On the ground below, battered to his knees by the wind, Ivor dan Banor looked up for one instant only, and the image of his son in the sky imprinted itself forever onto the patterns of his brain. Then he turned away and covered his face with his bloodied sleeve, for he could not bear to watch.
High overhead. Tabor lifted his sword to draw the Dragon toward him. It was not necessary, though; the Dragon was already aware of them. He saw it accelerate and draw breath to send a river of flame toward them from the furnace of its lungs. He saw that it was vast and unspeakably hideous, with grey-black scales covering its hide and mottled grey-green skin below.
He knew that there was nothing, and no one, on the windswept ground below that could withstand this thing.
He also knew, with an exquisite, quiet certainty—a last space of calm here in the teeth of the wind—that there was one thing and one thing only they could do.
And there was only a moment, this moment, in which to do it, before the Dragon’s flame burst forth to turn them into ash.
He stroked her shining, glossy mane. In his mind, he said, So here it is. Be not afraid, my love. Let us do what we were born to do.
I am not afraid, she sent back in the mind voice whose every cadence he knew. You have named me your beloved, since first we saw each other. Do you know that you have been mine?
The Dragon was upon them, blackness filling the sky. There was a roaring, a deafening noise of wind pushed to its outermost limits. Still, Imraith-Nimphais held steady before it, her wings straining as fast they had ever gone, her horn a point of blinding light in the roaring chaos of the sky.
Of course I know, Tabor sent to her, his last such thought. Now come, my darling, we must kill it as we die!
And Imraith-Nimphais forced herself higher then, somehow, and forward, somehow, directly into the maelstrom of the Dragon wind, and Tabor clung to her mane with all his might, letting fall his useless sword. Above the Dragon’s path they rose; he saw it lift its head, open its mouth.
But they were hurtling toward it, angling downward like a shaft of killing light straight for the loathsome head. Making themselves, the two of them, having only each other at the last, into a living blade, that they might explode at this dazzling, incandescent speed, the sharp horn shining like a star, right into and through the skin and muscle, the cartilage and bone of the Dragon’s brain, and so kill it as they died.
At the very edge of impact, the edge of the end of all things, Tabor saw the Dragon’s lidless eyes narrow. He looked down and saw the first tongue of the flame appear at the base of its gaping throat. Too late! He knew it was too late. They were going to hit in time. He closed his eyes—
And felt himself thrown free by Imraith-Nimphais in a tumbling, spiraling parabola! He screamed, his voice lost in the cataclysm. He spun in the air like a torn leaf. He fell.
In his mind he heard, clear and sweet, like a bell heard over summer fields, a mind voice say in the purest tones of love: Remember me!
Then she hit the Dragon at the apex of her speed.
Her horn sheared through its skull and her body followed it, truly a living blade, and just as Imraith-Nimphais had shone, living, like a star, so did she explode like a star in her dying. For the Dragon’s gathered fire burst within itself, incinerating the two of them. They fell, burning, to the earth west of the battlefield and crashed there with a force of impact that shook the ground as far east as Gwynir, as far north as the walls of Starkadh.
And Tabor dan Ivor, thrown free by an act of love, plummeted after them from a killing height.
When the Dragon came, Kim was beaten to her knees, not only by the wind of its wings but by the brutal awareness of her own folly. Now she knew why the Baelrath had blazed for the Crystal Dragon of Calor Diman. Why Macha and Nemain, the goddesses of war whom the Warstone served, had known that the guardian spirit of the Dwarves would be needed, whatever the cost might be.