Shuddering, she tried not to think of it. She wished Jaift were with her. Jaift would say something practical and reassuring, and no doubt Diöllin would be sarcastically disdainful, but then Niniol would say something sardonic to Diöllin and they could all argue about their plans, which would make those plans seem so much more normal and…and achievable, somehow.
Iëhiy no longer ran with the fire horse. Meridy was beginning to trust that the dog would always be exactly where he was most needed, and she hoped that he’d gone back to help Jaift somehow. Meridy hoped he had. She wished she knew for sure that Jaift had gotten clear of that disastrous conclusion of their escape. And Lord Roann, too, and the seneschal’s brother—she couldn’t remember his name and didn’t care.
The mist lingered long into the morning. That helped a great deal, for it gave Meridy the means to keep the fire horse ghost continually within the real. The mist also concealed them from sight and muted the footfalls of the fire horse, though those were already muffled compared to a living animal’s, as though he moved half through the real world and half through dreams.
The fire horse never tried to throw them off, or reach around with slashing tusks to savage them. Meridy didn’t understand that, but she was afraid to question it too closely, in case the stallion changed his mind.
For a long time, neither she nor Herren spoke. Meridy didn’t wonder at the young prince’s silence; certainly he’d had no shortage of horrible things to deal with. For her part, she was concentrating both on keeping the fire horse as far as possible in the real and on staying mounted. The stallion’s ghost might not be trying to pitch them off, but every muscle she owned ached from their wild flight, and she was now finding it difficult and uncomfortable to ride bareback, especially without stirrups. It didn’t help that Herren seemed perfectly at ease on the fire horse’s back.
Though she couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead or to either side, Meridy thought they had for some time been moving uphill at an increasingly steep grade. She hoped this was true, since it would mean they had already reached the slopes of the mountains that encircled Cora Diorr. That seemed unbelievably fast, but then the fire horse had been racing the wind from the instant she’d leaped to his back and pulled Herren up after her. She hoped that she was right and that they were even now heading up toward the gap where the road ran between the mountains. She felt that they would be safe once they had crossed the saddle between the mountains and come out on the other side.
She had no reason to think they’d ever be safe again, actually. The sorceress hardly seemed likely to just shrug and let them go. Though as they went on and on, she started to believe that maybe Aseraiëth wasn’t likely to catch up with them right this minute.
At last, worries crowding her mind, she asked tentatively, “Herren, I mean Your Highness, do you think, um, the sorceress might be able to find you?”
The stallion’s small ears swiveled and tilted at the sound of her voice, but he didn’t miss a step. Maybe he thought he could whip around anytime he liked and tear them to pieces. Probably he could, if he tried it and Meridy didn’t push him away from the real fast enough. She tried to be ready for that, just in case.
Herren didn’t turn his head. Nor did he answer, for so long that Meridy had about decided he wasn’t going to. But at last he said in a thin, exhausted voice, “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Wonderful,” muttered Meridy.
Then the boy volunteered, “She knew where I was. Before. She didn’t have to find me. It’s only, she couldn’t take me until…until the servitor went away. So then the witch-king didn’t have eyes or hands right there anymore, so my— So she could come get me.”
Meridy thought about this. She hardly wanted to ask about anything that had happened to Herren; it was all so horrible. She didn’t want to frighten him by asking more about the terrifying sorceress who had taken his mother’s place, or the witch-king who must be even worse. But she needed to know some things. She really did, or how could either of them figure out what to do next? Besides, she was almost sure that Herren knew more about what was going on than she did.
She asked tentatively, “So is the sorceress Aseraiëth, is she an enemy of the witch-king now? Is she working for one thing when he wants another?”
Herren still didn’t turn to look at her. “She isn’t one of Tai-Enchar’s servitors. That’s not what she is. She’s her own person. I think…”
Meridy waited.
