“An who are ye?” demanded Tetaris, squinting at the figure whose dark features were hidden by shadows, backlit as he was by the afternoon light falling on the ground beyond the door arch.
“Your sight grows weak, Tetaris of ’er Bradach. Do ye na ken your ally? Even one ever as black as I?”
“Saladon!” the commander exclaimed. A sigh passed through the Huntersfolk, just as Bevn’s heart leapt in his chest. It was Black Saladon! The wizard had come to save them from the ruffians! They were saved!
The wizard was formiddable; his dark features were tight and hard, his plaited moustache tails quivering beside the rigid line of his lips. He was anything but glad to see Bevn. He came up to the prince and glared at him through smouldering eyes. Bevn had forgotten how heavy the wizard’s presence was. He felt squashed and small before him.
“This littleratter is dangeroos,” said Tetaris. “He call pon he who can na be called.”
“Then we shall have to keep him silent,” said Black Saladon. “Put ye a blade pon his neck while we parley. If he utters a word, ye slices ’cross that idiotic throat.”
Bevn looked wide-eyed at the wizard. He understood the order despite the wizard having reverted to the Hunters’ strange dialect. What was he doing? Why was Saladon so angry with him? Wasn’t he glad to see them safely across the wastelands?
A cold blade touched his skin, and he knew then that he had missed the opportunity to ask anything. The rough grip of the Hunter behind him told him the man was braced and ready. He would not be shy to pull that weapon as instructed.
Bevn was horrified. Maybe he wasn’t as important to the wizard as he’d originally thought. If that blade was jerked across his neck… It would be horrible, like when Gabrielle had speared the Lûk, but instead of some savage’s blood spilling upon him it would be his own blood that would gush warm down his chest and onto his lap. His knees started to shake and he couldn’t stop them.
Saladon stepped up to the table beside the elders and addressed Roherro.
“I can bring better gain to ye an Bradach under such amatter. Allow that I offer ’er saltweight for captives two, to be servants pon ’er road.”
“Ye come a’lasting, trader Saladon. One breath a’later an dead would he have been.”
Saladon nodded. “Boyer is as foolish as ’er frothjawhound, but I need him halerhale, he is part a’pact I maker familymine.”
“Ah. We ken ye to be true, Saladon, but these two be full a’tales an twisted tongues. They bespoke a realm pon ’er waste’s east. Ayree. Be there such land? Have ye trade betaken ye ‘cross ‘er dry an deadly wastes?”
“Ayree?” Saladon replied, mispronouncing it just as the Hunters did. “Might be that mighty Bradach saw such a place,” he said at last. “I have heard it bespoken by other men; else where, else when.”
“Saladon, your word-betold helps none to end this dispute!” Roherro said.
“I can na settle muddle-matter of where become,” Saladon answered, “but I can settle where begone.”
Roherro considered this. “Glad we be to see yon foolish-tongue begone,” agreed Roherro. “But ’er vixen be a different tale, she be worth many times more than ’er pup. Ye can see for yourself. Bradachin is ever drained of womenkind. An she have ’er generous form, of nature pleasing to menninmen. Truthbetold!”
The commander stood forward. “I took her from ’er forest, an would have more than salt to bring level pon ’er scales.”
“An I would put precious blades an whetstones in its place!” called out another Hunter.
Cheers ran through the men present in the hall, and whistles.
“Feify would put his’er wife on the scale,” a gruff-voiced man joked, and the Huntersfolk all laughed heartily. Gabrielle indulged them with a wicked smile.
“Laugh pon your own time, Roherro,” said Saladon sternly. “I have already named my price, and ye ken it is fair.”
“I am not so cheaply traded!” Gabrielle objected. “You must outbid the others, that is the way it is done, and that does not make me your servant. You still have to negotiate with me, settling with the others merely eliminates your competition.” She was enjoying this.
How many times has she played this game in the tavern in Fendwarrow, and how many men have lost their gold or teeth to rivals, only to meet with her clever tongue?
Saladon turned upon her, clearly unimpressed. “I thought you were wiser than the princeling, but I begin to wonder. Don’t you understand, woman, you are not free anymore? Besides, I have already bought you. Now I must pay more?”
