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fall of rocks from above. She staggered on, Hatiphas half dragging her. With
her eyes blurred with tears, Pierrette hardly noticed when they emerged in the
light of day, on the rocky, wave-lapped shore, not more than two hundred paces
from her boat.
Pierrette wiped her eyes. What great, dark clouds were those, looming in the
gaps beyond the outer ring of islands? Pierrette rushed to her boat; if a
storm were rising, she might not be able to get away in time.
She scrambled down the sharp rocks, and tumbled into her little craft. The
once-smooth water rose and fell rhythmically, and the boat's masthead thumped
and scraped against the overhang. Gustave already stood braced in the bow, his
brown eyes wide, the whites of them yellow in the glow of lava from above.
"Hatiphas," Pierrette shouted over the rumble and roar. The vizier still stood
on the shore. "Get aboard!"
He shook his head. "I'm already lost. Minho has trapped me here with him.
Cunotar's soul can still fly free wherever it will end up, and so will the
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others. Perhaps the new-made Christians' souls will find their Heaven as well
. . . but mine? The cord has been cut. I am what I am what you see. So will I
remain.
"But . . ."
"It must be. Minho was right. I chose, long ago. I chose long life, and this
hideous form is what I got. I
chose to serve Minho, and I'll still serve him, in whatever Hell remains of
his kingdom. But you must be beyond the furthest islet before all is lost.
Hurry!"
"Good-bye!" she shouted over the crash of rocks, the roar of the fiery spume.
But Hatiphas was already gone back into the tunnel, or crushed by a bolt of
flaming lava. She would never know. Likely, it would be the same, one way or
another, in the end.
In the trough of one wave she pushed desperately against the rock, and the
boat edged outward, only to be pushed back on the next crest. The mast flexed
ominously between solid rock above, the buoyancy of
the sea below. Again, she pushed, and on the next crest the masthead slipped
from beneath the rock.
The contrary wind blew first from one quarter and then from another. Pierrette
raised the yard and sail with little hope that the fickle air would favor her.
She unshipped the heavy steering oar and used it like a paddle. Slowly, the
clumsy boat moved away from the sharp, black rocks of the shore.
On the high ground above, where the walls of the cavern had fallen away down
the slope, amid the growing thunder of the eruption, she heard bellows and
shouts of rage. By some trick of the heat-distorted air, she saw Minho raising
the great axe, and there, facing him, was Cunotar, wielding the sword that had
pierced his guts and was still killing him. He showed no sign of being
weakened by his ancient wound. He parried the broad, swinging blows of the
labrys
, and the serpent tongue of his sword darted in and out. Was that blood from
Minho's injuries or his own, that spattered the rocks, or was it molten lava?
Pierrette could not tell. Neither apparition seemed to have the advantage of
the other.
Pierrette did not dare linger. Now out of the wind shadow of the shore, her
sail filled. She remounted the steering oar and set her course toward the gap
between two inner islands. It would not be easy to get away in time; the route
to the open sea was circuitous, and already glowing chunks of pyroclastic rock
were screaming down from above, splashing into the sea around her, raising
billows of steam. If one of those struck her boat, it would shatter it.
The wind held steady. In a while, Pierrette dared to look back. There was
Minho, a giant astride the ruins of his palace, and there was Cunotar, fallen
upon his knees, his sword a broken stub. The great battle-axe swung down in a
sweeping arc, and buried itself in Cunotar's head. Its weight and momentum
carried it through the druid's body, and it only came to rest halfway down his
chest. Slowly, the two halves of his upper body sagging to either side, he
tumbled over, out of Pierrette's sight.
Had Minho won? What would happen now? Was he really as huge as he seemed? The
Otherworld, Pierrette knew, distorted such things and she had not yet uttered
the spell that would bring her back from it. Could he stride across the
channels between his islands, and confront the Hermit, step on him and crush
him like an ant beneath his foot? Could he still be victorious and drag
Pierrette with him into some impossible netherland, where she would never
again see Anselm, or Father Otho, or even Magister ibn Saul?
But the great black clouds billowed ever larger above their growing peak. The
heavy, sulfurous yellow smoke drifted ever more thickly down the flanks of the
island, and spread like a heavy blanket across the water. Surely Minho could
not prevail against that with a battle-axe.
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