Harp of Winds

6 Steelclaw

In contrast to the close and narrow gloom that shrouded Chiamh’s Valley of the Dead, the plateau of the Wyndveil was a place of air and light. Toward its southern end, the land broke up into a series of crags and canyons, rising to the sheer white walls of the Wyndveil and its brethren. At its northern brink the land dropped, sweeping down across dark, pine-clad slopes to the verdant plains, and finally, to the bright expanse of the sea. It was a windswept perch between peak and plain, belonging neither to earth nor sky—an open temple, designed by the Goddess for the contemplation of Her world, The Xandim used it as their Place of Challenge and a court of justice. Only here, in this airy Hall of the Goddess, the stunning panorama of Her creation, could matters of life and death be decided by the tribe.

Now, in the chill dark close of a winter’s night, the snow-scoured plateau was a place of awe and mystery. In the narrows of the meadow, beside the sinister stones that guarded the gate of the Deathvale, a figure stood braced against the storm. He was a stern-faced man of middle years: bald, save for a silvering of cropped hair at the back of his head. His gaze was proud and uncompromising, like a keen-eyed hawk. He held his years well; his belly was flat, his body as muscular as it had been in his youth, when he first won the leadership by Right of Challenge. Phalihas was his name, and he was Chief and Herdlord of the Xandim.

The Herdlord stood by the hallowed stones, awaiting the prisoners, showing no movement save where the snarling wind worried at his heavy cloak. At a respectful distance stood the curious folk who had come to watch the trial of the Outlanders. Awed into stillness by the numinous ambience of this sacred site, they huddled together, whispering softly, in reassuring groups around bonfires whose streaming flames were pressed flat to the ground by the gale. Phalihas saw the restless dark shadows of their flapping cloaks, like the wings of carrion birds, and the occasional vivid spark of brightness where fitful firelight caught a rough-hammered tore or an armband, or the polished beads of stone or bone that they threaded into their braids.

To one side, in an uneasy, muttering knot, stood the Elders; men and women old in wisdom, though not necessarily in years. Though any of them might advise Phalihas, the final verdict would be his alone. They were present by law and tradition, but this time, their contribution would not be needed. The matter before him was straightforward: strangers were not permitted in the Xandim lands, and the penalty for trespass was death. It was as simple as that. Phalihas sighed, and pulled his cloak more tightly round his shoulders in a futile effort to block out the icy wind. It was his own fault, he told himself, that he was out here freezing, instead of being warm and asleep in his bed back at the Fastness. The Elders had objected to this trial as a waste of time, and only his insistence on adhering to the law had dragged everyone out here. Though he held to his conviction that traditions must be upheld for the good of the tribe, Phalihas had not realized that this trial would stir acute and painful memories of the last time he had stood here in judgment.

The face of Iscalda, his former betrothed, was seared into the Herdlord’s memory. Pale and wild-eyed with terror she had been; her flaxen hair—unusual among the Xandim—of which she had once been so proud, had hung down around her face in raveled snarls, as she had stood before him in this place, her face set in a stony mask of defiance as she repudiated the one who had condemned her beloved brother to exile. Phalihas made a small sound of anger, a low snarl deep within his throat, at the memory of the one who had dragged his beloved Iscalda down into ruin. Schiannath, he thought. If only I had slain him when I had the chance!

Alas, under Xandim Law, execution was saved for strangers. The only time one of the Xandim could kill another was in the Rite of Challenge for Herdlord—and Schiannath had already undergone that trial. Though he had lost, he had survived, and the Challenge, by Law, could not be repeated. Schiannath, on losing, had not accepted his lot with good grace. A malcontent and a troublemaker, he had undermined the Herdlord’s authority in every possible way, and the tribe had suffered as a consequence. Exile had been the Herdlord’s only option, but it burned his heart that the transgressor could still be alive somewhere, among the trackless mountains. And Iscalda—did she still live? Did she remember anything, now, of her human existence? Had she died of the cold, or been eaten by wolves, or the Black Ghosts that haunted the peaks? Was nothing left of her but a jumble of stripped bones at the foot of a precipice? With a muttered curse, the Herdlord tried to shrug the dreadful visions away. What did it matter, whether his former betrothed had survived or perished? She had betrayed him! But ever since that day, when his hurt and rage had betrayed him into condemning her to live as a beast, he had been haunted by guilt and bitter regret.

