Chapter 21: Rent By The Sky
In the now-silent valley, most eyes were fixed on the Sixth Spear. There, against the clouds wheeling their way across the azure, a small figure could be seen. Thin, slight; the sort most of the Ortheri, and many of the Haehînbór, would overlook. But now, perched at the peak of the Spire of Last Days, a spear held above her, she was also the greatest of them all. "Hope is ours!" she shouted, and the Haehînbór roared.
Hardly anyone noticed a small figure, his cloak fluttering in the breeze, plunging down the rocky cliff-side, bouncing wetly across some of its jagged rocks, and ultimately vanishing behind some of them. No one would find what was left of him, save perhaps carrion-birds seeking a place to roost.
Matching Yîgeke's shout, Qemik wheeled his horse around. He'd been punctuating the battle with his four-word chant, but raising a broken axe-handle towards the silhouette of the Spire of Last Days, he cried out, "Hope is ours!" By the time the Haehînbór were chanting with him, and surging back towards the Ortheri line like a sandstorm, unstoppable, Yîgeke had cast the spear and vanished once more into the Spire.
Oyana's eyes were fixed not upon the hillside. She'd seen enough to know that Yîgeke was alive, and also, that she would likely not be for long. But if the First Hand had done her part, now it was time for Oyana to do hers. Her eyes sought and found the Ortheri Baugcaun with the intensity of a hunting lynx peering at a juicy sand-mouse. She watched as gust after gust of Haehînbór hurled themselves against the Ortheri forces, scattering them, at terrible cost. Countless Haehînbór would go to Kumzu's camp, and more would go nowhere but into the thirsty sand. The Ortheri warriors were not daunted; their unquenchable battle rage roiled within them. But each warrior, lost in her own rage, screamed and fought heedless of the others. Their discipline had fled, drowned out by the chanting and roars, and now they battled, heedless of their own fellows, their formations, their very purpose.
The moment approached. She held perfectly still, in the midst of the storm, and waited. Soon. Soon.
Now.
She spurred her horse forward and plunged through a gap in the Ortheri guards. At the last moment the Ortheri Baugcaun whirled and saw her coming. He threw himself aside, avoiding the death blow he expected was coming, and rolled on the sand. Then slowly he rose, smirking. She'd come for him, she'd taken her moment, and she'd failed. He was unharmed.
He turned to gloat at her, and then stopped in his tracks. There she sat atop the mighty roan steed, and her eyes were on his. She had an unsettling smile.
And in her hand, she held his scepter.
He reached out a hand impotently towards her and cried, "No!" but he could do nothing as she held it aloft, then with one hand, crushed the crystal sphere at its peak.
He whirled around once more, but by the time his eyes found Caras Lithgweth, it was almost done. Sand was trickling down through Oyana's fingers, and there, on the horizon, the city was blowing away. It didn't burst, or shatter. There were no tumbling stones; the ground did not shake. There was no sound, save a thin whistling of the wind.
The city simply blew away. As if it had been a mere momentary happenstance, grains of sand moving and aligning for a split second in the shape of a city; and in the next moment, each grain of sand had its own idea of where to go, and the city was no more. As if it had never been.
"Their works rent by the sky until not one grain stands atop another," Oyana remarked dryly. Then almost as an afterthought, she spurred the horse forward, snatched up an axe, and lopped off the gape-mouthed head of the Ortheri Baugcaun. She raised the head to the sky, so that every man and woman, every warrior and slave, could see it. "None shall mourn them," she shouted, over the stunned silence that suddenly surrounded her.