by Maggie Furey
‘He tried to use the Stone and failed? He must have been absolutely livid.’ Corisand’s eyes sparkled. ‘Oh, how I wish I could have seen that.’
Taku’s eyes glittered with amusement. ‘As you say. And worse was to come for the Forest Lord. The Moldai knew that the opportunity for which they had waited so long had finally come to pass. They withheld the spell of completion until the Lord of the Phaerie had met their price - the return of the Stone of Fate into their custody. He agreed, seemingly readily enough, though inside he was raging. The Stone was given back to the Moldai and placed in the custody of Ghabal, one of their most powerful magicians, also known as Steelclaw in the mundane world. He had been nominated as the one who would act as focus for the spell of completion; the one who would combine his magic with that of Hellorin in order to allow the portal to form.’
‘But Hellorin had a treacherous plan to take back the Fialan.’ Aurora’s voice grew harsh with anger. ‘Even as the portal opened and his people passed through, he tried one last, desperate act of magic to wrest back the crystal from the Moldai. The result was catastrophic. The portal spell required tremendous amounts of two differing sorts of magic - that of the Phaerie and that of the Moldai - all bound together in a delicate and precarious equilibrium of force and counter-force, and Hellorin’s additional spell shattered that balance.’
Taku’s voice was a growl. ‘The resulting explosion almost destroyed the Elsewhere, and brought death and havoc to many of its inhabitants. The worst fate, however, befell Ghabal. Since he had been using the Fialan to help Hellorin form the portal, he caught the direct recoil of the spell and was dreadfully injured. In the mundane world, his body was shattered, the living rock of the mountain peak riven and melted. Here in the Elsewhere, he suffered hideous disfigurement, and was driven hopelessly insane. Yet he managed to retain the Stone, and still holds it, to this day. All that power and potential is now in the hands of a violent, mad and unpredictable creature.’
Corisand’s mind was racing, almost too fast for her to keep up with the welter of ideas and possibilities. ‘If Ghabal has the Stone of Fate, and the Moldai can dwell in both realities, does that mean he could use it in either world?’
Taku nodded solemnly. ‘I suspect that may be the case. Your own world is in danger, as well as this one.’
‘That’s not my consideration at present. I’m wondering...’ The Windeye took a deep breath. ‘I wonder if there is any way the Stone could be used to free my people? If I could only negotiate with this Ghabal, and somehow persuade him to help us. After all, his great enemy, the Forest Lord, is also my foe. Might that not be enough to convince him?’
‘It would be sheer madness even to attempt such a thing,’ Aurora snapped. ‘Put any idea of bargaining with Ghabal out of your mind. His people made a covenant with Hellorin once, and it cost him almost everything. He will never negotiate with anyone else. Approach him with that end in mind and he will strike you down.’
Corisand scarcely knew whether to be relieved or disappointed. Though it had seemed such a simple, elegant plan, the thought of actually trying to form an alliance with the crazed Moldan had filled her with misgiving. Yet if she could not be his ally, she would have to take the Fialan away from him, and that alternative was far worse. Nevertheless, she would have to do it, and she meant to. The fact that she hadn’t worked out how she could possibly achieve such a thing was simply a trifling detail. She fixed the serpent with her gaze. ‘But if I possessed it, I could use the Stone?’
‘I think,’ said Taku cautiously, ‘that with some training, you might learn to use it and bend it to your will. Hellorin and the Moldai made the Fialan for a specific reason: to use as a gateway between the worlds. But the Stone itself is not the portal. It is simply a way to store and magnify their magical power. I have the feeling, however, that other, alternative forms of magic - say the power of a Windeye or a Wizard - may achieve additional and far different ends.’
‘But we do not know for certain,’ Aurora added hastily, ‘and you would risk a great deal in trying to master such forces single-handed - if indeed you ever got that far. If you are determined to proceed along that path, you must first take the Stone from Ghabal. How do you propose to achieve that? Others have tried before you. None have succeeded. None have survived.’
At Aurora’s dark words, Corisand felt dread rising up like a dark miasma from her belly to her brain. With a struggle, she held it back. ‘You think I can do it, don’t you?’ she said to Taku. ‘That is why you brought me here, is it not?’
‘I brought you here on a gamble, nothing more,’ he said, with a wary glance at Aurora. ‘When I felt a Windeye abroad in the mundane world again, it seemed that there was one last chance, one faint hope, to regain the Stone. But when I brought you here, I did not know your mettle. Now that we understand one another a little better, I begin to see the faintest gleam of hope for all of us, and I am prepared to help in any way I can.’
‘Taku.’ Aurora sounded shocked. ‘What have you done? You brought this innocent here, and I have watched as you cleverly manipulated her into thinking she could recover the Stone. This is all wrong. How dare you give her hope where none exists, only to further our ends? She has no idea what she would be facing.’
‘I have simply made the most of an opportunity. She is a Windeye. Their powers are different from ours. It has been so long since Hellorin or Ghabal faced one of her kind that she might be able to take them by surprise. Some of the old Windeyes were very strong.’