“The truth is,” Phalihas sighed to himself, “that if it were permitted, I would undo what I did that day. But it can never be.”

Above the seething wrack of the storm, the sun was lifting her crown above the jagged mountains, and day crept forth on dragging feet to infuse the plateau with a feeble, ghostly half-light. Across the meadow the prisoners were approaching, bound and desolate, between their guards.

Phalihas, glad to be distracted from his dawn-bleak thoughts, observed the Outlanders as they were cast down before him and forced to kneel on the iron-hard ground. They made a strange group—the wiry little man whose very posture spoke defiance; the tall, fair warrior-maid, whose ripe body promised joys uncounted, but whose eyes were cold and hard as an unsheathed blade; the old man, sick and fevered unto death, unless the Herdlord missed his guess—and the other. The bony woman with the mad, fey eyes. Merely to look at her sent chills down the Hereford’s spine. He tore his eyes from her and forced himself to speak, rushing through the sentencing in his hurry to get as far away as possible from her relentless, burning stare.

“You are here to answer the charge of trespass and invasion,” he told them. As he spoke, he wondered whether he should have had that wretch the Windeye present, in order that his words could be translated for the prisoners. Truth to tell, since Chiamh had pronounced the words that cast Iscalda forever into equine shape, he had not been able to bear the sight of the half-blind Seer. The knowledge that he was being grossly unfair to the Windeye—after all, Chiamh had only been acting under his own orders—did nothing to improve the Herdlord’s mood. What does it matter, he thought. Within hours, these strangers will be dead—and whether they understand the reasons for their execution or not, it will scarcely matter then!

Straightening his shoulders, Phalihas continued, in the age-old formula: “You need not speak, for you have no defense: you were caught by my warriors in the midst of an illegal act. The penalty for your crime is death . . .”

“How dare you!” The strident voice, cutting abruptly across his own, robbed Phalihas of his carefully prepared phrases. The madwoman! How did she come to know the Xandim tongue? Her eyes grew larger—they were burning into his soul as her voice shrilled on and on ...

When Chiamh arrived, late and panting, on the plateau, he found utter confusion. The Herdlord, looking shaken, his gray face twisted with rage, stood in a knot of Elders who were gesticulating wildly and shouting at the tops of their voices. What in the world had happened? The Windeye strained his weak-sighted gaze, but could see no trace of the prisoners. Had they been executed already? Had they escaped somehow? “Gracious Goddess,” Chiamh muttered.

“Iriana of the Beasts—don’t let me be too late!” He took one look at the stricken Herdlord, and gave up any hope of speaking to Phalihas. Instead he found a wizened old grandsire, who was standing to one side, sucking his gums and watching the commotion with avid interest. “What happened? Chiamh demanded, clutching at his sleeve.

“Hola, young Windeye! Missed the trial? You missed a sight!” the dotard confided with relish. “Herdlord was passing sentence when up speaks that skinny witch, and demands safe passage through our lands, if you can credit it!” The oldster was frowning with the effort of recalling the madwoman’s words, “She has business in the south, she says, that can’t wait on the whims of a bunch of savages!”

“What?” Chiamh yelped, horrified,

“It’s true as I’m standing here!” The gransire nodded sagely, delighted with his role as the imparter of such momentous news. “That big bonny wench is nudging her, trying to shut her up, and the little fellow is shaking his head like he can’t it! Then the witch says if our Herdlord tries to stop her, she’ll curse him, to the end of his days! Well, stirred like a hornets’ nest the Elders was! But the Herdlord put his foot down, and they’ve taken the foreigners up to Steelclaw, to stake them out on the Field of Stones to be breakfast for the slinking Black Ghosts, an’—Hey, come back ...”

Chiamh heard the whining voice trail off into the distance as he ran, as fast as he could, past the standing stones toward his valley. Luckily the guards wouldn’t dare take the straighter route through the Vale of the Dead. As Windeye, he had access to a shortcut . . .

The Field of Stones was not, in fact, a field at all, but an unusually level area of the mountainside that was littered with more of the low, flat-topped hollow boulders that appeared to be dwellings, though they were never used as such by the Xandim, for the altitude was too great, and the climate too harsh. Instead, the Horselords had found a more sinister use for the structures. Manacles and chains had been bolted to the flattened tops, and Outland prisoners (usually marauding Khazalim, captured on raids) were staked out here as sacrifices to appease the fearful Black Ghosts of the mountains.

