He did not know what that thing was but he would not let it intimidate him. He was the Bomanz who had slain a grandfather of dragons. He was the Bomanz who had walked into the flames, daring the wrath of the Lady in all her majesty and strength.

But his feet had rested upon solid ground those times.

Softly, surely, he murmured the calming mantras, following with the unleashing cycles that would allow him to slide free of his flesh.

In a moment he was adrift in the whale's belly, floating through the flames, watching the dark fire-eater. Only because it fed so gluttonously had the windwhale not yet been consumed by a holocaust.

He added his skills to the self-protective efforts of the windwhale and the damping of the fire-eater's feeding. The flames began to dwindle. He tried to move subtly and do his work unnoticed by the predator. That thing had only one thought. Soon the windwhale could manage the fires alone.

The fire-eater tried to breach another gas bladder. Bomanz slapped it away. It tried again, and again, and again, failing, till it flew into a frustrated fit.

While it was out of control Bomanz insinuated tendrils of sorcery. With a jeweler's touch he evicted the commands of the wicker man. He replaced them with one overwhelming imperative: destroy the wicker man. Consume him in darkness, consume him in fire, but rid the earth of his noxious presence.

Bomanz retired to his own proper flesh. Physical sight showed him the stars masked by fire-edged wings that spanned half the sky. Those wings tilted. The body they supported dropped toward the place Old Father Tree wanted defended at all costs.

Bomanz glanced at Silent and Darling. The dusky, humorless wizard smiled slightly, nodded, made a small gesture to indicate that he had witnessed a job well done.

So maybe he was finally off the s.h.i.t list.

He watched the fire-eater strike.

"d.a.m.n!" It was plunging toward the compound. Limper must have broken in.

The windwhale had fallen a long way, too. It was in easy striking distance for the wicker man. The giant of the sky had buckled in the middle, become a sagging sausage. It had no more ballast to shed. Neither could it control its motion through the sky. It was at the mercy of the wind, heading south, still losing alt.i.tude.

Silent and Darling joined Bomanz. He demanded, "Why did you stay? Why didn't you get the h.e.l.l off?"

Silent's fingers danced as he relayed to Darling.

"Knock it off with the waggle fingers. You can talk."

Silent gave him a hard look. He did not say anything.

The windwhale lurched. Bomanz grabbed an organ stem as he hurtled toward the monster's side and a drop still three thousand feet till it was over. A gobbet of flame rolled up, singed him. He cursed and clung for his life. The windwhale continued to reel and shudder. It began making a hollow, booming noise that might have been a cry of pain.

An overlooked spark had tangled with a slow leak from a gas bladder. The game was about over. There was nothing to be done this time.

He was going to die in a few minutes. For some reason he could not get as upset as he thought he should. Mostly he was angry. This was not the way for the great Bomanz to go out, just dragged along, without an audience and no great battle to die in. Without a legend to leave behind.

He cursed continuously, in an unintelligible mutter.

His thoughts, more agile than ever he pretended, scurried around in frantic search for a way to make sure the wicker man went with him.

There was none. He had no weapon but the fire-eater, which was a javelin thrown and now beyond his control.

The windwhale began settling more rapidly. Fire crept up the aft half of the monster. The bend in its middle grew increasingly p.r.o.nounced. The sucker was going to break up. "Come on. That half is going to go." He began climbing the steepening slope of the fore half. Silent and Darling scrambled after him.

Another explosion. Silent lost his footing. Darling grabbed a treelike organ with one hand, caught him with the other. She hoisted him to his feet.

"That ain't no woman," Bomanz muttered. "Not like I ever saw."

The rear half of the windwhale began falling faster than the front half. Secondary explosions hurled comets of whale flesh into the teeth of the night. Cursing monotonously, Bomanz continued his scramble away from disaster-every second wondering why he bothered.

The fear began to come, feeding on his helplessness. His talents were of no avail. He could do nothing but run from the conquering fire till there was nowhere left to flee.

Yet another explosion ripped and wrenched the windwhale. Bomanz fell. Below, the aft half of the monster tore free and fell away, the whole enveloped in flames. The rest of the windwhale bobbed violently, trying to return to horizontal. It yawed and rolled while it bobbed. The old sorcerer hung on. And cursed.

