Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.) Page 22

  Corisand gave him a look filled with sympathy and understanding. ‘Just remove the tethers from the Wizard mounts, and let them roam free. I’ve told them to stay here, in this clearing by the lake. They have plenty of water and grazing, and the trees will shelter them. Athina assured me that enough of her influence would linger in this place to protect them from thieves and predators – including those accursed ferals, with their taste for horseflesh.’

  ‘I hope she was right,’ Iriana said with a frown. ‘I hate to leave them, but we can’t take them with us when the flying spell will only work on the Xandim.’

  ‘We’ll come back for them,’ Corisand assured her. ‘Never fear.’

  Their voices faded away to silence as Dael walked towards the trees. The sun was already rising, hidden by the leafy canopy that surrounded the clearing. When he had reached the forest’s edge, he turned back and waited, his eyes fixed on the elegant tower that soared above its island on the lake. All at once, a finger of sunlight streaked down through the trees and fell upon the tower. For an instant the whole building glowed as bright as molten gold – then it shimmered, wavered as if it had been its own rippled reflection in the lake, and diffused into a cloud of golden mist. The haze obscured the entire isle for a moment, then drifted away to leave – nothing. No garden. No tower. Just a bare, rocky island dotted with a handful of bushes and stunted trees.

  Dael hid his face in his hands, but just as sorrow rose up like a dark tide to overwhelm him, he had a sudden vision of Athina, seen in his mind’s eye, yet as clear and vivid as if she was really standing there before him. Though she said nothing, the warm glow of her love reached out to envelop him, he felt the gentle touch of her hand upon his face, and he knew, knew for certain, that one day they would be together again. Though the vision vanished, that phantom caress remained with him, like a benison, like a promise, and he felt comforted and whole as he had not been since she left. It would be all right.

  He had no idea how she’d done it, but with the tower’s passing Athina had left a farewell for him, and an inestimable gift. Dael had stopped being afraid. He no longer saw himself as a victim, helpless in the hands of fate and those beings more powerful than he. He was not an inferior, but someone with an important part to play in the events to come. He would forge ahead, do his duty, and help the Wizard and the Windeye achieve their aims. Then, if they succeeded at last, they might think of a way to help him to find his own heart’s desire.

  There was no point in standing there looking at the dreadful vacancy where the tower had been. It was time to let it go into the past and the treasure chest of happy memories, and look to the future. Dael turned away from the lake, went to find the horses. He set the Wizards’ mounts free with a farewell pat, and saddled the Xandim mare. She was reluctant to leave her new companions, but he took a firm hold of her bridle and led her out of the woodland and across to where the Wizard and the Windeye waited. When he came within earshot, he realised that he had not been the only one who had been reminded of their losses when the tower vanished.

  ‘It’s as if another link with him had been broken,’ Iriana was saying, ‘but I refuse to believe that Avithan has gone for good.’

  ‘Athina did say that she’d do everything in her power to get him back to you – and she has a lot of power at her disposal.’ Corisand laid a hand on her friend’s arm in a gesture that Dael found essentially female. It was hard, seeing her now, to remember that she had spent most of her life as a horse.

  ‘There’s one thing: Avithan won’t let her stop trying. Not for a single instant. When he really wants something, he just refuses to be shaken. He grits his teeth and digs his heels in, until finally the opposition – whether it be flesh and blood or merely adverse circumstances – crumbles away in the face of his stubbornness.’ Iriana’s fond smile included Dael as he came up to them. ‘Neither Avithan nor Athina are the sort to give up – and neither are the three of us. One step at a time, we’ll all get where we’re going.’

  ‘Then let’s take that first step,’ said Corisand decisively. ‘Dael, we’ll get you settled on Rosina first, before I make the change.’

  They tied blankets for all three of them, rolled together in a single bundle, behind Rosina’s saddle, and packed her saddlebags with provisions, balancing her load carefully. When all was ready, Corisand took herself off a little way apart from the others and stood very still for a moment, a frown of rapt concentration on her face. Around her neck pulsed the emerald radiance of the Stone of Fate, so vivid and bright that it penetrated the small leather bag that held it, as though the hide had suddenly become transparent, revealing the beauty and power of the gem within.

