The ice storm they crafted was invisible in the dark, but its effects were now increasingly evident. A black line had appeared in the slow current of the molten river, a line pointing west that hadn’t been there the night before. It seemed barely more than a hair’s width at this distance, but Shamil calculated it must be at least fifty feet across.

  “So,” he murmured. “That’s what they’re about.”

  Stielbek’s beak snapped again, louder this time. His desire for resumed battle was clear, but the bond enabled Shamil to sense something beneath it, a raw impatience to finish this task so that they might begin another.

  “Soon.” Shamil ran a hand through the feathers on Stielbek’s neck before turning to descend the rise, making quickly for Rignar’s chamber.

  “They’re crafting a bridge.”

  Morgath spared Shamil a brief glance, grunting as he swung his legs off Rignar’s bed. The mage had sealed the First Wing’s every wound, but his broad back was now an epic of overlapping scars, and crystalmancy could do nothing to restore the eye he had lost. In its place he wore a smooth blue stone, veined in gold, a strangely beautiful island of colour in a sea of scarred flesh. More concerning than the disfigurement was the absence of any vestige of a smile on his lips. Shamil had thought this man capable of finding humour in any circumstance, and discovering his error made for a harsh realisation: he thinks we’ve already lost.

  “He’s right,” Tihla put in. “Took a look for myself. That ice storm they’ve conjured can turn twenty yards of lava to rock in the space of an hour. By noon tomorrow they’ll have a causeway for that army to cross.”

  “Only if they have mages to keep the storm churning,” Shamil said. “We need to kill them.”

  “Mind your place.” Tihla’s voice was curt, though less so than he might have expected. “What you did today was impressive, and we’re all rightly grateful for it, but the First Wing decides our battle plans, not you. Today we lost half our number and barely got within sight of those mages. And even if we did get close enough for an arrow, I doubt they’ll just stand there and obligingly await death.” She took a breath heavy with reluctance. “It might be wiser to conserve our strength, wait for them to cross before launching successive attacks, buy time for the Treaty Realms to gather their forces.”

  She fell silent, eyes lingering expectantly on Morgath’s slumped head, her features bunching in suppressed consternation when no response was immediately forthcoming.

  “Shamil is right.”

  Shamil and Tihla turned to regard Rignar as he hefted his satchel onto his bench. “It will take weeks for Mara-Vielle and the Crucible Kingdom to muster an army,” he went on. “Months for the Treaty Realms entire to gather a force capable of defeating the malign horde, if such a force can even be gathered. We have to stop this before it begins.”

  “You want me to watch the rest of them die?”

  Morgath’s voice was a raw scraping echo of its previous vitality. Looking into his partly ruined face with its gleaming blue eye, Shamil knew his wounds went deeper than mere skin and muscle. The First Wing of the Sentinel Eyrie might not yet be broken, but he was at least buckled.

  “This family we’ve built?” Morgath continued, his gaze shifting from Rignar to Tihla. “I did that once before. All my fine lads and lasses, thieves and cutthroats they may have been, but they were family to me. I knew more loyalty and kindness living amongst pirates than I ever knew throughout the long, wretched years beneath my father’s roof. And I watched him hang them all, one by one. He had me chained in such a way that I couldn’t turn my head from the sight, and I was flogged if I dared to close my eyes. When I was dragged to these mountains and dumped at the base of the Eyrie, the last words I ever heard from my father were, ‘Die quickly.’ But I wouldn’t, my last act of defiance. In surviving here, I won the trust of my brothers and sisters, once again becoming a captain of sorts. In the years since, the love I have for this place and these people has washed away all the anger and hatred that once claimed my soul. Don’t ask me to destroy what’s left, Tihla.” His head slumped once more, ragged voice descending into a groan. “I can’t.”

  “You won’t have to,” Rignar said. He paused to undo the satchel’s buckles, revealing the glassy orb of the black onyx. “If I might be so bold as to propose a stratagem.”

  “It doesn’t seem like nearly enough.”

