“A storm that blew up awful bloody fast,” Rygel said, his amber eyes narrowed as he watched the sky.
“We were due.” Alun shrugged. “Our incredible luck with the fair weather had to end sooner or later.”
I followed Rygel’s intent stare. Huge white and dark grey thunderheads billowed up over the top of the forest, growing larger by the minute. Lightning stabbed down, its resulting explosion of thunder almost instantaneous. The storm was closer than it looked.
“We may want to consider finding some shelter,” Witraz advised.
Tor stumbled to my side, a shy grin revealing his even white teeth. “I have no sword to pledge to you, Your Highness,” he said, his brown eyes bright. “But I’m still your man. I will follow you, too. For his sake.”
I smiled. Damn it, did his voice sound deeper? Resisting the temptation to tousle his curly hair, for that would demean his new-found manhood in his own eyes, I gripped his shoulder. The new muscles under my hand surprised me. Tor would someday be a warrior to be reckoned with.
“So shall you be,” I replied, kissing him on the brow. “Keep up with your archery. Somehow we’ll find you a sword.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
His grin endearing, he bent swiftly to take my hand and kiss it. Like Witraz, Yuri, Yuras and the twins, Tor returned to his grey horse to finish saddling her.
“That might not have been such a good idea, Princess,” Rygel said.
“Why?”
He grimaced, glancing at a forlorn Arianne, Tuatha still overflowing her arms. In the confrontation with Kel’Ratan, I’d almost forgotten them both. “I’m thinking Tor should stay here with Arianne. With one or two of your warriors.”
He jerked his head toward the distant mountains. “That’s no place for the young nor the weak.”
“No!” Arianne shrieked, spilling Tuatha into a disorganized heap on the ground. “You’ll never leave me behind!”
“Arianne –”
“You can’t stop me from going.”
Rygel glanced helplessly to me.
I shrugged. “It’ll kill her to stay behind. Tor, also.”
I smiled wryly. “Besides, I just freed them from their vows of fealty,” I said. “My boys are under no oath to obey me now, so how can I command any to stay? Tor, Arianne and Tuatha come along.”
Rygel sighed, looked down into the furious, yet glorious eyes of his tiny beloved. “By your command, Princess.”
Blinding lightning struck the forest, not far from the clearing. Thunder cracked sharply overhead. I couldn’t stop the reflexive duck I made, nor did Rygel and Witraz. No few wolves yelped, leaping to the side. Tor’s mare spooked, knocking Tor to the ground.
“That was close,” Rygel muttered.
“Too close,” muttered Witraz. “I think we should ride like hell.”
Corwyn and Kel’Ratan walked back toward us. Corwyn had his arm companionably around my cousin’s shoulders, his mouth half-smiling. Kel’Ratan’s eyes rested on me, though his face remained red. With an embarrassed flush this time, not fury.
Sheet lightning filled the blue sky. Under its accompanying sharp crack of thunder, I and no few others yelped in fear. I swear I felt the impact tremor through the ground, but knew that was impossible. Bar screeched, his wings half furled, his raptor eyes on the rapidly approaching storm. I rubbed my arms, my fingers tripping over my armbands, gooseflesh rising along my skin.
“That storm isn’t natural,” Rygel said slowly.
Silverruff growled.
“I don’t know,” Rygel answered absently.
Suddenly, his yellow eyes widened in horror. “Gods above and below,” he muttered, using Raine’s favorite epithet. “Oh, shit. Shit. Shiiiiit!”
“Rygel, what – “ I began.
Like a steel vise, his grip on my arm clamped down painfully. Dragging me with him, he bolted toward the Tarbane brothers. I ran alongside him, keeping up with his long legs as best I could.
“Quick,” he demanded. “Which one of you is the fastest?”
“I am,” said Shardon.
“He is,” said Tashira in the same breath.
Seizing me about the waist, Rygel threw me onto Shardon’s bare back. Such was the force Rygel used, I grabbed Shardon’s thick silver mane to prevent myself from sliding down his other side. Scooting back where I belonged, behind his withers, I swept my hair from my face. Astonished by Rygel’s mad behavior, all I could do was gape down at him.
“Run, my friend,” Rygel said, taking Shardon by the jaw. “Keep her safe, for all our sakes.”
“Rygel – “ Shardon began.
