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The torch on the po, was no ust of wind; it flickered wildly and went out The rass bent ahead of the wind in dark waves, ure frooddess A heroine ould conquer death itself
And who ain tomorroith her sister at her side
No one but Kestin knehere she was going, or what she was doing, or how the world would change tonight She pushed the horse forward recklessly, her breath whistling past her into the wind they h her, a heady feeling thatin her body
It took her a few false tries to find the cave entrance, in a darkness that confounded her sunlit h the caves she had last walked in the coly empty, hol ow and silent
When her relit torch final y showed her the glint of round, her whole body was tense with iht it would She fol owed the sparse trail to the spot where the Defender had confronted theht to him, so she had knohere he would be Ithad taken her Somehow she had assuot here; but as she turned around, the light of the torch il u she hadn’t seen last tieway fromites; the bare patch of rock, deep in shadohere the Defender had been
Been what? She remembered suddenly how the Defender’s voice had co even Clarisse If he had been waiting for them, he should have been in front of the there? Darri frowned, picked up a loose rock, and threw it at the shadows
It dropped right through the bare ground, leaving behind a faint ripple After several seconds, Darri heard a thud far below
The ground was stil and apparently solid Darri tried not to iht onto it She reached for a thin stalagth
The crash beloas much louder this time, the ripples more violent Darri found an already broken stone, thicker and heavier than she could have wrenched of herself, and threw that, too She was looking for another when the ground undulated violently and was gone
Darri cautiously approached the edge of what turned out to be a craggy plateau, the edge of a sheer rock face at least forty feet high She put the torch down Below, the rocks she had thrown lay sed pieces on the bare earth The clif face below her was unnatural y sht use to climb down Across from her, the wal s were covered by a cascade of white rock, like a waterfal frozen in time It drew her eyes down, to where spray should have crashed, far down below
Set in stone and earth A cluster of stalagether in a swirl of colored rock, coiled together so tightly she couldn’t tel where one began and the other ended The pink and red and ether, both beautiful and obscene There was so dif erent coils of rock in ways that didn’t lance, its beauty took her breath away; after a few seconds, Darri felt nausea spiraling through her fascination But it looked so much like she could h
"Look away," Clarisse said
Darri shrieked and turned For alines and serpentine rocks She blinked hard, and her vision cleared Clarisse stood a few yards behind her, her hair blowing about her face in a nonexistent wind
"Hypnotic, isn’t it?" she said "You would have stared at it until you died of thirst It’s the spel ’s last defense"
Darri couldn’t stop the shudder that rol ed through her She turned her back on Clarisse, keeping her eyes averted froe of the clif"Thank you for warning hed "You should assume I don’t have the patience to wait for you to starve to death" She took one step forward, leaned back slightly, and kicked hard at the smal of Darri’s back
It was intended to send Darri over the edge, but Darri had been ready for an at ack She ducked, and Clarisse’s foot skih to throw her of -balance She stepped backward under the kick, grabbed Clarisse’s leg, and yanked it up, using Clarisse’s own host forward Clarisse flailed, screeched, and went tu into the cavern below
After only a second she shot back up, her hair writhing around her shoulders, her eyes spit ing green fire
Literal y She looked like a dehth her
through her
Clarisse snarled, revealing pointed teeth, and flew through the air faster than any living person could have irl hit her in the chest, and she found herself flying backward
She stretched her body out instinctively, grasping desperately for so into the far walOne of her outstretched arainst the rock-strewn floor, skidding diagonal y as the impact threw her sideways For a moment, half- stunned on the floor, her arm a vise of pain, she couldn’t move
Then she heard Clarisse say, "Wel , that was disappointingly easy," and she leaped to her feet Her arround, it worked; so she shoved the pain aside, shoved the fear aside, and drew herself up
The stitches of her sleeves were tightly woven, but they were just thread With several violent yanks, she tore the her arer and crouched
"How quaint," Clarisse said, and flew straight up into the air
She probably expected Darri to run, but Darri had seen enough falcon kil s to kno quickly a swoop froer and threw it