The prince was silent for a moment. Then he added, “The witch-king wants…he wants to pour himself into me, like the sorceress did to my mother. Except he doesn’t mean to share. Just take my life for his. Then he’ll be a prince, descended of the High Kings, and he’ll still be a sorcerer. And alive. And he’ll make himself High King and rule forever, I guess. Until the real world becomes a mirror of the dream he’s made in the ethereal realms.”
Herren was gazing straight ahead over the fire horse’s translucent head. But he was shivering, and Meridy suspected it wasn’t from the damp chill in the air. His voice held a kind of exhausted flatness that was disturbing in a child his age. She had worried in case she should frighten the young prince, but she was fairly sure she couldn’t have come up with anything half as frightening as this if she’d thought it out with both hands for half a year. “Are you sure you’re only eight?”
The boy huffed a tired laugh. “Almost nine.”
“Of course.” It was all so terrible, she honestly didn’t want to hear anything else, but she would be ashamed to be less brave than a little boy who wasn’t even quite nine. She said, “That’s what he meant to do to Inmanuàr, I suppose. Although maybe not, since Inmanuàr might be the High King’s heir, but after all, he’s long dead.”
Herren turned his head at last to look over his shoulder at Meridy with an actual glimmer of curiosity. “You know Inmanuàr too?”
Meridy was too surprised by this response to answer. Herren went on quickly, “Then you know the witch-king did want to do the same to Inmanuàr, but first he’d have to embody him, and he couldn’t, he never could, because Carad Mereth kept stopping him.”
“I see….”
“Of course.” Herren sounded surprised that she could question this. “Carad Mereth anchored Inmanuàr to life so he couldn’t take the White Road, and then he anchored Inmanuàr to me when I was born, because—” But he broke off there, not like he didn’t know where that sentence had been going, but like he’d changed his mind about telling her. He definitely sounded much older than eight. Or almost nine. He sounded, in fact, just like the kind of little boy who might have been serving as an anchor for a really old ghost all his life. He said, “Inmanuàr’s wanted to take the White Road for a long time. But he can’t because that would let Tai-Enchar win. He needs to stop Tai-Enchar first. Except it’s been so long, and Tai-Enchar’s been gaining power, not wearing away. But Inmanuàr has a plan—or Carad Mereth has a plan, or they both do.”
Carad Mereth, whoever he really was, must have anchored the High King’s heir right at the moment of his death. And held him ever since. And he had the nerve to claim he wasn’t a sorcerer. She wondered what his name had been, way back then, at the breaking of one age and the beginning of the next.
But she only asked, “And your…mother?”
The young prince flinched slightly, facing front again so that he wouldn’t have to look at Meridy. “She wants…I think she wants to use me to bargain with the witch-king. But I don’t know what she wants to bargain for, now. She wanted Tai-Enchar to help her do the same as him, but with Liny. Diöllin. Take her body so she could be alive and have the bloodline of the High Kings and sorcery, too.”
“She told you that?” How utterly appalling.
“No. Sort of. I…I figured it out. But Liny died, so now I don’t know what that sorceress wants.”
Meridy tried to think about that, about what a long-dead sorceress might want, how she might make use of a ghost like Diöllin. It was hard to think, though. Herren
tried so hard to be grown-up and fearless and calm, and he was, but he was also a little boy and it was all so horrible.
The fire horse came over the crest of the mountain road and started the descent. Meridy wondered if the stallion had realized yet that he would never tire, and wondered if he thought it was worth becoming quick. Probably not. But he sure liked to run. He was stretching out again, faster and faster. Meridy clung to Herren and resisted the urge to suggest that he try to persuade the fire horse to slow down. It wouldn’t really help—nothing would help but actually getting off, and she knew they had to keep moving.
“Don’t hold on so tight,” muttered Herren, taking Meridy by surprise, so for a second she just blinked at him. But he repeated, “You don’t have to hold on so tight. Relax. Like you’re sitting in a rocking chair. He’s all right.”
Meridy tried to do as the prince suggested. She wasn’t sure she succeeded.
“How long do you think you can keep him in the world?”