The Field, with its grim associations of death and bloodshed, was located on a long spur, high up the mountain, where the Wyndveil was joined to its neighbor, Steelclaw, by a saddle of high, broken rock known to the Xandim as the Dragon’s Tail. Like the tortured stone of ruined Steelclaw, this sheer, knife-edge ridge was twisted and fractured partway along its length, preventing human access to the other peak, but that was fine by the Xandim, who never set foot there in any case. Steelclaw was the haunt of the fearsome Black Ghosts who ate human flesh—and the Ghosts could cross the ridge with no trouble at all.

Chiamh’s shortcut took him through his own valley, and so he was able to stop briefly at his cave and put on an extra tunic and a warmer cloak, against the freezing air of the higher altitudes. He bundled up some of his blankets, with a flask of strong spirits packed carefully in the center of the roll, and fastened the resulting bulky package to his back with rope. Then picking up a staff shod with an iron spike, to assist him up the icy reaches of the mountain, the Windeye set off to rescue the strangers.

The secret way up the flanks of the Wyndveil led past the place where the flimsy rope bridge to Chiarnh’s Chamber of Winds was attached to the mountain. First came the icy flywalk ledge that led as far as his bridge, then the cliff seemed to fold over upon itself to form a narrow gully with towering walls that was invisible from the plateau below. It slanted up the mountain’s flank to eventually merge with the main trail that zigzagged up from the plateau round an outthrust spur of the Wyndveil. For Chiamh, with his blurred, chancy vision, it was a dreadful journey. Though he was accustomed to climbing the cliff, its slender ledges were glassy with ice. Even so, he preferred the perilous scramble up slippery, precipitous rocks to the heavy going in the gully, where the way was darkened by the steep walls of stone, and he was forced to plough his way through waist-deep pockets of drifted snow, and scramble around thickets of stunted firs that had rooted themselves in this sheltered place wherever there was a crack in the rock. Weary and panting, his limbs numbed and aching with cold, the Windeye finally arrived at the junction with the main trail—and found, as he had expected, that this would be the worst part of the climb.

The gale slammed into Chiamh like a giant fist as he left the sheltered gully for the faint, icy track that snaked across the exposed mountainside. On his left, the bleak snowfields sloped steeply upward, with nothing, not even a tree, to break the force of the wind. On his right—the Windeye shuddered. Better not to think of it! Stray too far in that direction, and he would be falling down a slope that, though not a cliff exactly, was far too steep to let him stop. There would be an ever-quickening slithering plunge—until he reached the edge of the cliff and hurtled to oblivion on the rocks at the bottom. For the first time since he had experienced his Vision, Chiamh began to have serious doubts about whether the strangers were worth this trouble. Nonetheless . . . Cursing under his breath, the Windeye drove the spike of his staff down hard into the ice, and took his first, tentative step along the perilous trail.

After what seemed to be a lifetime, the track, climbing steeply, curved sharply to the left and rounded an outcrop of broken black rock. Chiamh noted thankfully that rocks had begun to appear on his other side too, cutting off the drop to his right. As the way began to narrow, he heard voices, borne to him on the wind from the Field of Stone. Thank the Goddess! Though he’d been forced to go slowly and carefully, testing his footing with each step as he blundered up the slippery track, Chiamh had reached the Field of Stones before the guards escorting the prisoners were ready to depart. The last thing he’d needed was to meet them coming back, and have to explain what he was doing up here! Blessing the shortcut that had bought him the extra time, the Windeye slipped into the midst of a cluster of boulders at the side of the trail. Praying that the wretched guards would hurry, he settled down to wait. Luckily, the escort had no wish to linger until the Ghosts appeared. The snow had begun to fall again, whipped into swirling flurries by the howling wind. Within a short time, Chiamh heard the squeaking crunch of footsteps in the snow as the guards passed his hiding place, cursing as they slithered down the treacherous trail and grumbling in the typical manner of soldiers. Their complaints came to the Windeye on the voice of the gale: “Because of the Herdlord and his accursed Law, we risk our necks in this storm ...”

“Aye, and for what? The stinking Outlanders will likely freeze to death before the Ghosts come ...”

“Why we couldn’t simply have run a sword through them down on the plateau, I’ll never know ...”

“It would be a waste to run that wench through—not with a sword, at any rate! We could have had some fun with her, had it not been so cold! ...”

