AN inferno surged through his veins. Like caustic lye, it scalded away all traces of human blood. His bones ignited, melted, bent. Elongated. Splintered. Re-formed. His spine flexed, vertebrae mineralizing like coal, like onyx. From his shoulder blades came a wrenching, a drawing-out. The bones of his hands, what he could feel of them, contracted, then thrust out to impossible length. Nerves smoked and charred until he thought surely they must have burned out. Skin softened, elastic and coriaceous, as it stretched over those too-slender bones. Talons longer than a man’s forearm sprouted from what had been his fingers. Wings unfurled to catch the heated air rising from the pit.
A volcano rumbled in his belly. Lungs like leather bellows sucked in air. He opened his throat, his jaw hinging wide. Flame poured out. His body quivered with the fierce, wild pleasure of it. He drew in the fumes rising from vent and lava flow. They curdled in his gut, fueling yet more flame.
He tightened the muscles across his chest and extended his tail. Thermal currents lifted him. His wings beat strongly, stroke after stroke. His tail acted like a rudder to stabilize him in the shifting winds. There seemed to be no end to his strength or his mastery of the air.
Below him, the divided mountain dominated what was left of the valley. Most of the surrounding hills had either toppled in on themselves or been completely obliterated by the uplifting peak. To the south, the remaining Gelon struggled for order as they retreated. The cadre of new monsters from the abyss reached the stragglers and engaged them. Bodies, mostly Gelon but some horses and a few rift creatures, littered the stony ground.
The arc of his flight took him back toward the rift. Even from this height he could not discern its depth, but perhaps his vision was not made to work in that way. The form of Fire and Ice wavered, one moment almost solid, the next moment phantasmal. It tilted its head back to glare at him. Spiderwebs of pain shot through him as if a metallic net tightened around his torso.
*The Shield! Destroy it!*
Zevaron’s back arched reflexively, faltering in his flight, but only for a moment. Extending wings and tail, he steadied himself, dipped one clawed wing tip, and circled back. There, to the east, beyond the tumbled remains of the southern hills, he spotted horses galloping, a flowing wave of brown and gray and black. Human eyes could not have made them out at this distance, but his eyes were no longer human. The riders came from two directions, some bearing Gelonian soldiers, others racing to meet them. In the middle, a small group, mostly on foot, had formed a circle.
Gold stirred in his breast, restless in its bondage.
The circle. The guardians of the Shield. The rainbow of color and song and power.
He belched out fire, but was too high for the blast to reach the circle. His flames dissipated into rust and sulfur.
Men, riders and soldiers alike, set up a defensive perimeter around the circle. With the disciplined order of the Gelon and the speed and agility of the Azkhantian archers, they might hold off the monsters for a time. And while they did, Fire and Ice would be trapped in its present half-existence. How long it could remain so, he did not know. The urgency of its command still echoed through him.
*Destroy the Shield!*
A challenge rose up in his throat, hoarfrost and brass. Haze shaded his vision in burnt carmine, in umber and slag-gray. He wheeled through the colorless sky. Men wailed in his shadow. Horses reared. Their screams pierced his flight. But the heart of the enemy magic remained. They stood together, hand in hand, that knot of men and women. Red-gold glinted in the hair of one of the men.
Gelon!
Zevaron dipped, thrashing the air with his wings. The wind whipped a woman’s garment, turning it into a crimson pennant.
All but the man with red-gold hair and the woman in red were honey-skinned and black-haired, with strong facial features that marked a common heritage. They were so focused on their work that none flinched as he glided even lower. All except the man with the red hair, who glanced up.
Zevaron missed a beat. He knew that man, those distinctive pale-green eyes, that expression. The man’s mouth moved, lips forming syllables and syllables a name. Almost, he remembered. Then he darted away, wings punishing the air. Dragonfire blasted through the chambers of his heart, cauterizing his instant of weakness.
Memory carried only bitterness, and bitterness meant frailty, and frailty lead inevitably to failure. He had no past, no kisses beneath a rapture of many-colored night-veils, no enfeebling friendships, nothing but revenge, hoarded and nurtured over ages.
No great king of men stood upon the hilltop. No armies answered his call. They were dust and less than dust, their deeds obliterated, their names erased. Compared to the men of that bygone time, what were these few puny humans, this mongrel assembly? One was no more than a mewling girl-child, and another doddered on the brink of his grave.
At the back of his mind, he felt the pulse and leap of color, the gossamer web that linked each to each. It would unravel when put to the test. Human will alone could not hold it together without a center. A center . . .
Gold echoed like the far, far, farthest tolling of a bell.
Blistering ice roared through him, filling his gullet. It pressed hard against his throat, demanding release, but he swallowed it down. He had already seen how the flames dissipated with distance. This time, there would be no diminution, no hope of survival. No room to escape. Heat and pressure built inside him, scaling the walls of his throat. He welcomed the pain as a promise of the eruption to come.
Soon now, very soon . . .
He arced toward the circle. The ground seemed to rise up to meet him. Dust shot into the air, churned by his wings. And still they did not break and run. Still they made no attempt to save their pitiful lives. He heard their voices above the wind. The words might once have been familiar—chants, prayers, incantations, he did not care.
Above the human voices came the sound of galloping hooves and the high, clear whinny of a horse. He faltered and his control of his internal fire stuttered. Ice-flecked flames burst from his mouth, but too soon, unfocused and poorly aimed. It caught the circle obliquely, not dead on.