“Outrun the lightning,” Rygel gasped, smacking him on the rump. “Run like hell.”
Shardon wheeled, half-rearing, shaking his head. Breaking into a fast gallop, he headed north, away from the approaching storm. He broke into a fast gallop. Having no reins, I pulled back on his mane, begging him to stop. “Shardon, no, wait.”
Plunging to a halt, he reared again.
I looked back. “What about you?” I cried. “Come with us.”
“Go!” Rygel screamed, running after us and punching his fist into the air. “It’s not after us. Shardon, run!”
“Hang on,” Shardon ordered tersely. “Let Shardon show you the real meaning of speed.”
I clamped down with my legs a split second before his lunging gallop all but tossed me over his rump. Like a limpet, I clung desperately to his mane. His body being so much larger than Mikk’s, my legs could hardly reach far enough around his barrel to hold me in place. Rather than pursue that course, I leaned forward, keeping my body closer to his massive neck. I wrapped not just my hands into his flying mane, but my arms as well. His speed blew that very life-saving mane into my face, whipping tears into my eyes. By ducking my head, I sent it past my shoulder.
My eyes cleared. Not that it did me much good, however. The terrain flew past so quickly it blurred. Or was it the wind whipping tears into my eyes? I blinked them away. If I thought Tashira had run fast when we escaped Brutal’s magical trap, Shardon outstripped him by a wide margin. Bar at his fastest speed hadn’t a hope of catching up. An arrow in flight? Oh, please.
The hills rose steeply, grew ever rockier with sparse shrubs and scrub oak thickets dotting the hillside in patches. We startled a small herd of deer that had no time to leap out of his path before Shardon cleared an antlered buck in an effortless jump.
“Check behind us,” he said.
I risked a glance over my shoulder. My jaw dropped. I swallowed hard, trying to drum up something sensible to say.
“Lady have mercy,” I whispered.
“I suspect we’ll need her mercy before long,” Shardon replied, his tone dry.
Keeping an eye on the storm, I shot glances over my shoulder. The dark clouds kept pace. A huge bank of near black fog enveloped the hills behind us. Lightning stabbed down in an almost continual rain of blinding flashes. Given Shardon’s great speed and the wind in my ears, I hadn’t heard the thunder. Like a hand, the swirling cloud bank reached out, a mere thirty rods behind us, and cast its lightning. The bolt struck the ground just behind Shardon’s massive hind legs.
“Got a good grip?” Shardon asked.
“I jolly hope so.”
“Me, too.”
He jumped and dodged. He leaped left, right, up, down, sliding like a serpent before leaping like a nimble cat up and out, then lunging sideways. No horse on earth could ever match his athletic prowess. As his front hooves left the ground in an incredible leap, his hind legs twisted, bucking, driving him to either the right or the left. Glad to have his mane wrapped securely around my arms, I hugged tight to his neck, still shooting rapid-fire glances behind us.
“It’s getting closer.”
“Bah.” He snorted. “I’m just getting warmed up.”
As though reading the evil mind behind the clouds, the lightning, Shardon leaped and twisted, jumping safely out of the way. Each bolt struck the gr
ound where he should have been, not where he was. As sinuous as a snake, as light on his feet as a dancer, Shardon evaded the strikes as easily as I might stroll through a rose garden and avoid the thorns.
“What wants you dead?” he asked, as casually as though we stood around the campfire talking, all the while taking yet another snaking leap that outsmarted the lightning. “Or perhaps it’s truly a ‘who’.”
“I’ve no idea,” I gasped, shutting my eyes. I’m dead, I thought, haphazard.
“Odd. I’d think you’d have some idea.”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Lady, make him jump aside. Please.
I peeked again at the death that awaited us, a dangerously short distance ahead.
“I can keep a secret.”
I shut my eyes. “I know.”
Turn aside, you silver fool.
I soooo did not want to watch as we descended into the arms of death.
Shardon leaped and dodged the lightning, yet maintained his steady course. He ran straight ahead, carrying me, into Tarbane suicide. I opened an eye and peeped past his perked ears. Surely he sees it? Did he have a set of wings hidden somewhere he can pull out and use to fly? Why doesn’t he veer aside? “Uh, Shardon?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Do you see that, er –“
“Ravine?”