  But Dael had seen the Fialan before. What was happening to Corisand was far more interesting. Wide-eyed, he watched as her outline began to shift, to blur, to grow. Her limbs thickened and elongated as she dropped to all fours, on fingers that had suddenly fused into hooves. The clothes she wore, linen, wool and leather, became smooth grey dappled hide. As for her neck and head . . . Dael swallowed hard. He could take what was happening to her body in his stride, but so much of her character, her individuality, herself was concentrated in her face that his stomach churned to see her features alter, her head elongate and her human expression vanish. Her ears, black-tipped and elegantly tapered, moved up to the top of her head, and her eyes, now large, round and lustrous, shifted round to the sides. Finally, the unsettling transformation was over and, where a small, wiry, dark-haired human had stood, there was now a large grey horse with clean, strong limbs, a powerful arched neck and a long black, flowing mane and tail.

  Dael shivered. At some point in the transition, he had unconsciously taken Iriana’s hand, or she had taken his, he had no idea which. Now he looked across at her and saw the same disturbing thought that was in his mind reflected on her face.

  It was as though the human Corisand had never existed at all.

  Then the great grey horse trotted over, poked Iriana with its nose, and broke the spell. The Wizard laughed. ‘Corisand says that while she was shifting we were gaping like a pair of baby birds. She wants to know whether we plan to stand here all day, and suggests we finish loading her and get on our way, before we all die of old age.’

  Dael grinned and bowed to the Windeye. ‘I beg your pardon for staring, Corisand. In both your human and horse forms you’re extremely beautiful – but the bit in between? I’m not so sure.’

  Corisand regarded him solemnly for a moment – then put out a long, wet tongue and swiped it up and over his face from chin to eyebrows.

  ‘Ugh!’ Dael spluttered and hastily wiped his face on his sleeve. Corisand let out a long, low whinny that sounded like a snicker, and Iriana sat down on the grass beside Melik and simply rocked with laughter.

  After a short time they collected themselves, and completed their preparations. Though she had did not have a saddle, Corisand had a bag of rations and spare warm clothing to carry as well as a rider, and even Melik had not been forgotten in the preparations. Though he rode quite happily, perched in front of Iriana while they were riding normally, with their feet on the ground, he didn’t have far to jump if he lost his balance. She was worried about him falling off when they were in midair, however. If there should be some sort of mishap, the results would be unthinkable. Iriana had put him into Seyka’s old carrying basket with the lid fastened firmly in place with a leather strap, and hung it on one side of Corisand’s withers, balancing it with the food bag on the other side.

  Finally they were ready; there were no more preparations to make. Iriana, sharing Corisand’s vision now that Melik was safely shut in his basket, gave Dael a leg-up into Rosina’s saddle and helped him to get settled. He did his best to relax, sitting and holding the reins as he had been taught. He could only hope to deceive the horse into thinking that he was competent, for he certainly wasn’t fooling himself.

  Corisand positioned herself by a large rock on the lake shore, so that Iriana could clamber up and mount that
way. As they returned to stand beside Rosina, the Wizard called out to Dael. ‘Corisand says there’ll be a lurch as you leave the ground, so hang on tightly to the saddle. Falling off is definitely not a good option after that point.’

  ‘What about you, Iriana?’ he replied. ‘You don’t even have a saddle.’

  The Wizard grimaced. ‘Don’t remind me. I have the strap that’s holding the baggage in place, I’ll have to make do with that – and of course Corisand’s solemn promise that she won’t let me fall.’ She took a deep breath. ‘She says she’s ready to start the spell now, so here we go.’