“That’s life. Get used to it,” said Gabrielle. She held the wizard’s attention with a level gaze. Bevn wished he could be that brave against Black Saladon. She was daring him, resisting him, showing off to him.
Why did she never do that with him?
Saladon didn’t answer her, but his dark gaze told Bevn that Gabrielle was in trouble with the wizard as well. Saladon turned to face Roherro once more. “Saltweight an a’halves,” he offered.
“Sooth say they walk onna firewyld,” one of the elders said, a craggy-faced woman with wispy white hair. “Such skill has value to Bradachin, witherso many burns a’forest.”
“Double weight then, but na push me further, I warn ye.”
“Na need for ’er threatening, friend Saladon, your price is goodly, we na stand in ye way. Take them as ye will.” Roherro rose, and extended his hand. Saladon shook on the deal, in the manner of the Hunters.
The rest of the elders rose, and Bevn was lifted to his feet by the guard behind him. The man kept his blade across Bevn’s throat. Gabrielle retrieved her dagger from the table.
“Come,” ordered Saladon, striding away toward the exit. Bevn was pushed roughly forward by the knife-wielding Hunter. Gabrielle hesitated before following.
“Don’t expect any more than you’ve bargained for,” she called out.
Saladon gave a short, humourless bark of laughter. “That will be your pleasure,” he said loudly over his shoulder.
“Follow me if you wish to live as well.”
18. SILVER SAND
“Change the world and a person will adapt or die;
Change the person and the world transforms,
in the blink of an eye.”—Zarost
They followed the new pass out of Eyri. They rode up the avenue like pilgrims about to enter a holy land, eyes wide with wonder despite their aching bodies. Tabitha rode at the head, with Garyll close behind on his roan stallion. The mist swirled at the crest of the Penitent’s pass, billowing and disturbed as it was from the spell Tabitha had cast to break the Shield.
Something slithered around her neck. The clasps on her necklaces had lost their seal. She caught the heavy crystals and slipped them into her pocket. She turned to see if the same thing had happened to Garyll, and saw him looking down to where his stone had fallen to the ground. He left it there.
The pressure of the Shield had gone. Tabitha spread her arms and felt her presence spread outward, upward; released. She could breathe. There was slight warmth to the air, and a scent of burnt cinnamon. They rode downhill, into the grey and swirling mist, over the bare, rocky ground and onto silver sand.
Her brown mare jumped and skittered nervously, but she kept spurring her on to avoid backing into the others behind her. The mist began to break into shreds pierced with sunlight. As Tabitha rode into one of these clear gaps, the light caught her full on her shoulders, casting a shadow onto the horse’s neck. The light was unusually bright. She glanced quickly at the sun, gasped and turned away. The sun was a crisp orb, blinding and powerful. It had lost its corona. It was intense. She turned her palm to the sunlight and felt the rays tickle her fingers—rough, raw, the sunlight felt unfiltered.
The sky above was blue but strangely disjointed, as if divided into great mismatched panes. Her mare took a few steps forward but slowed, unsure of finding its own way. The ground was silvery, covered in a metallic dust that crunched under the horses’ hooves and
sparkled in the sun.
There was a faint persistent sound. Tabitha cocked her head. A river running over rocky shallows? No, it was a rougher sound; it set her nerves on edge, like dry leaves scuttling in a breeze. A scratchy dissonance, a hissing screech, and yet it was also a rippled sound like water running over the bones of the earth.
Her horse shifted beneath her.
“Do you hear it?” she asked Garyll. “Do you feel it?”
He shot her a quick glance of concern. “There’s something coming though the mist?”
She shook her head. No, she should have known he wouldn’t hear what she heard—it was the elemental music that had altered. The crackle and screech came not from ahead of them, but underneath them. The earth was different to the soil of Eyri—it gave off a unique sound. The last of the mist rolled aside, and there, before them, lay their first view of the land beyond Eyri, their first view of Oldenworld.
“Oh mercy, it’s a wasteland!” she exclaimed.
