by Maggie Furey
Not long after Arvain had been sent to his rest, she had walked down towards the lower fields one snowy night, unable to sleep, and wanting to distract herself from worry and sadness. When she’d reached the furthest pasture, she had seen a sight that had haunted her ever since. The moon, low on the horizon, had broken through the massed banks of cloud, and in the moonlight, the grey mare was dancing.
Hardly daring to breathe lest Corisand discover her presence, Aelwen had watched the horse dance amid the swirling snow; transformed, in those moments of magic, into some otherworldly creature. Then, as if someone had blown out a gigantic candle, the moon vanished abruptly behind the clouds, and the mare became flesh and blood once more, and paced quietly back into her stable. The sound of the bolt being slid back into place sounded loud in the still, frosty air, and a chill that had nothing to do with the wintry weather passed down Aelwen’s spine, as silently she turned and crept away. When she had awakened next morning, falling snow had obliterated the intricate hoofprint patterns in the paddock, and the whole episode had taken on the tenor of a dream. But Aelwen knew, in her heart, that it was not.
At that moment Kelon came walking across from the stables, and the Horsemistress smiled to see him. She had known him for so long that he seemed almost to be an extension of herself. Her second in command, he had been her friend for years uncounted, and she knew that she could trust him with her life, as he could trust her. Though he was a Hemifae like herself, in looks he had taken after the human side of his ancestry, rather than the Phaerie. His hair was sandy rather than the burnished red-gold that was so common among Hellorin’s folk, and his face was seamed and weathered, lacking the pointed delicacy of the Phaerie physiognomy. Though he was a kind man, it was a standing joke around the stable that he was rarely seen to smile.
‘Are you still fretting about that animal?’ Though Kelon would never openly criticise her, his voice held a hint of reproach. She knew he thought that she wasted too much time and energy worrying over Corisand’s odd behaviour. The mare was healthy, wasn’t she? And surely this new, quiet demeanour could only be an improvement? Well, then.
Aelwen sighed. ‘I know you can’t see it, but I am absolutely certain something is amiss with her.’
Kelon looked thoughtfully at the mare. ‘You know, I’m beginning to agree with you. At first, I didn’t think this new behaviour was of much significance - I put it down to shock after the attack, and thought she’d come out of it in the end. But this new business of becoming lead mare - now that’s just plain unnatural. Totally out of the normal pattern of behaviour for the whole group.’
Aelwen frowned. ‘It’s not just her inattentiveness, or even this lead-mare business that’s worrying me. It’s only that - I don’t know - there’s just something about her. She was always a very difficult horse to handle, but now, though she’s all right with the two of us, you would think she hates everyone else. There’s something in her stance and the way she looks at the grooms that sends a chill through me . . . Kelon, do you think she’s going mad?’
For a thoughtful moment, Kelon gazed at Corisand again. ‘What about breeding from her?’ he said at last. ‘She isn’t doing anything useful right now - just lazing around, eating her head off, and she should come into season again about the end of the month. She’s an outstanding mare - if we put her to that black stallion of yours, the foal could be spectacular. And if...’ he hesitated.
‘And if this strangeness does turn out to be a problem, at least we’d still have her bloodline,’ Aelwen finished for him with a sigh. ‘Whatever ails her, we know it’s not part of her heredity.’
Kelon put his hand over hers as her fingers tightened on the paddock rail. ‘It’s got to be faced,’ he said softly. ‘But don’t despair. The worst hasn’t happened yet, and probably never will. She’s been acting strangely, but she hasn’t shown any signs of aggression so far - at least, no more than usual. She’s just odd, that’s all.’ His eyes went to Aelwen. ‘Mind you, what can we expect? Everything here has been out of kilter since Hellorin was struck down.’
‘I know.’ With no one else would Aelwen have dared to be so open and honest, but Kelon was special. Abruptly she switched from open words to mindspeech. ‘Don’t you think, Kelon,’ she went on slowly, testing each word with delicate and deliberate care, like a horse testing its footing as it crossed a bit of boggy ground. ‘Don’t you think that Hellorin is taking an unnaturally long time to recover?’
