Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.)

by Maggie Furey

  Then a shriek, loud enough to be heard over the screaming of the storm, drew his eyes upwards. Through streaming eyes he saw the titanic forces snatch at Incondor, hurling him like a stone from a slingshot, tumbling him over and over in the air like an autumn leaf. Once more he shrieked hideously, and Yinze saw his wings crumple like paper as the dreadful forces snapped the delicate bones like kindling. Then the gale hammered down like a fist, smashing the winged man into the harsh rocks of the pass.

  He was dead. He had to be. Yinze rushed forward, sick with horror, but Kea was faster, and knelt over the broken, bloodied form. ‘Don’t move him,’ she said. ‘He’s still breathing, but he’s smashed up so badly . . . We need a healer here.’ Wildly she looked around for their bearers, but they had all suffered the same fate as she would have done had Yinze not protected her, with the wind catching their wings and bowling them over. They had been scattered further down the pass, and even now were picking themselves up and limping back, their flesh covered in cuts and abrasions, and already darkening with bruises. Two of them, it was clear, had dragging, damaged wings; another was bleeding from a jagged tear in his scalp, and yet another needed help from his comrades to walk.

  Kea beckoned to them. ‘Are any of you fit to fly?’ Parea and Incondor’s friend Milvus were the first to step forward. ‘Then return to Aerillia as fast as you can, and fetch help,’ the winged girl told them. ‘We’ll try to keep Incondor alive until you get back.’

  Sick with dismay, Yinze dropped to the ground beside Kea. While they had been working on the harp they had become adept at melding their two very different sorts of power, and now, as she laid her hand gently on the winged man’s breast, he put his own hand over hers, lending her his energy and magic to help hold his enemy to life. Nearby, the harp lay on the ground, as mangled and shattered as Incondor’s wings, and the Wizard felt a stab of anger at the waste, the destruction. Surely this disaster must spell the end for all his hopes and plans?

  Queen Pandion looked down at Incondor, her expression very grave. The healers had cleaned him up as best they could, and straightened his broken limbs, holding them in place with casts of stiffened rawhide, but even Yinze, who knew little about healing, was sure that even if the winged man survived, he would be hopelessly crippled and would never fly again. He felt sick and sorry and, even though he had not initiated the confrontation, his stomach was knotted with guilt.

  ‘Come,’ the Queen said, and motioned the Wizard and Kea from the room. The corridors of the palace were hushed and empty around the sickroom, apart from the swift, padding tread of the healers going back and forth. Pandion led the way into another chamber, where food and liafa were set out on a table. Outside, the sun had set, and the room was growing dark. ‘Sit,’ she said wearily. ‘Rest. Neither of you have eaten anything all day.’

  Gratefully, Yinze sank down onto a stool, and took a sip of liafa sweetened with honey, wincing at the sting from his bruised mouth where Incondor had hit him. The hot liquid was both comforting and reviving, but his stomach still revolted at the thought of food.

  ‘Have the healers looked at you, Yinze?’ Pandion asked.

  ‘It’s not important,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It is important. Get those scrapes and bruises treated, Wizard. Cyran would never forgive me if I sent you home in that state. I already feel guilty that one of my own subjects should have caused such damage.’

  ‘Your Majesty, I’m sorry,’ Yinze blurted. ‘I’m just so dreadfully sorry. All these months of keeping the peace with Incondor, then I failed the final test.’

  ‘That you are sorry says a great deal for your character, but as far as I am concerned, you have absolutely no reason to feel guilty,’ Pandion said firmly. ‘I have spoken to your bearers, and Kea, and Incondor’s companions. It seems clear to me that the blame lies with him. He initiated the confrontation. He struck the first blow, his friends threatened Kea’s life, and he stole and destroyed your harp, almost destroying himself in the process.’

  Her eyes went once again to Yinze’s battered face. ‘I will speak with Archwizard Cyran, and make it clear that no blame is attached to you for this regrettable incident. Nevertheless, I feel that you should return home as soon as possible. Our physicians have suggested that I send Incondor with you, to see what the healers of Tyrineld can salvage, for his injuries are beyond our skills.’