The ground sloped away, bare, barren, stripped to the silvery-white skeleton of the rocks, as if a great fire had raged across it and left only a swathe of ash in its wake. The morass stretched as far as she could see on the plains, a featureless expanse of lifelessness. Only on the far horizon did the landscape hold a narrow stroke of green—possibly a forest, but many, many leagues away.
“For shame, the horses! They’ll die out here!” Ashley said. “There’s not a blade of grass… Not a blade for them to eat.”
“Fool!” said Garyll, to himself. “We should have brought a pack horse with grainmeal and fodder. I’ve never seen a place where grass did not grow. Even Slurryrig isn’t this bad. Ah, this is a cruel twist to our fate.”
Tabitha’s mare twisted beneath her. She tightened her grip on the reins.
She scanned the wastes for signs of life. Nothing. Except for twinned tracks that led away across the sands, two widely spaced grooves. The tracks curved in toward them, turned behind them then curved outward again in a second line. Something had come past and gone away again. A coach? Tabitha didn’t think so, because there were no hoof prints. No footprints either. The footprints she had been tracking ended beside the groove closest to Eyri, at the edge of the silvered soil.
Bevn had found some means of transport. Someone had collected him. That was worrying. Someone in Oldenworld had known he was coming. This might not be as haphazard as it seemed; it might be a planned expedition. They might be up against more than a runaway prince.
Garyll’s stallion tossed its head, and Mulrano’s whinnied.
Did the Sorcerer know about Bevn? With the Shield broken, Eyri was vulnerable.
With a great squeal, Ashley’s mare jumped away. Garyll reached for the reins as its head passed him but missed. Ashley leant close to its head and seemed to regain some control, but then Mulrano’s black stallion ran with a strange sideways gait, and Tabitha’s mare shook its head as if trying to rid itself of a wasp. Garyll’s stallion stamped and reared, stamped and reared again. Every hoof-fall raised a puff of dust around its hocks.
“It’s something in the ground!” Ashley shouted, guiding his grey closer. “They don’t like it. It’s as if it stings their hooves, I’m not sure how. Uhhh, not again. I can’t hold onto them!”
The ground? It was still, just as silvery-grey as ever. Tabitha realised too late what that might mean.
Across Oldenworld shall his wildfire spread. Sorcerer of the silver fire, thrice-dreaded.
They were standing in wildfire! The Sorcerer’s magic, the touch of Chaos.
The horses took off, galloping and bucking, outward onto the silver sands.
“No!” shouted Tabitha. “Get them to go back! Turn them back!”
Was this whole wasteland filled with the Sorcerer’s power? They would never survive it. She hauled hard on her mare’s reins, but the mare Sharrow just fought her, panicked, frantic. The others tried to turn their horses back as well, but none of them obeyed. Every lurching sideways lunge took them further into the silver sand.
“Something’s happening!” shouted Ashley. “There’s a change ... a wrongness in their minds!”
Garyll’s stallion reared, and he was almost thrown.
“Stay on!” Tabitha shouted. “Whatever happens, stay on the horses! The ground is tainted with magic, all of it is tainted. Oh mercy me! Ashley! Can you calm them? Can you make them go back?”
“I can’t… They’re going mad!” he cried as his mare spun him in tight circles.
Tabitha looked in horror at Sharrow’s pounding legs, stained silver from the dust. Thick worms crawled under the skin, bulging, growing; then they were as thick as writhing serpents. Sharrow’s hair fell away like chaff. Her skin became tough and leathery. The girth burst and the saddle loosened between Tabitha’s legs as Sharrow’s back broadened and her limbs thickened. Her nose became more rounded, her muzzle wizened. She rolled a terrified horsey eye at Tabitha.
Chaos was upon them, a rampant curse, a poison that inflicted change. The living flesh was taking new forms. Tabitha was too scared to do anything but clutch to the neck of the beast beneath her. She couldn’t afford to fall off.
Garyll’s horse reared again, pawing the air with its forelegs, balancing there as its legs thickened and bulged with muscles. It lost its roan coat just as Sharrow had; its skin became as shiny as lacquer. All at once its hooves changed. Vicious, splayed talons grew through the old horny casings. A hooked barb thrust through the skin at each knee. The elegant lines of its head became warped and flattened, and the skin pulled back from a mouth of elongated teeth. It glared from suddenly predatory, slit eyes. It gave a sibilant cry—half horse, half monster.