Their eyes, his grey, hers green, met in a look of understanding. Kelon switched to mindspeech too. ‘It’s wonderful, is it not, how well Tiolani has taken to ruling?’ he said softly. ‘She’s her father’s daughter. Having tasted such power, it must be hard for her to think of giving it up.’
In that moment he had never seemed so dear to her. Out of love, out of loyalty, he had taken it upon himself to voice the heresy she could not bring herself to name. She gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. ‘Not here and now. It’s not safe.’ Though mindspeech ought to be private, there were ways to overhear it, if the eavesdropper was determined enough. Suddenly she was filled with the overwhelming urge to get away completely from the whole mess: horses behaving mysteriously, Hellorin’s illness, Tiolani’s hostility and the atmosphere of sheer wrongness that poisoned the air of Eliorand these days. ‘It’s a beautiful morning, ’ she said out loud, ‘and I would love to get out of here for a while. Shall we go for a ride?’
Kelon gave her one of his rare, fleeting smiles. ‘What a good idea.’
With a mounting sense of panic, Corisand watched them depart. Damn those Phaerie! Why couldn’t they leave well alone? She couldn’t have a foal just now. It was the last thing she needed. As it was, finding a way to regain her human form and her Windeye’s powers felt like a hopeless task. With a pregnancy and then a defenceless, dependent foal to care for, it would become downright impossible. But how could she prevent it? As the Phaerie reckoned things, they were about halfway through the month. By the time it ended, oestrus would be upon her and, though so far they had never let her breed, she already knew how powerful those drives could be. Would they prove so strong that the instincts of the animal would overcome the reasoning of the Windeye? Taryn was a very attractive stallion and she liked him. He also had an excellent record of success in getting foals. All things considered, she had a feeling that she would be a fool to risk an encounter with him.
Corisand raised her head to look over the fence at the forest beyond. ‘There’s only one thing for it,’ she said to herself. ‘I’ve got to escape.’
She was almost ready to try it then and there, so desperate did she feel - but her Windeye’s intelligence made her hesitate. If she made her escape in such an obvious manner, the Phaerie would find out almost immediately. Without the flying magic that only Hellorin or Tiolani could give her, she had no power of flight, and would simply have to run away into the forest. She was Hellorin’s own mare, and, as she had just discovered, Aelwen and Kelon considered her bloodline to be valuable. They would never rest until they had hunted her down and recaptured her.
No, she had to come up with a better plan than that. But what? How? The caring, conscientious vigilance of Aelwen and Kelon would thwart her at every turn, and it suddenly occurred to her that if she did manage to succeed she would bring a great deal of trouble to the two of them - the only Phaerie out of the whole tribe of them that she didn’t detest.
Never had Corisand felt so helpless, despairing and very much alone. How could she escape this impossible situation? It would take a miracle.
22
NIGHT IN THE FOREST
The weather had improved at last. Since leaving Nexis the previous day, Iriana and her companions had been riding across rolling green downs beneath a blue sky streaked with high, racing clouds. Though it was summer, the air up here was cool and fresh, tingling against Iriana’s skin. Now they were approaching the forest, and once again, Iriana was looking at the world from the perspective of Boreas the eagle. From s
uch a height, the immensity of the wildwood was grimly apparent. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she gasped. ‘It goes on for ever.’
Esmon shrugged. ‘Not quite. At a steady pace, it should take us about ten days or so to reach the other side.’
Iriana, far from being daunted by the endless miles of forbidding forest in front of them, was looking forward to the adventure. It might help her forget that dreadful night in Nexis. Now that she had put a goodly distance between herself and Challan’s new family, she was finally beginning to shake off a little of the bitter rage that had clouded her spirits since that pointless and humiliating meeting with her foster father, but she didn’t feel any better about it. Oh, how she wished she had ignored him as he deserved, and had never gone to see him! The thought of him sleeping with that human slave and fathering that nasty, poison-tongued half-breed made her physically sick.
