Heritage Of The Xandim

2

INITIATION

Though Tiolani was disappointed about Asharal, she tried to do as Aelwen said, and appreciate that her father was doing her an honour in letting her ride his own horse. The silver-white mare bore her years lightly, and still had more than sufficient stamina, speed and spirit to serve a novice huntress well on her first Wild Hunt. From her pricked ears and the brightness of her eyes, it was plain that she was delighted to be hunting again. She snorted and stamped as they waited in the courtyard, as impatient to be off as any of the younger animals. Hellorin, in the meantime, had mounted his new mare, Maiglan’s daughter; a much darker, dappled grey with a black mane and tail. The creature was far more fiery and wilful than Asharal, Tiolani thought with a tinge of resentment. He had called her Corisand, an ancient Phaerie word for a tempest, and ever since she’d been a foal, she had lived up to the name.

The Forest Lord blew on a silver horn, and suddenly the courtyard fell silent save for the baying of the great grey fellhounds. He flung up his arm in a skyward gesture, and the magic of his flying spell streamed from his fingers in glittering trails that drifted down like snow to cover the riders of the Hunt, their mounts and the pack of hounds in a cloak of scintillating light.

Gwylan gave the signal to loose the fellhounds. The pack leapt forward as one, streaming across the courtyard, but before they reached the gates they were in the air and climbing fast, the shimmer of the flying spell leaving a trail of sparks beneath their feet. Hellorin’s dappled mare bounded forward, diamond starbursts appearing beneath her hooves as the spell took hold. She sprang into the air and simply kept on going, running easily as though ascending a gentle slope, with every stride taking her further aloft. Arvain, holding in his own chestnut stallion with difficulty, turned to Tiolani. ‘Come on, Monster. Follow me.’

Tiolani gathered her reins and urged Maiglan on. She felt the lurch as the mare leapt forward and they took off in their skyward leap just a stride behind Arvain. As she climbed, the frosty night air swept past her, burning chill against her face and hands, and whipping away the crystalline clouds of her breath. Beneath her, she glimpsed a dizzying whirl of rooftops; then, as she gained more height, the entire city stretched out beneath her. At the top of the eminence on which Eliorand stood was Hellorin’s palace, a cluster of elegant towers with a complex of other buildings grouped round them that contained everything from banqueting halls and state chambers right down to the palace kitchens, and the workshops and living quarters of those whose sole work it was to maintain the royal abode in all its beauty and splendour. Like all structures in Eliorand, the buildings were fashioned from polished wood and stone with the flowing, organic lines that the Phaerie loved so well, so that they seemed to spring naturally out of the hillside. Close to the palace in magnificent dwellings lived the true Phaerie, the members of Hellorin’s court. On the lower slopes were the homes of the Hemifae, as well as markets, workshops and beautiful gardens and parks.

‘Watch where you’re going, you stupid little . . .’

Tiolani, whose attention had all been on the city below instead of on her fellow members of the Hunt, wrenched her horse out of the impending collision almost by instinct. The other rider did the same and veered away, cursing all idiots who didn’t know enough to keep their wits about them in the sky. In the heat of the moment, he had never even noticed who had so nearly run into him, and Tiolani was glad of that. She had been gawking like some mooncalf at the view, while so many other horses were moving at speed in the sky around her. Her heart hammered at the thought of what would have happened if she or the other rider had been unseated in a collision. A fall from this height meant certain death. How could she have been so inattentive, knowing as she did that Ferimon’s father, drunk and careless, had caused just such an accident which had taken the life of her mother?

The entire court was now in motion, rising into the night skies to add their glittering presence to the glory of the stars. They were an awe-inspiring sight, terrifying in their splendour, their robes of shimmering, many-hued luminescence trailing behind them in sparkling drifts like comet-tails. The horses were caparisoned in the same glistening fabric, and their reins gleamed with pure white light. As the riders swept low above the treetops, following the baying hounds, everything that their trailing vestments touched took on the mysterious radiance, to be limned in frosty rainbow sparkles that spread from branch to branch, outlining the boughs and leaves in delicate traceries of lustre.

