Page 194 of The Cradle of Ice
From Daal, to Nyx, to Shiya.
Like the bellows of a forge, each breath blew it brighter. Each heartbeat pumped more power. She waited until she could hold it in no longer. She let Shiya and Daal know.
Now.
The command’s strength startled her, but she did not relent or falter. She opened her throat and heart and cast out a golden wave. Shiya did the same.
As their waves undulated across the Mouth, rising and falling, the two found their rhythm together. Shiya filled Nyx’s valley with her song; Nyx did the same to hers. The ripples of their casting flattened into a tremendous golden tide, a merging of both their songs into a single unbreachable harmony.
Nyx was swept with the surge, riding along within it, spread throughout all of it.
She aimed for the section of chasms that Graylin had pointed out. The wave struck there, washing down the canyons, spreading through other tributaries, flooding down cave mouths.
As it did, nothing was hidden from her.
Those ghostly trees she had spotted earlier were life, blurring the line between stone and flesh, not unlike coral. She sensed the colonies of tiny, frilled animals encased in rocky skeletons, fed by molten minerals and the sulfur in the air.
Then she was swept into the skies, into the flurry of tiny bats. They were indeed reminiscent of a young Bashaliia, as Graylin had said. Nyx studied them, allowing her energies to penetrate past fur. As she did, she perceived their hollow bones, their tiny panicked hearts. She read the map of their veins, the billows of their lungs.
Being creatures of bridle-song themselves, they fled from the flood, sensing the surge of power. They dashed and cartwheeled away. They sped into shadows that could not hide them. They dove down holes that she could easily follow. She flowed everywhere in all directions.
Still, her drive was singular.
To search for one.
She poured herself into every cranny, surged into every vast space hidden in the canyon walls. She made herself into a torrent.
Then at last …
A lone heart thumped out in the darkness, pained and struggling.
Once, twice, and again.
She knew the song of that heartbeat as surely as her own. She swept upon it, coming from everywhere, closing in all directions. That song was a beacon of hope, of love, of need.
She reached a chamber deep in the rock.
Bashaliia huddled on the floor, head tucked low, wings wrapped tight. He glowed in the darkness with the purest golden light. She saw him in his entirety. His thrumming blood, his panting lungs. The fiery contours of his brain glowed with bridle-song, fighting the assault.
Around him, five raash’ke lurked in lairs up the walls, hunched with concentration, their eyes shining with sickly fire. All focused on Bashaliia. Their coppery threads of power—tarnished with an emerald corruption—lashed at him, seeking a way through his purity.
Bashaliia was clearly exhausted, nearly spent. Several of those malignant strands had found purchase, worming deep and spreading smaller tendrils, like the roots of a cancerous tree.
She swept to him.
I am here.
He sensed her, his wings stirring. He keened tentative notes, hopeful but still wary. Distracted, he lost some of his focus, his fighting wavered. The raash’ke saw this and attacked more furiously. The chamber filled with a storm of their emerald malignancy.
No.
Bashaliia’s glow collapsed under the assault.
Leagues away, she tightened her hand, as if trying to break bones. But that was not her desire. She extracted what she needed. She felt Daal fall to his knees, then to one hand.
Flames coursed through her body, through the tide. When it struck her out in the canyon, she repeated her repudiation, only with far more force.
No.