Hearing the hectoring tones of Galdras, the Windeye fought to suppress the hope that the fools would fall over a cliff on the way down. Once they had safely gone, he left his hiding place and made his way along the rocky track to the Field of Stone—until a spate of curses and shrieks, coming from ahead, made him stop in his tracks. O

Goddess—surely the ghosts could not have come already? Quaking with more than the deathly cold, Chiamh waited until the sounds had ceased. Then he crept forward, more slowly now, afraid of what he might find upon the Field of Stones.

Parric lay spread-eagle and helpless on the flat-topped Deathstone. The icy cold of the shackles burned into his wrists and ankles. By all the Gods, he thought, I didn’t know it could be so cold! Already the snow on the rock beneath him, which had melted in its initial contact with his body, had frozen again, sealing him to the stone. Already, as the lethal cold claimed his body, his anger against the Xandim was giving way to despair. Anger had been better. At least with anger, you could fight—but how could he fight in any case, shackled and frozen as he was?

Nearby, the others were chained down on great boulders of their own. Sangra was somewhere behind him, out of sight. Meiriel he could see from the corner of his eye; now here, now gone behind the drifting gray curtains of snow. The Cavalrymaster bit down on a flash of rage. Due to some strange effect from the spell of tongues that the Mage was using on the Xandim, he had been able to understand her words at their trial, and it was likely that she had brought them to this end. If she had only let him speak to the ruler and explain that they were only passing through his lands, and wanted nothing, and would soon be gone! Parric had worked it all out—but instead of translating his words, Meiriel had flown into a typical Magefolk tirade—just like the one that had got them thrown off the Nightrunner ship and into this mess in the first place! Her arrogance had killed them all.

Elewin, to his left, lay gray-faced and unmoving, not even coughing now. Parric was afraid that the grueling journey up the mountain might have finished the old man.

“As this cold will soon finish us all . . .” The Cavalrymaster was unaware that he had spoken aloud, until he heard Meiriel’s shrill cackle from her nearby rock.

“Oh, no, you stupid Mortal—it won’t be the cold that will finish you! That was not the reason you were brought here! The guards were talking, I heard them . . . There are Demons up here, Parric—Black Ghosts that haunt this place. A sacrifice, that’s what you are—you and your pathetic Mortal friends—but they won’t get me.”

As the Magewoman spoke, the chains that shackled her wrists and ankles flared into painful brilliance and crumbled to dust. She scrambled, crowing, to her feet—and Parric’s glad cry died in his throat as she turned her back on her erstwhile companions and scuttled, with her tattered skirts flapping scarecrow-fashion in the wind, away down the broken ridge toward the other mountain. In no time, she was lost to sight among the drifting snow. “May you rot, you accursed Mortals . . . They won’t get me!” Her mocking cry floated back to Parric on the wind, and he struggled furiously against his bonds, cursing bitterly.

“Come back, you bloody bitch!” Sangra was shrieking.

Then, once again, there was silence, except for the whistling moan of the wind across the stones.

May Chathak curse her! the Cavalrymaster thought, I should have expected something like that from Meiriel—she’s a Mage after all, and mad besides. Elewin warned me from the start ... But her betrayal pierced him like a sword to the heart, somehow setting the final seal on his fear and misery, What a fool he’d been to come south! Now he would never find Aurian—and still worse, he’d dragged Sangra and Elewin along with him to their deaths. Alone and wretched, Parric closed his eyes and wept—until, with horror, he discovered that the tears had frozen, sealing his eyelids shut and blinding him. At least I won’t see the Ghosts when they come, he thought wryly, remembering Meiriel’s words—and that was a mistake. Now that his eyes were sealed, his imagination took over.

Parric began to hear noises coming nearer and nearer—the hoarse huff of breath through fanged jaws; the blundering, scraping sound of a massive body moving among the rocks, as it came to rend his helpless body ... It was coming—it was coming! Parric gave a whimper of terror. “Dear Gods,” he gasped, “no!” Then something touched him. “No!” he howled, thrashing against his chains . . .

“It’s all right,” a voice said hastily, in a tongue that was, and was not, his own. “I am Chiamh. I came to rescue you.”

“You festering idiot!” Parric screamed, on the knife-edge of hysteria. “I thought you were the bloody Ghosts!”

