Heritage Of The Xandim

3

POINT OF NO RETURN

The horses were the first to sense that something was wrong. Corisand, standing together with Maiglan and Valir, pricked up her ears at the muted hiss of whispers and the scuffling of furtive movement in the surrounding bushes. The reek of anger and fear came to her, strongly overlaid by the smell of humans. She threw up her head and stamped restlessly, aware that the other horses were also fidgeting as the current of unease flowed through their ranks.

The Phaerie were crammed into the clearing; talking, laughing, completely unaware that anything was wrong as they clustered around Hellorin’s daughter to congratulate her on her success. The attack came without warning. Suddenly the air was thick with arrows. Screams echoed as Phaerie and horses alike were mown down by the deadly rain. Arvain, standing next to his sister, was hurled backwards by the force of the arrow that pierced his throat. As he fell, he grabbed Tiolani and pulled her down with him. He was dead before he hit the ground, but his corpse was sprawled half on top of her, and his fingers, constricting in a rictus of death, remained tightly locked around her arm, preventing her from rising. A number of shafts pierced Hellorin’s body, followed by another hail as the bowmen reloaded. Clearly, he was their chief target. He staggered and sank to his knees, and at the fall of their Lord, the Phaerie still standing were overcome with confusion and dismay. Only a handful seemed able to put up any coherent defence. Though a few of their attackers had fallen to their bows, the renegade slaves were picking the others off one by one.

Many of the horses were running, terrified by the arrows, the screams and the stench of blood and death, only to be shot or captured. Just as Corisand turned to flee, an arrow whistled past her, missing her by a hair’s breadth, and buried itself in Valir. The chestnut stallion went down, thrashing in agony. Before she could move, he had drawn his last breath.

Nothing could have prepared her for what happened next. As Valir died, knowledge exploded through Corisand’s mind. In one astounding instant she knew her people’s history and her own identity. Her world, her life, her reality were all smashed into a million pieces, and reassembled in an entirely new pattern. Shock turned her muscles to water, and before she knew what was happening, she too was down on the muddy, bloody ground beside her dead companion. All this time, he had been Windeye of the Xandim - and now his mantle had passed to her.

But there was no time for Corisand to come to terms with her new identity. The humans had brought off their attack with such speed and unexpectedness that it might have succeeded, save for one thing. These slaves were runaways from the Wizards. They did not understand that Phaerie magic was different from that of their former masters, and they had no idea of the awesome powers they were about to unleash. Corisand, still blinded by shock, did not see Hellorin stagger to his feet. Despite his terrible wounds, he was drawing on every last scrap of his immense vitality and force of will to keep going, just a little longer. In a voice like a thunderclap, he roared out a word as old as time, and the surrounding woodland came to life. The earth shook, and a sinister wind moaned through the branches as the trees awoke. Then, across the chaos, the Forest Lord struck back.

His inarticulate bellow of rage and grief broke through Corisand’s absorption in her own plight, and she opened her eyes to a sight that would burn itself upon her memory to the end of her days. In an eyeblink Hellorin grew from normal size into a towering colossus who blotted out the stars. A blast of magic exploded through the clearing, radiating outward from the immense form of the Phaerie Lord, its force enough to uproot bushes and tear the branches from trees. Even the surviving Phaerie were knocked off their feet by the force of the onslaught, and the humans at whom it was aimed stood no chance. Now it was their turn to cry out, as each one found themselves encased in a column of vivid green radiance that seemed to rise up out of the ground.

The emerald light flared - and all at once the undergrowth where a pack of wild humans had lurked was filled with statues, as each and every one of the rebels was encased within a sheath of stone. Every last detail was clearly etched, including their faces, which bore expressions of such agonised horror and fear that Corisand was certain they must have had time to realise exactly what was happening to them. Were they still alive, encased in their prisons of stone? She had a feeling that it was so, and though she did not feel like wasting pity on them, she could not help but shudder at the cruelty of such a fate.

Hellorin’s eyes flashed beneath his lowering brows. Clearly, he was not finished yet. Clouds rolled up, mountainous, black and menacing, and blotted out the stars. Thunder reverberated through the treetops. Lightning splintered in a searing arc from sky to ground; sizzling blue-white bolts that leapt from one petrified human to the next, linking them all, for one blinding instant, in a net of fearsome elemental energy. One by one, the stony figures exploded in a cloud of dust that blew away on the shrieking wind, leaving not a single trace of their passing.

The wind dropped, as suddenly as it had risen. With it went the massive bank of darkest cloud, rolling the storm away to the south until the sky was clear and the stars shone forth once more. Hellorin dwindled back to normal size. As his wounds finally overcame him, he swayed and toppled like a mighty tree, his hand reaching out across the intervening distance, towards the body of his son.

