Heritage Of The Xandim

30

TRUST AND TREACHERY

Athina already had the early stages of a plan worked out. Once she had brought together all the major protagonists of her vision, plus the handful of others that her instincts told her were important - and had told them all the salient facts - they would have a chance to formulate a common vision and work towards it. She might have to leave this place, but at least she would put its future into the best hands possible. It was all she could do. It was vital she accomplish as much as she could in the hours she had left - no matter what the cost to herself.

Resolutely she searched, scanning the shadowy spaces beneath the crowding trees, sending forth her mind while her body stayed safely in the tower. To her relief, she discovered that fate had lent a helping hand. The Xandim of her vision had already found Iriana, so that was one less thing to worry about. The others she sought, however, those strange half-Phaerie who had been grounded in the storm with their Xandim mounts and must be somewhere in the forest - they would need to be gathered too.

It did not take her long to find them, sad, soaked and separated, trying to shelter from the wild elements as best they could. With relief, Athina sent her magic to each of them in the form of a glowing red globe: a guide to bring them together and unite them with Iriana and her companions. After she sent the spells forth, she noticed for the first time a drag of weariness in her mind and in her bones, and felt fear twist its icy coils inside her guts. Uriel’s prediction was already coming true. Her powers were beginning to weaken in this place. If she persisted in using them here, where they could not be renewed, she stood a good chance of losing them altogether.

Athina gritted her teeth. ‘I’d better hurry, then,’ she muttered.

All at once the fatigue fell away, dispelled by a jolt of excitement. She had found Tiolani at last, and the fate of Hellorin’s daughter was hanging by a thread.

A pounding headache.

Cramped and aching limbs.

The clammy, dank chill of wet clothing.

The sickening, sinking sensations of horror and fear.

All these feelings avalanched down on Tiolani with returning consciousness. Making things worse was the disorientating knowledge that, although she couldn’t seem to move a muscle, somehow her body was in motion. Between pain and confusion, it took a little while to pick through her memories and establish what, exactly, was happening to her. From the pattern of meshes digging into her skin, she realised that she was thoroughly cocooned in the net that had saved her life, and was being carried along between two or more of the accursed ferals who had captured her. She was wrapped so tightly that she couldn’t move, and there were too many layers around her to let her see out properly.

Her original hope - that this was all some horrible nightmare - was soon quashed. Not even the worst dream could produce such an abominable smell. Ever since the first ambush, all those months ago, human odour had been unbearable to her, but this stench of feral, unwashed humans - only the fact that her stomach was empty from her earlier vomiting saved her from throwing up again.

She remembered falling from that thrice-cursed Corisand; being rescued, then the grim rain of arrows, the death-screams of her friends and their mounts. She remembered the terror and the helplessness, waiting for the ferals to get to her. And, seared like a brand into her mind, the recollection of hearing them say that Ferimon, her beloved, had betrayed her father and herself, and been responsible for her brother’s death.

No! It’s not true. It’s NOT!

Desperately she pulled her thoughts away to other matters, telling herself that the ferals lied, that their stupid wild tales were of no importance now, when her life was at stake. Pretending that the knowledge was not now lodged, like a poisoned dart, in the bitter depths of her soul.

What else did she remember? Only discovery, and seeing her own death in the flash of a knife in the darkness. Well, she had been spared for the present, though she knew her reprieve would not last long - and that her death, when finally it came, would be a drawn-out agony that would make her wish for the clean, swift, merciful ending of the blade.

In order to distract herself from thoughts of the hideous, and probably brief, future that lay before her, Tiolani began to listen to the soft conversations of her captors, hoping against hope to hear something - anything - that might help her escape.

‘Damn it, Danel, she weighs a ton.’

‘Aye, and carrying her like this, it’s a bugger to get through the bushes,’ another voice complained. ‘Why we had to bring her along, I don’t know. She’s a cursed nuisance, and a danger to us all.’

‘Evnas is right,’ a third voice added. ‘Let’s just stick a knife in her right now. A few inches of dirt over her, and the bloody Phaerie will never know what happened to her.’

‘I think they’d guess, don’t you?’ Danel asked, with a deceptive mildness. Tiolani, with her own will of iron, was quick to recognise the same trait in another.