“Sorry,” the voice said cheerfully. Warm air, moist and smelling faintly of herbs, tickled Parric’s face as Chiamh breathed on his eyelids to melt the ice. By the time he could open his eyes, his heart had stopped trying to claw its way into his throat and he had recovered sufficiently to reel embarrassed by his outburst. Then all such thoughts were driven out of his mind by the sight of the round-faced, brown-haired young man who stood before him. It was the apparition—quite real and solid now—that had visited him in the Xandim dungeons!

After all that had happened, the Cavalrymaster was feeling dangerously overwrought. The “ghost” was groping shortsightedly on the ground, and somehow the sight of that amiable, foolish face only fueled Parric’s anger. “What do you want with us anyway?” he snarled, unwisely, Chiamh stood up abruptly, his grin vanishing like the sun behind a cloud—and Parric saw the rock in his hand. For a moment, the Cavalrymaster ceased to breathe.

With a quick jerk of his wrist Chiamh brought the rock smashing down on Parric’s manacle, Parric yelled, is the of the manacle bit into his Though he was too numbed by cold to feel the pain, he felt the flow of hot blood across his hand, and knew it would hurt like perdition on, “They aren’t locked, you jackass!”

“Oh,” Chiamh didn’t bother to apologize—he ply started to pry with the hilt of his at the stubborn metal catch, which his blow had bent sadly out of shape. “Just as well, really,” he added, as the clasp finally gave way, “because it seems the Ghosts have found us . . .”

“What?” As the other wrist came free, Parric shot bolt upright, groping frantically at his manacled ankles with fingers that were too numb to work.

“Out of the way.” Chiamh pushed his hands aside and quickly freed the remaining chains. “Stay you quiet, my friend—they’re right behind you.”

His skin prickling with dread, the Cavalrymaster turned to follow the Windeye’s gaze. Not a man’s length away from the stones were two of the Ghosts—not spectral beings at all, Parric discovered, but great cats of an awesome size. He swallowed hard, seeing the size of their claws, like scimitars of steel, and their great white fangs as they snarled in a low and menacing duet. The gleaming pelt of one was stark black against the snow, the other was black with patterned dapples of gold. The blazing lamps of their watchful yellow eyes filled with a weird and arcane intelligence. Parric’s breath froze in his throat.

“You know,” Chiamh said in a soft, conversational tone, “I believe these cats to be more than simple animals—and for all our sakes, let us hope I’m right.” Then, to the Cavalrymaster’s horror, he appeared to go utterly mad. Advancing on the Ghosts, he seemed, to Parric’s fear-glazed vision, to be twisting his hands, as though tying an invisible knot in the air. Both cats started, their golden eyes widening as they stared, with hackles rising—then, with bloodcurdling yowls, they shot away as though Death himself were hot on their heels,

“I was right” Chiamh laughed. “It takes imagination to be scared by an illusion!”

Parric stared at him, amazed. “Why did you save me?” he whispered. “What do you want from me?”

“You had best ask the Goddess,” Chiamh replied shortly, “for I’m sure I don’t know. But our Lady of the Beasts has a task for you, and it was her Vision that sent me to you,” His sternness vanished, as he put a shoulder under Parric’s arm to help him rise. “Come, let us free your companions.”

“About bloody time!” Sangra’s voice came faintly from the direction of her stone, and Parric and Chiamh shared a grin.

“Here ...” The young man shrugged the bundle from his shoulders and unwrapped it, handing the Cavalrymaster a flask that, to his delight, contained something very close to raw spirits that went searing down his throat like a bolt of lightning.

“Aah! Good!” Parric gasped. Seeing that Chiamh was already loosening Sangra’s chains, he threw one of the young man’s blankets around his shoulders, and went quickly across to help Elewin.

The old man did not move as he approached, Elewin’s face was sunken; his skin was a sickly bluish-gray. As he loosed the shackles, Parric found no signs of breathing. “Ah Gods, no,” he muttered. “Poor old beggar ... All this way he came, and only to die—”

“Let me see!” Chiamh pushed him aside. Lowering his shaggy brown head to the old man’s chest, he listened for what seemed an endless time, then put his face close to Elewin’s own. “Not quite gone, but close,” he muttered. “Too close for my liking, but . . .

Chiamh laid his hands on the old man’s chest, then on his face—then he lifted and moved them in a series of fluent gestures, seeming, as he had done when he banished the great cats, to be writing invisible figures in the air. Sangra, wrapped in her blanket, approached with tears in her eyes, and the Cavalrymaster put an arm around her. They looked on, entranced, as Ghiamn’s hands moved fluidly across the old man’s body, seeming—so distinct were his actions—to cocoon it in some invisible weave from head to toe.