  Morgath’s one good eye tracked over the three birds perched on the east-facing rise. Kritzlasch and Vintress exchanged a few beak snaps and hisses as they waited, both resting on a branch lower than Stielbek and conscientious in avoiding his eye. For his part, the black wing seemed content to ignore them both, his gaze still entirely locked on the Maw and its vomitous smoke. The rising sun painted the occluded horizon a faint shade of pink. Deep shadows still concealed much of the army waiting on the far bank of the lava flow, but the ice storm was visible now, a blaze of white that seemed to be growing by the second.

  “Speed is more important than numbers,” Rignar replied, glancing up from the black onyx. He had kept hold of the crystal since Morgath’s eventual and grudging agreement to this plan, constantly playing his fingers over the surface. The stone’s response to his touch had grown ever brighter in the intervening hours, producing a sustained shimmer in its core. Judging by Rignar’s increasingly grey and hollow-cheeked countenance, Shamil concluded that whatever sorcery he had crafted within its facets had cost him dear.

  “Besides”—Rignar forced a smile before favouring Lyvia and Shamil with a fond glance—“I’d rather fly with my young friends at my side than any other.”

  Morgath gave a sombre nod before settling his gaze first on Shamil then Lyvia. “I won’t command you to this,” he told them, the diminished rasp of his voice battling with the stiff morning wind. “No disgrace will result if you choose not to . . .”

  “We’re wasting time,” Lyvia cut in, before adding with a tight smile, “But your consideration is appreciated, First Wing.”

  Morgath’s livid scars twisted as a very faint grin ghosted across his face, but only briefly before he turned and strode away. He climbed the perch of the tallest rise where Kaitlahr waited. The youthful fire wing had taken up station at the beam before sunrise, crouching low to allow the First Wing to climb onto his back with no need to leap. Other greatwings had issued forth from the nest to accept sentinels whose birds had succumbed to their wounds. Even so, the host mustered that morning was a much denuded and less impressive gathering than had flown to confront the resurgent Voice the day before.

  Before the sentinels buckled on their helms, Shamil saw a mostly uniform expression of fatalistic determination with no sign of the usual grim humour. He watched Morgath share a long look with Tihla before they both donned their helms, a look that surely spoke of many things left unsaid throughout the years of their service.

  They took off in one great flock, the well-ordered grouping of yesterday replaced by a dense arrowhead formation aimed directly at the Maw. The air thrummed as the birds beat their wings with furious energy, closing the distance to their foes with a speed that commanded notice.

  Rignar waited until the sentinels closed to within a few hundred yards of the Maw before donning his helm. “It’s time,” he said, raising his gaze to Kritzlasch, who immediately hopped down from the perch, crouching low so the mage could climb onto his back.

  “Before we set off,” he said, settling himself into place, one hand clutching the owl’s harness and the other pressing the onyx hard against his chest. “It would be remiss of me not to offer my regrets to Lady Lyvia.”

  “Regrets?” she asked, voice given a metallic tinge by her own helm as she climbed onto Vintress’s back.

  “For the desecration we are about to inflict upon your ancestor.” Rignar nodded to Sharrow-Met’s statue, still contriving to shrug off the concealing cloak of the Maw’s discharge.

  Lyvia replied with a short, tinny laugh. “Desecrate away, good sir. It’ll be a relief not to have to look at that thing every day.”

  Stielbek shuddered with anticipation when Shamil mounted him, spreading his wings and launching them into the air without pause. He climbed into the air to catch an updraft and began to circle higher, letting out an impatient caw that had Vintress and Kritzlasch quickly following suit.

  The three birds levelled out at least two hundred feet higher than the sentinel host before striking for the Maw. Shamil could see the close-packed formation of greatwings closing on the smokestack now and the flecks of black within the haze that told of a great many Maw beasts rising to meet their onslaught. Flares of light erupted at the edge of the smoke as the leading sentinels let loose with their first volley of crystal-head arrows before they disappeared into the grey-black fog.

  For a few seconds, unleashed energy roiled like a compressed lightning storm, a testament to the ferocity of the hidden struggle, flashing so bright Shamil was forced to switch to his darkened lenses. He fought down a panicked suspicion that the sentinels had met with disaster, and a relieved sigh hissed through his teeth when he saw the leading birds sweep clear of the smoke, followed by what appeared to be most of the host. The sentinels banked upon reaching clear sky, turning in a wide arc to attack once again, loosing a flurry of arrows as they did so. The host became a great wheeling circle at the edge of the towering pall, which darkened in its upper reaches as ever more Maw beasts were drawn towards the fray.