With a desperate effort, Tiolani wrenched herself loose from the grasp of her brother’s dead hand. She averted her eyes from Arvain’s face. She couldn’t look at him, because if she saw him lying there, pale and still, not breathing, she would have to face the fact that he was dead, and she just couldn’t do that. Not yet. With a gargantuan effort, she managed to haul herself out from under his heavy body, but when she tried to get to her feet, her legs would not support her. Instead she crawled across on her hands and knees to where her father lay, all the while muttering to herself in a low voice. ‘No, he can’t be, it can’t be true, he isn’t dead, he can’t be dead too, he can’t be . . .’ It was like a charm, or a spell to make Hellorin hold on to life. He would have to be alive. She wouldn’t accept any other alternative.

Events seemed to happening so slowly, with the smallest thought, the slightest movement stretching out into hours. Only now was she aware, at the edge of her vision, of the other Phaerie who had survived the massacre. They were just beginning to move and struggle to their feet, as though time was being drawn out for them in the same unnatural way. Nevertheless, Tiolani was the first to reach her father.

So many shafts had pierced him - how could he still be alive? Yet, as she lifted his head, Hellorin coughed, and drew a rasping breath, and suddenly time snapped back to its normal course. She became aware that other Phaerie were arriving, older and more experienced in such emergencies than she, surrounding her, kneeling by her side, and by that of her father. The Tiolani who had set out on the Hunt that evening would have been content to take a step backwards and let the others deal with the situation; to surrender to her grief and let herself be comforted. But in a few short moments, everything had changed. Her mother had died many years ago, her brother had perished tonight, and Hellorin was badly, perhaps mortally, wounded. She alone was left of the Forest Lord’s line.

There was no time to waste. Each shuddering gasp her father gave sounded as though it might be his last. Tiolani took a deep breath and cast quickly back in her mind to her lessons in magical lore, so recently ended. Finding the spell she needed, she raised her hand and let the power channel through her mind. A silvery-blue light shimmered into existence around Hellorin’s body as she activated the spell that would take him out of time. Blocking out all distractions, she poured every ounce of herself, every bit of strength and will and determination she could muster, into the magic to boost her power, adding some of her own life force into the spell to bolster the fading vital spark of father’s being.

Only when he was completely surrounded in the magical light, and the spell was sealed in place, did Tiolani allow herself to slump, exhausted, over Hellorin’s body, taking great, ragged gulps of air which made her realise that she had forgotten to breathe while casting the spell. But it would be all right now. Her father was safe for the moment, taken out of time, his life preserved until he could be returned to the city and tended by the most skilled of healers.

Tiolani had forgotten the presence of the others until she felt a hand on her shoulder. The dark-eyed, gaunt-faced Phaerie with the saturnine expression was Cordain, her father’s Chief Counsellor and oldest friend. ‘Well done, Lady,’ he said. ‘Your swift action may have saved his life.’

The Forest Lord’s daughter shrugged the hand away and got to her feet, looking at Cordain with eyes as bleak and cold as winter. ‘Don’t just stand there. Have my father borne back to Eliorand with all speed.’ For a moment her voice faltered, but she took a deep breath and hardened her heart. ‘And find others to bring my brother and the remainder of the fallen home. We will not send them to their rest in this wild and dismal place.’

She took a deep breath. ‘My father’s flying spell is powerful, and it will linger a few hours more, even though he is supporting it no longer. Nevertheless, we must move swiftly. Search for any other wounded, take them out of time and have them conveyed to the healers as quickly as possible. Find any missing horses and hounds.’ She looked for the first time at her brother, and her voice grew hard as steel. ‘And search the woods for any surviving humans. There are likely to be others hidden away, the older and weaker of them, and the women and children. I want every one of them found, do you hear me?’

‘And what shall we do with them when we have found them?’ Cordain’s voice held a new respect.

‘Kill them. Every last one. By the end of the night, before the flying spell fades, I want every last accursed human in this part of the forest dead.’

High above the forest, Dael was carried northward by his captors. The journey in the net was a nightmare: as well as immobility, the Phaerie spell had afflicted him with dizziness and an unpleasant prickling throughout his entire body that was painful in its intensity. The wind flayed his flesh with knives of ice. His cheek was pressed hard into the twisted meshes of the net, so that he had no other choice but to look down at the forest, which seemed to wheel and lurch as the net swung and swayed beneath the swift Phaerie horses. He could not be sure whether the nausea that gripped him was due to the unaccustomed motion, or to the magic that had struck him down.

