Prim had learned to look up when El might be in a position to attack her. She did so now, and saw nothing. But she did get dizzy, as sometimes happened when looking up, and this time it was enough to drop her to her knees. She felt a pain in her breast and tried to put her hand to the spot, but it was interrupted by something hard.

She looked down to see that she had been transfixed by a black arrow. It had gone straight into her chest. It had come, she understood, from El; he had conjured it into being and launched it at her during that brief glance. Its shaft was already enshrouded in her aura as her body began to dissolve around it.

She fell over on her side. With her eyes half-open she could see the rider gallop down to the bridgehead and rein in her horse at the bridge that was now again broken. Behind her a pack of Lightning Bears was coming in off the glacier.

It now seemed for a little while that the world consisted entirely of noise. She had heard many loud noises of late, what with all of the Evertempest’s thunder and the clamorous boulder duel between El and the Chasmian. Those were but clicks and whispers compared to the sound that came now from the direction of the Fastness. It was so loud that it startled El, and the rider across the gorge, and her Lightning Bears. Prim, before her vision dissolved into chaos, had at least the satisfaction of seeing El turn around, and astonishment come over him. It was such a distinct reaction that she had to turn her head and see what he was seeing: the Fastness unbound, its iron dome rocking from side to side where it had been shrugged off, and chains and hasps still avalanching down all round it. Perched on the top of the castle was a figure nearly as great as the Chasmian, but of human form.

Or so it seemed until it spread its wings.

Egdod saw at once that the tempest he had laid over the Knot in ancient times had served its purpose and was no longer of use to him, and so with a wave of his hand he stilled it. In the calm air that followed he spread his wings and took flight, but glided only a short distance to the top of the stone anvil, where Sophia lay dying. He took her dissolving form up into his arms as a mother takes up a baby, and gathered her into his chest.

“Once again our time together is all too brief,” said Sophia to Egdod, though she had lost the power of forming words and could only speak through the connection of their auras.

“The sweeter for that,” Egdod returned. “Know that your sacrifice was not in vain. The Quest is complete.”

“Edda will need rest,” she said, her aura growing very faint.