A whimper caught his ear.

Not five feet away he saw the glowing eyes of an infant manta. When the windwhale fragment began to stabilize he crawled thither. "They forget you, little fellow? Come on out here."

The kit hissed and spat and tried to use its lightning. It could generated no more than a spark. Bomanz dragged it out into the moonlight. "You are a tiny one, aren't you? No wonder they missed you." The kit was no bigger than a half-grown cat. It could not be more than a month old. Bomanz cradled the infant in the crook of his left arm. It ceased struggling almost immediately. It seemed content to be held.

The old wizard resumed his journey.

The windwhale had become as stable as it could. Bomanz eased nearer the side. He looked down just in time to see the other half hit ground.

Silent and Darling joined him. As always their faces were emotionless masks, one dusky, one pale. Silent stared down at the earth. Darling seemed more interested in the baby manta. Bomanz said, "Under two thousand feet now. but that's still a long way to fall. And there's still that to concern us."

That meant the small fires still burning back where the rear half had broken away. One of those could reach another gas bladder any minute.

"We should get as far forward as we can and hope for the best." He tried to sound more hopeful than he felt.

Silent nodded.

Bomanz looked around. The monastery was burning merrily, fired by the fire-eater. So that had worked, some. But when he listened the right way he could sense a knot of rage and pain seething amidst the flames.

The Limper had survived again.

And his scheme had worked some, too.

XXVII.

I had a hard time believing it. Raven had given up. His hip must have hurt a lot more than he wanted to admit.

He had not moved since he had gone down, and hadn't said nothing since his body beat down his will. I think he was ashamed.

I really wished the son of a b.i.t.c.h would figure out that he didn't have to be a superman. I wasn't going to make him stop being my buddy because he was human.

I was as wiped out as he was but I could not lay down and die. That show up around the monastery was getting flashier all the time. In fact, some of the fireworks was headed our way. That made me too nervous to c.r.a.p out, though even my toenails were tired.

Another blast. A rose of fire bloomed in the sky. A big hunk of something started falling, spinning off smaller hunks of fire.

I realized what I was seeing.

"Raven, you better get your a.s.s up and look at this mother."

He grunted but he didn't do it.

"It's a windwhale, a.s.shole. Out of the Plain of Fear. What do you think of that?" I saw a couple get wiped during the big bloodletting up to the Barrowland.

"So it seems."

Mr. Ambition had rolled over. His voice was cool but his face was fishbelly white, like he'd stepped around a corner and b.u.mped noses with Old Man Death.

"So how come it's here?" Then I shut up. I'd imagined up a reason.

"Not for me, kid. Who on the Plain would know where to look for me? Who would care?"

"Then...?"

"It's the battle of the Barrowland, still going on. It's the tree G.o.d head-to-head with whatever I felt breaking loose up there."

Light flashed. Fire busted out of one end of the part of the windwhale that was still up. "That thing isn't going to stay up there much longer. Should we go see if we can do something?"

He didn't say anything for at least a minute. He looked up at the humpbacked hills like he was thinking maybe he had enough left to go catch Croaker after all. He couldn't be more than five, ten miles away, could he? Then he levered himself to his feet, wincing, obviously favoring his bad hip. I didn't ask. I knew he'd claim it was just the chill air and cold ground.

He told me, "Better get the horses. I'll drag our stuff together."

Big job you took on yourself there, old buddy, since we basically just dropped in our tracks when we couldn't go anymore.

Since he didn't have much to do he mostly just stood there watching that flying disaster cross the sky. He looked like he was being asked to mount the gallows and put the noose around his own neck.

"I've been thinking, Case," Raven said as we came down off the knee of the most northerly of those goofy humped hills, headed northeast, chasing that drifting windwhale fragment.

"Brooding is the word I would have picked, old buddy. And you been at it since the day they finally put the Dominator down. Looks like that explosion a while back was the last one."

The fragment was drifting on a course that would intercept ours. A few fires flickered on one end. It was turning end for end slowly but had stopped its fall.