‘So what?’ It was Evnas again. ‘I’d rather the labour of digging than have to carry the bitch any further. In fact, if they’ll guess anyway, why dig at all? Just kill her and be done, and leave her for carrion. The wolverines and bears and worms will take care of the rest.’

‘No.’ The leader’s voice was like steel. ‘If you’re tired, Evnas, change places with Thu. He hasn’t had a turn at carrying her yet.’

As Tiolani was lowered to the ground then lifted again, Danel carried on speaking. ‘We need to take some time to think about this. There might be some way we can use her as a hostage, or a bargaining counter. They’re bound to want her back.’

‘They’ll want her all right,’ Evnas said. ‘Enough to return with their hounds and bows and stinking magic, and slaughter the lot of us. The bloodshed we’ve already suffered will be as nothing compared to the massacre that will happen if they think we’re holding her. They’ll wipe us out, down to the last man, woman and babe in arms.’

‘No they won’t,’ Danel said decisively. ‘Don’t you see, we have a chance to make them stop hunting us now? We’ll tell them that if any more of us are harmed, we’ll kill their ruler.’

‘And then what? We can’t keep the bitch for ever, clothing her and feeding her and tying up men who can ill be spared from hunting to guard her every hour of every day. And what about her accursed magic? Sooner or later she’ll escape, or be rescued, or we’ll be forced to kill her. Then the Wild Hunt will be back for us with a vengeance.’

Danel swore imaginatively. ‘You have a point,’ she said at last. ‘But maybe there’s another way. She might buy us a little time, at least, to get our people out of the Phaerie realm. We could go south, away from the Hunt—’

‘And right into the hands of the bloody Wizards. Have you lost your mind, Danel? Do you want to be a slave again?’

There was the sudden, meaty sound of a fist striking flesh, and a grunt of pain. ‘I lead here, Evnas.’ Danel’s voice was as cold and inexorable as stone. ‘Before my father died he nominated me to stand in his place. I may be young, but our losses have diminished since I took over and so far, I’ve led you well. If you think otherwise, you can call for a vote in council - and much good may it do you. Now, I’m telling you for the last time, we don’t want to be hasty in killing Hellorin’s daughter. Because you’re right about one thing - if they find out we’ve murdered another of their leaders, the bloody Phaerie won’t rest until they’ve hunted every one of us down.’

She sighed. ‘I almost wish she hadn’t landed in our territory tonight. Those stupid Phaerie would have to come crashing down practically into our laps - we didn’t have much choice but to defend ourselves. But since we have her, let’s wait and see if there’s any good we can wrest from the situation. Remember, as long as she’s alive we still have options, but once we’ve stuck a knife in her - much as I’d like to do it myself - well, we can’t bring her back again.’

For a moment, there were mutterings among the band, until another voice, female this time, spoke up. ‘Well, maybe you’re right, Danel. I truly hope you are. Though I think—’

But what she thought was never to be revealed.

Suddenly the ferals froze, startled as wild hares, then dropped down into the undergrowth, dragging Tiolani with them. What had alarmed them? She had heard nothing. The storm was finally blowing itself out now; the rain had ceased, the thunder and lightning had rolled on towards the mountains, and even the ravaging wind had dropped significantly.

The ferals, signalling to one another in some code of their own devising, left her in the bushes and crept forward, silent as drifting smoke. Then from somewhere up ahead, Tiolani heard what had panicked them, and her heart leapt with hope. Horses, she heard horses, and two raised voices. She caught her breath at the sound of familiar, beloved tones. Ferimon! He had survived. He was here. He would save her.

Before she could act, a hand gripped her shoulder through the meshes of the net, and she felt the sting of a knife point in the hollow of her throat. ‘Make a sound, you die,’ a voice hissed. ‘Use your mindspeech or your filthy magic, warn them in any way, and I’ll dismember you piece by piece.’

Tiolani froze; helpless, terrified, scarcely breathing. Even as she cursed herself for her cowardice, even as she steeled herself to risk all in a mind-cry to her love, she heard Ferimon speaking.

His words turned her heart to gall and ashes.