“I don’t know. Until the mist lifts, I suppose—or until I fall off or, I don’t know, something else happens. I have to…It’s not…I’ve never tried to keep a ghost so far into the real for so long before.”
It was both easier and more difficult than Meridy would have expected: easier because it didn’t require constant close attention, harder because she had to struggle against letting her attention drift completely.
She said, “He won’t get tired. But he might get bored, I guess. Or angry.” She wondered again how fast she could push him away from the real if he turned on them.
But Herren shook his head and patted the fire horse on the neck. “He won’t. He knows he can’t leave you. You’re his anchor.”
“He can’t understand that, though.”
“He does. He’s not like a normal horse. An ordinary horse is afraid of everything. He’s not afraid of anything.” The boy sounded envious. “He’s not afraid of you at all—of us. He doesn’t mind carrying us as long as he can run. and go where he wants. He probably wouldn’t like it if you tried to get away from him.”
How could the young prince possibly know all that? But on the other hand, Prince Herren had obviously grown up around horses. Maybe he’d always thought of riding a fire horse….Well, he was a prince; of course he’d thought of riding one. She had already realized that the stallion had no reason to be afraid of them. And maybe…maybe he was smart enough to know about anchors, and to know that they weren’t the ones who’d trapped him and dragged him out of the southern mountains and then shot him and killed him. She had no idea how smart fire horses were, not really. Maybe Herren was right after all.
But Meridy doubted she was ever going to sound that calm about the idea of riding a fire horse, even one that was smart and not scared of her and quick rather than living.
On the other hand…maybe Herren was just so exhausted, or so stunned by everything that had happened to him, that he simply couldn’t manage to be afraid even of things that would terrify any normal person. On reflection, that seemed entirely likely.
Meridy said prudently, “No matter how far and fast he can run, I can’t ride straight through to Surem from here without rest. And I don’t think you can, either.”
“I can’t sleep,” Herren said, still without turning. “Because if I fall into dreams, Tai-Enchar will find me. I can’t let him. I have to get to Surem. To Moran Bay. But not…I can’t let him take me there. I have to find Inmanuàr. In the place of his power, he says. That’s Moran Diorr, I guess, but it’s under the bay, so I don’t know.”
Meridy felt like everything had been moving too fast and now she was trying to catch up. She felt stupid. Maybe the fire horse was smarter than she was. He was surely less frightened. How stupid to be envious of the beast for that.
She said, “We’ll find you some sweetleaf. It’s common enough. Any farmer would have some, I’m sure. We’ll stop somewhere after the fog burns off—I mean, we’ll have to stop then anyway. I’m not sure I can keep the fire horse far enough in the real without it.” She hoped dust and sunlight would be enough to manage it. She was sore, but not eager to slow to a walking pace. Nor to walk all the way from wherever they were to Surem. That was a long way. She didn’t know how far. But farther than Cora Talen, she knew that.
Herren said abruptly, “The stallion’s name is Gonnuol.”
Meridy stared at the back of the young prince’s head, wishing she could see his expression. “Oh, it is?”
“He’s a king of his own kind. Gonnuol is a good name for him.” Herren’s voice was growing thin again, but he sounded like he meant it.
“Well, I’m not arguing.” Meridy supposed she could call the stallion Gonnuol if Herren wanted. High King Gonnuol had ruled long ago, before the Great War and the raising of the Southern Wall and the drowning of Moran Diorr. She remembered that. If the stories were true, the original Gonnuol had been a violent, dangerous man; an effective leader when it came to keeping the peace in the early, more volatile Kingdom, but a hard man. Maybe it was a good name for a fire horse stallion after all.
“The mist is lifting.”
Meridy, startled, looked around. Herren was right. The fog was burning off at last. When she glanced over her shoulder, she could see where the sun was: a diffuse brightness lit the fog behind them, not enough yet to cast shadows forward, but warm on her back. “Can you make, uh, Gonnuol slow down?”
“I don’t know. Sit back. More than that. Put your weight right back. Sit down harder.”