Driving hard with his wings, he shot toward the sky. No screams reached his ears. Perhaps they had died instantly. He slowed his ascent and bent to look. Ashes, pale as snow, pale as hope, drifted to the ground around the untouched circle. A few pinpoint embers sparked where they fell on grass, but quickly died. A sphere so thin and pellucid it might have been glass surrounded the humans. For an instant, its iridescent sheen reflected sky and mountain, grass and ocean.
Fury seized him, but it was not his own, just as the power fueling his jets of fire did not belong to him. He was its channel, its instrument, and he had failed. Now Fire and Ice directed its rage and frustration at him. Ice raked spurs across his flesh, sharper than the diamond chips he had used on the troll. A blizzard scorched the inside of his skull. His mind went white as soundless howls wracked his frame before dying into shivers.
*Attack again! Quickly—before they recover!*
Reeling, he struggled to obey. His marrow felt like powdered glass. Blood-tinged acid laced his wings. His heart hammered, bruised and frantic, against the prison of his ribs. He wondered if it were possible for him to die.
When he neared the circle again, the black horse reappeared and swerved toward him. The rider drew her bow. Sun flashed on the opal-hued wood. He glimpsed her expression, set and unreadable. A second woman rode pillion behind her. This one wore a sleeveless vest and loose gathered pants instead of the quilted jacket of the steppe people. Seven dark braids rippled down her back.
The steppe woman fired a shot over her horse’s rump as they raced past. Too late, he recognized the danger. He veered away, but the air resisted him. The arrow pierced the membrane of one wing. It was a minor injury, a puncture rather than a disabling tear. Although it produced little pain, the wound was enough to unbalance him.
Damn her!
The black horse circled and came at him again. The woman had already set another arrow to her bow. If she should damage the other wing . . .
He struggled for height.
Her second shot tore through his good wing. The arrow head snagged on one of the long supporting bones. The bone cracked and splintered. The arrow kept going, slashing through vein and membrane.
His body canted sideways in the air. He extended both wings, thrusting hard. Too hard, for the next instant, the damaged bone snapped. The edges grated together, the pain enough to stop his breath in his throat. Blood sprayed from the ragged cut.
Downward he plunged. Sky and earth whirled sickeningly. An upward gust of hot wind battered his good wing. Air whistled through the hole left by the arrow, but the membrane held. It stretched, belling. He could not fly, but that momentary lift allowed him to right himself and slow his fall.
His feet touched the ground, knees bending to break his fall. He stumbled, barely catching himself. The drag of his mangled wing rendered him clumsy. He could not fold it out of the way. When he tried, the pain almost blinded him, so he let the wing drag. He would not be able to fly again, and in a few moments, that would not matter. The black horse was already poised for another run.
He pulled himself as upright as he could manage. Let her come. Already, the fire in his belly had renewed itself. He would save it, waiting until the steam and ice built into a hurricane. Horse and riders would burn and freeze. Then, wing-crippled or not, he would turn his attention to the circle. In another moment, he would incinerate them.
“Shannivar, stop!” A woman’s voice rose above the sound of the galloping hooves.
“He doesn’t know us!” the archer shouted.
“Enough! You’ve brought him down, now let me—”
The black horse switched leads, beginning to turn. The second woman, the one riding pillion, jumped from the horse’s back. She hit the ground and rolled.
“Tsorreh, no!” the archer screamed, wrestling the horse down to a canter.
Tsorreh?
The world convulsed around him.
No.
But she was getting to her feet with the awkward grace of someone for whom even such a rough landing meant nothing. Abrasions stood out, dark red, across one bare arm. There was no hesitation in her step, nor in her gaze. She looked up at him, for in his winged form he had grown beyond human dimensions.
He fell to his knees. Fire and Ice howled through his mind and flesh, blood and nerve and sinew. Its warning hammered through his bones. She was an illusion . . . a trick, a cheat. She was not possible. The circle had summoned her up, spun her out of remembered grief.
The cruelty of such a deception—the cheat of hope—most surely and inevitably—only to open him to a third loss—he could not conceive of it.
One blast, and she would be dust. Dust and less than dust, less than a memory of dust. Then the ones who dared such perfidy would be next.
Flame and ice gathered. His gut roiled with its power.
Someone cried out, a man’s hoarse, desperate tones. The voice bore a treacherous familiarity, carried the weight of past friendship. It stirred up vile longings in his breast. He flung away the sound.
His skin glowed, molten. He seized the pain from his mutilated wing and breathed it out as glacial vapors. And still the woman did not flinch. She did not vanish like an evil spell.
The circle had broken. He sensed it in his core. Exultation flashed along nerve and sinew. The last resistance to Fire and Ice had fallen.
“Danar—stay away!” This time it was a strange woman.
“Tsorreh!” the man shouted, and again, memory ricocheted at the sound of the name.
The firestorm within him had reached critical pressure. He should release it now. He should transform his body, throat and gut and heart, into a conduit. He should open himself so that all the rage and power, the eons of simmering hatred, came roaring out. Already, he could see in his mind how the roots of the mountain would spread, sending out a thousand, a million, lightning-jagged fissures in all directions. His nostrils flared, anticipating the reek of magma and sleet, of acid geysers and torrential hail. The steppe would go up like a torch. The oceans would freeze and sink.
Gelon. Gelon would burn.
“Zevaron,” she said, and laid her hand on his smoldering skin.
The pressure of her fingers, no heavier than a butterfly’s kiss, shattered him. He knew that touch, knew it in the stillness between one beat of his heart and the next. Behind his breastbone, as twisted and deformed as it was to support his demon’s wings, gold woke. Gold called, and the memory of gold answered.
The world dissolved. He dissolved.
He was no longer flesh, no longer fire, no longer raging blizzard.
He was tears.