Milla remembered a real avalanche she had seen once. It was at a gathering between the Far-Raiders and their sister clan, the Frostfighters. Both clans had left their ships under skeleton crews to celebrate and feast upon the lesser peak of Twoknuckle Mountain. It had been a great but risky celebration, as the mountain was known to be dangerous. It was sheer bravado that had led the clans to choose it. Even so, the Crones had insisted on some precaution being taken, and hundreds of moth lanterns were laid in expanding rings around the central fires.
Halfway through the feast, the higher peak of Twoknuckle shrugged, sending down a vast wave of snow and ice. They had heard it first, a deep roar in the darkness, louder than any beast. The outer ring of lanterns was snuffed out in an instant, and for a few blinks the inner ring lit up the avalanche as it fell upon the camp. Milla remembered it well, a wall of icy death that swept away everyone who wasn't quick enough to find shelter behind the clusters of rock.
It was an avalanche she imagined now, one of solid Violet. She called it up out of the stone, using all the powers of concentration and all the discipline that made her such a dangerous fighter.
Violet flared. Icecarls gasped. Odris stepped even farther away and said something that Milla was too focused to hear. She could feel the avalanche coming, could feel the Violet power rising in the stone. Her hand was shaking, her whole body trembling, as if a real avalanche was roaring down upon her.
Instinct told her when to thrust her hand forward and let the power go--at exactly the same moment the Spiritshadows charged.
Milla shouted a war cry as Violet light leaped from her Sunstone and spread into a wave. It was as wide as the fort and tall as an Icecarl, rushing forward with a deafening crash and rumble. The wave swept every Spiritshadow before it, sending them crashing and tumbling back through the walls and doors.
The Icecarls cheered, but only briefly. One attack had been forestalled. There were still three forces coming from the remaining sides.
"Sell your lives dearly!" Milla shouted as she dashed toward the side the Spiritshadows would reach first. She was surprised to find Odris speeding ahead of her, and on the side she wore the Talon.
Nothing had ever made Odris come that close before.
"It's coming back!" Odris warned. "Look out!"
Milla looked behind her. The Violet wave had rebounded from the wall and was ricocheting toward them. It looked stronger and more menacing from this side, and showed no signs of weakening. It had veered a little to one side in the rebound. Only half of it would strike the Icecarls' fort.
"To this side!" Saylsen cried, her voice at full roar in an effort to be heard above the rumble of the wave. "To this side!"
Everyone was running to the safer side when the Violet wave hit. Milla watched aghast as it picked up huge barrels and hurled them toward the ceiling. Sacks were blown apart. One of the Shield Maidens, already wounded and slow, was lifted up, thrown down onto the floor, and then rocketed out the back of the wave. If two of her companions hadn't caught her, she would have broken her neck.
Still the wave of light kept going. Spiritshadows, attacking only a moment before, fled in all directions as the Icecarls hunkered down as best they could, shielding themselves from the spray of debris.
"Well done!" shouted Saylsen to Milla. "The enemy flees! Let it run one more time through, then stop it!"
"Stop it?" Milla yelled back. "I don't even know how I started it!"
CHAPTER FIVE
Tal had just about given up on the Crones and any hope of escaping from his dream when he spotted a black-clad figure approaching across the Ice. A Crone, skating without skates, moving as fast as the ice-ship, though it was under full sail. Tal had tried to slow the ship down, but had only succeeded in changing the color of the Sunstone on the mast. Apparently he had to know how something worked in order to dream it properly. Or else thinking he had to know something stopped him from dreaming it. He could go mad thinking in circles like that.
Tal glanced away for a moment. When he looked back, the Crone was suddenly there, standing next to him. He jumped, then he realized it was the Crone of the Far-Raiders, the first Crone he had ever met.
She smiled at him, her silver eyes twinkling, but she didn't speak.
"Please feel free to talk," said Tal. "It's my dream, after all."
The Crone smiled again, but remained silent. She seemed to be waiting.
"Am I supposed to do something?" asked Tal politely. He couldn't quite remember what Milla said happened when the Crones showed up. Except maybe this wasn't truly a Crone. Maybe he'd just dreamed up a Crone, instead of having a real Crone entering his dreams, so she couldn't actually help…
"Stop it!" muttered Tal to himself.
"Stop what?" asked a familiar voice.
Tal whirled around. Adras was floating behind him, but in his Aeniran Storm Shepherd form, not as a Spiritshadow. Which was impossible. All Aenirans turned into Spiritshadows in the Dark World.
"Where are we?" asked Adras, scratching his cloudy head with one puffy finger.
"In my dream," said Tal. "Are you you, or are you me dreaming you?"
"What?" asked Adras. "The last thing I remember is falling asleep."
"Yes, but I could easily dream you saying that,"
said Tal. "Oh, who cares! Hopefully we'll wake up soon.
He turned back to the Crone and jumped again. The deck was crowded with Crones now. Lots of Crones, and a Crone Mother sitting there in a high-backed chair of bone.
"Who are they?" Adras asked as he puffed himself up to full size. Lightning crackled in his fists. "Are they enemies?"
"No!" said Tal hastily. "They're Icecarls. Like Milla."
"They're a lot uglier than Milla," remarked Adras, but he let the lightning crackle away into the air.
The Crones slid forward. Tal watched them nervously, but didn't move as they clustered all around him. He had to shut his eyes, unable to meet their stares.
He felt the Crones pick him up and opened his eyes again. He saw the mast and its Sunstone high above, and the darkness beyond.
The Crones threw him up in the air. It was exhilarating to be thrown and caught again. The first time he went up half as high as the mast. The second time he was level with the Sunstone at the very top. The third time, he didn't come back down. He just kept going up and up and up into the dark sky. Then there was a tremendous flash of light and all of a sudden Tal was wide awake, crouched inside the crystal globe. Fashnek was only a few stretches away
, frantically turning the wheel that controlled the green gas. Vapors were beginning to swirl around Tal's feet again, but he ignored them.
Without hesitation, he reached out to the seven Sunstones around him and took control. Each one flashed, then steadied into the appropriate color--the code to unlock the crystal globe.
There was a faint click and the globe split at its equator. Tal threw it fully open and jumped out. Fashnek shrieked, a strangely high-pitched shriek for a Chosen. He dropped the Sunstone he held in his right hand and scuttled back, both of his halves in total panic.
Tal snatched up the Sunstone as it skittered across the floor.
"No, no, it wasn't me," moaned Fashnek in one breath, and then in the other, "Get him! Kill him!"
His two Spiritshadow companions obeyed. The Urglegurgle bounced twice and launched itself at Tal's head, while the wasp-waisted shadow lunged forward to grab his legs.
Once again Tal acted instinctively, almost without thought. He stepped back against the globe. Still in tune with the seven Sunstones, he summoned a thin line of Violet from each of them, to form a fence of light around himself.
The Urglegurgle hit the fence as it came down and was split in two as cleanly as a cut apple. Each half landed badly and bounced away. They came together for a moment, failed to join, and then there was a pop as the Urglegurgle disappeared, either back to Aenir or destroyed for good.
The thin-waisted Spiritshadow was quicker. It twisted away, losing only a hand to the Violet wire.
Tal raised the Sunstone he had picked up off the floor. The Spiritshadow raised its remaining hand in a gesture of defeat and vanished. Its rapid disappearance troubled Tal. It showed that free Spiritshadows could retreat to Aenir whenever they wanted to. He hoped it was much harder for them to come back, though with the Veil weakened and possibly already failing, it might not be.
"Spare me, noble master," whined Fashnek, prostrating himself on the floor. "I am but a humble servant of the Empress."