Mav had already started moving.
He dropped to one knee on the stone of the terrace and cast his Manifestation. His dome of water rose around him, 50 meters across, filling the terrace from the doors of the hall to its edge. The wind hit it at once. It was the strong morning wind of the Drift, and it tore at the surface of the water. The whole dome shivered and began to slide toward the edge of the terrace and the long fall into the cloud.
Mav pressed the anchor into the stone under his knee.
It went into the rock as if the rock were mud. Then it stopped, and the dome stopped with it.
The wind was still blowing. The water at the edge of the dome still tore into spray. But the dome itself didn’t move. It sat on the terrace like a mountain of glass, as still as if the air around it were dead calm.
’He made this in his first year,’ Mav thought. He was full of a fierce, wild joy. ’Thank you.’
Then he called them all.
-----
They came out of the water together, his whole army.
The needlefish came first, in a silver storm, with Two at their head. The spined fish came behind them in a slow, heavy wall, with Eighteen in front. Seven rose to the top of the dome like a white rope. The spitters waited beside her with their eyes turned up.
On the stone, Birch came out roaring. The wolves, Six and Log came with her. The stalkers stepped out of the water and vanished against the gray stone. Sela and her three water movers stood at the edge of the dome with their hands raised.
Last of all, the two hawks burst out of the top of the dome in a spray of water. They shook themselves once, angrily, and rose into the sky. They climbed until they were two dots against the sun. Then they came down out of it with their wings folded, faster than anything in the Drift, and they hit the last of the Speaker’s rank C guards before he had even seen them. He went down into the cloud with both wings torn.
The winged people had never seen a hawk dive at them. They had kept these birds for 300 years, and they had never once seen them hunt.
The guards broke apart in the air, screaming.
Beside the dome, Ronald cast his hills, and Tamsin cast her forest. Ronald’s boars came out onto the terrace in a line. When the first guards landed on the stone to reach the dome, the boars hit them with Charge, and the guards went over the edge of the terrace in a tangle of wings. Tamsin’s five moths waited in the branches of her trees. Every time a group of guards dived together, the moths flashed, and the guards came down blind.
-----
Then the Speaker reached the dome.
He didn’t attack it. He hung in the air in front of it, with his huge wings spread. Then he beat them once, with all his strength.
The wind that came off his wings was like a falling wall. It hit the dome full on. The water bent inward. Mav felt the whole Manifestation shudder. It wanted to slide. It wanted to tear free of the terrace and go over the edge.
The anchor held.
The Speaker beat his wings again. He beat them a third time. Each time, the dome shook, and each time, it stayed exactly where it was. Mav saw the Speaker’s face change. For the first time since Mav had met him, the old man looked uncertain.
That was when Seven struck.
She came out of the top of the dome along a rope of Sela’s water, so fast that she seemed to fly. She wrapped herself once around the Speaker’s legs. Then she used Overload.
The flash lit the whole mountain. The Speaker’s wings locked open, and he fell out of the air onto the terrace with a crash that cracked the stone.
Seven fell beside him, stunned for 10 long seconds, outside her water.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Winter Coat.]
Mav came out of the dome with Dart before the Speaker could rise.
-----
It was the hardest fight of his life.
The Speaker was rank C. He was very old, and he had been fighting in this sky since before Mav’s grandfather was born. He was up again in a heartbeat, with his staff in his hand. He swung it at Mav’s head. Mav’s ice coat stopped most of it, but the blow still threw him across the terrace.
He rolled to his feet. Birch was already there, between him and the Speaker. She breathed out, and the cold went over the Speaker’s wings, freezing the thin skin stiff. He tore them free with a scream.
The guards had reached the dome by then. There were dozens of them, all rank D, diving at the water with their spears. Two’s needlefish met them at the edge. Each time a guard reached into the water, the needlefish were there. But every time a guard pulled back out, he took fish with him in his claws. The spined fish held the line at the bottom of the dome, packed together, and the guards’ spears went into them again and again. Mav felt them die. He felt each one go out in his head, small and cold, and he had no time to grieve them. The spitters shot water into the eyes of every guard who dived, and Sela’s ropes of water pulled others down into the needlefish, but there were so many.
On the stone, the wolves pulled a guard down by the legs. Six caught another in one great claw and held him while Log took him. Moss came out of nowhere and closed her jaws on a guard’s wing. Then a spear went into Fern’s side.
Mav felt it like a blow to his own ribs. He turned, and the Speaker hit him.
The old man’s claws went across his chest, through the ice and through his shirt, deep into his flesh. The pain was so great that for a moment, Mav couldn’t see. He felt warm blood running down his stomach. He felt Regeneration begin to work, slowly, much too slowly.
He wanted to fall, but he wouldn’t let himself.
He let go of Dart to catch the Speaker’s wrist in both hands.
[You have borrowed a skill: Clamp.]
His hands locked shut.
The Speaker pulled. He was stronger than Mav, far stronger. He lifted Mav off his feet and swung him against the wall of the hall. But Mav’s hands didn’t open. Nothing could open them for 10 seconds.
He let his lightning go into the old man’s arm.
The Speaker jerked. He stumbled backward through the open doors of the hall, dragging Mav with him, across the floor of the great room. Then down the long stair, both of them falling, rolling, until they crashed onto the floor of the hall of the stone.
The Speaker landed on his back against the iron bars. They bent under his weight. He fell through them.
Behind him, the stone was beating.
Mav’s hands opened. He lay on the floor and watched the Speaker try to rise. The old man’s wings were broken. His back was pressed against the white crystal of the Heartstone that he had fed for a hundred years.
He looked at Mav. There was no hatred in his black eyes, only surprise, as if he had never once believed that this could happen to him.
Mav picked up his harpoon from the floor. He drove it through the Speaker’s chest with all the strength that he had left.
The Heartstone flared. It burned so bright that the whole hall turned white. It went on burning, brighter and brighter. Mav covered his eyes. He felt the heat of it on his face.
When the light faded, the Speaker was gone. There was nothing on the floor inside the bars but his robe and his staff of bone.
The Speaker had fallen on his own stone, and the stone had taken him.