Andrea Höst - Voice of the Lost

Struggling to control her descent, Medair bounced and somersaulted, catching glimpses of flood-lands to her right and a city to her left. She realised she was tumbling into the saddle between two hills and her startled mind struggled to translate the noise which so deafened her. It was from the stony roof above, as it ponderously followed her down the slope.

In the next few moments, panic fired her to heroic efforts, but she couldn’t get upright, and found herself heading directly into the centre of the saddle. The great slab of rock above was night falling in the most tangible way, and it was closing the distance, pummelling her with volleys of shattered stone. Frantically she struggled to change her course. She had to get out from beneath before it ground her into paste, but it seemed to stretch for miles in all directions. There was no way.

In the moment after that, a hand caught at her arm. Illukar, typically upright, pulled her almost to her feet. He hurled them both left, out of her tumbling course, and together they half-ran, but mostly fell, down a chute full of dust and a rebounding hail of rocks toward a rapidly narrowing line of sunlight. Medair’s lungs were full of sand and her veins thick with acid mud and she couldn’t see, could scarcely think, but she knew when they slid out from the shadow of that mammoth weight. She could feel Illukar’s hand still tight in hers as she fell some ten or fifteen feet to a slippery slope of grass with mercifully few rocks to bruise them during another tumbling slide. Behind and above them came a thooming clap of thunder, the death-knell of a mountain, and then something which was only silence in comparison. Dust and small rocks sifted liberally over them as they slid into a soft bed of clover and were still.

Medair knew she was alive because she hurt. She had a great many sources of pain to consider, though only her left arm came close to unbearable. Scratches, bruises, bumps and grazes and one broken bone. Her head spun and her chest seemed resolved to disown her. The world around her was dust-blurred and distant and her ears were clogged with dirt.

Letting go of Illukar long enough to scrub at her face, she gazed through tearing eyes at a handful of goats fleeing in utter panic down toward the city. And then she did not know what to stare at first, because before her was Finrathlar and above her was Falcon Black.

Her view was blocked as Illukar snatched her to his chest. She could hear his heart thundering at a full-out gallop, and with her one good arm squeezed him painfully back, thanking Farak for his survival. Her disbelief was reflected in his face.

She had never imagined Illukar in such utter disarray; the cuts and grazes and fine coating of dust were nothing compared to the incredulity in those wide grey eyes. Not even Ibisian reserve was proof against someone moving mountains.

But he was recovering, enough to discover her forearm, with a bone protruding in a most irregular fashion and blood oozing liberally over her hand. Moving the arm had been a mistake, and the look on Illukar’s face only made it hurt more. Medair blinked rapidly, dots swimming before her eyes. Sucking in a breath, she tried not to mewl at the pain.

"I’ll be all right," she said, unconvincingly, managing to get her feet under her. She was shivering, and her legs were rubbery as she stood, but they held her. Wanting to sit right back down, she looked up at Falcon Black properly, and saw that half the hill had come with the castle. It looked as if it had been sliced cleanly across at an angle which did not quite fit the line of the two hills it now rested between. The dust was settling around the transplanted hill and as she watched, the largest of the castle towers shuddered and collapsed, stones bouncing down into the valley bare feet to their right. The entire thing was canted in toward the city, tilted as if set to slide from its precarious perch.

"Can you see anyone else?" Illukar asked, his voice breathless as he searched the rock-studded slopes around them. He put his hands on her shoulders to steady her and she knew she must look on the verge of collapse but at this moment he could not spare his attention from the overriding problem. Not the castle teetering above, but Tarsus. Tarsus and the device.

"No wild magic?" Medair tried to focus on searching the slopes, spotting a demolished chair and a sprinkling of candles among the tumble of rocks, but no people.

"Not now." Illukar had seen someone, and led her carefully left as more small stones bounced down the slope. Every step made her arm feel like it was about to explode, but all she could do was try not to jar it and refuse to break down. "What was summoned was completely consumed by the gate," he continued, looking jerkily up at the castle and then down at Finrathlar. "I cannot feel any residue. It has not broken loose."

Medair blinked at him, trying to focus beyond her arm. He was speaking in small bursts, was still hollow-eyed with shock, and he had not hidden his fear. He was thinking of the Blight, of the inevitable consequence of a malfunctioning device which summoned wild magic in such monstrous proportions. And Finrathlar. His beloved home, the seat of his Dahlein, with a Decian castle perched above it and, somewhere, wild magic which had screamed at them, and then vanished.

"So picturesque, Keridahl."

It was Vorclase, his voice faint and unsteady. He was propped against a rock, one of his legs a splintered mess. The mangled body of a young guard lay within hand’s reach.

"How does he do it?" he continued, addressing Medair in what he apparently meant to be a weary drawl. But he could barely get the words out, was grey-faced, dull-eyed and shuddering. "The hill fell on him as well and he stands there looking a little mussed and dusty, while we’re all blood and splinters and this poor fellow is so much sausage." He looked at the body, then coughed and gingerly touched the side of his head, as if to make certain it was still there. "Can you see the boy?" he asked, rallying. "I know he’s here. I had hold of him, just for a moment, when the whole thing fell out from underneath us."

"Not as yet, Captain." Finding Vorclase seemed to resurrect Illukar’s poise. "He will be found."

After another glance up at the looming castle, Medair decided to sit down, and found herself a rock she wasn’t likely to fall off. Falcon Black seemed inclined to stay where it was, at least temporarily, and she would rather wait for someone from Finrathlar to come and find them. Dust was filming over the blood coating her hand, and the slow flow was making her light-headed. It seemed likely she had broken a couple of fingers as well, and it was so hard not to howl and moan like a child.

"I’m beginning to see why you were so bent on getting hold of that bit of glass," Vorclase said faintly, as Medair tried to find a way to hold her arm which didn’t make the pain worse. "Might not be a problem any more." Then he laughed, a coughing sound which was mostly moan. "I’d give a lot to see Sendel’s face."

Illukar didn’t reply, busying himself with a casting. Medair recognised the phrases of a wend-whisper and remembered Islantar, somewhere in the castle above. Not in the tower. Their rooms hadn’t been in the tower.

"I’m not certain we would know it, if the device was destroyed," she told Vorclase. Given its insubstantial nature, the gate device might be perfectly at ease with a castle sitting on top of it. Since she could not see anyone else moving on the slope, chances were Tarsus was dead.

"He could be on the other side," Vorclase said, following her line of thought. He looked with feverish anger at his leg, evidently the only thing stopping him from scouring the countryside. "If he gets into the Shimmerlan, we might never catch up with him."