  ‘So they think he’ll live?’ Relief washed over the Wizard.

  ‘Our healers believe they can hold him to life – but he will be terribly crippled. But the Wizards, with their Earth magic, are far more adept at healing than we. Perhaps the damage can at least be minimised.’

  The terrible fear that Incondor would die, that had haunted him over the last few hours, finally subsided, leaving Yinze weak and shaking. When the Queen spoke again, he saw sympathy in her eyes. ‘Be comforted, my children,’ she said, looking from Kea’s tear-stained face to Yinze’s pale and battered one. ‘As I said, this tragedy was not your fault. It was my duty to keep you safe while you were here, Yinze, and because I failed you have been injured, and all of your hard work of these last months has been destroyed by one of my subjects. Crombec is repairing the structure of your broken harp – all that remains for you is to imbue it with your magic once more. But is there any way in which I can make recompense?’

  The Wizard was stunned. Despite his involvement in the tragedy, the Queen was apologising to him. Enough guilt still lingered to make that seem very wrong. ‘Your Majesty, I don’t deserve . . .’

  ‘I mean it,’ Pandion insisted. ‘The honour of the Skyfolk, of Aerillia, is at stake here. I ask again, is there any way in which I can compensate you?’

  Suddenly, Yinze thought of the little white creature that had mewled in panic in Incondor’s hands. ‘Does the cub still survive?’ he asked. ‘The white cub that Incondor found? If it lives, may I be permitted to keep it? To take it home as a gift for my sister Iriana? Though she is blind, her skill with animals is unsurpassed, and if anyone can raise it, she can. I know she would love one of the great cats of the mountains.’

  Pandion looked grave. ‘Yinze, do you realise how dangerous those creatures are? How big it will grow?’

  ‘I have no fear for Iriana, Your Majesty,’ Yinze said proudly. ‘Perhaps to compensate for her blindness, she has formed a special, close connection with the minds of beasts, and has even raised and tamed one of the great eagles of the northern ranges. She would be in no danger.’

  Queen Pandion thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Very well. So be it. If the cub survives it will be yours. Such rare creatures are said by my people to bring great fortune, but after the events of this day, I doubt it greatly. May it bring better fortune to your sister.’

  She got to her feet, suddenly looking old and weary. ‘Go now. Rest. As soon as the healers say that Incondor is fit to travel, you will be going home.’

  4

  ~

  FRIENDSHIP

  It was sunset, and at last the Archwizard Cyran had reached the edge of the forest. He was bone weary after a long day of galloping across the moors, desperate to discover what disaster had befallen his ill-starred emissaries, and now, at the insistence of his escort, Nara and Baxian, who were anxious about the well-being of their horses, they had stopped to make camp. The Archwizard did not help them with their chores of setting up tents, lighting a fire and seeing to the poor, exhausted mounts. He sat alone beneath a tree, lost in dark and wretched thought. He was mourning the lost ones: those whose passing he’d felt this morning, his only son Avithan, poor blind Iriana, who had so longed for adventure, and brave Esmon, the warrior he had sent to guard them. His heart was rent by grief, remorse and guilt, and the terrible pangs of their ending would haunt him to the end of his days. He dreaded the reaction of his soulmate Sharalind. He, and no other, had sent them to their deaths. How could she ever forgive him?

  He would never forgive himself.

  All he could do was bring their bodies home, and try to disc
over what dreadful fate had befallen them. He clenched his fists. If the Phaerie had been responsible for Avithan’s death, he would wreak bloody war upon them such as the world had never seen. A shiver went through him as he recalled the terrible visions that had tormented him for so long – but now, instead of dread, they brought forth a feeling of resolution. If it was his fate to bring about the horrors that he had tried for so long to avoid, if all that ruin and bloodshed must be on his hands, then so be it. Justice must be done. Avithan must be avenged.