When Tiolani looked down at herself, she saw the visual component of her father’s spell glittering on her own skin and clothing. The gold she had chosen for her costume not only suited her colouring and looked suitably regal for her rank, it would make her easily visible to Hellorin who, annoyingly but not unnaturally, wanted to keep an eye on her this first time. Though the Phaerie seemed to approach it in a light-hearted spirit, the Hunt was dangerous. With horses plunging down from the skies and hurtling through the forest in pursuit of their quarry, collisions could, and occasionally did, happen: with trees and other obstacles, or between the horses themselves. Sometimes the prey would fight back, and the thrust of a well-aimed weapon could slay one of the Phaerie as easily as it could kill one of their slaves.

At the thought of these dangers, Tiolani felt a hollow sensation in her stomach. ‘It’s nothing but excitement,’ she told herself firmly. ‘I’m an excellent rider, I know how to use a weapon. Nothing can possibly go wrong.’ She flexed her shoulders against the comforting weight of the bow that was slung across her back. She could have used a sword with equal facility; indeed she carried one and had been well trained in the use of both weapons. Tonight, however, she had decided that it would be better to keep a certain distance between herself and her quarry. Though she had been sparring for years with her tutors and various opponents, she had never actually killed a living creature with her sword. Somehow, she was reluctant to see the spurt of blood as blade bit into flesh, and hear the crunch of metal biting through bone. Not this first time. She would have enough to think about, without that.

Hellorin laughed aloud for sheer joy and urged his mount higher, and Corisand, for once, did not resist him. Viewed through a horse’s eyes, the Phaerie did not present such a brave and beautiful sight, for they could clearly be seen as the predators they were. Feral, cold and pitiless, their eyes glittered with a savage light, and the miasma of blood-lust hung around them like a dark and reeking cloud. On this special night, however, Corisand was untroubled by the ruthless and barbaric side of her masters’ nature. She too was caught up in the exhilaration of the soaring climb towards the stars, and the thrill of the wild chase through the crisp night air. Unlike Tiolani, she was not looking forward to the sport the night might bring, or concerned about the dangers involved. She only knew that for once she was free to run, and to revel in the smooth play of healthy muscles as they bunched and stretched in powerful motion. The vision of an equine, with her eyes set to the sides of her head, meant that she could see almost all the way around herself, so she was aware of her fellow horses on every side, before and behind, and could lose herself in the elation of running with the herd.

Tiolani, in the meantime, was following her father and brother, her heart beating fast with excitement, the icy wind stinging her face and pulling her long hair out of its braids to unravel into a wild banner that streamed out behind her. The lights of Eliorand, twinkling like earthbound stars on their hill, fell away quickly, to be replaced by the dark, mysterious tangle of the forest, with here and there the shining line of a stream or river threading its way through the gloom. Tiolani wished she could silence all the sounds around her and lose herself in the wonder of the night. Yet the huffing exhalations of the horses, the wild music of the horns, the baying of fellhounds and the excited voices of the Phaerie Court, calling to one another as they raced across the void, were so much a part of the night’s magic that it would be wrong, somehow, to lose them.

The Hunt galloped on, streaking across the skies, eating up the miles as the forest sped by below them, sounding their silver horns and singing songs of bloodshed and slaughter. When they reached the broad river that marked the border between their own realm and the lands of the Wizards, they ignored the treaty that existed between themselves and the Wizardfolk and continued onwards as before - but now Gwylan the Huntsman led the fellhounds spiralling down among the trees, bringing them back to earth to seek the scent of humans.

There were two sorts of humans at large in the forest. The first had been seeded there by Hellorin himself in previous centuries, so that they could breed in the wildwood to provide his hunters with a ready quarry. The remainder had escaped from servitude, either to the Phaerie or the Wizards. Though the mortal servants of both Wizards and Phaerie were bred to be nothing but slaves, it was only natural that some would grow weary of their lot, and escapes were inevitable. Most of the fleeing slaves were rounded up quickly as their masters used the powers of scrying to learn of their whereabouts, but others had survived over the years to breed, and now groups of wild or feral humans were scattered throughout the forest. The little band that were to be hunted tonight were slaves; escaped from the Wizards, they had fled far indeed from their masters, taking shelter many miles to the north of Nexis, the settlement that lay closest to the border of Hellorin’s kingdom. So far, no one had bothered to come looking for them and against all odds, they were managing to survive the winter. A pitiful encampment of roughly built huts, their roofs white with frost, were clustered in a forest clearing as if seeking protection in numbers from the terrors that lurked in the dark and the wilderness - but there was no protection from the predators that sought the humans this time.