Now, however, she could see a little more clearly, with her vision less clouded by anger. As she rode, Iriana thought back to the events of that night. Though she was forced reluctantly to admit that her own behaviour, fuelled by fury, had been less than exemplary, the conduct of Challan and his woman and daughter had driven her to such extremes. It was not so much the fact that he had abandoned his true family so heartlessly, or the fact that he had run off with a mortal slave and had bred a half-human offspring. It was both of those things together - added to the fact that he had seen fit to humiliate his original family by throwing his unnatural liaisons in everyone’s face. Everyone knew that some Wizards - not all of them male - liked to pleasure themselves with humans, and the resulting hybrids did appear from time to time. But unlike the Phaerie, Wizard-human relationships were not acceptable within their society, and most Wizards had the decency to be discreet about their foibles, not move into a house with them and parade them as if they were a proper lifemate, for the whole world to see. And as for Chiannala, Challan’s abomination of a daughter - apparently she had the temerity to think herself every bit as good as Yinze, the full-blooded child who had been deserted in her favour, and she could only have learned that attitude from her father.
How could Challan have put Zybina and Yinze in such an embarrassing position? Had he never loved them at all? As for herself, perhaps she had less right to such consideration - but all these years, she had lived with the misery and guilt of believing that he’d abandoned his family because of her. Now that she had discovered the truth, all the pain that had been festering within her for so long had come spewing out. It was too soon for her to feel relieved and grateful that she had not been the cause of such misery. She just felt sickened and stupid, and furious that she had wasted so many years in blaming herself. And how could she ever tell Zybina the truth? It would break her heart.
All these thoughts, however, had been churning in her mind for the last two nights and the day in between, and Iriana told herself firmly that it was finally time to stop. Challan had ruined enough of her life - she wouldn’t let him spoil any more of her first real adventure. With the border of the trees coming closer, she switched back again to the bird’s-eye perspective of the forest. It wasn’t exactly easy. While she stood still, it was a simple matter to keep her mind focused on the eagle’s viewpoint, but from the back of a moving horse, the experience was disconcerting in the extreme. She would only have dared try it on this particular horse. She had had Dailika since she was a youngster, and had trained her patiently for years to carry her rider smoothly and steadily at ground level while Iriana’s mind was in the skies.
Seen from above, the vast tract of woodland spread like a dark cloak from horizon to horizon. The mountains that marked its northern boundary were so distant that they were nothing more than a smudge on the skyline. Directly below the bird, less than half a mile from the southernmost edge of the forest, the horses cantered steadily along a windswept ridge. They had left the logging road from Nexis the previous day in favour of a different, older trail, located further to the east, which wound its way through the wildwood to the Phaerie city. Iriana was glad about that. The constant stream of human slaves that passed to and fro along the Nexis road, and the mundane work that was being done, would have made this part of the journey much less of an adventure. Besides, the extensive felling operations had left ugly scars on the face of the land, and she didn’t want to see any more of the churned ground and the pitiful stumps of the devastated woodland.
From her lofty perspective, Iriana watched with fascination as the little mounted figure that was herself drew ever closer to the border of the woods, and finally disappeared among the trees. As soon as she entered the forest, Iriana left the viewpoint of Boreas and began to alternate her vision between the cat and the horse instead. As the trees closed round the riders, she regretted losing the sense of freedom that she always experienced looking out through the eagle’s eyes. He was still far above her, she knew; though she could no longer see him, he was linked to her by their unique bond. How she envied him the freedom of the skies . . .
‘You seem far away.’ Avithan’s voice interrupted her reverie.
‘I was.’ Iriana grinned at him. ‘Literally. I’ve just been looking down from the skies with Boreas.’
‘That must have been quite an experience,’ Esmon said, ‘but now that we’ve entered the trees, you’d better pay more attention to your immediate surroundings. There are any number of dangerous wild animals here in the forest: bear, puma, lynx and moose, to name but a few—’
‘Moose?’ Iriana interrupted. ‘But surely they’re herbivores?’