Sharrow bucked and arched beneath Tabitha, probably trying to get away from Garyll’s altered stallion, which lashed out with its taloned forelegs and almost caught Mulrano’s stallion in the throat. Mulrano’s stallion answered with a high unnatural squeal. It shrank, growing smaller and more hound-like, and blacker, if that was possible. It was like watching darkness concentrate itself around two evil eyes.
“Catch him!” Garyll shouted to Tabitha, who was nearest. “He’s going to touch the ground!” There was a hint of panic in Garyll’s voice. She grabbed for Mulrano. As she caught his arms, the saddle fell from under him. The tack clattered to the ground as the shrunken creature shook its head. The bridle smoked in the ash. Mulrano struggled and kicked his way onto Tabitha’s thickset beast, and almost pulled her loose from the shifting saddle. Behind him, his shrunken animal fled. It was no bigger than a hunting dog.
Ashley’s horse squealed and reared. Tendrils of silver shot up its legs and spread quickly over its body like a rampant creeper. The mare grew thinner, but something bulged from its shoulders, stretching the grey coat outward. The horse squealed and bucked, but the touch of Chaos was impossible to refuse. With a sudden tearing of skin, two limbs protruded through at the mare’s shoulders, thick-edged and covered with bloody feathers.
The mare became thinner in body as its wings grew wide and strong. It tossed its head, which became thin and avian around its startled eyes. Its muzzle became elongated and hardened into a horny beak. With a leap and a surprised cry from Ashley, his transformed horse took to the air. He clung to its neck and whispered in its ear, but it beat the air with its new wings and rose in a frantic flutter.
“Ashley!” she cried out. “Ashley!”
“They still believe they are horses!” he shouted down, rising ever higher. “Give them clear commands! Ride them!” Ashley was soon too high above them to speak to, and the winged creature that had once been a horse lurched away on the upper winds.
“Garyll! I don’t want to die!” Oh Ethea, don’t let me be changed like this! The world had become unutterably strange.
Garyll’s creature roared. Her own beast shuddered beneath them then ran. She clutched tighter to its neck, and Mulrano gripped her waist with desperate strength from behind. They galloped away, holding on for dear life. Heavy hooves thundered on the sh
ifting sand. Although they plunged through thick banks of silver, they did not alter any more. Sharrow’s legs remained thick and leathery, as if by changing she had developed an immunity to further change, if only for the moment.
The bridle bound the creature’s nose so tightly it looked about to burst. Tabitha tried again to rein her beast in. It’s Sharrow, Tabitha thought, she’s still Sharrow inside, she just looks like a beast. She had to believe that. She had to believe that part of what she rode was still a horse, or she would go mad with fear. Garyll’s taloned horse galloped close on their tail. It was harder to believe that the predatory creature had ever been a stallion. A whorse, Tabitha thought. It was a horse, now it was…something else, far worse.
She let Sharrow run. She suspected that Sharrow’s mouth had grown too hard to care about the pull of the reins anyway. The saddle wanted to slip under Tabitha’s legs. She gripped as tight as she could with her knees, but it was awkward to sit upon the wide back, and Sharrow’s heavy gait was unsettling. Mulrano knocked into her with every step.
The wind whistled in her ears. The ground flew by in a metallic glistening blur. The danger lay in front of them. The plains stretched away in bright undulations, league upon league of wasteland. A ridge passed by on their right, growing larger as they descended beside it. These must be the back of the peaks they could see in Eyri, Tabitha thought. They looked so different on the Eyrian side—lush, carpeted in green trees. On this side of the Shield, the ground was barren, the rocks streaked and scarred and the slopes dry and empty of any life. Some clouds lingered on the border of Eyri, like ugly tongues jutting out toward the plains, twisting upward toward the brightness of the morning sun. Farther ahead, a brown-tinted thundercloud grew stacked and knuckled above the desert plains. The sky still looked as warped as ever, a montage of lopsided squares of uneven blue.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 28
