The Pearl of the Soul of the World - By Meredith Ann Pierce Page 0,52
it recoiled, diving, and disappeared. Pendarlon roared in fury. The dark girl called out and gestured toward the halls of Winterock. Behind her, the Mariners regathered and rowed.
But how do they mean to enter? Aeriel wondered suddenly. The keep has no door. On the shore, the Witch's forces, now gravely disarrayed, were growing ever more ragged. Most of Syllva's people had crowded into the barges now to cross the Mere. Not far from shore, the mudlick, jaws gaping, reared up before the Lady's barge. Syllva shot it through the mouth with an arrow made of silver and gold. Ahead, Erin and Pendarlon had nearly reached the keep.
Without warning, the second mereguint broke the surface of the Mere before them. Its breath smoked, sulfurous yellow. Thundering, the dragon rose, towering over them. With a snarl, the lyon dropped to a crouch. Erin sprang to stand upon his back as, like a black bird, the mereguint's vast head swooped, jaws wide, its teeth each as long as Erin's arm. The dark girl let go of the lyon's mane, taking hold of her blade's hilt in both hands.
"Erin!" Aeriel screamed, reaching out across a hopeless distance—and yet it seemed her own voice echoed in the singing of the blade.
As the dark girl swung the burning sword, Aeriel shut her eyes, feeling a sense of motion and of draining, a sweeping rush as though she herself were circumscribing an arc. Through her own body, she felt the crunch of broken scales, cloven spine, and the waft of something dark and mighty above her collapsing in coils upon coils into the Mere—until gasping, shuddering, Aeriel pulled back, opening her eyes, willing herself away from merger with the sword.
In the lake below, the dead mereguint floated, head severed from its body, black blood iridescent upon the shadowy surface of the Mere. A haze of acrid yellow smoke drifted over it. Not far from it, the lyon, with the dark girl still crouched upon his back, bounded onto the ledge of the castle directly beneath Aeriel. The burning sword blazed in Erin's hand. Drained by even such brief contact with the glaive, Aeriel tottered.
"Erin. Oh, Erin," she breathed.
In the sky overhead, one of Irrylath's brothers sliced a darkangel with his hooked Istern sword.
Oriencor's lip curled in a snarl. Eyes fixed on the battle in the air, she seemed not to have noticed Erin vanquishing her dragons below. Aeriel wondered if the White Witch had even heard her crying the dark girl's name. Above, the prince of Avaric finished off his brother's darkangel with the Edge Adamantine. In silence, like its fellow, the icarus fell.
"Irrylath fights well," Ravenna's daughter murmured, "with great brilliance and passion. I will grant him that. One by one, my darkangels topple."
On the far shore, her troops no longer held any semblance of order. Company by company, her minions were straying to a stop. Absorbed in the aerial battle, Oriencor remained oblivious. A rush of sudden understanding overtook Aeriel. Like an overambitious juggler unable to catch and rethrow all of her many beads, the Witch was allowing her forgotten ground forces to falter. Such numbers, Aeriel realized, must require tremendous concentration to control—and Irrylath's betrayal had clearly shaken her.
"Traitor!" the Witch muttered bitterly. "I never thought he would desert me in the end."
Keep her distracted! Aeriel told herself. Oriencor could regather her scattered battalions in a moment, if she chose. Desperately, the pale girl searched her mind for something, anything to keep the other's attention from the battle below.
"Yes, my husband has deserted you," she said, throwing into her voice a hard edge of confidence she did not feel. "As the Ancients of Oceanus once deserted you—as did Melkior."
With a hiss, the White Witch turned from the casement, her green eyes blazing. "What do you know of Melkior, you little fool?"
Aeriel's heart quailed beneath the ferociousness of that gaze, but she steeled herself to stand firm, not to flinch. "That he is a halfling, like you," she flung back, using the word she knew would cut. "That he was your friend once, but he turned from you. He served your mother in the end."
"My mother is dead," the White Witch snarled, "and Melkior no more than her clockwork golam.
Gears and wires! He is unimportant."
Angrily, she made as if to turn back toward the fray. Aeriel stifled the cry of protest that would betray her as surely as would Oriencor's taking note of events below.
"The Ancients abandoned you as well," Aeriel said quickly. "They refused