There’ll be nothing left for the rites, but if you and he would sing for me when this is over…”
“We will.”
A tongue of flame uncoiled from the crater, washing the night carnelian and gold. The mountain was a hot pressure against all of Xinai’s senses, scraping her raw.
“It’s time,” said Selei. She knelt and took up the box of rubies. “The wards are failing. You should go.”
“I can’t let you go alone.”
“This will be a bitter enough victory—don’t make us lose another warrior to it. Run, child.”
Scrubbing her eyes, Xinai turned and started down the slope. Rocks slipped and scattered under her feet and tears blurred her already strained vision. She looked back once, saw the old woman picking her way carefully toward the top of the mountain, silhouetted against the cauldron’s glare.
The first tremor threw her down and she slid cursing through rock and brush before catching herself. She kept her footing through the next, but the path was treacherous.
She was scarcely a quarter down the slope when the night shattered into flame and ash.
Chapter 20
Zhirin was so busy staring at Mount Haroun that for an instant she didn’t understand where the roar was coming from. Then the sky blotted dark and Asheris twisted up and sideways, his impossible wings shredding the clouds. She screamed, gasped as his arm tightened around her ribs. She clutched at him as they spiraled farther away from the mountain, land and sky spinning around them.
When they paused again she saw what had happened. The cauldron hadn’t erupted, but one of the hills flanking the mountain had burst open, spewing smoke and ash. The plume rose before them, past them, blotting out the stars. Sparks flashed in the column like blossoms on a tree. An instant later she cried out again as cinders and ash rained over them.
Asheris cursed and turned, shielding them with one set of wings while the other beat frantically against the thickening air. Zhirin choked on the stench of sulfur and char; grit crunched between her teeth.
Craning her head and shielding her eyes, she saw lava leaking from the shattered mountain, incarnadine blood pouring down the southwestern slope. Flames flared gold and vermilion around the flow. The forest was burning.
The air cleared as they gained distance, though the smell was still thick. Asheris turned and they watched in horror and amazement as the mountain shuddered and split again. A new rift opened on Haroun’s main slope, spitting fire and rock. Lava spilled from the cleft, rushing down the hills.
To her otherwise eyes, a many-headed serpent writhed free of shattered rock, hissing his hundred-tongued fury into the sky.
Zhirin wasn’t sure how long they hung there, coughing on the acrid fumes, watching the mountain rip itself apart. Her lungs and throat burned and tears leaked down her face.
“We need to land,” Asheris finally said, turning away from the devastation.
The air was clearer to the east; the worst of the ashen cloud rolled west, toward the bay. Toward Symir. Useless to think about that now, she told herself. There was nothing she could do.
Asheris’s wings stretched wide and they wheeled downward in a narrowing gyre. The river glittered beneath them. He was landing near the dam.
He touched the ground as gracefully as any bird, but Zhirin stumbled as soon as he let her go. A rock bit her foot and she frowned—she’d lost a sandal somewhere in the sky. She took a step, then kicked off the other. When she turned, his wings had vanished.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
He shrugged, steadying Isyllt with a hand on her elbow. “Stay out of the way until Haroun’s wrath is spent.”
“But Symir is going to burn!”
“There’s nothing we can do to stop that now.”
She turned away, gritting her teeth in fear and frustration. Even the river’s nearness couldn’t soothe her now, though it steadied her, eased the drain of spent magic. She could see the gray bulk of the dam upriver, the sharp-toothed mountains behind it blotting out the stars.
“The dam,” Zhirin said. Her voice sounded odd and distant, like a stranger’s. “If we release the dam, the river can help stop the fire.”
Asheris shook his head. “Then the city would flood and burn. It would only add to the destruction.”
“You always speak of the mountain as though it lived. Do you think the river is any less alive?”
“Fair enough. But men bound the river as they did the mountain. What makes you think the Mir would help us if it could?”