"Maybe. But you say something definite like that, the G.o.ds will stick it to you. Let's just hope it clears the woods. Be rough landing in there."

"What were you thinking?"

"About you and me, Croaker and his gang, the Lady, Silent, Darling. About all the things we had in common but still couldn't get along."

"I didn't see all that much you had in common. Not once you got past having the same enemies."

"Neither did I for a long time. And none of them saw it, either. Else we all might have tried a little harder." I tried to look like I gave a s.h.i.t at three in the morning. "Basically we're all lonely, unhappy people looking for our place, Case. Loners who'd really rather not be but don't know how. When we get to the door that would let us in-or out-we can't figure out how to work the latch string."

I'll be d.a.m.ned. That was about as open-up-and-expose-what's-inside a remark as I ever got out of him. Filled with longing and conviction. Well shave my head and call me Baldy. I been right up here beside him since a couple years ago. You don't see the changes going on in people when you're standing up close.

This wasn't the Raven I'd first met, before his ego and misadventure had gotten his soul trapped among the shadow evils of the Barrowland, before its cleansing. He had returned from the prison of the heart dramatically altered. h.e.l.l, he wasn't even the same man who had spent all his time drunk on his a.s.s in Oar, neither.

I had kind of mixed feelings. I'd admired and liked and gotten along pretty good with the old Raven. Maybe I would again once he got through his transition. I did not know what to say to him, though I was sure he wanted a response. His knack for befuddling me never changed. "So did you figure out how to work it?"

"I have an unsettling premonition, Case. I'm almost paralyzed by a dread that I'm about to find out if I've learned anything." He stared at that piece of windwhale.

I checked it, guessed it was about two miles away and five hundred feet up. The breeze was bringing it to us.

"We going to chase it back into the hills if it carries that far?"

"You tell me, Case. This was your idea." He paused to whisper to his horse. The animals were not excited about hiking around at night either. Even if they didn't have to carry anybody.

Flame mushroomed out of the windwhale. Before the roar of the explosion reached us, I said, "We're not going to have to worry about climbing any hills."

The windwhale came down fast, turning end for end. When it was about two hundred feet off the ground some chunks fell off and it stopped coming down so fast. I had a pretty good idea where it would hit. We hurried toward the spot.

Then what was left nosed down, sped up, and hit the ground about a mile away. It bounced back into the air, maybe a hundred feet high. It kept coming, straight at us now.

At the peak of its bounce it exploded again.

It bounced two more times before it stayed down and just slid to a stop.

"Be careful," Raven said. "There might be more explosions." Fires still burned on the windwhale. Somewhere inside it was making a noise like somebody beating on the granddaddy of all ba.s.s drums.

I said, "It ain't dead yet. Look there." The end of a tentacle lay just a couple yards from me. It was jumping around like a snake with a toothache.

"Unh. Let's hobble the horses."

Excited all to h.e.l.l, Raven was. Like he spent his whole life hanging around windwhales so close he could smell their bad breath. And this one had that all over.

I caught something in the firelight. "Hey! There's people up on top of that sucker."

"There had to be. Where?"

"There. Right over that black patch." I pointed. Some guys up there were hauling around on something.

Raven said, "Looks like somebody trying to get somebody else out from under something."

"Let's get up there and give them a hand." I left my horse unhobbled.

Raven grinned at me. "The exuberant folly of youth. Where does it go?"

I started climbing a blubbery, stinky cliff. He went looking for a bush to tie the horses to, that being easier than messing with hobbles. I was halfway to the top before he started after me.

The flesh of the windwhale was sort of spongy and definitely smelly, with the odor of burned flesh added. The flesh trembled with pain and failing life. Such a n.o.ble monster. I wanted to cry for it.

"Raven! Hurry up! There's three of them up here and a big fire burning back there."

Right then there was a baby explosion. It knocked me down. Gobs of fire splattered the ground. Some of the dry gra.s.s caught.

There would be trouble if that spread.

By the time Raven dragged his carca.s.s up I had the woman across my shoulders and the old man, who was the only one on his feet, was tying her so she wouldn't slide off. Finished, the old boy whipped around and starting trying to drag a frondlike piece of windwhale off somebody else.