Yachne stiffened with a shriek of mingled pain and fury as Lydryth’s gryphon-hilted sword, with all the strength of Alon’s arm behind it, transfixed her.
The mist vanished as the witch toppled over backward- and lay unmoving.
At the same moment, Lydryth and the others staggered forward as the barrier that had kept them helpless on the outside of the meadow disappeared.
“Alon, oh, Alon!” The songsmith ran straight to the Adept, grabbing his shoulders, hugging him ecstatically, but only for a moment did he return her embrace. His face set, he gently put her aside, then walked forward to pick up a small, stricken form lying on the ground next to the dying sorceress.
Lydryth cried out softly with grief and pity. Steel Talon was not dead yet… but he soon would be, that was plain. “Oh, no!” she whispered.
Tears stood in the Adept’s eyes as he cradled the dying falcon against him. “Steel Talon…,” he whispered brokenly. “You saved me. . . .”
Lydryth lifted a hand to gently touch that fierce beak, staring at those dimming eyes. She thought that she glimpsed a strange satisfaction deep in them. Alon glanced up at her, startled. “Steel Talon is … content,” he whispered.
Lydryth nodded as understanding suddenly flooded through her. “Because he has fulfilled the quest that was the only thing keeping him alive, is that not so?” she asked. “He dies content, knowing that he has gained his revenge.”
Alon nodded. “Yachne … it was Yachne that night, when Jonthal died. She set the trap … for me. But it was Jonthal who died. . . .”
Steel Talon’s fierce eyes seemed to blaze even more fiercely; then the bird abruptly stiffened, jerked several times, and sagged, limp. Alon swallowed, then turned to walk away, toward Monso.
Lydryth started after him, but Jervon caught her arm. “No,” her father said gently. “Give him a moment to grieve in private. He would wish it so.”
The songsmith took a deep breath; then she nodded. They watched as Alon walked over to Monso, gave the stallion a quick pat, then carefully, tenderly, wrapped the falcon’s body in his undertunic. He tied the small, wrapped form to the saddle. She knew, without being told, that the Adept intended to give the bird proper burial on clean ground.
Lydryth turned back to her family, and saw Joisan and Hyana crouched beside Yachne. The songsmith was faintly surprised to see that the sorceress still lived, though it was plain that no healcraft could aid her.
Dropping to her knees beside the witch, Lydryth stared down at her, thinking how suddenly small and shrunken she appeared. Yachne opened grey eyes to regard her, and the younger woman realized that the gleam of madness that had so frightened her before was gone. The witch struggled to draw breath. “Am … am I dying?” she whispered.
Joisan hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. If I could help you, I would, but your wound is beyond any ability of mine to heal.”
Sweat stood out on the dying woman’s face. “Yes . . . feel it. Hurts . . . hurts so . . .”
“I am sorry,” Joisan said. “I can try to sing you into a painless state, if you so wish. That is all I can do to ease your passing.”
The witch nodded. “Alon?” she whispered. “Where is Alon?”
Lydryth hastily beckoned the Adept, who was even now returning to them, to come quickly. When he reached the woman who had cared for him as a child, he dropped down beside her, took her hand. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “So sorry. I wish there had been some other way.”
“Not… not your fault,” she whispered. “I see clearly now . . . been so long since I could do that . . .”
“Hush,” Alon said, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. “Don’t try to talk.”
“Must… must talk …,” she insisted. “It was the Turning … the Turning.” She gasped for breath. “I was . . . witch of Estcarp before then. …”
“So we guessed,” Lydryth said. “And you lost your powers after the Turning?”
The former witch nodded. “Angry. Wanted what should have been mine forever . . . wanted it back . . .” Joisan carefully wiped Yachne’s dry lips with a cloth moistened in water. The old woman (for all her borrowed “youth” had vanished) sucked gratefully at the moisture. Joisan aided her as she swallowed a sip from a water flask. “Then I found out … about the ones who still had the Power… the males. They had what should have been mine. . . .”