After a time, Chiamh looked up, and Parric saw that, despite the dreadful cold on the mountain, the young man’s face was glistening with the sweat of exertion. Chiamh mopped his brow, and reached out wordlessly for the flask that still held, “It may hold long enough,” he said, and took a long, gasping pull at the liquor, “Your friend is old and tired and very ill, and this cold was almost enough to finish him. But I have done . . . something that will keep the air moving in and out of his lungs for the present. If I can keep him breathing until we can carry him down the mountain and back to my home—well, my Grandam taught me much about herb lore and healing. It may be that we can save him after all. It is a hard thing to ask of you, but if you could spare him your blankets ...”

Parric looked doubtfully at Sangra. She was shivering, white-faced, and bedraggled, and leaned wearily against the stone as if her strength were scarcely sufficient to keep her upright. Frankly, he felt little better himself.

“Pox rot it!” Sangra muttered. She sighed, shrugged off her blanket and handed it to Chiamh. “Come on, then,” she said briskly. “Let’s get off this blasted mountain before we all freeze to death!”

While they were wrapping the unconscious Elewin for his journey, Chiamh suddenly looked up, frowning. “What became of your other companion, the madwoman?”

Parric scowled, and shrugged. “Forget her,” he said.

Chiamh soon realized that getting the sick old man down the mountain was going to be appallingly difficult. His companions were incapacitated by their own weariness, and they were almost stupefied with the cold besides. Time and again, as they crossed the slanting track across the snowfield, the Windeye’s heart was in his mouth as one of the Outlanders slipped, almost sending themselves or their unconscious companion hurtling down the precipitous slope to their deaths.

Time stretched into eternity as they crawled like flies across the endless white expanse, two of them struggling along with the motionless body of the old man slung between them, while the other took a turn to rest. It was as well that their route was chiefly downhill. As it was, Chiamh found before too long that he was forced to take constant charge of Elewin, while the others rested for longer and longer periods, trudging behind. They had no idea how to move safely on a mountain, and their carelessness gave the Windeye some moments of alarm, but at least they had the sense to know that they must keep going, though Parric’s face was creased with fatigue, and Sangra looked ready to drop. Nonetheless, she still had the strength to fetch Chiamh a telling clout that almost sent all four of them over the edge, when he saw that the tip of her nose had turned pink with impending frostbite, and without thinking to warn her, he clapped a handful of snow to her face.

By the time they had reached the branching trail that continued down the gorge, a thick cap of dark storm clouds was rolling down the face or the mountain, portending another bout of evil weather. When Chiamh paused, it was as though the others had been puppets, and some playful God had finally cut their strings. Setting the old man down in the snow, they leaned against one another, sagging.

Chiamh could see that both of the Outlanders were completely fordone. How could they carry the old man through the rougher going of the defile? And what about the approaching storm? If they could not get down before the blizzard hit, they stood little chance of getting down at all.

Sangra, shivering, her hair straggling around her face, gave the Windeye an accusing look, and cursed bitterly. “Is it very much farther?” she whispered.

Chiamh nodded, and the three of them looked at one another in silence. It was Parric who finally voiced what everyone was thinking. He looked at Elewin, and bit his lip. “Are you sure you can keep him alive until we get him back?”

“I think so ...” The Windeye hesitated. “But if I do, I will not be able to use my powers to hold off the storm until we reach safety, which I otherwise might have done.”

The Cavalrymaster looked down again at the old man, refusing to meet Sangra’s eyes. “Are you sure you can save him if we do get him down?” he asked quietly.

For a moment, the Windeye’s confidence wavered. Parric was asking him to make a decision that might either kill the old man, or kill all four of them. Is it worth it? he found himself thinking. Is it worth the chance of preserving one spent and fragile life, if the alternative is for us all to die here on the mountain? Then suddenly, into his head came a vision of his Grandam—and the old woman was scowling at him fiercely. Chiamh flinched as though she had clouted him and stiffened his spine. “Of course I can save the old man, and we will get him down,” he said, with a confidence that he was far from feeling. As he spoke, he was uncoiling the rope that had originally bound his bundle of blankets.

“Help me tie this around him’ the Windeye instructed, the gradient is steep in the gorge—if we cannot carry him, we may be able to pull him, like a sled.”