‘That didn’t stop the Forest Lord from enslaving her race,’ Aurora snapped. ‘What you ask is beyond her, Taku. It is beyond any of us. How can we ask her to do what we cannot?’ The clear, golden gaze of the eagle turned in Corisand’s direction. ‘Windeye, be warned: what Taku asks of you is not reasonable. Let me send you back to your own world.’
Corisand stretched up a hand towards the shimmering vision in the sky. ‘Thank you, Aurora, for trying to protect me. I know you have my interests at heart. But can’t you see that Taku is right? This is my only chance to free my people, and I can’t turn away while that one small hope exists. If I succeed, then we all win, and if I fail . . . Well, there will be another Windeye to follow me, and carry on in my place.’
‘There.’ Aurora turned on Taku. ‘Now see what you’ve done.’
‘I have done what I intended to do. What I had to do.’ His voice was implacable, and his stare as level as her own. ‘This meeting was no accident, sister. This was fate at work. I have no idea how we can bring such a thing about, but I have a feeling that the days of both Ghabal and Hellorin as threats to the world are numbered, and that their power is finally about to meet its match.’
‘You’d risk everything on a feeling—’ Aurora began.
Corisand cut her short. ‘Please, stop this. Surely we should all be on the same side. The two of you can dispute this until the end of time, but that won’t get us anywhere. Whatever Taku may have done, however he may have manipulated me, I am here now, and I want to make the most of it.’ She paused. ‘One thing puzzles me, however.’ All at once, there was a new edge, hard and cold, to her voice. ‘Why do you need to involve me in this? If you Evanesar are such an ancient, powerful race - strong enough, even, to set bounds on the ambitions of the Phaerie - why can’t you take the Stone for yourselves?’
‘When the Phaerie and the Moldai were creating the Fialan, the same thought occurred to them.’ Taku’s voice was a low, angry growl. ‘No matter how they planned to cheat one another, they were absolutely united on one thing: the Evanesar must never get control of the Stone. So between them they set a ward upon it. If one of the Evanesar so much as touches the Fialan, it would not only destroy itself, but the violent implosion of forces would destroy both worlds.’
‘Fools!’ Aurora said. ‘For their Guardian Magic cannot be undone - it is part of the very form and structure of the crystal. And now that the stone has fallen into unsafe hands, we are powerless to intervene.’
&n
bsp; ‘As you will always be powerless against me and mine.’
The voice was like a blade being turned in Corisand’s guts. ‘Hellorin!’ She spun to see the Forest Lord standing on the apex of her own bridge. Anger blazed up within her to consume the terror. How dare he set his filthy, treacherous feet on her beautiful construct? How dare he sully the shining purity of her first magic with his foul touch?
‘So. We have a new Windeye.’ His voice was soft with menace. ‘I might have guessed it would be you. You were always stubborn, recalcitrant and disobedient. Always the rebel.’ He smiled, and the cold, cruel contempt in his eyes sent chills crawling through her body. ‘But as I am sure you recall, I mastered you then. And I can master you now.’
Corisand gritted her teeth, gladly embracing the anger that burned within her. Taking care to keep any sign of it from her face, she half-turned away with a dismissive shrug. ‘That was in another time, another world. Things are different here. In your own realm, you mastered a dumb, powerless animal. Are you so proud of that? It’s not much of an achievement. Not much to brag about.’
Hellorin’s face paled with anger. ‘You delude yourself if you think that anything has changed. Despite your current guise, you are still nothing more than an animal, spawned of a primitive, barbaric race.’ His voice dropped into a snarl. ‘Human or equine, when I have finished with you, your body will go to feed my hounds, and your hide will make a fetching carpet for my floor.’ As the last words left his mouth he struck at her, his body suddenly towering high overhead, a bolt of dark lightning sizzling from his outstretched hand.
Everything happened at once. Taku flung a vast wall of ice between Corisand and the Forest Lord. Aurora swept down a wing, and the Windeye was shielded by a many-hued curtain of energy. And Corisand herself, acting on some bone-deep instinct, created an illusion of herself as a vast colossus and stepped into that image, so that she grew as tall as her foe. At the same time, she formed the air into a shining, mirrored shield and threw it in front of her, so that she reflected Hellorin’s magic back at him. With a vicious curse, the Forest Lord vanished, and Corisand felt triumph swell within her. The first blow had gone to her.
The serpent and the eagle, however, did not drop their shields. ‘It is time to send you home, little sister,’ Aurora said softly. ‘Hellorin will soon be back, and this time he will be prepared. You are not ready to face him yet.’
Corisand’s heart plummeted. ‘But I don’t want to go back,’ she protested. ‘I can learn more, do more, help more if I stay here, in this body. I’m only just getting started.’
‘You can always return,’ Taku said kindly. ‘We will bring you back when it is safe, and Hellorin’s attention is elsewhere. Then there will be time to help and teach you.’
‘But how can I come back? You said yourself it was only the coincidence of the portal opening that allowed you to bring me here in the first place.’