Kelon had spent a cold, wet, wretched night beneath the minimal shelter of the wind-blown trees. But while his body was wracked by the storm, his thoughts were tortured with concern over Aelwen. When last he had heard from her, she had still been airborne, battling the tempest. Had she landed safely? The fact that he could no longer contact her by mindspeech did not bode well. And even if she had reached the ground in safety, she might have been captured. Tiolani would execute her out of hand for trying to make away with Phaerie steeds.

If, by some miracle, she was safe, but too far away to communicate with him, he was still far better off than the Horsemistress. Because he had kept his hold on the packhorse, Aelwen’s precious Rosina, he could huddle between the two animals and share their body heat. The roan mare also carried food, but at first Kelon tried to ignore the gnawing in his stomach. It didn’t seem right, somehow, to touch the food in the saddlebags of the packhorse while Aelwen was somewhere out in the woods alone, with nothing to eat. Occasionally he would call out to her in mindspeech, hoping for the comfort of hearing her voice and knowing that she was all right, but there was never any answer. It took a great deal of energy and effort to project mindspeech over any distance, and she was obviously far away from him. The other alternative - that she might not have survived the storm - he simply refused to countenance.

That didn’t stop him from thinking about her, however: how deeply he cared for Aelwen, how long he had lived with the mingled joy and pain of a love that was not returned. He knew that he was very dear to her, that they were the closest of friends, but always she seemed to carry an invisible barrier around herself. Her heart was shrouded in secrets; he knew that she had long carried the shadows of sorrow and loss. Maybe now that they had left the perils and intrigues of Hellorin’s court, and were away from their many responsibilities; now when they only had each other to depend on - maybe now, if they survived, things would be different. He could only keep on hoping, and wait to see what the future would reveal.

After what seemed an eternity, the violence of the storm abated, and the darkness began to give way to an eerie grey world of mist and shadow. As yet, however, the light was too faint to be any of practical use for travelling, but Kelon could see that the forest floor was a quagmire covered with broken foliage and fallen boughs: the debris of the savage gale’s destruction. Water dripped from the trees overhead, and he shivered in the dismal damp. Though the wind and rain had faded away, there was not the slightest hope of lighting a fire, so he finally succumbed to his hunger and wolfed some bread, meat and cheese from the saddlebags, in the hope that the food might give him more energy to stay warm.

When he looked up again from his meal, Kelon was sure he must have dozed, and dreamed. A globe of crimson radiance hung before his face, dazzling him after the dismal gloom of dawn. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but the strange vision remained. He stretched out a hand to it and felt a gentle heat, but it glided away from his touch, remaining tantalisingly just out of reach. Drawn by the cheerful glow and the hope of some much-needed warmth, he took a step or two after it, but it slipped away from him again, retreating whenever he moved towards it, yet remaining motionless, just as if it were waiting, whenever he stood still.

This was not Phaerie magic - but it was some sort of enchantment, of that he was certain. It did not feel evil. Glowing there so bright and warm and cheerful, it felt beneficent to Kelon. Half-dazed from cold and lack of sleep, craving the comfort that it brought, he followed it along a narrow track that was no more than a game trail, as though he were in a trance.

So when he stumbled across the body of the horse, the shock hit him like a lightning bolt. Kelon recoiled with a cry as his own mount shied into the bushes, dragging the packhorse behind. Calming the snorting, trembling Alil, he dismounted and tethered his own animals, then went forward reluctantly to examine the dead creature.

It was the most appalling thing he had ever seen, its limbs broken and twisted in unnatural places, its hide split and leaking and its skull smashed open. Only the bloodied scraps of white hide and a glazed blue eye that the ravens had not yet found betrayed the poor creature’s identity. Vikal. Ferimon’s horse.

The poor creature must have fallen from a tremendous height. All around the body lay splintered branches, some even impaling the flesh, obviously broken off when the animal came crashing down through the trees. Kelon turned away and vomited into the undergrowth, but even as his stomach wrenched and heaved he could feel a chill of fear crawling between his shoulder blades.

What had happened to Ferimon? Where was he? Had he survived?

No, surely not. Who could live through such a fall? But Tiolani was bound to be searching for her lover, and the more distance Kelon could put between himself and this place, the safer he would be. Besides, it was more urgent than ever that he find Aelwen. Anxious to put his gruesome discovery behind him, he skirted as far around Vikal’s body as the undergrowth would allow and hurried on his way. The burning globe had hung in the air all the time he had been preoccupied, and there could be no doubt that it was waiting for him. Now, as if sensing his urgency, it moved ahead of him faster than before, leading him through the shadowy ranks of the trees.

