by Frewin Jones
“No,” Cordelia whispered, her face close to hers. “But there is something I think you would wish to see.”
Tania got up and followed her to the edge of the plateau. Edric was already there, crouching on his heels and staring down. She followed the line of his eyes and saw that a bonfire was burning on the slopes of the hills some half a mile away from them.
“Be still and watch,” Cordelia said.
Tania hunkered down beside Edric, her hand on his shoulder. She stared at the fire. Dark shapes were moving around the flames. She could faintly hear voices, high-pitched and crackly.
“They’re dancing,” she said as her eyes cleared of sleep. She stared more closely. A whole group of people were leaping and prancing around the bonfire, and now she could hear the distant piping of flutes and the thud of drums.
“See anything odd about them?” Edric asked.
Tania peered more intently. He was right: There was something not quite right about the way they were moving, their dancing had a jerky, almost birdlike quality to it. “Oh!” She gave a gasp of shock as the dancing figures came sharply into focus. “Their legs bend the wrong way!”
From the waist up, the distant people seemed human enough, but it was as if their legs were fixed on backward, their knees bending back so their steps had the raking, pecking quality of large birds.
“What are they?”
“I don’t know,” Edric admitted.
“We should not allow ourselves to be seen,” Cordelia warned. “Come away. You’ve witnessed another of the curiosities of this bewitched land. Now go you back to sleep.”
Tania watched the strange dance for a minute or so more before crawling away from the edge and lying down again. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep, but the leaping flames and the uncanny dancers haunted her dreams.
From high dark cliffs, they looked out over a great stretch of indigo blue water. Waves beat at the rocks a hundred feet below them, sending up spumes of white spray. The wind came shrieking off the sea, snapping their cloaks and sending the manes and tails of the unicorns flying. Black birds circled in the air, calling as they swooped and dived.
“If I’m right,” Edric shouted over the howl of the wind, “that darkness over there is either Highmost Voltar or Rhoth.”
Tania stared into the wind with narrowed eyes. A low hump of land lifted out of the dark water on the horizon. “Is that good?”
“It means we have reached Fidach Ren,” Cordelia replied. “Our steeds have served us well. We have made good time, if the maps that I have seen showed a true depiction of Faerie.”
“So, how much farther is it to Ynis Maw?” Tania asked, pulling her cloak tighter around her.
“We won’t get there today,” Edric said. “But we should tomorrow.”
“So, let us ride!” Cordelia called. “Ride like the north wind!”
Tania patted Tanzen’s neck and the three animals dashed along the clifftop toward the looming mountains.
No one could sleep. The night was pitch-black and full of a moaning wind. They huddled together in their cloaks, listening to the blustery air as it hissed and howled among the rocks. But it was not the sound of the wind that disturbed them the most.
Tania had been on watch when she had heard it first: a deep, ponderous noise in the blackness, as if some huge thing was dragging itself through the hills. And then had come the laughter and the crying and the shouting, voices on the wind, far off but eerie and distressing. A strange red glow had tipped the hills. Tania had crept over to a big hunk of rock and had peered over it. She had seen a herd of black horses galloping through the night on spindly insect legs, their manes and tails formed of leaping red flame. Trembling with fear, she had crawled back to where the others were lying.
Soon, they had all been awake, clinging together as the ground groaned under the weight of the slow, monstrous slithering thing. Tania didn’t dare to try and imagine what was causing the noise; it was bad enough knowing there was something huge and alive out there without having images of it in her mind.
She was never so glad in her life to see the first faint, gray hint of dawn come creeping over the eastern hills.
Part Three
The Power of Seven
XVIII
The morning was strangely calm as they rode along the coast of Fidach Ren. They saw no trace of the things that had disturbed them in the night. The land was barren and raw, as if the soil and crust of the country had been stripped back to reveal its bare bones. There were no trees now, the only living things were wind-torn scrub and bracken, and sharp-edged grasses that thrust up out of the stones like knives.