“I think they call those that size canyons.”
He snorted. “Ravine, canyon, what’s the diff?”
I shut my eyes. The boy has a death wish, I thought. Of course. Sentenced to spend the next three years with Rygel who wouldn’t? Why did he have to take me with him?
“Ly’Tana?” Shardon asked. “You still with me, girl?”
“Yes,” I squeaked through numb lips.
Now, had he even wanted to, his speed far too great, Shardon had no time to stop. Nor with the surrounding sharp rocks strew about at close quarters could he dodge safely among them. We’re both dead. Lady, lady, receive my soul….
Lightning struck the earth and rocks behind his heels the instant his heels left the ground. He leapt into the sky, airborne. He leaped out into empty space.
Not flying on Bar’s back, nor the wind in my feathers, compared to the sheer power of Shardon’s flight. Up he leaped. Straight toward the sky he hurdled. His massive muscles bulged with the effort to fly without wings. I opened my mouth –
- and screamed.
“Ly’Tana, please,” he snorted, pained. “My ears, they’re rather sensitive.”
Bar at least had wings when he launched himself off the top of the escarpment. Previously, I had the wings, the feathers, the light hawk body to keep me airborne when I flew. Shardon was a solid mass without wings, without feathers, owning no such talents for flying without either. I knew there was nothing on earth that might keep him airborne.
Opening my eyes a fraction, I glanced down. His huge, indestructible hooves folded tight against his silver chest as he blasted out and up, into the blue distant sky. The rocky wall, glimpsed from between his flattened ears, appeared a league away. Perhaps two, in my morbid fascination. Far, very far, below, the churning white river that cut the canyon’s walls from the mountains roared and echoed in the dim distance. My belly lurched. There’s no way he can leap across and keep us both alive. No way.
I waited with shut jaws and no breath for his huge body to fall, free and loose, into the waiting rapids below. Not even a Tarbane can leap a distance that far. When Bar plunged off the escarpment with me, naked and panicked, on his back, his colossal wings kept us both aloft and alive. Bar outweighed Shardon by perhaps two tons, but Bar’s wings made all the difference. He couldn’t fly with me on his back, weighing him down, but he could soar, and did, to the safety of the ground.
Shardon didn’t have wings. His weight alone should have dropped him into the abyss. I glanced down, my throat dropping into my belly. Empty space below no longer frightened me. But empty space below with no wings scared me silly. The horrid rocks and rushing river greeted us with open arms, welcoming us into its watery, cold embrace.
The lower half of my body swung out into empty space. My legs hung loose, flopping against his rump like twin sacks. Only my arms wrapped in his mane kept me with him. Above me, past his silver head and blowing mane, I observed a single white cloud in the clear blue depths. That blue sky Shardon flew towards, striving to reach.
Lightning struck the granite canyon beneath us. Its thunder reverberated the air and the very rock Shardon leaped from, making my teeth itch. My hair rose on my arms, legs and nape, spreading the alarm that electricity rode the air.
“Too bad,” Shardon said, continuing our conversation as though he ambled through a meadow and leaping a canyon a half-mile wide. “Knowing one’s enemy helps you defeat him.”
“Um,” I replied, knowing how silly that word sounded. Since it would most probably be the last word I spoke in this life.
Shardon didn’t fall. Instead, his back arched, his hind legs stretched out long behind him. My eyes, still blurred with wind-driven tears, saw the far edge of the rocky canyon hove into view. Too far, I half-thought. Nope. Can’t make it. My hands ached from the death grip that kept me with him. I couldn’t feel my arms. They were still there, at least, as I could see them, buried in the thick ropes of Shardon’s silver mane. My lower body hung out into empty space, floating. It followed the rest of me only because it was attached. Bloody hell, I thought, abstracted, my brain useless, I hope my sword is still there.
“Know what I think?” he asked, the near-silent wind in my ears made his voice painfully loud.
“Uh,” I replied.
A bolt struck the canyon wall Shardon vied for, hissing passed his massive shoulder to knock several granite boulders loose to fall into the river far below. Trying to quarry that rock stroke after stroke? I thought, inane. That’s like hammering a sculpture into the side of a mountain.
“Somewhere, somehow,” Shardon continued conversationally, “you annoyed a god.”
