Emerald and Crystal-Fire

She could hear him down below - walking, by the sound of it - singing a Te Deum as he went, and singing it remarkably well.plenilune
It is time for Katie's monthly snippets program.  Unfortunately I spent almost all of last month focusing on a single scene so I feel as if I don't have much to show you unless I dump the whole scene on you.  Which you would love for me to do and which I will not do.  I've also got to the point where I skim over documents looking for snippets, come across a really good one, and suddenly wonder - "Didn't I post that already?"

August Snip-Whippets
Malbrey’s horse, a skittish, angry white mare he called Pearl, was beginning to stoop in front of her, starting the sharp, winding descent toward Glassdale. Her own leggy grey, moving like an ill-omened shadow among the uncertain pine-light, felt like a rock under her: every jump and jar and skitter on the steep road, barely cushioned by saddle and muscle, made her pelvic bones jangle as if she had dropped them on a shingly shoreline.Plenilune
She could see Aikin and Brand riding out together, Brand looking like a shard of sunlight and Aikin with his dark hair spiked and dyed red at the ends. Plenilune
Feeling more than ever alone, cold in the wide freedom of Capys’ steep fell country that seemed to mock her fiercely like the flash of the fox’s white teeth, Margaret tugged her surcoat close at the throat and turned her face toward the overlook where, through the pine trunks, through the heavy silver mists and latent banks of snow, through the flicker of crow-wing, she could see Glassdale below. For a moment she became confused, her mare jostling her thoughts out of order; as if she were stumbling out of waking into a brief dream she thought she was seeing, not Glassdale, but a fresh waking view of the Cumbrian fells that knelt their knees down to the earth by Aylesward in England.Mother… Father…But then a blue-jay screamed overhead and the dream ripped away like cobwebs and it was Glassdale again. The memory of England was darkened by the ugly shadow of dissention and strife that still hung around her memory of her family. Glassdale, bright as an emerald and crystal-fire, was the thing that left her aching under her breastbone. Plenilune
"They are men hard to swallow.""And sooth! they taste of fire and iron."Plenilune
“Time runs into the well at the world’s end, gentlemen: we cannot keep Plenilune from her overlord forever.”Plenilune
A thick, strangling feeling was beginning in her throat, a painful stabbing of tears behind her eyes. She pitied herself, she pitied Plenilune, but she also pitied Skander for he must be thinking poignantly that he was responsible for what was to become of her. For his sake she tried valiantly to fight past the coarseness in her throat.Plenilune
...Rupert, etched as with stone, head upflung, put back his lips and showed her his teeth as if he could feel her between them and, like a wild animal, was savouring the moment before he ground her in his jaws. Plenilune
“Art in my way!” Rupert barked. “Play no black marble, dragon games with me, old mother, for I am in no mood to be gentle.”Plenilune
Her words filled Margaret with dread and a rush of blood like the scent of the last victory. She was not aware that she was not breathing. She was aware of Rupert’s face, cold, white, fixed, as close to a kind of horror as he would let himself appear with Malbrey right beside him. He parted his lips—he had clenched them—then tucked them together again, resisting the urge to touch his tongue to them. His hand lifted from the reins and stole out, silently, purposefully. The thing in his face, in his eyes, surfacing like a nightmare Margaret had pressed beneath pillows and suffocated, was clear and awful and chilling. But the woman was unmoved. She looked back into that face and smiled a little, an odd, dark softness in her ancient eyes. For a moment, wrapped against the cold in shadow and sunlight and a cloak flecked with the colours of a grouse’s wing, she looked purely beautiful.Plenilune
"Come on, you need some wine. You look peaky." "And you?" He turned to her, having stepped back into the light of his tent, and held out his hand: it was shaking visibly.Plenilune
"I do not know perdition as you do."Plenilune