A horn rang out, and the deep baying of hounds echoed through the trees. The pack had found their quarry. Like falling stars, the Hunt came hurtling down out of the sky, and Tiolani heard the sudden thunder of hooves as the horses’ feet hit the ground and galloped on without breaking stride, throwing up clots of mud and dead leaves as they ran. Maiglan landed in the midst of the others with a jolt that rattled her rider’s teeth, then the mare was bounding forward. Tiolani held on tightly, flinging an arm up to protect her face as they went crashing through bushes and dodging between tree trunks at breakneck speed. At first she was in terror of slamming into an obstacle or another rider, but presently she realised that Maiglan, despite her speed, was sure-footed, alert for any hazards and careful to avoid them. Suddenly she was fervently glad that her father had insisted she ride an experienced horse. But where, in all this confusion, was the quarry? Up ahead she could hear yells and screams and the clamour of the dogs, but at first her view was obstructed by the other riders. These soon began to scatter, however, peeling away to pursue their individual victims, and Tiolani finally caught her first sight of her prey.

The Phaerie whooped with excitement and howled with bloodlust as they hunted their victims down one by one with the huge grey dogs, closing on the helpless humans who darted this way and that between the trees in a futile attempt to escape. Great teeth seized and tore, scattering bloody chunks of flesh. Blades glittered in the starlight, whining as they clove the air, shearing through muscle and sinew, crunching into bone. The frosty leaves that coated the forest floor were darkened with spreading pools of gore, and the screams of the dying rent the night.

Her palms slippery with sweat, Tiolani took a tighter grip on the reins and swallowed hard, forcing back the nausea that was rising in her throat. She was Hellorin’s daughter - she was damned if she’d disgrace herself in front of the entire court. ‘Get hold of yourself,’ she muttered. It helped to remember what her father always said about these particular mortals. Feral humans were vermin, no better than rats. They bred like rats too, and if left unchecked would outnumber Phaerie and Magefolk in no time. Their extermination did the world a favour.

Tiolani felt better at the thought, and ashamed of her squeamishness. Never mind, she told herself. Many people feel that way on their first Hunt. Just concentrate on getting one of these humans. Then the worst will be over, and your honour will be satisfied.

The Hunt had drifted away from her through the forest. It wasn’t far - she only had to follow the sound of the Phaerie crying out to one another, and the screams of the mortals. Coming upon a knot of hunters and hunted in a clearing, she singled out a victim, a short stocky male with greying hair. He was clad, like the others, in nothing but dirt and a tatter of rags and animal skins that made him look bestial indeed: a far cry from the clean and neatly turned-out slaves in her father’s palace. Somehow, that made it easier for Tiolani to see him as prey. He darted to one side, and the experienced Maiglan turned to follow the fleeing figure as it dodged between the trees. Looping her reins around the pommel of the saddle, Tiolani reached for her bow and, within an instant, had an arrow in place. She had been hitting moving targets from horseback since she was ten, so this should present no great challenge. She sighted, fired - and in that very instant another rider darted out from between the trees and took the quarry’s head off with a single swiping sword-blow. Tiolani’s arrow flew over the top of the victim and embedded itself in a tree. The body stumbled on for a step or two, then fell to the ground, twitching and spraying blood, while the head bounced and rolled right under the feet of Maiglan, who snorted and sidestepped, causing her rider to lurch in the saddle.

‘Hey,’ Tiolani yelled. ‘How dare you take my--’ She faltered into silence as the other rider turned, and she recognised Varna - but a Varna she had never seen before. In place of the amusing, deferential lady-in-waiting she had always known, there was a wild-haired demon whose eyes blazed with a savage light in a blood-spattered face. ‘My quarry,’ Varna snarled. ‘Find your own.’ She wheeled her horse and was gone.

Shocked, Tiolani hesitated for a moment - then she realised that the Hunt was leaving her behind once more. Muttering a curse, she swung Maiglan around and set off in pursuit. By all Creation, this was more difficult than it looked.