Dreadful though his situation might be, it was better than staying down below to be slaughtered. The other fugitives had been so carried away by the daring of their plan that they had seemed unaware of the risks that were all too obvious to the outcast. Reabal, the successor to Dael’s father, was a man of more courage than sense, and had inflamed them with his stirring speeches. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he had persuaded them that a handful of hungry, ill-clad humans with makeshift weapons could defeat the might of the Phaerie.

The entire insane scheme had been the result of desperation; of men with nowhere left to go turning on their oppressors like cornered rats. But they had failed to take into account that, even in the near-impossible event that they managed to kill every single one of the hunters, there would still be a multitude of others dwelling in their northern city of Eliorand. Fear gripped Dael with claws of ice and steel. What was to become of him? When the remaining Phaerie discovered the massacre of their brethren by the humans, their vengeance would be beyond imagining.

Despite their burden, Dael’s captors were travelling at a tremendous speed. Again and again, he tried to turn his head to see what lay ahead of him, and what his captors were doing above him, but to no avail. The Phaerie magic still held him in helpless thrall.

Finally his efforts paid off, though he thought he was imagining things at first. Had his head moved, maybe? Just a fraction of an inch? Or was he being deceived by false hope? But no: once again he felt movement, slightly stronger this time, and better still, his fingers gave a little twitch.

From the careless way his captors were handling him, Dael felt sure they weren’t expecting their magic to wear off so soon. They had been in such a hurry to bundle him up, and so confident of their spell, that they had never even bothered to search him for weapons. Though the temptation to move was overwhelming, especially when a painful tingling began to signal the return to life in all his limbs, Dael forced himself to remain limp and motionless. He thought of the small knife - all he’d had with him when his fellow slaves had driven him away - concealed in a pocket in his ragged pants, and dared to hope a little, though for what, he couldn’t say.

The riders seemed to be heading for a steep hill rising out of the forest, which proved to be much further away than he had first thought, for when they finally reached the tree-covered eminence, its sheer size astonished him. The riders flew over the summit, and began to slow their speed and lose height, approaching the level of the treetops. Dael was baffled. When he’d been a slave among the Magefolk, he had always been told that the Phaerie dwelt in a great city - so why did they seem to be planning to put him down in the middle of nowhere?

Over his head the conversation between his captors had been going on throughout the journey. Dael, preoccupied with his troubles, had paid little heed to the talk, but now his ears caught the words ‘slave’ and ‘captive’. Suddenly he was all attention.

‘Why bother, Jeryla?’ one of the male Phaerie was saying. ‘Leave it to the keepers of the slave pens. It’s their job.’

‘Don’t be mean, Ferimon,’ the woman replied. ‘It’ll cost me no effort, and the poor thing may as well see where he’s being taken.’

See? Dael was puzzled. What did she mean? The Phaerie must have known his eyes were open when they bundled him into their net.

‘You’re too soft on them,’ Ferimon complained. ‘When all’s said and done, they’re only animals.’

Jeryla shrugged. ‘A little kindness never hurt anybody. If you two can manage the net, it will be but the work of a moment to take care of him.’

Dael felt the net lurch and sway as, with much grumbling on Ferimon’s part, the two male Phaerie took the weight between them. The temptation to turn his head to see what was happening was overwhelming, but while Dael was fighting for self-control, the female came riding into his field of vision, her elegant bay horse pacing the air and her pale, gem-studded hair streaming in the wind. She gave him a mocking smile. ‘Now, little human, open your eyes to the truth.’ Lifting her hand, she cast a ball of rippling blue light at his head. He screamed as it splattered against him, covering his shrinking face with glittering sapphire sparks that sank into his skin with a mild burning sensation. He could feel them penetrating his skull and concentrating around his eyes, with a warmth that would almost have been welcome, were it not so uncanny.

The Phaerie woman laughed, and disappeared from his sight as she rode back to her companions. Once more the lurching began as she took her share of the burden, and the net began to turn slowly, back and forth. As the green eminence spun back into view, Dael stifled a gasp of shock. Before him, instead of the steep, tree-covered slopes of the great hill, was a beautiful, shining city of elegant buildings and many soaring towers.

So that was it. The city had been disguised by a spell. A chill ran through Dael at this further evidence of the power of the Phaerie. In attempting to combat the Wild Hunt, his fellow escapees had failed to understand the risk they were running. He had little doubt that those who’d remained in the forest were doomed - but what of those who had been captured already? Dael was certain that the vengeance of his captors would extend beyond those who had been personally involved in the attack, including himself. One thing was patently clear: if he allowed the Phaerie to take him to the city, he was as good as dead.