I blinked. Suddenly, the rugged, monster-hewn canyon edge appeared beneath Shardon’s front hooves. Like a miracle, his front legs extended to meet it. In a burst of granite pebbles and rock dust, Shardon hit Mother Earth. Goddess be praised, he reached the far side. My lower body sat astride massive shoulders once more, my legs gripped his ribs as my hands refused to loosen their entanglement with his heavy mane. His hooves scrambled for purchase on the solid rock of the canyon, his hind legs breaking off bits as he clawed for every inch of solid ground. Reaching his incredible speed once more, he lunged forward. I took a much-needed breath –
Lightning struck the cliff’s edge just as we leapt from it, galloping hard. The explosion sent jagged granite pieces hurtling faster than Shardon, tiny and small stones striking me in the back and legs. My ears all but shattered under the roaring clap of thunder and the detonation of the canyon edge splitting apart. I didn’t glance directly at the lightning, but its brilliance flowed past me and vanished.
I glanced behind us. Thunder growled in my ears, but the dark, almost black, cloud recoiled upon itself. On the far side of the massive canyon, across the rapidly rushing river, it gave up the chase. Lightning continued to flash within its depths, but Shardon’s tremendous speed rapidly left the angry cloud, or god, behind. Clear, dazzling sunlight shone down, all the brighter after I’d seen the darkness.
His headlong gallop slowed to a trot and finally to a walk. Shardon stopped. His head turned. One amused brown eye amid a cascade of silver forelock fell upon my wretched form. Somehow, not quite sure how I managed it, I remembered to breathe. I sucked air into my lungs. Tiny black dots danced maliciously in my eyes.
“You still there?” he asked, amused.
“Um,” I said.
“So you said before,” he commented. “Do you have anything original to add?”
Weakly, blearily, I tried to straighten. My arms, wrapped in the silken steel of his mane, trapped me in a forward leaning position. My head swirling in a crazed daze, I tried to dis
entangle myself from its clutches. At last shaking myself loose, I sat up, pushing my own locks from my face. I looked about.
“Where are we?”
Shardon glanced about; his head and ears turning this way and that. “No idea.”
In panic, I spun about, seeking the deadly storm that sought my life. Was it coming back? The dark clouds had vanished beyond the far distant treetops. We beat it. It was in full, dishonorable, retreat. Whatever, whoever, it was, we beat it. My heart soared in triumph.
“I wouldn’t be so happy, if I were you,” Shardon said, turning around to walk back the way we came. “It’s probably mad as hell you escaped and is planning yet another attack, even now.”
I couldn’t help but notice: he galloped faster than sound, outran lightning, flown without wings, yet he hadn’t even broken a sweat. Some folk are so lucky. I myself was drenched in it.
“You’re right, of course,” I said, at last finding my voice. “I just don’t know who.”
“Whom have you irritated lately?”
“You mean besides Raine and Rygel and all my people?”
I caught the amused gleam in his eye as he turned his head once more. “Right.”
I thought about it before drawing a blank. “Only Brutal.”
“Does he have this kind of power?”
“Not bloody likely.”
Perhaps Rygel, claiming to be the best of the best, might create such a storm. Thus, it was impossible to imagine Ja’Teel doing so. As a magician, as a man, he wasn’t even in Rygel’s class.
“You should really find out who wants you dead,” Shardon offered helpfully.
“Raine and Rygel were on that very errand,” I answered, relaxing. I sucked in a deep draught of cool air, my sweat drying on my skin. “When they found you.”
“Ah. I did wonder what brought them there.”
“They hoped to find a priest.”
“Just any priest?
“No. Monks who speak to all the gods, not just those worshipped in their locale.”
“Makes sense, I suppose.”
Decidedly happy that Shardon turned east and discovered a route that took us down to the river rather than leap the canyon again, I glanced up at the sheer rock cliffs that we’d flown over only mere minutes before. Though the ground fell steeply, I clung to his mane as he loped downhill, leaping deadfall and rocks. As Shardon surged into the cold, churning rapids, I gasped. The shocking cold water chilled me to the bone as the rushing flood drenched me from head to toe. Like the storm, Shardon shrugged off its attempts to take him down, and wading deep into the chilly, rock-strewn stream. My teeth chattering and my feet numb, I shivered as he cantered up the far side of the canyon.
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