Dael would have given anything to be able to change places with one of his hunters. He was an outcast among outcasts, and death surrounded him on all sides. He ran through the forest, praying he could keep one step ahead of the Phaerie; hoping he would not run into one of his fellow human escapees, who would think nothing of betraying his whereabouts to save their own hides. If he should be caught, he could expect little quarter from either race. His father, Lamus, had been the leader of the outcasts until, sick of his evil temper, brutality and violence, the others had banded together and clubbed him to death only a few days ago. Though Dael had been just as much a victim of his father’s bullying as the others, and bore the scars and bruises to prove it, his blood had been tainted in their eyes. They had spared his life, but banished him from their little community and driven him away into the forest, where he had been facing the prospect of slow death by cold and starvation, before the Forest Lord’s hunters had arrived to alter his fate.

Somehow, he had never expected the sight of the Wild Hunt to be so terrifying. Throughout his life, Dael had heard all the tales. ‘Be a good child, or the Phaerie will come for you,’ was a ploy used frequently by human mothers. But no matter how bloodcurdling the stories had been, nothing could have prepared him for the real thing. His only warning had been the distant belling of hounds, then the flame-eyed pack came streaming through the skies, with the Phaerie following in their wake like a shower of shooting stars: a heart-stopping sight in their glowing robes. Dael gave a moan of terror. It was just his luck that it had to happen now, when he was frozen, half-starved and all alone in the world without a soul to care whether he lived or died.

There had been little time to act. The best he could manage was to push himself into some bushes, in the hope that he would not be seen, and the fellhounds would find other victims. But one of the hunters, a girl about his own age, had spotted him and fired at him with her bow. Luckily for him, she had turned out to be an awful shot and the arrow had thudded into the ground just beside him. Dael hadn’t given her time for a second attempt. Springing to his feet, he ran blindly through the trees, finding strength and speed from sheer desperation, even in his cold and starving state. But it had all been pointless. Behind him he heard the crack of breaking twigs and the crunch of fallen leaves being crushed under heavy hooves. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that another group of Phaerie were after him.

As hard as Dael could run, his pursuers could close the distance faster. A blast of magic hit him, knocking him off his feet. Even as he stumbled and rolled, he felt the spell penetrating deeper into his body to freeze his nerves and liquefy his muscles. He hit the ground hard, stark-eyed, terrified and gasping for breath. There was a blur of movement at the edge of his vision, then a shadow engulfed him and a horrible, clinging weight fell on him, wrapping itself around his body. For an instant, blinded by sheer panic, he did not understand what had happened - then he realised that he was buried beneath the silvery meshes of a net, and could only lie there, helpless, and wait for them to come.

Would the cold-eyed hunters finish him with an arrow or a sword? Or would he be torn to pieces in the jaws of the ravening hounds? It flashed through his mind that twenty years of slavery wasn’t much to call a life, and for an instant his fear was lost in anger at the sheer unfairness of it all. Then the Phaerie were upon him, and his fear returned tenfold as he waited for the blow to fall. Instead he heard laughter. ‘Call that a cast, Ferimon?’ a female voice said. ‘You’re supposed to net them then bespell them, you fool.’

Three Phaerie, two men and a woman, stood over him. ‘He took me by surprise,’ Ferimon protested. ‘What is he doing here, so far from the others? Anyway, how could I have made a decent cast when the wretched trees were in my way? You take the net next time, if you’re so clever.’

‘Never mind.’ Clearly the third hunter was set on keeping the peace. ‘It doesn’t really matter as long as we have him. He looks like a nice, sturdy young specimen, and capable of a good day’s work. Come on, roll him over and wrap him properly, and we’ll take him back.’

Take him back? Dael’s first sensation was one of overwhelming relief. They weren’t going to kill him. The close proximity of death proved how precious even a life of slavery could be.

Working together, the Phaerie bundled him securely into the net, then fastened it to the saddles of all three horses, taking the weight between them. For a moment, as the horses started to move, Dael was bounced and dragged through mud and rotting leaves. Then suddenly he was airborne, his stomach lurching as the net swung far above the ground, and his body in its thin tatters of clothing was pierced by the cold night air.

By now, the initial relief of his reprieve was fading, leaving behind a sinking sense of dread as he thought of the future. He looked up at his Phaerie captors, laughing and bickering good-naturedly as they rode home in triumph. They wouldn’t be so cheerful and confident if they knew what he knew about the madness his fellow escapees were planning. Mortals would not be the only ones to die in the forest tonight. Then would come the vengeance of the Phaerie. Despite the fact that Dael had escaped death in the Wild Hunt itself, he knew that, before the night was done, not a single one of the slaves who had taken refuge in the forest would be left alive.