Herren demonstrated what he mean, leaning back against Meridy so that she had no choice but to do the same. She didn’t see what good that would do, but to her surprise the fire horse—Gonnuol—did slow his pace. Unfortunately, the slower gait was a lot rougher than his faster paces. Meridy jolted, slipped, clutched at Herren, jolted again, and lost her hold on the fire horse, who became suddenly as tenuous as the thinning mist.
She hit the road hard, Herren on top of her, and the stallion disappeared into the brightening morning.
The young prince got up again, slowly. Meridy didn’t, not at once. She lay on her back on the road, blinking at the lilac-and-pearl sky and trying to decide if all her bones were still where they ought to be. At least the surface of the road was smooth and not too hard. Hard enough, though.
Herren brushed himself off and fussily straightened his sleeves. He didn’t say anything, which was nice of him. Maybe he was just too tired. Maybe he was afraid that if he said anything, he would start yelling. Or crying. She could understand that, too. Meridy painfully pushed herself to sitting and looked around.
She couldn’t tell how far they’d come. Except the land here was extremely flat. When she turned to look, the haze was still too strong to see the mountains behind them. She could tell there were fields or pastures on either side of the road….There were spotted goats in the nearest pasture, and a big white dog, who was at the moment watching Meridy and Herren suspiciously, and no wonder. On the other side of the road there was nothing but a field of some crop or other, turnips maybe. A vague shape, hardly visible through the remaining haze, might be a farmhouse. Or a barn, considering the goats.
What she could definitely see, indistinct in the haze, were other people on the road. There was a large group some distance away, along the road toward Cora Talen, with wagons and, from the blocky shapes of their beasts, probably oxen. Farther away in the other direction was a smaller group that Meridy was almost sure consisted of mounted men. Not farmers, then, or carters, or, probably, anyone else she or Herren would want to meet.
Now that they’d stopped, Niniol glimmered into shape, colorless and not quite visible. He stood with his arms crossed, regarding Meridy where she sat in the dust and then measuring the half-visible shapes of the approaching men with a cynical eye. “You’d better get up if you don’t want to meet those men,” he told Meridy, not very sympathetically. “His young Highness is correct. We’re safe to presume his enemies will not cease their pursuit of him. We must take effective act
ion to prevent word of him from traveling this road.”
Meridy smiled at him, despite weariness and lingering fear and new bruises. Trust Niniol to move right on to practical concerns.
“Herren!” said Diöllin, flickering into view like a pale candle-flame. She rushed to her brother, murmuring. He couldn’t see her, of course, but he shrugged away from her voice, from her presence, his mouth tightening. He didn’t want sympathy, Meridy could see. Maybe because he was so tired and too much kindness might make him cry. She could understand that, and she looked away to give the young prince a chance to compose himself, if necessary.
Near at hand, outlined in haze and light, stood the nearly transparent form of the fire horse. He had circled and come back and now tossed his head uneasily, staring at them, his ears pinned back. He tossed his head again, raking the damp surface of the road with one clawed foot, leaving every now and then a long set of parallel slashes in its packed earth. Jerking his head up, he snapped his fanged jaws, tusks clashing in soundless threat. He looked…he looked impatient and annoyed, Meridy decided. Like he’d never heard of anything so stupid as girls who fell off his back and lay in the dirt at his feet.
She definitely felt stupid enough. And Niniol was right, of course. She got to her feet, a bit at a time, missing Jaift, who would have hovered and asked if she was all right and probably told a deprecating story about falling off a pony when she was little.
But it was Diöllin who came to her, leaving her brother to recover himself. She stood with her transparent hands on her hips and glared at Meridy. “Of course,” she said. “Of course once a fire horse became quick, naturally you’d bind him. How else? But how could you let my brother near a monster like the one that killed our father? What if it had torn him to pieces because you held it in the real?”
Herren jerked his head up. “I’m not a baby, Liny!” For once he sounded his age. “What else were we supposed to do? Walk? Hide in a corner of that horrible empty dream realm until she caught up with us, or the witch-king did?”
The White Road of the Moon Page 25