With all his attention focused on the light, Kelon was careless of other dangers. He never even realised that he was being watched until a tremendous weight crashed down on his head and shoulders, knocking him out of the saddle.

He hit the wet ground with a stunning impact. Dazed and shocked, the breath knocked out of him, his vision smeary with mud and his nose and mouth filled with cloying filth, he was in no condition to fight for his life, but there was no choice. The assailant was also on his feet.

Ferimon.

Kelon barely recognised the Phaerie as the handsome, charismatic young man who had won Tiolani’s heart. He had come off badly in the fall. His blond hair was matted with dirt and leaves and clotted blood. His face was scratched, bruised and swollen, and his tattered clothes were stained crimson where he had been hurt. A gory socket was all that remained of his right eye, and the left held a searing glare of hatred and red wrath. There was madness in that look, and Kelon was pierced by a fire-ice bolt of fear. Though he had been taught the basics of combat with bow and blade, by nature he was no fighter.

Vile epithets spewed from Ferimon’s twisted mouth, then a snarl. ‘Would have ruled. Should have ruled.’ His voice rose to a scream, then that one eye fixed on Kelon with a terrible intensity, and the slurred tones fell to a whisper. ‘Stupid Tiolani. Had her fooled, everyone fooled. All my plan. Give bows to filthy ferals, bring down Hellorin.’ He spat blood. ‘Should have killed him, like her brother. Wed Tiolani. Rule. Rule!’ His face was contorted with rage. ‘Accursed horse demon,’ he spat. ‘You made it kill Tiolani. Aelwen bitch did. How? Why?’ The voice rose again to a howling crescendo. ‘Kill you now. You. I should have ruled.’

Pulling his knife from its sheath, he took a lurching step forward, and Kelon knew a split second’s disbelief. Surely he can’t really mean to fight me? Wounded as he is? His head cleared rapidly of extraneous thoughts, his instincts working at lightning speed as he backed away to give himself a little more room to react. Almost without his knowing it, his own knife was already in his hand, memories of a hundred stable brawls filling his head. Apprenticeships in the stables were a test of toughness, and the youngsters perforce learned to fight if they wanted to survive.

Then Ferimon, as if he had realised that in his condition he could never hope to win a physical combat, had a change of heart - either that, or the knife had been a ruse all along. Without warning, he launched a spell: a magical call that shot like a bolt of silver into the shroud of blackness that lay beneath the trees.

From the secret heart of the forest, something answered.

Fast, fast, fast: shreds of shadow streamed from beneath the bushes to pool at Ferimon’s feet. They gathered, entwined, clotted together to form a shape like the terrible heart of the night: a creature like a wolverine, black as nightmare with eyes like searing embers burning in a narrow face. Eyes of hatred. Eyes of savagery.

Eyes of death.

They fastened on Kelon, affixing him as though he was held in a vice, while within him, his soul cried out in despair. Legends of this hypnotic stare were manifold - but he had never heard of anyone escaping it. The creature was a Culat: rare and lethal, and possessed of its own magic. Despite its size, it was numbered among the most deadly magical beasts and was one of the most feared.

Ferimon laughed: a sound like a knife blade scraping an exposed nerve. ‘Like my pet, Kelon? Took a long time to find one, longer to tame. Now it comes to my summons. Kills for me.’

The creature opened its mouth to reveal needle-tipped teeth that glittered white as bone. It gave a low hiss, and scores of shadows sprang up around it, ghostly images of itself replicated over and over again. Concealed by the undergrowth, they spread out and clustered around the periphery of the clearing, the claws on their thronging feet making not a single sound, even among the rustling dry leaves.

Ferimon raised a hand, holding the monstrosities in place with his will, enjoying the sight of his enemy’s horror and fear. The Culat’s power lay in the shadowy army of facsimiles that surrounded it. They housed the souls of every living being it had slaughtered, subsumed and enslaved; all given animation by its will. Each one of them was as capable of dealing death as the entity itself. And as each victim they slaughtered was absorbed into the Culat’s sinister power, its army of doomed and captive souls increased. The only way to destroy this threat was to find and finish the original, the leader, the progenitor. It was the only one that truly lived; the only one that could die. And if it could be killed, the rest of the soul army would be freed at last from their ghastly imprisonment. But how to kill it? It would be too fast for blade or bow.