Tiolani was wondering just how a bunch of runaway slaves could manage to make themselves scarce. She urged Maiglan into a gallop and sped through the trees with reckless speed, hoping to catch up with the rest of the Hunt before it was too late. This time, she came upon a different group of her fellows, and discovered to her surprise that not all of the Phaerie were there to kill. She watched the net-casters, open-mouthed. Why had no one ever told her about this? Then the answer came to her. It was of great importance that Hellorin’s daughter should kill on her first Wild Hunt. Until she had done that, she had no business getting distracted by any other possibilities. Still, this sort of hunting looked like more fun than the carnage Tiolani had witnessed, but she could see that it must take a great deal of skill and practice. Tomorrow, when she got home, she might ask her father if she could look for a group to join, but tonight she still had her first Hunt to get through.

She rode on through the trees, looking anxiously about her, hoping to catch a glimpse of a fleeing human figure. Was she too late? Had the Hunt already run out of victims? Then ahead she saw someone making a pitiful attempt to hide in a clump of scrubby bushes. A young man, probably a little younger than herself, she thought. He huddled down low, shaking with terror, his eyes closed tightly. Tiolani grinned. Why, surely she couldn’t miss this one. He hadn’t even seen her. Raising her bow, she took careful aim. There would be no failure this time - but as she loosed the arrow her arm seemed to jerk of its own volition, sending the shot wide. The arrow thudded into the ground within inches of the young man’s leg. He leapt up with a howl and ran off between the trees - only to be captured by a group of net-bearers, who felled him with a blast of magic and scooped him neatly from the ground, carrying him away between them over the treetops.

Tiolani slammed her fist into her thigh, disgusted with herself. What in Creation had happened? She’d had the shot perfectly lined up: how could she possibly have missed? To make matters worse, it wouldn’t take the Hunt long to deal with one small colony of feral humans. As time went on, her chances of making a kill were growing less and less, and how would she bear the humiliation if she failed?

Hearing voices and the baying of fellhounds to her left, she set off in that direction. All at once, a figure came swerving out of the undergrowth, almost beneath her horse’s hooves. Without thinking, she raised her bow and fired, and this time there was no mistake. The figure jerked, staggered and collapsed as the arrow thudded into its back. Punching her fist into the air, Tiolani gave a cry of triumph. ‘I did it, I did it!’ As she dismounted for a closer look at her prey, the hound that had been in pursuit burst out of the bushes and seized the twitching body by one arm, worrying and jerking at it, and pulling it over onto its back. Tiolani saw the face of a girl no older than herself. Her pretty features were contorted in agony; stained with the blood that had gushed from her nose and mouth. Her blue eyes stared, wide and unseeing, at her killer.

Tiolani bolted into the bushes and was violently sick. As she emerged, wiping her mouth on her kerchief, she came face to face with Arvain. ‘Well done, little sister.’ His face glowed with pride. ‘That was a superb shot.’

Unhooking her water flask from her saddle, Tiolani rinsed out her mouth. ‘You saw me,’ she said, when she could speak again.

‘From the other side of the clearing,’ her brother told her. ‘Your first kill. How proud Father will be. I called to him in mindspeech and told him: he is on his way.’

‘Arvain, you won’t tell anyone I—’

‘Never fear, a lot of folk throw up the first time - myself included.’ He grinned. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

Then, almost before she knew what was happening, her father was there, with Varna and a crowd of others, all thronging around to congratulate her. Her father, beaming with pride, dipped his fingers in the blood of the dead human and marked Tiolani’s cheeks and forehead. ‘All praise to my daughter, the Lady Tiolani,’ he announced. ‘On this night she has killed her first quarry and thereby reached her maturity. She now belongs fully to the Wild Hunt of the Phaerie Court.’

Tiolani tried not to shudder at the touch of the sticky gore on her face. She longed to rub it off, but that would have to wait until she got home. Instead she forced a smile, and accepted the cheers and compliments with good grace. Soon, having entered into the spirit of the occasion, she found that she actually did feel proud of her achievement. Just so long as she didn’t have to look into those dead, blue eyes, everything was fine.