The sky was a dreary gray sheet above their heads, occasionally tossing down a scattering of cold rain as they rode along. The noise of the waves hammering on the black rocks was so constant that Tania was hardly even aware of it anymore. She rode with her head bowed, weary of this endless journey, exhausted by this terrible land. Their food was almost all gone. They ate a meager midday meal, not even bothering to stop for rest. Tania knew the others felt the same way she did: They all just wanted this to be over and done with.
She was brought sharply out of her lethargy some time in the middle of the slate gray afternoon. She lifted her head, peering at something that she thought at first was a bird flitting low across the sky a little way ahead of them. It was gone in an instant, diving among the rocks before she was able to focus properly, but as she stared into the distance she quickly realized that the thing had been two or three times farther away than she had initially thought; if it had been a bird, it had been a very large and a very strange-shaped one.
A little while later she saw another shape go skittering across her eye-line, low against the horizon, flying from crag to crag, black against the featureless sky. “What was that?” she asked.
“Winged things,” Cordelia replied. “Not birds.”
They moved warily now, slowing their unicorns to a walk as they found themselves descending into a valley whose steep black walls rose sheer around them. Tania heard a sharp cry from somewhere above. She stared at the black crags that surrounded them. There was a shape up there: something squatting on a broken-toothed peak. A watchful silence filled the valley, as if the hills were holding their breath. They rode on, down and down into the winding valley, the unicorns moving slowly as they picked their way over the uneven ground.
“They are all around us,” Cordelia murmured. “I think they mean to attack. Would that we had swords to defend ourselves.”
“We might be able to outrun them,” Edric said.
“We cannot ask the unicorns to gallop over such terrain,” said Cordelia. “They would have broken legs for their pains.”
The tension rose as they made their way along the valley. Tania’s head ached with the strain. She felt like yelling out to the creatures—anything to break the deadly, volatile silence. Stones rattled and clicked under the hooves. The creatures didn’t show themselves. The silence screamed.
There was a sudden rattle of stones behind them. Tania looked over her shoulder. Rocks and boulders were tumbling down the hills at their backs. And suddenly the air was full of flying creatures, shrieking and shouting and hurling stones at them.
A stone struck Tanzen on the neck. He reared, whinnying in fear, his forehooves kicking at nothing. Another stone struck him and he lurched to one side. Tania slipped from his back, trying to clutch at the long mane as she fell. But it was useless. She came crashing to the ground as Tanzen went bounding back up the valley in a flurry of clattering hooves.
She got to her feet. The air seemed full of flying stones. She put her arms up to shield herself. A stone cracked on a rock by her foot. Another grazed her shoulder. She stumbled back as she saw Cordelia’s unicorn rise on his hind legs and then slip sideways. Cordelia was thrown to the ground. Zephyr struggled to get back onto his feet, and then, with a whinny of fear, he raced away in pursuit of Tanzen. Drazin went plunging past Tania, almost knocking her off her fe
et. Edric was not on her back. Then Tania heard his voice.
“This way!”
She spun around. Edric was on higher ground, and close by where he was standing, she saw a cave mouth in the valley wall. She and Cordelia scrambled over the stones, crouching to avoid the missiles that were falling all around them. Tania saw a stone hit Edric’s back and bounce off. He fell and she ran to help him get up.
“I’m okay,” he said, gasping. “Get into the cave!”
A few moments later the three of them were under the shelter of the low roof of the cave. For a while the stones still peppered the entrance, spinning and skipping, sometimes ricocheting in and almost hitting them.
Tania crawled to the cave mouth. “Stop it!” she shouted. “We haven’t done anything!”
The rain of stones came to a halt. Surprised, Tania looked at her companions. “That worked better than I’d expected,” she said. “Do you think they understand English?”
“Try it,” Edric suggested.
Tania kept herself under the lip of the cave entrance. “Hello?” she called. “We’re friendly. We just want to talk to you?”