  Dael felt the power blazing from Corisand as she cast the magic around herself and Iriana, like a radiant starfall which swirled and spiralled outwards to include Rosina. Dael gritted his teeth and knotted his fingers in the reins, fighting the urge to shrink away, or even run, as the spell engulfed him, pulsing in time with his heartbeat and setting a vibrant tingling throughout his body. All at once he felt lighter, almost as though he could float out of the saddle and take to the air of his own accord – an alarming sensation that made him snatch nervously at the front of the saddle and hold on tight.

  Then suddenly Corisand sped forward and took a mighty leap into the sky, accompanied by a wild yell from Iriana that might have been either alarm or excitement. Rosina snatched at the bit and raced after her companion and, without warning, gave an almighty bound that never landed but took her into the air, leaving Dael’s stomach on the ground behind her – or so it felt. He screwed his eyes tight shut as terror burst through him, but after a moment or two, when he felt more secure and it became clear that nothing terrible was going to happen, he opened them to find the world was suddenly at his feet.

  Far below him the forest stretched, a vast ocean of trees that reached far ahead until it lapped around the skirts of the northern mountains. The air felt cold, crisp and clean against his face and its song, as it whistled past his ears, was the only sound he could hear. Though Dael still clutched the edge of the saddle with a white-knuckled grip, it was simply a reflex now, rather than the fear he’d felt when they had taken off. Filled with the exhilaration of the flight, he had forgotten to be afraid. To see the world spread out below him in all its immense grandeur made him feel as though he ruled it all, as though it was his own personal plaything.

  For an instant his mind flashed back to the time before Athina had rescued him, when he had fallen from the nets of the Phaerie slavecatchers and been lost in the forest. He remembered struggling on stumbling feet through every treacherous, perilous mile; starving, injured, exhausted, lost, terrified and absolutely without hope.

  And just look at me now, riding the skies in lordly splendour like the Wild Hunt themselves! Look at me, not a slave any longer, but a friend and companion to these marvellous, magical beings, the Wizard and the Windeye. I’m useful, I’m wanted. I belong. My life is better than I ever dreamed it could be. I can make a difference, and help to free another race of slaves. What more could I ask?

  ‘Athina,’ whispered a small, sad voice inside his mind, but Dael, for once, chose to ignore it. What was done was done. For a little while he would put away those thoughts of loss and sorrow, and simply enjoy the glory of this wild ride through the skies.

  The sun had passed the zenith when they finally saw the broad, glinting line that was the Carnim river that marked the boundary of the Phaerie realm, and all of them were growing weary. They had landed once, briefly, to give Dael and Iriana a chance to get out of the saddle and stretch their legs, and permit Corisand to relax for a short while from the pressure of continual concentration on her flying spell. They wasted no time, however, and soon were on their way once more, sipping from their water flasks and chewing trail rations as they flew.

  They followed the shining path of the Carnim for another hour or so, until finally, on the northern bank, the land reared up into a low range of craggy hills, their surfaces too rocky and steep for trees or anything other than weeds and small shrubs to gain a foothold. As the companions swooped down towards the rugged eminences, they saw the river change colour to mark the confluence of the Carnim and the Snowstream. For a few hundred yards, until they were churned together by the swirling currents, the conjoined torrents looked as though the two separate rivers ran side by side in the same bed, with the Snowstream’s opalescent blue-green glacier melt running alongside the Carnim’s turbid flow, stained brown with silt and tannins from the trees.

  Following the oddly bicoloured river upstream, they saw the canyon slicing down through the hills to channel the northern river into its broader counterpart. The Snowstream poured, surging and foaming, through the constricting rocky gates of the gorge as the two horses swooped down and entered the narrow defile. The sun never reached the bottom of this gloomy crevice. Ferns grew in profusion in every cranny of the damp rock, and swags of bramble and ivy snaked down from the clifftops on either side to hang in tangled, thorny curtains that dripped with moisture. Looming like a threat, the echoing walls of rock reared up on either side of them, and the roar of the river reverberated in the enclosed space until their ears were ringing. A cold, dank wind blew into their faces, carrying the faintly metallic tang of wet stone.

  Iriana shuddered. ‘This is a horrible place.’

