At the center of the seven lens-beams, Pip could hear Ysabet’s shout, and it could feel her wrenched hand pulling back from the golden haze, but its own six legs were trembling under the sheer weight of the crowd inside the fourth stone.
Ten thousand real human beings had lived that afternoon because Azhrak had linked the valley. Their relief was not faked by temple scribes or carved into an empty monument; mothers holding wet infants in the reeds, old weavers pulled from burning carts, terrified boys whose militia pikes had not broken—all of them were pouring their love into the center of the circle, begging the small creature on the flagstones to accept the thirty-foot body of light and be their shield again.
Pip’s moisture-sensitive antlers twitched upward as the giant golden crown tried to settle down onto its horn. How could a creature refuse ten thousand people thanking it for their lives?
Then Ashaun stepped past Ysabet’s staff.
She did not crouch behind the parapet or shield her eyes from the glare. With her translucent stone left forearm held across her stomach and her unarmored shoulders squared under her padded wool gambeson, Ashaun walked straight across the frost-split flagstones into the blinding golden marsh of the projection.