After a moment she went on, “Wandered . . . long time. Garth Howell. . . they took me in. They were there, too, the males with the Power … the creatures against nature … but they offered me a way….” She sucked in breath, then writhed for a moment. Finally, sweat pouring down her face, she subsided. “The spell. The abbot taught me … spell. As long as I would take the Power from you …” She gasped, staring at Alon. “That was the price . . . one I was willing to pay . . . and gladly. I am sorry for that, Alon. . . .”
“Me?” He was plainly startled. “Why? I have never encoun- tered the denizens of Garth Howell, never banned them. I was half the world away! Why me?”
“They fear you . . . ,” she whispered. “You are one of the Seven.” She stared then at Lydryth, and Hyana. “As are they. The Seven . . .”
“The Seven what?” Lydryth wondered.
“Defenders . . . defenders of this land . . . defenders of Arvon,” Yachne replied. She was laboring now for breath, and it was pain to hear her. “There will be … Seven. Last has not yet … been born.” Her gaze turned again to Lydryth. “Your brother,” she muttered. “Will be the last. If he is ever born.”
Lydryth grabbed the old woman’s hand in both of hers. “What know you of my brother?” she demanded fiercely.
“Promise . . . promise you will ease my passing . . .” the sorceress said.
“I swear by Gunnora’s amulet,” she vowed. “Where is my brother, Yachne?”
“Here .. . and not-here. Within the stone that is not-stone. Beyond the cage, beneath the flesh . . . uhhhh …” With a rattling moan, she trailed off.
To Lydryth, the words had no meaning. She began to demand further explanation, but Joisan nudged her. “She is beyond speech. Daughter,” she whispered. “Shall we fulfill our promise?”
Together, Joisan and Lydryth sang softly, and all of the group watched the lines of pain smooth away from the aged features. When Yachne died, minutes later, her countenance was almost peaceful.
They covered her face with a fold from her ragged mantle, then withdrew to the other side of the massive stone to speak together for the first time. Joisan looked up at the eastern side of the Shadow Place. “Dawn is breaking,” she said softly. “We have lived through this night . . . something that I doubted, a few hours ago.”
Alon stared around him at his rescuers. “I thank you for coming to my aid. Without your”-he nodded at Hyana- “mind-sending, I would never have remembered that sword.”
“Alon, this is Hyana, my foster-sister,” Lydryth said, remembering her manners. “And this is Lord Kerovan and Lady Joisan, my foster parents.” Pride tinged her voice as she hooked her arm through Jervon’s. “And this is my father, Jervon.”
Alon had bowed in turn as each introduction was made, but when he heard this last, he blinked in surprise. “Dahaun’s mud worked!” he cried. “This is … this is wonderful hearing! Sir,” he added hastily.
Jervon smiled. “I owe you much, young sorcerer,” he said. “And I gather from everything that my daughter has not said, that we have a great deal to discuss, you and I.” He held out his hand. “Well-met, Alon!”
This time it was the Adept’s turn to color, but he grasped the older man’s hand with a strong grip, and met his eyes steadily. “You have the right of it… sir,” he said. “Well-met, indeed, Jervon. You are a most fortunate man. We had no idea whether Dahaun’s red mud would restore an injured mind.”
“I am fortunate indeed,” Jervon said. “To have a daughter such as mine. Although”-he gave Alon an equally level stare-“I have gained the impression that I must now resign myself to sharing her.”
Alon’s mouth quirked slightly. “Perceptive, as well as fortunate,” he said.
Kerovan chuckled, then reached into his saddlebag and brought out hunks ofjoumeybread and another water flask. “Here, Alon, you must be hungry.”
The little group sat in a circle, sharing food and water, while dawn slowly brightened the eldritch woods around them. The events of the night weighed heavy upon the songsmith now, and she felt at once so tired that she could have lain down and slept next to Yachne’s stiffening corpse, and so keyed up with frustration that she felt as though she must needs scream aloud.