“We have failed our High God. We must attempt amends. We will ask the stone to remember its strength. It has been ravaged. It has felt havoc. But if its life is slow, its awareness of harm is also slow. Its memory of strength persists.”

Covenant stared at the creatures. What, remember its strength? After it was broken? The damage to the stone was severe. And he could discern no power capable of mending rock from the Feroce; no power of any kind apart from the frantic dance of their flames.

But the creatures did not wait for a response. Trembling, they moved closer to each other, formed a tight circle. As they had done once before, they joined their hands, clasped their fires together. They may have been praying—

Gradually their strange energies found new force. The nauseating hue of the Illearth Stone grew brighter. It etched itself against the hot silver of the krill.

By some means, they had caused Covenant’s lost mount to recall its own nature earlier. They had restored the destrier’s contentious spirit.

Maybe—

Covenant saw nothing change. His senses were too dull to identify the effect wrought by the Feroce—if they achieved any effect at all. Clyme and Branl watched in silence.

But the Ranyhyn reacted as if they understood the Feroce. They jerked up their heads, shook their manes, snorted fiercely. Emerald and argent contradicted each other in the wide glare of their eyes. Trumpeting defiance, they flung themselves forward; burst into a gallop.

They managed one long stride on undamaged stone—and another, foreshortened. Then they sprang as far as they could stretch out across the wrecked rock.

Both of them, when one would have been too heavy.

Covenant forgot to breathe; forgot to blink at the blood still oozing from his forehead.

At the limit of their leap, their forelegs struck the surface. It crumbled instantly. Of course it did. Much of it had been corroded to the consistency of rotten wood. The rest had lost its foundations. Nevertheless Naybahn and Mhornym snatched their hind legs under them and tried to spring again.

They almost succeeded.

Almost.

But the stone had been too badly chewed. A section of the clifftop collapsed beneath the horses. Chunks of rock fell like jagged gobbets of the Earth’s flesh.

Frantically Naybahn and Mhornym scrambled at the failing slope. Somehow their hooves found purchase. Straining, they lunged forward onto stone as ruined and ruinous as the rock that they had crumbled.

Beyond them, the flames of the Feroce rose like screams into the air.

More of the surface broke. More of it fell away. Yet the Ranyhyn were faster—or the invocation of the Feroce had taken hold. Together Naybahn and Mhornym outran the collapse.