‘That’s as may be,’ Esmon replied, ‘but truly, they are one of the most dangerous creatures in the forest. They’re big, evil-tempered and their hooves are sharp as razors. They would disembowel you before you could even blink. Also, there are wolves and wildcats, which are less dangerous to us but might kill your animal companions.’ He shifted in his saddle and frowned. ‘There are worrying rumours that the occasional monster penetrates Hellorin’s wards and escapes over the border into our part of the forest. Unicorn, gryphon, basilisk and wyvern are all supposed to have been sighted at various times—’
‘But I thought they were extinct,’ Avithan protested. ‘They were wiped out years ago, surely?’
‘The wildwood here is big enough to hide anything,’ Esmon told him. ‘And it’s rumoured that the Forest Lord deliberately let a few of them survive and breed here, to guard the approaches to his realm. So let’s just behave as if it’s true, all right? That way, there will be less opportunity for unpleasant surprises. Besides, we know that there are plenty of other animals here, and a bear that’s ten feet high when standing on its hind legs is quite enough threat for us to handle. We must be on our guard. Now that we’re among the trees and visibility is so limited in all directions, you’ll need to rely on your other senses more - particularly hearing and smell. You should have the advantage over the rest of us there, Iriana.’
‘But we don’t know what these creatures smell like,’ Avithan pointed out.
Esmon smiled at him. ‘Good point. Well, a bear is probably easiest to describe. They smell something like wet dog . . .’
As they rode, Esmon taught them what he knew about forest survival - and he knew a great deal. Iriana reflected on how lucky they were to have him with them. He might be the high-ranking Head of a Luen, but he was refreshingly free of airs and graces, and was, in fact, the most down to earth of the three of them. He was a highly interesting, informative and useful companion who was more than happy to tell them everything they wanted to know - and more besides - about self-defence and survival in the wilderness. He was also excellent company, with a fund of amusing stories and bawdy songs. Best of all for Iriana, Esmon treated her blindness as nothing more than part of her life, never tiptoeing round the subject in embarrassment or pity, as so many of the Wizards in Tyrineld did.
The seldom-used forest road was little more than a primitive trail that wound between the trees, penetrating deeper and deeper into the dark, dim green of the wildwoo
d. Since Esmon had warned her to pay attention to her surroundings, Iriana, switching between the eyes of Melik and her horse, had begun to notice that the forest was far more populated than it had first appeared. The liquid fall of birdsong was all around them, with small winged shapes flitting from bough to bough and darting between the trees. Squirrels whisked up tree trunks and sat on branches, chattering indignantly down at the travellers from their safe vantage. Rustles in the undergrowth betrayed the presence of rabbits and their nemesis, the fox, while deer fled on slender legs from clearings at the approach of the riders, their short tails lifted to show white flashes of startlement and warning. It was ironic, Iriana thought, that she was probably seeing more through the eyes of her animal companions than she would have through normal human eyes. With Dailika’s vision giving her a panoramic view of her surroundings, and the keen eyes of the hunting cat, designed to catch the slightest flicker of movement in the undergrowth, she was able to detect the small, secretive creatures that she might otherwise have missed.
As afternoon wore on into evening and the shadows lengthened between the trees, Esmon decided that it was time to make camp for the night. Iriana felt a thrill of excitement. It would be the first time she had ever slept out in the open, in a tent. While they had crossed the realm of the Wizards there had always been somewhere for them to stay: inns, a farm, the sister of one of Esmon’s Warriors. Now that they had entered the wildwood, however, such vestiges of civilisation no longer existed. The trail followed the course of a narrow, fast-flowing river, and they found a clearing set well back from the road but close to the water’s edge. It felt good to dismount and stretch their legs after all the hours of riding, and as they began to set up camp, they found themselves falling naturally into a division of labour that would soon become routine.