“Don’t be daft, man! All that jolting around will finish the poor old beggar!” the Cavalrymaster protested. Chiamh sighed. Parric was right, but the alternative was the one thing he had been hoping to avoid. To change in front of these Outlanders—to betray the secret of the Xandim . . . Not to mention, he thought wryly, the risk of breaking a leg down there among those rocks! But if the old man was to be saved, there was nothing else for it.

“Listen carefully,” he told Parric. “Don’t be alarmed by what you will see in a moment—I’m going to change ...” He knew he should be explaining this better, but the words were sticking in his throat. He hurried on, before they could ask questions: “Tie the old man to my back and I will take him down the gulley. When we reach the bottom take him off again—I’ll need my human shape to get down that last part of the cliff ...”

As he had been speaking he was backing away from them, trying to avoid their puzzled eyes lest they should start asking difficult and untimely questions. “Now, you folk—stand back!”

And with that, the Windeye changed. The shocked cries of his companions shrilled loudly in Chiamh’s equine ears, and their Outlander stink burned his nostrils. He began to tremble all over. What have I done? he thought wildly. Gritting his teeth and blowing hard, he edged nervously toward the others. He had already betrayed the secret of the Xandim—there was no going back now.

Sangra was the first to recover from her shock. “Seven bloody demons,” she breathed—and swallowed hard. “Right,” she said crisply. “Come on, Parric—stop dithering! Help me get Elewin up and get these ropes tied—a horse is the one thing you do understand!”

For Chiamh, the descent of the gorge was a nightmare. He was unaccustomed to carrying burdens in his equine shape, and though the old man’s weight was slight in comparison to the Windeye’s strength, the unfamiliar bulk of the body unbalanced him, making it hard for him to pick his way down the slippery track—especially with the added distraction of keeping Elewin breathing. Also, in this form, he could feel the storm, the pressure of its forefront prickling against his skin and filling him with the instinctive, animal urge to shed his burden and flee. Before they were halfway down the gully, a wild-eyed, shivering Chiamh was dripping with sweat, despite the freezing weather.

“There, hush—it’ll be all right soon. Soon we’ll be down ...” Sangra’s lilting voice was low and soothing. A hand smoothed his neck, stroked his nose. Chiamh flung up his head and snorted in surprise—but her voice helped calm him, and her touch was astonishingly pleasant.

“Sangra, what the blazes do you think you’re doing” The Windeye heard Parric’s frantic whisper from his other side.

“He’s not a bloody horse, you know!”

Sangra’s hand never paused in its gentle soothing. “For now, he is,” she said: Chiamh blessed her understanding. When they reached the bottom of the gorge and removed his burden, Chiamh barely had the strength to change back. Once he had done so, he slumped in the snow, trembling all over. Spots were dancing before his eyes. Sangra draped one of Elewin’s blankets around his shoulders. “Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes wide with wonder. He nodded. “Thank you for your help. As a horse it’s hard to think straight . . .” His words lost themselves in a half-shamed smile.

Parric shook his head. “That was the most incredible—” he began, but the Windeye cut him off.

“Ask me later.” Snowflakes were beginning to swirl around them in the rising wind. Chiamh got swiftly to his feet.

“Come, we must get down the cliff before the storm hits.” In fact, he had no idea how to accomplish the final part of the descent. That crumbling, icy ledge would be difficult enough for him, and he was used to it, but for inexperienced, exhausted Outlanders . . . Chiamh was crushed by a weight of despair. After he had brought them so far .

“Have courage, Windeye, for I am also the mountain. Take up your burden and trust me. I will not let you fall.”

“Basileus!” Chiamh cried joyfully. Clearly, the others thought he had lost his mind, and only the proximity of the storm persuaded them to trust him when he assured them that the ledge was not so difficult as it seemed. Even then, they would only follow him when at last he hoisted Elewin across his shoulders, staggering under the weight, and set off alone down the narrow path. Behind him, he could hear them swearing horribly as they began their descent. But as Basileus had promised, it was easy. It was as though their feet clung tight to the stone of the ledge, as though a vast invisible hand held them safe against the rough cliff face. Chiamh’s burden seemed to weigh nothing, as the Moldan’s strength poured into him to take him over that last, desperate lap. Nonetheless, when they finally reached the pinnacle spire at the head of the valley, the Windeye had never been so glad in his life, to see his home.