Somehow her will did bring me up, so we huddled together on the lap of the seated one. It was not the figure that held the limp man-toy, for which I was dimly grateful. In its claw hand was a half-open flower. Now I saw Aylinn put forth her own hand to run fingertips across the stone petals, even as she might touch one of her moon-flowers.
She no longer was tense with the will to power which had been in her when first the fire ringed me round. Rather she waited—though for what event or signal, I did not know.
Ursilla’s protective circle touched upon the base of the seated one with the man-toy. Now smoke whirled out in thick coils to enclose it along with Ursilla herself. I waited for more to flow around the circle, engulfing one of the faceless beings and then the next as it had done before. However, this time the puffs of smoke remained stationary. Through the upper reaches we could see, faintly, the flow of the globe face above us. In it colors spun with increasing force, growing ever darker.
The flames crept now to the foot of the statue on which we had taken refuge. It appeared to me that the fire burned with anger, if that can be said of fire, lashing out with many tongues in an attempt to reach us. Yet the highest flames were well below us.
For a moment (Though how long might that last?) we seemed safe. I gazed eagerly beyond the flames to see what chanced with the others. Ursilla remained hidden in her smoke veil. The three from the Keep huddled together, their eyes wide with fear. Whatever spell Ursilla had put upon Maughus was slowly passing. The Lady Eldris clung to him. He had freed one arm and raised it before them both. Though he was weaponless, his gesture was one of defense. Beyond them, near their feet, crouched the Lady Heroise. All her arrogance had ebbed. She did not any longer even weep as she had when she had come at Ursilla’s bidding. Her face was blanched with fear, her staring eyes fixed upon the smoke cloud that concealed the Wise Woman. It was that, which drew all their attention. None looked at us above the flames.
There was good reason for that. Even the most insensitive of living creatures, one with no vestige of talent, would certainly have been aware of the forces collecting in that long-forgotten shrine (if shrine it was). Ursilla had thrown open some Gate—
One of the Gates of legend? Aylinn’s head turned against my shoulder as that thought slipped into my mind. I read the wonder in her eyes.
We, who were born after the great struggle between the Powers of Arvon, knew only through legends what had occurred in the dim years of long ago. We had Chronicles that spoke often of the Gates and what could be summoned through them. (It was far harder to expel such aliens back through the uncanny openings in the skin of our world.)
But of the nature of the Gates themselves, or the keys that opened them, or where they might be situated, that knowledge was never made plain in the tales. Such was forbidden, shunned by all who dwelt in the Power—unless the Shadow now meddled in some way; for a check upon these of the Greater Dark was ever hard to keep.
It was well within reason, I believed, that this place could mark one Gate. And, if Ursilla, in her madness, threw it open—
Where were the two from the Tower? I had been so bemused, first by Aylinn’s great danger, and then by the sorcery of the Wise Woman, I had almost forgotten them. Now I shifted as well as I could in the small cramped space of our refuge trying to sight them. However, the bulk of the figure, on which we sheltered, cut them from view. Aylinn’s hand closed on mine.
Her flowered wand shifted in her other hand, pointed toward the flower carved in the figure’s hold. She tilted the rod carefully so that its tip rested in the heart of the stone flower.
“Give me,” she said in a voice so low it could not have reached beyond my own ears, “give me all you have to give—kinsman!”
She did not glance toward me, rather fastened her full concentration upon the flower and the wand tip. A moment later, I knew that she had now become a channel for force, some of it raised by her own calling, some drawn from me. Though I was not practiced in such matters, I strove, as I had to separate man and beast, to release to her what small aid I could give.
So intense was my desire, my whole world narrowed to the small point where wand touched the carven flower. I could feel the energy going out of me, caught up by Aylinn, refined, strengthened, interwoven with what she had to give in turn. Then only did it flow down her wand.
Brighter blazed the moonflowers, the pure white radiance clear and clean above the sullen purple of the flames that still strove to consume us. The wand changed to a shaft of moon fire, eye-hurting in its brilliance.
Still Aylinn called upon me, still I gave freely, not reckoning any future cost.
Now, where the point of the wand touched, there showed a pale circle of fire. That, too, grew, brightened, spread out and up, to make the petals of stone resemble those of the moonflowers, as if the rock carving was transformed by our force of desire into a living thing.
I was dimly aware, even through my concentration, of something else. There was a change in the figure where we sheltered. Vibration ran through the substance of the shrouded body, not the vibration of breath, or heartbeat—but—akin to that!
I dared not allow myself to think of anything but what Aylinn would do now. I willed away suspicion of such change.
The flower was fully alight, to the very tips of its petals, not as purely bright as the moon blooms, rather silver instead. From the petal tips broke thin spirals of radiance, until what we could see, in truth, was not just the stone flower, but a much greater and more wonderful bloom sketched in the air about it.
Slowly the stone petals began to open further, folding back, as might those of a bud in full warmth of day. The other radiant petals, which the first guarded as a core, did likewise.
Out of the core emerged a sliver of silver light, another, more. I had seen field flowers, after blooming, scatter seeds that bore tufts of stuff upon them to aid their wind flight. Out and out flew these bits of light. Some vanished into Ursilla’s smoke wall, some dropped sooner into the purple of the flames at our feet.
Aylinn raised her wand. She looked up and around over her shoulder, seeming to seek out the globe face that hung above us. The drain of energy had ceased. I felt too weakened to move. Yet, somehow, I forced myself to do as she had done.
There was still the ceaseless roll and swell of color captured within the oval. But—there was something else!
Had I seen it? Or had my imagination only for a moment made me think that I perceived eyes marked there, eyes that regarded me as if from a very great distance—eyes to which I meant little or nothing, eyes drowsy from sleep? I am not sure, and yet I believed that I did see this.
If such eyes did look upon us, they were quickly gone again. In Aylinn’s hand her wand grew dark and drab. From its length the moonflowers withered, falling in seared bits. The stone flower and the radiance around it were gone. Where the seedlings (if seedlings the splinters of light had been) had fallen, there had been other results.
Of those that had met our prisoning flames, we could see no remains, but their passing was marked. For in certain places the circle of fire was quenched, leaving openings that no outward surge of fire could cross and close.
Also, in Ursilla’s wall of concealing smoke, other light seedlings had torn wide windows. Through these we could look upon what happened as she called upon all she had learned to serve her in this time and place.
Now I could see that Gillan and Herrel had moved forward, to one of the windows in the smoke. The snow cat crouched low. Pard memory tightened my own muscles as the black tip of the silver-white tail quivered.
He leaped—threading through the window in the smoke expertly. Behind him, Gillan thrust forward with her leaf-tipped rod, aimed at Ursilla’s head.