hhnr ae mrin'hen," said the voice of wind and storm from right above her. "Whole at last, yes!"
She stared up at Hasai, so torn between wonder and terror that she couldn't tell anymore whether her weakness came from impending death or sheer astonishment. Her mdaha gazed down at her, lilting his head in a gesture of greeting, and turned his attention again to the field and the forces attacking the scarp.
She had heard Dragons roar In her mind. But in the open it was something else. Rocks fell down from the cliff, and the ground shook
almost as hard as It had before. Not just one voice roared, but two, ten, a score, a hundred. The mdeihei were there too, not as solidly as Hasai, but present enough to be a host of shifting wings and deadly razor-barbs and
glowing, glaring eyes, ail looking down at the attackers. They sang of a solution to this problem, one that was not to be feared. Death. Death. Death. Hasai reared his head back, bared the diamond fangs that few had ever survived seeing, and flamed. The Reavers fled, panicked. Hasai's blast of Dragonfire melted the ground where they had been standing. Even the slow-stalking shadow at the southern edge of the field halted at that, as if stunned. Fyrd scattered in all directions but eastward, where the Sun seemed to be coming up.
The scarp was fenced with fire again, but this time the consuming white of Dragonfire, with a tinge of blue to it; and inside the circle a tremendous shape with wings like thunder-clouds was rearing up against the cliff, burning in iron and diamond, ineluctably real. And down by one of his hind ta-lons, hanging onto it for support, a tiny figure bleeding Fire from a wound in the heart stared up and up at what had been, and now was.
Segnbora thanked him politely for her defense — then she turned to look with grim, delighted purpose out at the field, at the fleeing Reavers and Fyrd, and down at the thing in her hand that burned with Fire.
"Sithessch 'tdae," she sang to Hasai and the other mdeihei who stirred in shadow along the ledge, "untidy to leave them running around like this, don't you think?"
The mdeihei sang angry assent in a thunder thai echoed from the surrounding mountains, causing a bass obbligato of avalanches to follow. "Must we send them rdahaihf" Hasai said in an ominous baritone solo.
Segnbora stepped forward to the edge of the shelf where they stood, only partially aware of Herewiss's and Freelorn's prone forms. Breathing or not, they'd have to wait until later. "I don't know," she said, and raised Skadhwe*, thinking hard.
It can't be done, they say — a gating for more than fifty. However. . She closed her eyes, not needing the physical ones to see at the moment, and drew up a. great flood of Power from the tremendous supply they had always told her she'd have. In mind she saw them, every Fyrd, in the valley and for miles around. She hated them, and loved them, and did what, was
necessary. She poured the Flame out of her as if opening a floodgate, until the valley was awash with it.
It was simple to gather up the minds of every Fyrd in the area and hold them all under the surface of that Flame until they drowned. Stop showing off, she told herself severely. You may drop dead in a moment, and there's business to be done here. Yet she laughed in pleasure as she thought it, and Hasai and the mdeihei went off in a thunderous accompaniment of hissing Dracon laughter. Whether she lived or died, she was going to enjoy this. She had waited a lifetime for it.
The Reavers and the Arlene mercenaries at the other side of the field were fleeing, and she stared across at them, angry and pleased. She could easily kill them all, but she knew Someone Who would prefer it otherwise, if at all possible.
So; she thought, and reached out in heart to feel them all, every last one, mind and soul together. The Rodmistresses had said it was impossible, but behind her she had a support-ing multitude who would testify otherwise if she asked them to. She was that multitude. She could contain universes.
Immersing herself in the minds of her enemies, she became them. Before they had a chance to recover from being her, she stepped to the cliff's edge and lifted Skadhwe. With it she drew four great slashing lines of Flame that fell onto the darkened field, and grew, and grew— Suddenly the ground within the lines was missing, replaced by five thousand different images blurred together — some of them of the Arlene countryside, or of Prydon city, some of them of the strange cold country beyond the mountains from which the Reavers came. Into the crammed-together vistas fell men and women who cried out in terror and were gone. She closed the door behind them with a word and a sweep of Skadhwe, and glanced up in thanks at the glowing eyes that hung over her. Then she turned south.