Диана Дуэйн - THE BOOK OF NIGHT WITH MOON

What in Iau's name are you—!
Don't ask, It'll hear, Saash said. Here goes nothing—
Abruptly the white flame running in the conduit streaked up her paw and downreaching foreleg, up around her—not quite running over her hide, but a scant inch above it. Saash was shielded, but the kind of shield she was generating at the moment made Rhiow's look like wet tissue paper by comparison; to judge by the behavior of that white fire, now flowing up and around her more and more quickly, she had a second shield above it, holding it in place, holding it in. Swiftly, almost between one breath and the next, Saash became a shape completely sheathed in burning white: a statue, a library lion with her head up, watching, with one paw hanging down into the catenary, the whiteness of the fire around her growing more intense with every breath. A conduit, Rhiow thought in mixed admiration and horror— and fear. Or a storage battery… or both. How long can she—oh, Saash, don't—
Saash stood up and began slowly, silently, to walk toward where Arhu and Haath were fighting; very carefully she went, like an ehhif carrying a full cup or bucket, intent on not spilling any of the contents. Haath and Arhu were up on their hind legs now, boxing at one another; as Saash paused, Arhu threw himself at Haath again, hard, and took him down, going for the throat, missing. Behind them, very quickly, Saash moved forward in one smooth rush—
"Saash, no!" Arhu screamed. Haath rolled out from underneath Arhu, scrambled to his hind legs, and
made a flinging motion at Saash with one claw. The spell he threw hit her, and her shields collapsed.
"Saash!" Rhiow roared. The white-burning form writhed, leapt in the air, shrieked terribly once—

She opened her mouth—
Slash. Haath straightened up, and Arhu went down, thrown fifteen feet away, staggering another ten or so with the force of the throw, with his rear right leg hanging by a string, the big groin artery pumping bright blood onto the dark stone. Rhiow started to hurry to him as Arhu fell over and tried to get up again, squalling with pain.
"No," Arhu yelled at her, "the Whisperer's telling me what to do, I can hold the blood inside me for a while, I'm wizard enough for that. Don't waste time with me!"
"Waste some," he growled. "Haath, you and I are going to polka."
"What is a polka?" Haath asked, mocking.
"You may be sorry you asked," Rhiow said softly, watching to see what Urruah had in mind.
It was a slower stalk… less the scream-and-leap technique that Arhu had used, and all the while he stalked around Haath, Rhiow could feel Urruah weaving a spell, fastening words together in his head, one after another, in a chainlike pattern she couldn't make much of. Haath turned as Urruah circled him, his head moving slightly from one side to the other, as if somehow watching what Urruah was doing—
"Rhiow," Arhu cried from where he lay, "none of this is going to be good enough! What are you waiting for? Use the spell! Use the spell!"
"I can't, it's not—" But it was. It was ready. It lay shining, complete and deadly in her mind, and Rhiow wondered that she had never perceived the sheer unbalanced dangerousness of it, even earlier when it had first started to come together. A spell is like an equation: on either side of the equal sign, both sides must balance. This one, though, was weighted almost all one way … toward output. The power and parity configurations, the strange output projections, they were all complete now … and all of them violated natural law.
Except that the natural law Rhiow knew was not the one operating down here.
I don't know how natural law operates down here! It could backfire! It could—
Sometimes you can be too reasonable, Urruah had said: or something very like that. But sometimes, maybe reason wasn't enough.
Sometimes you might need to be unreasonable. Then miracles could happen. It worked for the younger wizards, didn't it?
But I haven't been young for a while, Rhiow thought desperately. She was a team leader. She had to be responsible, methodical, make sure she was right: others' lives depended upon it. And even now, all that method hadn't helped her team: they were all going to "die dead," and she felt old— old, failed, and useless.
Don't listen to It, Rhiow! Arhu yelled into her mind, writhing, trying to get up. I've got enough young for all of us! But I can't do this for you. You have to do it. Let go, Rhiow, just do it, do the spell!
It could destroy everything—
Big deal, Saash was going to do that! And we all agreed she should! Now she can't! Do—
Urruah leapt at Haath. turning loose whatever spell he had been working on. Haath slashed at him, and Rhiow felt that spell abruptly come to pieces as Urruah went down, kicking, then froze, held pinioned on the stone, spell-still. Rhiow launched her mind against the wizardry that held him, trying to feel what it was, to pry it off Urruah … but there was no time, she couldn't detect the structure—
Haath leaned over him, lifted his claws, and slashed Urruah open as casually as an ehhif would slash open a garbage bag with a razor.
Everything spilled out….
Haath reached in one more time, hooked one long claw behind Urruah's heart, pulled. It came out, as if on a hook, still beating; beating out its blood, until none was left. Smiling, Haath released the spell. Urruah
rolled over in Rhiow's direction, squirming; he cried out only once. His eyes started to glaze.
Just let it go, he said. Just do the spell. Rhi—
And then silence.
Haath looked at her and grinned.
Rhiow held very, very still, and the rage and horror grew in her…
… for it was almost exactly what she had been saying to everyone else: Arhu and Ith in particular.
Sometimes we do not hear the Whisperer even at her loudest because she speaks in our own voice, the one we most often discount.
Rhiow took a long breath …
… and started to use the spell.
It was not the kind you could hold "ready-for-release" and then turn loose with a word: within minutes you would be staggering under the weight of its frustrated desire to be let go. It had weight, this spell. You had to shoulder into it, boost it up to get at the underside where the words of activation were. The weight of it pushed down your neck and shoulders, your eyes watered with the strain of seeing the symbols, and then you had to get the words out: big hefty polysyllabic things, heavy with meaning. Rhiow fought with the spell, pushed past and through its inertia and got out the first two words, three, five—