  “It’s working,” Shamil muttered, feeling a thrum of satisfaction from Stielbek. He took them higher still, hopefully beyond the notice of any enemies, although Shamil wasn’t so naive as to think this mission would end without combat. Soon, the now familiar sting of airborne ash reached his nose, and he looked down to see the great monument passing almost directly below. Looking to his left and right he saw Vintress and Kritzlasch flying alongside and raised his hand, forming a fist in a prearranged signal, which they both answered in kind. In accordance with the plan, Lyvia would dive first in the hope that her swift-moving falcon would draw away any Maw beasts lingering in the cloud below. Shamil would follow with Rignar close behind, Stielbek carving a path through any opposition to reach their target.

  Shamil shifted his hand to grip the whip’s handle. He had secured himself a bow and quiver full of crystal-heads from Ehlias’s stores but knew trying to aim and loose during a dive so steep and fast would be next to impossible. The black wing’s beak and talons would be their principal weapons today.

  Vintress gave a loud screech as she folded her wings and plummeted into the drifted grey-black haze, with Lyvia’s sling trailing from her hand as they disappeared from sight. Shamil forced himself to wait the agreed-upon count of five very long seconds before sinking lower, Stielbek’s neck feathers fluttering against his visor as he drew in his wings, turned onto his side, and hurtled into the smoke, his course as straight and vertical as any plumb line.

  As they fell into the shifting, acrid gloom, Shamil glanced back to confirm Kritzlasch was only a few yards behind before turning to peer into the onrushing sleet of embers and soot. His hand ached as he gripped the whip, and he expected some screaming, hellish visage to loom out of the chaos at any second, but their dive proved uninterrupted. Within the space of no more than five heartbeats, the smoke dissipated to reveal Sharrow-Met’s vast, stone features, still somehow beautiful despite their monolithic proportions.

  Stielbek voiced a loud screech upon seeing the Wraith Queen’s face, and Shamil could hear the clear note of plaintive longing it held. The bird flared his wings as they drew level with the statue’s head, banking hard to circle the monument in a downward spiral. Shamil risked another backward glance, finding Rignar had raised himself up on the owl’s back, the shining orb of the onyx clutched against his chest. Shamil knew that for this to work, the mage’s throw would need to be strong and true, and for all his virtues, the man was no warrior. However, he had insisted that only he could cast the onyx and gave cheery assurances that he hadn’t yet failed to place a crystal where it needed to be and wasn’t about to start.

  The lightning bolt lanced upwards just as Shamil began to turn away, striking Kritzlasch full in the chest and birthing an instant flower of black and red. The bird’s wings flailed as he tumbled end over end, casting Rignar from his back before colliding with the huge barrier of Sharrow-Met’s arm. There was no time to watch the owl’s corpse complete its fall. Stielbek retracted his wings and twisted before going into another dive, streaking down to lash out and snare Rignar’s falling body with his talons.

  A sound that mixed thunder with the scream of a thousand demons caused Shamil to flatten himself against Steilbek’s back, feeling a blast of heat and an intense prickling to the skin. Stielbek banked steeply to the left as another ugly thunderclap sounded, a portion of Sharrow-Met’s granite shoulder exploding in a flash Shamil was sure would have blinded him but for his helm’s lenses.

  Warrior instincts seized him then, all the hard lessons of the Doctrinate and recent experience of battle combining to have him unfurl the whip and deliver a swift backward strike. He saw the topaz tip flare bright as it struck something dark, a silhouette so unexpected in form he barely managed to comprehend the reality of it before it spun away, limbs flailing. He thought it might be one of the man-bats. But, as the shape tumbled in Stielbek’s wake, then incredibly, steadied itself and flew in pursuit, Shamil saw no sign of wings. They were being pursued across the sky by a man, a man bearing a staff, the tips blazing white as they poured forth a crackling energy.