Already they were flying over the stretch of forest lying directly south of the city. There was no time to waste. Better to risk a fall from this height than face who knew what kind of terrible fate at the hands of the Phaerie. Surreptitiously Dael groped for his knife - and a sudden chorus of shouts and curses broke out from the Phaerie above. For a blood-freezing instant he thought they had caught him - then he realised what they were saying. It had happened. The attack was taking place right now. ‘Come on,’ he heard Ferimon shout. We’ve got to go back and help them.’

Jeryla hesitated. ‘But what about—’

‘Who cares? There’s plenty more where he came from.’

The blade of a long silver knife glittered in the starlight as it sliced easily through the meshes - then the net gaped open and the Phaerie were already turning, speeding back the way they had come. Dael caught a single glimpse of them as he twisted in the air and began to fall.

All around the clearing, the survivors of the Wild Hunt were picking themselves up, ministering to the wounded, or searching frantically among the fallen for missing friends and family. Though Gwylan the Huntsman had been killed, Darillan, his apprentice, gathered together a small group of helpers and set off in search of the missing fellhounds, while others searched for straying horses. The Phaerie mounts who had remained in the clearing were caught and tended by willing volunteers, and a trembling Corisand found herself being helped to her feet and checked for wounds, before she was tethered with the group of horses who had remained unscathed.

Unscathed in body, at least, she thought. She knew that in her mind and heart and spirit, she would never be the same again. Nor would her Phaerie masters - or the humans of this world. Once word leaked out and spread though their ranks, as it inevitably would, that such an attack had taken place and come so close to succeeding, would fear of what had happened to these rebels be enough to discourage others from trying the same thing? What would happen if it did not? And how would tonight’s happenings affect the human slaves already belonging to the Phaerie? The Forest Lord - if he lived, for his wounds had looked grave indeed - had lost his only son. Would he be content with the vengeance he had exacted upon the ferals? Or, in his grief, would he extend his revenge to all humans alike?

Corisand never knew what made her turn her head at that moment and look at Tiolani. The young woman was standing in the middle of the clearing as though overseeing the efforts of the Phaerie to recover themselves, but her gaze was turned inward. In the course of but a few moments, she seemed to have aged a dozen years. Her face, which so recently had been alight with girlish excitement, was now pale, cold and hard as marble, and her eyes were filled with a bleak, implacable hatred that chilled the Windeye to her very soul.

Suddenly Corisand realised that this girl would be the sovereign of the Phaerie until Hellorin recovered, if he ever did recover. If he should die, then Tiolani would be crowned as Lady of the Forest, and the prospects for the humans looked bleak indeed. But that was not Corisand’s only concern. Most important of all, how would the repercussions of the attack affect the well-being of the Xandim? She had a foreboding that after the events of this night, the world would never be the same for anyone.

Corisand shook her head. She was unaccustomed to thinking like this. It was difficult and it hurt. It opened up whole new concepts of past and future, cause and effect, conjecture, concern and a sense of responsibility she had never experienced before. Until a few moments ago, she had never even known that such a thing as a Windeye existed. Not for the last time, she wished that she could have remained in blissful ignorance for ever.

She watched in horror as the remnants of the Hunt were sent out again until, one by one, any remaining humans were rounded up or hunted down. The Phaerie, damaged and distraught though they might be, were not permitted to rest until all the vermin had been accounted for. Corisand was concerned to see that Tiolani had elected to ride out with the huntsmen, instead of returning home with the wounded Hellorin, in order to make absolutely certain that not a single human remained alive in the woods. Her hatred was so intense that it had overcome even her deep love for her father. With newfound understanding, the Windeye shivered at the thought of what this might portend. Tiolani’s rage at the mortals was uncontainable, and she had even vowed that all those human slaves who had been captured alive and taken away before the ambush had happened would share the death of their brethren before the night was out. A number of the Phaerie had been slain, which was crime enough - but it was clear that for the wounding of her father and the murder of her brother, she could not make the humans pay sufficiently dearly.

Corisand was spared any part in that final slaughter. Along with several other horses, she was in no fit state to be ridden. To her relief, she was left in the clearing with the wounded, their helpers and some vigilant guards. If Tiolani seemed to have aged a dozen years, Corisand herself felt as if she had aged a century in the course of this night, and was longing with all her heart to go home to the comfort and security of her own roomy box in Hellorin’s stable.