As if reading his thoughts, Ferimon laughed again. ‘Needs magic, pure Phaerie magic. Not your pathetic powers; your blood tainted by human slave filth. You can’t kill it, Hemifae.’

‘I think you’re lying.’ Rage swept through Kelon, an anger so powerful that it broke the Culat’s hypnotic spell. He took a deep breath and looked his foe in the eye. ‘Or maybe not - but at least I can take you with me.’ And on the last word he lunged through the shadow army, his knife piercing upward between Ferimon’s ribs, finding his heart with deadly accuracy. The Phaerie sank to the ground, his last breath rattling in his throat, pulling Kelon, whose hand was still locked around the hilt of the jammed blade, down with him.

And in eerie silence, the Culat’s minions attacked.

They were in no hurry now. They closed in on him slowly, stalking, feeding on his fear. Kelon abandoned the futile struggle with the knife and dived behind Ferimon, putting his back against a tree and trying to use his enemy’s body as a shield, but he knew it would be useless. Against so many foes, there could be no defence. He fixed the image of Aelwen in his mind and waited for the end.

And an end came - but not the one he had expected. Kelon cried out in shock as a hissing hail of arrows swept the clearing in a lethal storm. The Culat horde ignored them, the missiles passing through their wraith-like forms, but the onslaught was so heavy that one was bound to find the leader. One of the creatures fell with a piercing scream, spraying gore - and in the blink of an eye, the rest had vanished.

‘You can come out now.’ The laconic voice was female, and sounded quite young. A feral human, she had to be, Kelon thought with dismay. How would they react to someone of Phaerie blood - even half?

‘It’d stupid to hide - you can’t get away.’ This time the voice betrayed impatience - and just a hint of puzzlement.

Though Kelon’s position, tucked down among the roots of a tree behind Ferimon’s cooling corpse, had kept him out of the way of stray arrows, it certainly would not conceal him. Furthermore, he knew that these unknown assailants must have seen him when they made their attack. So what unpleasant game were they playing? They had him helpless. Why toy with him now?

Then he happened to look down, and for an instant, until his sight adjusted, he saw what they must have been seeing.

Nothing.

Kelon was absolutely stunned. He had made himself invisible. But he had no talent for glamourie! He could only imagine that need had ignited some unknown, deeply buried spark of ability within him, a legacy from his Phaerie father. With his survival at stake, instinct had taken over.

‘I said come out, damn you!’ But behind the anger in her voice, he could hear the uncertainty. ‘We just saved your life, stupid,’ she went on.

He had no idea who she was, how many were with her, or what she wanted. He wasn’t that stupid. So he waited, staying very still lest he betray his position.

From somewhere out of sight, there was a murmur of voices. ‘Look here, you idiot.’ The female spoke again. ‘We have this place surrounded and you can’t get by us. You might as well come out. You killed that slimy, cold-blooded, treacherous turd, and that puts us on the same side - at least for now. I’m only disappointed I didn’t get to do it myself. So show yourself, stranger. Come out and parley.’

Not in this lifetime, Kelon thought - but once again, his deepest instincts seemed to be one step ahead of him. This time he actually felt the magic coursing like cool wine through his veins as the glamourie fell away.

‘There he is!’ From all sides, the cry went up. The only way for him to salvage any shred of dignity was to pretend he’d revealed himself deliberately, so Kelon stood up, his skin prickling all over in expectation of an arrow.

They materialised like ghosts, out of nowhere, curious, wary-eyed, hostile; armed with slingshots and bows, and dressed in badly tanned hides and tatters of cloth. Then from the midst of the throng stepped a young woman with short, brown hair that stuck up in tousled spikes and looked as though it had been hacked off with a blunt dagger. She was skinny but wiry, her face smudged with dirt, but she wore her ragged clothing with the dignity of a queen, and her hazel eyes, the colour of forest shadows, snapped fire. ‘Throw the knife away,’ she ordered.

With a bristling thicket of arrows pointed at him, Kelon had no other choice