Ilze watched, his eyes bulging, his body twitching. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.”
“Don’t,” Gendra begged. “We’ve made a mistake, Uplifted One. It won’t happen as you expected it to. Put out the fire. …”
The first flames touched Pamra Don. Neff, she thought. She tried to look over her shoulder to see his face, but she couldn’t. He was there, she felt his blazing glory. Before her on the rimrock were her mother and Delia, but Neff was behind her. He was hurting her. “Neff,” she cried. The flames were all around her, and she cried his name again, the word rising up in an agonized howl to fill a silence that had fallen over all that multitude, rising and rising from a throat that could not stop it nor end it nor consider what it was doing, on and on and on into a silence that seemed to resound with it still when it had ended.
“Get grappling ladders onto that butte,” the general shouted, not seeing that Jondarites had already done so and were scaling the sheer wall, being attacked by furious fliers, thrown down, replaced by others, with the smoke still blowing. The first man reached the top, was pitched off by buffeting wings, was replaced by two more who flailed with their hatchets at the fliers guarding the fire. Other men poured up the ladders after them. The wind stilled for a moment, falling into an enormous, awful silence. Into this silence the scream insinuated itself as though dropping from the heights of the sky itself to fill all the world. It had all agony in it, all pain, all loneliness. Pamra’s voice. One endless scream. Then again the silence.
And after the silence a roar of fury which moved across the multitudes like a mighty wave, from the base of the butte to the farthest edges of the encampment. Fliers had landed here and there to strut and crow before crowds of unarmed crusaders. They were clubbed to the earth, clubbed into the earth, pounded into bloody soil and scraps of feathers.
“You should not have done it,” Gendra muttered, falling to the stone. She had no more strength. Nothing mattered now. She knew what would happen next. It was inevitable. From beside her, Sliffisunda watched, amazed and wild-eyed. This was not the way it should have gone. The humans should have cowered before this. On the Stones of Disputation it had been decided, they would be frightened, they would be abased, obedient. But they were not. They screamed. They howled. Sliffisunda felt a strange, unfamiliar emotion. Terror.
“Hostages,” he screamed to three fliers near him in the sky. “Take these two humans. We may need hostages.”
Obedient, as frightened as Sliffisunda himself, they dropped straight down and took off again, Ilze struggling in their claws, Gendra Mitiar hanging limp, unconscious. They tilted, spun, flew toward the Red Talons. Behind them, bolts filled the air and other, less wary fliers fell from the sky.
Tharius Don found himself running, not remembering when he had started running, only that he was. The general pounded along beside him, both of them headed for the butte that was about a quarter mile away, close to the main river. Without the glass, they could not see its top. They panted their way to its bottom, leaned against the stone, puffing. A Jondarite came down the ladder.
“The woman?” the general asked. “Pamra Don?”
“I think she’s dead, General.”
“You think?”
“Something there. Strange. The men won’t go near it.”
They were climbing the ladder then, swaying. Tharius had never liked heights. He didn’t think he could climb this ladder, but he was being pulled over the rimrock before he could determine whether it was possible or not. A smoking pyre was before him, a great heap of glowing wood. In the center what remained of Pamra Don, black, contorted, its teeth showing between charred lips, held upright by a partially burned stake. .
And in its arms a sphere of softly moving light which pulsed. And pulsed. And breathed.
And broke.
Something came out of it. Winged. Or perhaps finned. Or both. Whatever it was spoke to Tharius Don. “Poor Tharius. She was the last of your line.” Then it was gone, falling or flying from the edge of the rock to the river below, entering it with scarcely a splash, moving in it as though born to it, south, southward, away toward the River that encircled the world.