It was like part of some nightmarish dream to see that beneath and behind her lay groveling bodies of those who would have stayed her passage; that the blade of her once gleaming sword now glinted with the bright crimson of death. But it was a joyous dream—for she was over the portal, through the barrier. Just a few more strides of the frightened doe, now, and she would be safe within the forest.
If—she glanced back over her shoulder. If one of those now springing from the camp did not succeed in snaring her brain once again with that green ray. Or if—but Meg did not want to think about that other more ruthless weapon.
Her deft hands guided Nessa right ... then left ... a zigzag path to spoil the dwarfling's aim. Once air hissed and crackled beside her head as a burst of cherry-flame just missed her, flashed by to cinder a huge tree instantly into a withered, massive twig. Her nostrils caught the stench of scorched hair, and Nessa whimpered piteously—but the doe's hoofbeats never faltered.
Once again Meg's brain spun with a brief moment of dizziness; she found herself thinking how pale and lovely was the sunset—and knew, instantly, that the green ray had found her. She ducked her head with a last conscious gesture, and was rewarded by feeling sense flood back like a cleansing tide.
And then green branches were whipping across her face, her fair skin was slashed with the hungry clutch of forest brambles—but she did not feel their hurt. Joy rose in her heart, joy like the glory of the newborn moon. Free! Free to find aid for her Clanswomen!
Free to—
At the last moment she saw it! Saw it and screamed a sharp cry to Nessa. The trained doe obeyed that cry, but both Meg and the deer were powerless before the eternal force that bore them onward—the force of gravitation.
For that which Meg, too late, had seen, was a patch of green soil too fresh, too even, to match the surrounding earth. Even as Nessa's scrambling feet struggled vainly for security, even as Meg felt herself pitching headlong and helpless from the doe's back, she knew that Daiv—gone, now, forever—had been right in cursing the traps with which her Clan destroyed the Wild Ones.
It was one of these traps that now, in her moment of triumph, had destroyed her!