  The impossibility of the sight caused Shamil to hesitate before lashing out with the whip once more, his confused amazement worsened by the fact that the man was assailing them with words as well as lightning. “Traitor!” he called out as he flew, voice impossibly loud and filled with a depthless rage. “You’ll share her fate this day!”

  Something in that voice caused Stielbek to rear, spinning about as his wings beat to a blur. Shamil could sense the black wing’s fury, a roiling, bitter fire just as deep as that of the flying man. He soared closer as they hovered, staff blazing bright enough to reveal him as the bald-headed mage Shamil recalled so vividly from the day before.

  “You think she still lives, traitor?” the Voice-mage asked in a frothing scream, and Shamil saw how his red-glowing eyes were fixed not on him but on Stielbek. “You’re a fool! A wretched remnant of her treachery!”

  He spun the staff, the tips creating a blazing white wheel Shamil knew instinctively would soon give birth to another lightning bolt.

  “She isn’t coming to save you!” The bald man’s face was every inch as bestial as any Maw beast as he shrieked out his final curse. “Die as she di—”

  His words choked off as his rage-filled face formed into a blank, wide-eyed mask of utter astonishment, gaze locked on something in the sky beyond Shamil. Turning, he saw Vintress streaking out of the smoke, Lyvia raised high on her back as she whirled her sling. She had removed her helm, her face revealed in full by the glow of the mage’s staff, the face of a woman he insisted was long dead.

  He managed to recover his wits just as Lyvia loosed the crystal, raising his staff to deflect the projectile. The staff somehow managed to survive the resultant explosion, as did the mage, but the force of it sent him into a chaotic spin. Lightning coiled and struck in all directions, Shamil’s heart lurching as he saw a blazing tendril catch Vintress before she could veer away.

  The falcon screeched and spasmed across the sky, disappearing into the shadow cast by the vast statue. Rage burned in Shamil as Stielbek beat his wings and surged forward, closing the distance to the Voice-mage in an instant. He had almost steadied himself now, but not enough to avoid Shamil’s whip. It snaked out to coil itself around his staff, the tip blazing out its sorcerous energy as soon as it touched the intricately carved dark wood. Clearly it had already suffered great damage thanks to Lyvia’s crystal, for its blazing tips guttered out a final burst of energy before fading. The staff thrummed then shattered, leaving its wielder scrabbling in the air, a wordless scream forming on his lips that choked to a gurgle as the black wing’s beak bit deep into his chest.

  Stielbek cast the limp doll of the mage’s body aside and soared higher as Shamil looked about desperately for Vintress but could see no sign. His whip trailed in the wind and, seeing the crystal tip destroyed and half of its length burned away, he opened his hand to let it fall. A glimmer of light from beneath Stielbek’s bulk caused him to lean forward where he saw Rignar still clutched in the bird’s talons. The mage had lost his helm, his gaunt, bleached face staring up at Shamil with imploring eyes. His mouth formed words that were lost to the wind, but the meaning was clear enough as he weakly raised the onyx in his hands.

  “Here!” Shamil shouted, crouching and extending his hand to the crystal. “I’ll throw it.”

  Rignar shook his head, the onyx glowing in response as he flattened his hand against its surface. Once again Shamil had no difficulty in reading his unheard words. “I need to be touching it.”

  “You never intended to throw it!” Shamil shouted back. “Did you?”

  Rignar’s lips formed a smile as he shook his head.

  “Back to the Eyrie!” Shamil shouted at Stielbek. “We’ll find another way.”

  Stielbek angled his wings, but instead of steering for the mountains, he turned back to the statue. “Stop!” Shamil ordered, receiving only an angry shudder in response. “Don’t do this!” he cried out to Rignar.

  The mage’s eyes were sad now, but also shining with a deep contentment, his face that of a man about to fulfil a lifelong task. He removed one hand from the onyx and reached for the chain about his neck, dragging air into his lungs to call out a few words. “The Voice lied, Shamil! She never died!” Rignar snapped the chain and threw it at Shamil. He caught it by pure reflex, finding the emerald pendant dangling in his grip. “She went to find its birthplace!” the mage shouted. “Look for the immortals!”