She waited for a response. None came. She looked at Cordelia and Edric. “I’m going out there.”
“No, you can’t,” Edric said.
“What else is there?” Tania asked. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“Then I’ll go,” Edric said.
“No, I will. It’s no safer for you than me.” Tania stood up and walked out into the open again. She hadn’t said so, but she felt a kind of distant kinship with these creatures. They had wings—light, gossamer wings that were the same as the ones that had grown from her back only a few weeks ago.
“Please don’t hurt us,” she called. “We only want to talk to you.”
The valley was silent. Perhaps the winged creatures had gone?
Then a solitary shape rose above a nearby boulder. Its wings cupped the air and it jumped lightly onto the boulder’s top, crouching low, knees bent, one hand gripping a stone and the other reaching down, fingers touching the rock for balance. Tania stared at it in amazement. It was shaped like a person, but it was utterly alien, quite unlike anything she had ever seen before.
“Hello,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry.
The creature was female. She wore a simple tunic of grayish brown material, and her legs and arms were bare. The iridescent wings rose high above her head as she stared at Tania with huge sea green eyes set in a narrow, triangular face. Tania guessed that she would be about five feet tall if she was standing up, her body lithe and slender, her arms and legs fine-boned and her skin a curiously shiny ivory color with a thin tracery of pale blue and green over it, as though the skin was so thin that the veins were showing through. Long unkempt blue-green hair hung over her shoulders.
“What art thou?” The voice was high and keening, and when she opened her mouth Tania saw that the small teeth were needle-sharp and pointed.
“My name is Tania. My friends are Cordelia and Edric.” Tania held out her open hands. “We won’t hurt you.”
The creature’s head tilted and she grimaced, her feet shifting uneasily. “Hurt us?” she echoed. “No, truly thou shall not hurt us, Fid Foltaigg.”
“I’m sorry,” Tania said, stepping slowly toward the creature. “What does that mean—what you just called me?”
“Thou art Fid Foltaigg,” said the creature. She rose to stand erect, her hand tapping at her breast-bone. “We are Lios Foltaigg.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Tania became aware of a dozen or more of the creatures, rising now from cover and surrounding her—both male and female, all dressed similarly to the first one, all with the same slim bodies and oddly beautiful triangular faces, all with shining wings on their backs.
“Thou art the unfinished ones,” said the creature. “Where is thy pride?”
“My pride?” She looked around and a sudden understanding hit her. “Oh! You mean my wings. I don’t have any. I did have, but they…well, I lost them.”
She felt a hand on her back. One of the male creatures had crept silently up to her, his face filled with curiosity. “Thou wert winged,” he said. “I feel the ghosts of thy wings at thy back. Their loss haunts you.”
“Yes, it does,” Tania admitted. A few more creatures approached her and gazed at her with questioning eyes. She saw Edric and Cordelia standing at the cave mouth. “I don’t think they’re going to hurt us,” she said to them.
She looked back at the first female. “What’s your name?”
“Clorimel Emalion Entarrios,” said the creature.
“Wow,” said Tania. “That’s a lovely name.”
“Thou art tamers of the horned beasts,” said Clorimel, glancing nervously in the direction the unicorns had fled. “I have not known such a thing before. Thou hast especial sorceries.”
“Not really,” Tania said. “They were only helping us. They’re not really tame.”
“Why art thou in our land?” asked the male who had come up behind her. “It was promised to us for all time. The Sun came to earth and gave Fidach Ren to Lios Foltaigg for eternity—for us alone, untroubled by Fid Foltaigg.” He waved a hand. “Thou shouldst depart.”
“That we cannot do, by your leave,” Cordelia said, walking forward to stand beside Tania. “Not until we have fulfilled our quest.”
“What is thy quest?” asked Clorimel.
“We’ve come here to rescue King Oberon from Ynis Maw.” Edric joined them. “We were told you might be able to help us.”
