"Long ago, you took me prisoner and collared me like an animal," she hissed at him. "You tried to discover the extent of my powers. You tried to make me your Queen so that I would bear your children. You failed. I escaped. I returned to my own world and found a place in it where I could forget you and your dark plans. But even though decades have passed and things you cannot begin to comprehend have changed, you still cling to your foolish dream. You still think to make me yours."

She gestured expansively, arms flinging wide, particles of frost and ice flying into the air about her like a miniature storm. "Well, Tael Riverine, here I am. Don't you want me?"

"You are not Grianne Ohmsford!" The other screamed it as if it were a personal affront, as if it had been deliberately planned to thwart his purposes and deprive him of his due.

Behind him, the dragon stamped the earth and breathed fire onto the grasslands, setting patches of vegetation aflame. The Jarka Ruus surged backward in response, stumbling over one another in an effort to remain safely clear. Smoke from the dragon-fire rolled across the plains in black clouds.

"Well, in that you are both right and wrong," replied the witch. "I am here and I am not here. The truth is beyond you, and my patience with this business is at an end. Since you do not wish for me after all, I can admit that I want nothing of you, either. But one of us must give way and I think it must be you. What I want matters most."

Was he seeing things, Railing wondered, or was the witch wraith growing larger? "We should go," Mirai whispered in his ear, taking hold of his arm and pulling on it.

"You beg for your life, do you?" Tael Riverine stood rock-still not six yards away from her.

The witch laughed. "I beg for nothing. What I need, I will take. And what I will take is your place as ruler of the Jarka Ruus."

For a long few seconds, the Straken Lord stared at the apparition, attempting in vain to take her measure. In the vast sweep of the plains, where even an army of hundreds of thousands could not manage to fill the emptiness, Tael Riverine might have recognized the danger. But the demon's life had been long and hard and filled with other dangers, and his pride convinced him that this was just one more.

"It is you, isn't it?" he said at last. He bent forward to peer closely at her. "You've become a hag, a gathering of cloth and smoke, a bit of nothing. You are Grianne, but changed into this ... thing. Once, I would have made you my Queen. Now you are not worthy."

They faced each other in silence, and it seemed to Railing that each was waiting on a response from the other. He couldn't have said which of them was the true aggressor and which the intended victim at this point. Perhaps they were both looking to discover this, both deciding what more was to be done.

But it was Tael Riverine who attacked, leaping at the witch with his iron staff raised, swinging for her head. He was quick for such a big man, much quicker than Railing would have thought possible, and for just an instant the boy thought she had simply disintegrated under the blow. But then he realized she wasn't even there anymore. Instead, she had appeared off to one side.

He struck at her a second time, now using the magic of the scepter, fire lancing from its intricately shaped iron head, burning through the witch and turning her to ash and smoke, but again she wasn't there. When the fire diminished and the smoke cleared, the witch was standing off to the other side, her white, ragged form untouched.

The Straken Lord nodded to himself and went into a crouch. "If you refuse to let me come to you, Grianne-that-once-was, then why don't you come to me?"

His spines lifted off his back and down the sides of his arms and legs, and he gestured for the witch to approach. Railing felt Mirai pulling on him, urging him to back away. He shook his head. He was not ready to go. He was not willing to miss any of this.

In front of them, not thirty yards away, the witch wraith was moving. It was a slight shifting of position, one that caused the Straken Lord to go still in expectation. Railing had no idea what she was doing. She had avoided Tael Riverine's attacks twice now, seeming to be one place while actually in another. But she hadn't fought back. She hadn't shown any intention of doing so.

Until now.

Casually, with a movement so languid and relaxed it appeared to offer no threat at all, she advanced on him.

It seemed suicidal. She was making no move to attack and was doing nothing to defend herself. She had assumed a submissive posture, hunched a bit, head down. It was as if she were conceding his dominance and had decided there was no point in prolonging the inevitable.

The Straken Lord's hand dropped to his side, and when it lifted again he was holding a conjure collar. He meant to bind her to him by means of complete and deliberate subjugation. Apparently he had abandoned his plan to disable or kill her and was now seeking domination, perhaps to demonstrate his superiority to his followers or perhaps to reaffirm it to Grianne Ohmsford, whatever incarnation she had assumed.

When she was within several yards of him, the witch wraith dropped to her knees and began to crawl forward, a penitent ghost begging for mercy. Railing knew all the stories of her imprisonment by Tael Riverine and her fierce hatred of him and could not believe what he was seeing.

"What is she doing?" Mirai gasped.

Railing had no idea, but he felt the last of his hope slipping away as the witch continued to crawl to her doom.

When she was right in front of the Straken Lord, she lifted herself onto her haunches, head still lowered in a posture of subjection. The Straken Lord bent down, holding out the conjure collar to fasten it around her neck.

"Perhaps you are her," Tael Riverine mused, surprise and disgust reflected in his voice.