  Then, even as his mind wrapped itself in such dreadful darkness, a strange sensation swept over him. It felt like the lift of spirits that accompanied the first day of spring, the approach of dawn after a long and troubled night, a door opening to let in sunlight. It was as if the missing piece of a puzzle had clicked back into place, and without question, without doubt, he knew that one of his own had come back.

  For one heady instant Cyran thought that Avithan had returned. Then that mysterious blaze of life, that sense of an unknown presence, steadied and clarified, and he knew the truth. Emotions warred within him: amazement and disbelief that such a miracle could have happened, joy and relief that one of the young Wizards had been saved, followed swiftly by disappointment, black and bitter.

  Why Iriana? Why did she have to be the one who had survived?

  Why couldn’t it have been Avithan?

  The Archwizard hated himself for harbouring such shocking and unworthy thoughts. He had known the girl all her life, because his soulmate Sharalind had been such close friends with Iriana’s foster mother Zybina. He was very fond of her, and he admired the cleverness and courage with which she had surmounted the disadvantages of her blindness. Yet she was not, and never could be, his son, and her return could in no way compensate for the loss of Avithan.

  Cyran suddenly roused from his thoughts to see Nara and Baxian hovering expectantly, close by. From their expressions, it was plain that they too had sensed Iriana’s impossible return, and were bursting to ask him about it. He was glad they had been sensitive enough to allow him a moment to get his emotions under control. Even as Baxian opened his mouth to speak, the Archwizard held up a hand, stilling the words. ‘No, I cannot understand it either,’ he said shortly. ‘It appears that we have been vouchsafed a miracle today – yet how, why and whence has Iriana returned? Our first step must be to find her quickly, for she may need our help, and there are many questions we must ask her.’

  He rose to his feet, brushing leaf litter from his robes. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let us eat and sleep, and we will set off at dawn to start our search. There is no time to lose.’

  If the others noticed him frowning, though they had been granted such seeming good fortune, they forbore to mention it. Though Iriana had returned, she had appeared to be alone. Cyran had a right to grieve.

  The group of young Wizards left behind in Tyrineld thought of themselves as the survivors now, a change in circumstances that had left shadows of sorrow on their faces and a heaviness in their steps. Before Yinze, Chathak and Ionor had gone away, it had been their habit to meet together every evening. In the summer, their favourite place had been at the women’s house, in Thara’s lovely garden. All seven of them: Chathak, Yinze, Ionor, Iriana, Thara, Melisanda and Avithan, would sit around the long wooden table near the fountain; eating, drinking cool, sparkling starwine and endlessly talking. Somehow, no matter how many times they met like this, they never ran out of things to say, their words well seasoned with laughter and smiles. While the stars came out and the moon cast a shining silver track across the ocean they would linger, giddy with the scent of the datura flowers that glowed in the moonlight on the bush beside the wall, and watching the flickering flights of the bats as they flashed by, feeding on the moths that were attracted by the shimmering globes of magelight that Avithan suspended in the trees.

  Tonight they were together again; hopeful, perhaps, that this scene of such good memories would give them some comfort in these dark and sorrowful times, for their happy group had been fractured, and what should have been joy at their reunion after being separated for so long had been replaced by worry and sorrow. There were two spaces at the table now. Avithan and Iriana had been snatched away from them without warning, leaving them grieving, anxious and confused.

  The first death they had experienced had been that of Esmon. They had all felt it: the brief, wrenching stab of agony that all Wizards experienced at the passing of another. Chathak and his Dragon counterpart, Atka, had arrived later that same night. Because Chathak had been utterly devastated by the passing of his brother, they had been teleported to Tyrineld by a concerted effort of the Dragonfolk. Ionor, speeding through the night with the Leviathan, had reached the city the following morning with his fellow Leviathan Mage Lituya, to find out that Cyran had already left at dawn with a force of warriors to search for his son and Iriana. Then a few days later, only this morning, Yinze had arrived with Kea, in time to feel the passing of Iriana and Avithan. Though the blow had been faint and muted with distance, they had all known when their friends had left the world, and had mourned them as gone for ever.