“None may come to Ynis Maw and none may go,” said Clorimel. “That is the ancient law, given to us by the Sun.”
“Please listen to us,” Tania begged. “Bad things are happening in the south. We’ve traveled all the way from the other end of Faerie to get here. I don’t know how much of this you’ll understand, but there’s a really bad man down there and unless you help us, he’s going to take over the whole of Faerie. There’s only one person who can stop this from happening, but he’s trapped on Ynis Maw.”
“We were told that there are legends concerning your people,” Cordelia said. “Legends that say you have a secret knowledge and a secret power. Are you the Karken En Ynis Maw?”
A low murmur came from the creatures. More of them had come out of cover now, and a few of them had surrounded Cordelia and Edric and were staring at them with puzzled eyes and reaching out with thin fingers to touch their clothes.
“We are Karken En Ynis Maw,” said Clorimel. “This name was given to us by the Sun in the time before time. We are the guardians of the Black Isle. None may come and none may go. While we hold true to our pledge then the land of Fidach Ren will be ours forever.”
“I believe you,” Tania said. “But if you don’t help us, bad people will come here, and they won’t care about any promises that were made to you. They won’t care at all. They’ll take this land away from you and they’ll probably kill you all.”
“Tell me,” Cordelia asked. “What is the meaning of the words ‘Fid Foltaigg’?”
Clorimel pointed to them. “Thou art Fid Foltaigg—unfinished people,” she said. “We are Lios Foltaigg—complete people.”
“She means the wings,” Tania said. “We’re incomplete because we don’t have wings.”
Cordelia looked shocked but said nothing.
Clorimel pointed to Tania. “Thou art Alios Foltaigg. Half finished—half Lios.” She frowned at her. “Thou art between things. Thou hast one foot on the land and one foot in the sea. The Sun is in thy right eye and the Moon in thy left. That is the engine of thy sadness and thy destiny.”
Tania felt a shiver run down her spine at this. Clorimel seemed to have sensed the core of her unrest—that she was half human and half Faerie—and she seemed to pity her for it. “Will you help us?”
“What wouldst thou have us do?” Clorimel replied.
“Do you have black amber?” Tania asked. “We need black amber to break
the Isenmort bonds that hold Oberon in his Amber Prison.”
Clorimel gazed blankly at her. Tania guessed that she had never even heard of black amber.
“Hopie was wrong, it seems,” Cordelia murmured. “These people cannot help us. It has all been in vain.”
“We should still go to Ynis Maw if they’ll let us,” Edric said. “We can’t come all this way and then turn back without finding the King.”
“Well said, Master Chanticleer,” said Cordelia. She turned to Clorimel. “Will you allow us safe passage across the water to Ynis Maw—or will you seek to thwart us?” she asked. “Know you that we will not willingly depart from this place until our quest is fulfilled. Blood may be spilled if you hinder us.”
Tania gave Cordelia an anxious look—this wasn’t the time to be issuing threats. She held out her hands to Clorimel. “Please help us,” she said. “You’ll be helping yourselves, too. Trust me: If you do this for us, we’ll make sure you’re never bothered by Fid Foltaigg again. And you’ll be helping us to destroy the bad people in the south. Will you help us?”
Clorimel sprang into the air, her wings vibrating as she flew in a spiral above the rearing walls of the valley. With whooping cries and calls the others leaped into the air and followed her, their wings shimmering like rainbows, their slender bodies light as feathers. Tania felt a terrible ache inside her: a longing to leap from the hard cold ground and soar and swoop with them. But all she could do was to crane her neck and watch them as they hovered in the sky.
They hung in the air for a long time, speaking together, obviously debating whether they should break their ancient law. At length they broke apart and began to circle downward, landing lightly on the rocks all around them. Clorimel came down in front of Tania, hovering a little above the ground so that their faces were level.
“We shall do as you ask, Alios Foltaigg,” she said. “For the sake of our homeland and for our long peace. But if thou prove’st false, then shalt thou all be killed.”