‘Now that you are here, however,’ Taku told her, ‘we can create a link that will let us bring you here whenever it is safe.’ With alarming speed, he struck with his fangs at the edge of the glacier. Chips and shards of the glittering blue ice flew up, and Corisand reflexively put out a hand and caught a piece. About the size of a walnut, it glistened on her palm like a jewel, and she could feel the intense cold beat against her skin.
‘When you get back to your own world,’ Taku told her, ‘the ice will go with you. Swallow it quickly, before it melts, and that will provide the link between us. Three times you will be able to come; three times the spell will last. And remember this: time runs differently in this world, it swirls and flows like a river. At this moment we cannot say how soon we will be able to bring you back, but do not fear. As soon as it is possible, we shall send out the summons.’
The serpent dipped his head to her. ‘Farewell, Windeye. Go with our blessing.’
Aurora spread wide her wings as if to embrace Corisand, sending veils of colour rippling across the sky. ‘Farewell, little sister. We have faith in you.’
Then there was that sudden slippage, that same sideways jolt as before. Corisand found herself back in her stable, on four feet instead of two, the glorious fire of her magic nothing but inert ashes. Her mind was a dreamlike world of bright impressions filled with colours that were no longer clear to her eyes, and she fought in vain to recapture that clarity and complexity of thought that had come so easily to her human form. She shook her head, no longer certain whether the events of that other world had been reality or a dream.
Then her eye caught sight of something glinting, down at her feet in the straw. Her heart leapt. The ice! Taku’s ice, and in this world, it was melting fast. Quickly she bent her head and licked it up, together with dust and bits of straw from the stable floor, and swallowed the cold, hard fragment.
All at once, it was as if a window had opened, and she caught a brief glimpse of Taku’s glistening form, and Aurora’s colours glimmering and shifting as her wings stretched out across the sky. Joy flooded her entire being with light. Not imagination, then. Not a dream. And she would see them again. She had their promise. Sooner or later, she would go back to that world of magic and miracles and deepest peril, to set about reclaiming her birthright as Windeye of the Xandim.
8
SIGNS OF PERIL
Hellorin lay, magnificent and motionless as the carven figure on a king’s stone tomb, his strong, handsome features blurred and silvered by the eldritch glimmer of the time spell. Aelwen, to her surprise, found herself groping for Cordain’s hand, in search of comfort.
‘Is there no sign of improvement?’ she asked. ‘Surely after two months we should be seeing some sort of change?’
The Chief Counsellor shook his head. ‘It is a mystery. The healers seem to be making no progress at all.’
She shuddered. ‘I cannot help but be unnerved by such unnatural stillness, ’ she said softly - though she could have shouted at the top of her lungs for all the difference it would make to the Forest Lord. ‘He has always been so vigorous, so vibrant; always moving, always doing, always in absolute command. To see him looking so diminished and vulnerable shakes me to my very bones.’
Cordain looked at her shrewdly. ‘Such a reaction surprised you, did it not?’
‘How well you know me.’ Aelwen smiled sheepishly. ‘I never found him lovable - not even particularly likeable, although he could be incredibly charming and kind when it suited him. In all the years I have known him we’ve knocked heads any number of times, but—’
‘But it has always been about the horses,’ Cordain said, ‘on which subject you are the most knowledgeable, and he respects and admires your skills. You would never have dared oppose him on any other matter - but at least he possessed the redeeming quality of always being open to advice. Indeed, he valued and respected his counsellors and experts, including the two of us, and always listened carefully and courteously to their suggestions.’ Cordain looked fondly down at his Lord. ‘Mark you, more often than not he would go his own way in any case, but at least he would act from a foundation of knowledge and a new consideration of the long-term consequences of his actions, which often turned his judgements to a more tempered and far-sighted course.’
‘Sometimes he had his secrets,’ Aelwen pointed out. ‘There were things he did that he would never explain even to the closest of his advisors - like never letting a single one of the Phaerie horses out of his kingdom. Merchants and couriers had their own special mounts, clearly a more ordinary breed than ours, and only they were ever permitted to pass beyond the borders, except during the Hunt, of course.’
Cordain shrugged. ‘Every ruler has secrets, Aelwen.’
‘Tiolani has certainly taken that to heart. Already she appears to have more secrets from us than Hellorin ever harboured. She has been ruling for two short months: surely this is the very time for her to turn to her father’s experienced and respected counsellors, even if only to learn the day-to-day functioning of so complex an organism as our realm. But doe
s she? She does not.’
‘She has dismissed us, every one,’ Cordain said. ‘The only person she listens to now is that shifty-eyed Ferimon.’
‘Shifty?’ Aelwen raised her eyebrows. ‘If only he were. Then she might notice there is something wrong. But he’s always perfectly charming, sunny-faced and utterly guileless. It takes folk of our own age and experience to realise that he’s too damned perfect - you just know that somewhere underneath the politician’s smiles, a serpent lurks.’
‘And we can see it, but Tiolani cannot. Aelwen, I fear for this realm, for all of us, if the Forest Lord does not recover. Tiolani has inherited his strong will without his wisdom. She seems utterly oblivious to the problems that are developing within the realm, though they are a direct result of her refusing our help on the one hand, and neglecting to act herself on the other.’