This time he found it harder to control his panic. He beat his de-feathered wings frantically, but without the means to caress the air they could not hold him aloft. DareWing tried to imagine new feathers sprouting along his wings, but he could not hold the image, and he fell through the air towards the ground.
DareWing closed his eyes, and prepared to embrace it. The ground would not harm him, for he did not fear it. He could exist without flight, he had already proved it...
The sound of a choir filled the air, and, distracted, Sheol let her magic waver.
Suddenly DareWing found himself soaring again, his wings whole, and he grinned. "Sheol!" he cried.
"Do you like the music?"
And he started to sing himself. It was no enchantment, and had no inherent magic, and no real meaning in its words. Its enchantment and power lay in the emotions it caused to well up in the breasts of both singers and listeners.
It was a song all Icarii sang when they celebrated a particularly blessed event — a marriage of a well-loved friend, or the birth of a child after a difficulty-fraught labour.
It was called Freedom Flight.
Feather drifting
Skyway beckoning
Freedom flight Never
ending.
Sun is burning Crest
is rising Wings are
arching Soul is
soaring.
Child seeded Hands
uniting Friendship
laughing Love
triumphant.
Feather drifting
Skyway beckoning
Freedom flight Never
ending.
Sheol's eyes widened. "Think that will hurt me?"
DareWing grinned yet more, and waved at the choir behind him, floating in the thermals rising from the black peaks below.
Their singing doubled, if not in volume, then in intensity.
Many among the Icarii were crying with the strength of their emotion — with the strength of their joy.
Sheol hissed, and wriggled back a little. "You cannot hurt me with that!"
"No?" whispered DareWing. "No? What would happen, Sheol, if I could make you sing a verse?
Hmm? Would you like to try? Now, come on. You have heard enough to know the words, surely.
Come, sing with me ... Feather drifting, Skyway beckoning..."
DareWing flew towards her with a hand outstretched. "Come ... Freedom flight, Never ending.'"
She snarled, and wriggled further away. "Think that pitiful song will destroy me?"
No, maybe not, DareWing thought, but it is a step in the right direction. And then hope did consume him, and he knew beyond any doubt that DragonStar would find the way to defeat these Demons.
"Get.you gone, Sheol," DareWing snapped, "for you are not welcome here in these wastes."
She stared, not knowing what to do, wondering if somehow this entire episode was meant to be a preamble to one of the preordained challenges, and, if so, what she should do about it. Then, fortuitously, Qeteb touched her mind.
Come back! Come back! We have a visitor.
"Fool!" Sheol shot at DareWing as a form of goodbye, then she flowed her form back into that of the winged serpent, and retreated back south.
Chapter 19