At last that interminable night drew to a close, bringing the return of the bone-tired hunters who, under Tiolani’s goad, had slaughtered every human they could find for miles around. Darillan and the other huntsmen collected together the hounds, and the Phaerie, weary, shocked and grieving, took to the skies and headed for home. With their departure, the forest fell into a wary and watchful silence. The cluster of primitive dwellings, which had once represented independence, pride and hope for a handful of rebels, stood dark and abandoned in its woodland clearing. Gradually it would fall prey to the elements, and the relentless overgrowth of brambles, weeds and saplings would blot out every trace.

It was almost daylight when the stunned and battered remnants of the Phaerie Hunt got back to Eliorand. The clear night skies had paled sufficiently to quench the glitter of the stars, and a crimson streak showed low on the horizon in the east. Corisand looked away from it quickly. It only reminded her of the blood that had been spilt that night. Instead she turned her gaze longingly towards the city and home - and was startled and confused to see the change that had taken place in her absence. As the light grew, the city of tall, slender towers, blooming gardens and leaping waterfalls took on the form of a forested eminence that stood high above the surrounding woodland. It almost seemed that the two images of woodland and city had been overlaid, so that the eye perceived first one and then the other.

Corisand was rescued from confusion by the new way of thinking that had come to her that night when the old Windeye had died. She realised that this strange glamourie, this shifting and changing, must be part of a Phaerie spell: a carefully crafted illusion to conceal their city from hostile or unwelcome gazes. As the light grew, the magic that disguised the city would become stronger, probably reaching its peak when the sun was highest in the sky. The spell must not work on animals, she supposed, or she would have seen it before; but now that Corisand had been catapulted into the role of Windeye, she was finally able to perceive both the illusion and the reality.

Illusions, however, were the least of Corisand’s concerns on that night of terror and loss. Her mind had still been reeling from the revelations that had swept through her like a spring flood, changing the entire landscape of her mind and washing away so much of her previous, simple life. With Valir’s death had come the realisation that she and the other Xandim were captives, slaves, robbed of their birthright and trapped in this equine shape - though that had not always been the case. Long ago, there had been a choice. The fact that in the past, her people could take the same form as their captors had stunned her deeply - but less so than the knowledge that she and she alone now bore the responsibility of restoring them to what they once had been.

When it had been time to leave the forest, her body felt sodden with exhaustion, and she was shaking from the aftermath of her experiences. At least, because Hellorin had been wounded, Corisand would be led home with the other injured horses instead of ridden, and she’d been glad of the respite. Her mind had been opened to the inner world of the mental gestalt that enabled not only mindspeech, but also the ability to see into another’s mind, to sense their thoughts and feel their emotions. This was the wellspring from which all magic stemmed, though the new Windeye was far too stunned to understand the implications immediately.

At first, it was all she could do to keep functioning amid the storm of Phaerie emotions that raged around her. Horror, pain, anxiety, grief; shocked disbelief that the human vermin could have turned on them with such devastating consequences - and, overriding all else, Tiolani’s terrible rage. In addition, she could feel the terror and agony of her equine companions, which came to her in primitive bursts of raw emotion that assaulted her senses like physical blows; all the worse because they had few words with which to express their feelings.

Never in her life had she been so glad to return to her cosy stable; to be fed and watered, to have the mud and the spatters of gore washed from her dappled hide, to have her aching limbs rubbed and her small hurts tended, to be groomed and cosseted and wrapped in her own warm woollen rug, and left in a bed of thick, soft, fragrant straw to rest. As the human grooms worked on her, she found herself puzzling, for the first time, over the chasm which existed between those who tended her and the ferals the Phaerie had pursued that night, who had fought back with such unexpected savagery.

No one would ever hunt these humans. Clean, hard-working, valued and cared for by their masters, they were an essential part of Phaerie society, keeping it running with their menial labour and leaving Hellorin’s folk free for other, more enjoyable pursuits. How great a difference lay between these mortal slaves and the quarry of the Wild Hunt, who had been viewed and treated as nothing more than animals. Yet they were exactly the same species. She was still trying to puzzle out the difference as she fell asleep. And surprisingly, sleep came very swiftly, as if her weary body and overburdened mind could scarcely wait to escape from the fears and memories and revelations of that night.

In the morning, of course, it was all still there. Corisand awakened to find that she was Windeye of the Xandim and, with no one to teach or guide or help her, she was going to have to make a start at sorting out the confused mass of memory, knowledge and emotion that churned in her mind. Somehow, she must learn to think clearly in words and images, to reason, conjecture and organise her thoughts. Somehow, she would have to find a way to shield herself from the mental emanations of others which assaulted her unceasingly. Somehow, she’d have to learn the extent of her new powers and abilities - for she understood in her deepest heart that these existed, though she could not say how she knew.