  ‘You should try it with the hearing of a horse,’ Corisand replied. ‘I think my head is about to explode. Couldn’t Taine have found a less unpleasant location for a hideout?’

  Iriana shrugged. ‘Maybe he could, but this place is safer, I suspect. Who would linger here long enough to find a cave, unless they were absolutely desperate?’

  ‘Well, for safety’s sake we can put up with a bit of unpleasantness, but I hope we won’t have to stay here too long.’

  The cave was indeed well hidden. Taine had described its location as being within a mile of the confluence, on the eastern side of the ravine, yet it took over an hour of flying up and down this part of the canyon, carefully examining every cranny and shadow, before the companions finally found the opening, several hundred yards from the mouth of the ravine and about two-thirds of the way up the cliff face.

  Dael was the one who finally spotted it, tucked away in the shadowy niche behind a jutting projection, partially obscured by ferns and a tangle of ropy, thorny bramble briers that cascaded down the precipice from the forest above. He was never sure what drew his gaze to the spot – he had passed it a dozen or more times already – but this time, approaching from a slightly different height and angle, his eye was caught by a deeper patch of darkness amid the shadows.

  ‘Hold on,’ he yelled, straining his voice to be heard above the roar of the river. ‘I think I see it!’ With Corisand’s help he managed to manoeuvre Rosina across to the right place, and pushed aside the overhanging greenery. ‘Ow! If this is the right place, we’re going to have to be careful of these brambles.’

  ‘It must be the right place,’ said Iriana, sharing Corisand’s vision as the tangled vines were thrust aside and a dark void was revealed behind them. ‘Well done, Dael. You have my eternal gratitude. I was sick and tired of flying up and down this accursed canyon.’

  In an awkward, lurching move which had him almost tumbling out of the saddle, Dael managed to scramble across into the cave mouth. They had come prepared with lanterns taken from Athina’s tower, and he lit one now. ‘I’ll take a look inside,’ he said. ‘If this is the right cave, I’ll come straight back and tell you.’ As Dael stepped into the dark opening, he was pleased to note how brave he sounded.

  The cave, its dark stone walls glittering in the lamplight, turned out to be little more than a narrow tunnel that went back into the cliff for about thirty feet. It then split, with a branching cave on the right-hand side, the remnants of another passageway that had been blocked at its far end by a fall of rock, leaving a chamber about nine or ten feet on a side. Although the walls near the entrance still carried the dampness of the canyon, the further in Dael went the moisture grew less and less until, by the time he rea
ched the branching cavern, the walls were perfectly dry. The ceiling began from a low place, about six feet high, not far inside the entrance, then gained another foot or two at the far end of the cavern. The floor was rock, fairly uneven, but smooth enough for them to get Rosina inside without much trouble.

  Dael hurried out to the others with a grin on his face. ‘Looks like the place all right.’ A brilliant smile broke out across the Wizard’s face, and even the Windeye lifted her weary drooping head and pricked her ears.

  With Corisand pushing and Dael tugging on her bridle, Rosina was finally persuaded to enter, and Dael led her along to the far end of the straight section, where he hobbled her so that she could not turn round and go back to the entrance. Unfortunately, the ceiling was too low for Iriana to enter the cave while still mounted on Corisand, even if the Wizard tried to lie very flat along the Windeye’s neck to avoid hitting her head on the roof. Instead, the Windeye brought Iriana right up to the very mouth of the cave and hovered there, as close as she could to the lip of rock at the entrance, while Dael put out a helping hand to steady Iriana as she scrambled across, using Corisand’s vision to see where to put her feet. Once she was safely inside, Corisand followed. Dael removed her saddlebags and Melik’s basket and, while Iriana freed her cat, the Windeye changed back into her human form.

  She clapped Dael on the shoulder. ‘Well done, Dael. Had it not been for your keen eyes, we might have been flying up and down that accursed canyon all day.’ She grinned at him. ‘Just for that, you win the prize.’

  ‘What’s the prize?’

  Corisand chuckled. ‘Iriana and I will make dinner tonight.’