But an instant later she had snatched the collar from his hands and snapped it around his own neck. He jerked backward in shock and dismay, but it was too late. Railing and Mirai, who were the closest, barely saw the movement of her hands; her quickness and strength left them blinking in disbelief.

The witch rose and stood with her face so near to his, it seemed she might offer him a kiss. "Am I close enough now?" she asked. She laughed softly. "You will do nothing without my permission, Tael Riverine. Do you understand? You belong to me now, as I once belonged to you."

He struggled anyway, thrashing to reach her. But the collar reacted instantly and the Straken Lord cried out in anguish, dropping to his knees.

She stood over him a moment as his body convulsed and his face twisted, and then she reached down for his scepter, retrieving it from where it had fallen. She studied it a moment, as if considering its use. Then she turned toward the Jarka Ruus, scepter in hand, and held it overhead for all to see.

A babble of murmurs and hisses filled the momentary silence as the creatures of Tael Riverine's army gave voice to what they were feeling. Uncertainty and fear turned to amazement and the beginnings of a shift in loyalty. The Straken Lord had ruled through strength; that was the law of the Forbidding. But now someone stronger had subdued him with almost no effort at all.

Abruptly, Railing Ohmsford remembered something Crace Coram had said many weeks ago, after Seersha had rebuked him for calling Grianne Ohmsford the Ilse Witch.

"That's who she still is somewhere deep down inside. Maybe that's who you want to find if you expect her to stand up to the Straken Lord."

The murmurs and hisses grew to a steady roar.

With that, the witch turned back toward the pain-racked Straken Lord and struck him with the butt of the scepter. Tael Riverine collapsed, dazed from the blow. Recognizing his peril, he fought anew to break free of the conjure collar, struggling violently against the witch wraith's magic, his entire body quaking and shuddering. But even the howls that rose from his throat came out as little more than subdued gasps.

The witch wraith stood over him, raised his steel-tipped scepter over her head, and brought it down with a lunge. The steel tip penetrated Tael Riverine's black armor and then his body, driven all the way through and into the ground. The scream the Straken Lord emitted was blood chilling, but reached new heights when the witch pulled the shaft free and then drove it through him once more.

He fought only a few seconds longer and then lay still on the blood-soaked grass.

Another roar rose from the Jarka Ruus. The roar was of satisfaction, of recognition that an old order had passed and a new one had risen. Strength had prevailed over weakness, and once again there was a new leader.

Railing was rooted in place, unable to look away even though Mirai was yanking on his arm and shouting in his ear. "Turn around!" she screamed.

Finally, he did so, and for a moment he could not catch his breath.

His brother was standing right in front of him.

CHAPTER Thirty-three

Edinja's confiscated Sprint was almost to Arborlon, the roofs of the city's buildings coming into view through the treetops, when a sickening realization of what was about to happen struck Aphenglow with dismaying suddenness. Her time with Arlingfant was almost over. She was about to lose her sister forever.

Since her breakdown over Cymrian's death, Aphen had traveled all day and all night trying to make up for her lapse, flying straight through from the Wilderun with as brief stops as she could for food and drink and the occasional snatches of sleep when she could no longer keep her eyes open anymore. She had found it necessary to change out the diapason crystals that powered their craft only once, even with the thrusters opened all the way. And aware of the dangers posed by the Straken Lord's army to the east, she had kept them well clear of the Tirfing and the Streleheim, coming up west of the Matted Brakes and Drey Wood to cross the Rill Song just below the Sarandanon in order to reach the Elven home city safely.

Still, it was a grueling journey, with no one but herself to depend on. Arling had slept most of the way. Weakened by her wounds and all she had been through while bearing the Ellcrys seed to the Bloodfire, she had barely spoken since their departure. For the past several hours, she had been asleep in the seat just behind Aphen, bent forward in her harness with her head resting against her sister's back. Aphen had tried hard not to disturb her, wanting to leave her as she was, to feel Arling pressing up against her. There was an undeniable comfort in keeping her close for the time that remained to them.

The loss of Cymrian had stripped Aphen of strength and courage both, undermined her sense of hope, and left her emotionally drained. She had never thought she would lose the Elven Hunter, her companion through so much. She had only just come to understand how much he meant to her, and now-in what seemed the blink of an eye-he was gone. She could still picture him alive and well, his wild white hair blowing, his striking blue eyes fixed on her, the angles and planes of his strong face shaped by the sunlight, just his presence a powerful reassurance.

All of it more was compelling than it had ever been with Bombax, and yet her relationship with Cymrian had been so abbreviated, ending so abruptly and cruelly. She had cried for him until it felt as if there were no tears left. His death had dominated her thoughts from the moment she had begun flying Arling back to Arborlon, which was why now, as they approached the Elven city, she found herself confronted for the first time with the inescapable knowledge that the worst wasn't over.

Arling, possessed of the Bloodfire-quickened seed of the Ellcrys, was about to be taken from her. And she would be left with a future in which the two people she loved the most would have no part.