Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [49]
"Look! You stopped it!" Alicia shouted, but then she saw that she was mistaken. The statue stumbled backward under the impact of the blow and shook its head slowly, as if trying to dispel a sense of grogginess. It stepped closer to them again, and though its step seemed less sure, not as quick as before, still it lurched inevitably forward.
"Quick! Get to the horses!" the princess urged, trying to help Tavish to her feet. The bard only groaned and slumped back onto the rock.
"I-I can't move," she gasped, her face flushed and perspiring. "Go-both of you! Go without me!"
"Damn!" Keane snapped, but he didn't leave her side. Alicia saw the white staff that Tavish had leaned on. The bard had dropped it when she slumped to the rock. The iron colossus again loomed over them, but Tavish seemed to lack even the strength to stand.
Desperate for any hope, the princess picked up the shaft of wood and darted toward the lumbering statue. It still lurched unsteadily, as if the lightning bolt had stunned it, forced it to move with the sluggishness of a serpent beset by cold.
"Alicia, don't!" cried her teacher in a voice taut with fear.
But his words came too late, nor would they have changed her course had she heard them sooner. The thing still moved slowly, as if every step required the focus of all its energies. Alicia thrust the stave between the monster's legs as it took a step along the shore of the pool.
The metal being abruptly seemed to break free of whatever lingering restraints remained from Keane's spell. A heavy foot of bolted iron kicked out sharply, striking Alicia in the shoulder. Bones snapped and hot streams of agony exploded through the woman's side. Her arm twisted behind her back, a limp and useless member. Alicia cried out in pain, her scream piercing as she felt herself cast through the air like a rag doll to land, with a chill splash, in the brackish waters of the Moonwell.
The staff twisted under the force of the monster's gait, and for a brief moment, the iron beast paused, as if the lone pole had somehow snared its feet. One end of the rod dropped, touching the surface of the water.
It seemed to Alicia as she struck the water that daylight burst around them with explosive speed, so bright was the illumination that surged upward from the waters of the well, outlining the black and rusty form of the statue in purest white. It was a brilliance that seemed to etch every tiny pebble, every branch of cedar, and each blade of withered grass in acute detail. The light surged upward, higher and higher, into a great column beaming into the night sky, clearly reflecting from the overhanging clouds as if dawn had come early to the Fairheight Mountains.
The beast of iron, bound by light, twisted in visible desperation. Alicia heard a sharp crackling sound as of lightning striking nearby, and then the great metal form toppled into the Moonwell, splashing a huge shower of the milky, glowing water from the pool. The colossus twitched and slowly grew still, lying in the shallows with much of its twisted form above the surface of the water.
Then the liquid-or was it the pain?-closed over Alicia, and she saw no more.
* * * * *
Musings of the Harpist
Within the cycles of birth and death, of winter and summer, of victory and defeat, all things know the Balance. The forces of good and evil remain opposed and taut, and it is this tension that provides support for gods and mortals, for all those who can know the difference between light and dark and can freely choose one or the other.
And if the gods know the cycles of life and the end of life, they also know that the Balance is eternal and that the end of life is no more than the prelude to a new beginning.
So it is with a tiny spark of vitality, the birthing of a new presence, the remanifestation of the great goddess, the Earthmother. Her life has lain dormant for a mere blink of an eye by immortal standards,