  They were absolutely stunned when, near sunset, they felt Iriana return from death. This was something that had never happened in the history of the Wizards, and the companions’ joy in her mysterious regeneration was greatly tempered by concern. Surely no one could go through such an experience unscathed and unchanged. What would they find when they met Iriana again? One thing was for sure – she would never be the same.

  Whatever had become of Iriana, however, one thing was certain. Avithan had not come back with her, and they were grieving for the loss of a beloved brother.

  It had always been natural for the group to share their joys and triumphs, and now they did the same with their sorrow. The other Magefolk that Yinze, Chathak and Ionor had brought back with them from far-off lands all understood and respected this, and had formed a group of their own, gathering together elsewhere in the city, united in their strangeness, though they could not be physically present in the same location.

  Lituya, the Leviathan, had made his home in the quieter northern bay, away from the busy harbour. A special, heated house for Atka of the Dragonfolk had been built nearby, with a flat rooftop that could be screened from the wind, so that she could go up there to catch the sun and feed. The Skyfolk Mage Kea, having discovered an immediate rapport with Thara and Melisanda, was staying with the Wizards in Iriana’s house but, respecting her hosts’ grief, she had spent a lot of time that afternoon with Lituya and Atka, sitting on the roof of the Dragon’s new home while the Leviathan sported in the bay below, and Atka sunned herself during the daylight, and curled up in her heated quarters at sundown.

  Their conversations were, of necessity, conducted at a distance, in mindspeech, but the strangers needed such a bond. All three felt a little lonely and out of place here in Tyrineld. There had been no Archwizard Cyran to welcome them, his soulmate was closeted away, mourning the loss of Avithan, and only a scant handful of people apart from the Heads of the Luens knew of the visitors’ existence at all. The entire city seemed to be in a state of sorrow, unsettled and confused, and until Cyran came back they were simply marking time, their thoughts with their Wizard friends across the bay, for they were worried about their counterparts, who had become close friends over the past months while the Wizards had worked with them in Aerillia, in Dhiammara and beneath the ocean.

  ‘I wish we could do something to help them.’ Kea glanced down through the glass skylight at the golden dragon, cosily curled up on her bed in her heated building, and picked moodily at a piece of yellow lichen on the roof.

  ‘I agree.’ Atka lifted her great head to look up at the winged Mage above her. ‘I hate to see Chathak so devastated. He was always so cheerful and lively back in Dhiammara, but now he won’t even talk to me. I have never seen this side of him before, and I’m deeply concerned.’

  ‘His Wizard friends are worried about him too,’ Kea told her. �
�He’s acting the same way with them. It must be hard to lose a brother the way he has lost Esmon. Melisanda has been trying to get him to open up and talk about his grief, but so far without any luck.’

  ‘At least he agreed to join them tonight.’ Lituya turned over lazily in the silvery waters of the bay. ‘Maybe the tide of his feelings will turn at last. I hope so, for his sake. For my part, I could wish that Ionor had never been called back here to face such sorrow.’ He heaved a great, gusting sigh, and a fountain of spray shot up, glittering in the moonlight. ‘He was going to make an excuse, you know, so that he could have stayed with us all summer. We were so looking forward to going north with the rest of the Leviathan. Somehow, in the time he spent with us, I began to think of him more as one of us, than one of his own kind. I am sorry to lose him back to the Wizards again – and see what has become of it!’

  ‘It seems that all three of them fitted in with our own respective people,’ Kea said, thrusting away the thought of the one exception, Incondor, who even now was languishing near death within the halls of the Wizard Luen of Healers. ‘But I suppose they need to be with their own kind, though it fills my heart with sadness to think that I will be parted from Yinze when I leave here.’

  ‘Maybe we should never have come,’ Atka said suddenly. ‘Maybe it was all a mistake.’

  In mindspeech it was less easy to conceal emotion, and there was an uneasy, troubled edge to her words that set Kea’s instincts on full alert. ‘Atka? What’s wrong? Has something happened that we don’t know about?’