Forral was looking at her as though he had never seen her before. “So I did,” he said softly. “So I did. So what do we do now, Commander? Lurk here underground until we starve and freeze?”
Aurian gritted her teeth. She was damned if she’d let him needle her. “We need information,” she said. “We don’t know how long we’ve been away from Nexis, let alone who rules the city now that the Magefolk have gone.”
Grince, forgotten in his corner, had watched in awe as the Mage had freed the creature in the corner. So this was the legendary Lady Aurian, who had been lost for so long? Old Hargorn had spoken of her often, with great fondness and regret. She had been kind to him, had healed him—and the thief admired the calm way in which she’d stood up to the other Mage when he had tried to bully her. Though common sense told him that it would be a grave mistake to get mixed up in the affairs of the Magefolk, he wanted to repay her for helping him—and besides, a little magic had come into his hard and brutal life along with her. He didn’t want to lose it so soon.
“Lady, I can help you,” he said, before he could stop himself. “I can tell you whatever you want to know.”
12
City of the Flying Horse
From the air, it looked to be no more than a hill. D’arvan, hanging facedown across the horse’s withers, his hands bound tightly behind him with what felt like thin strands of flexible metal, tried to turn his head and blot his watering eyes against his shoulder in order to see better. It wasn’t easy. The Phaerie steeds were moving so fast through the thin, cold air that the Mage’s long, flaxen hair kept blowing in his eyes, and he’d been plagued by streaming eyes and a running nose for the entire journey, which had lasted through the night and into morning. D’arvan blinked again and squinted down toward the craggy, tree-covered eminence. Surely this pinnacle of rock in the middle of nowhere couldn’t be their destination?
Apparently, it could. One by one, the steeds of the Phaerie peeled off from their phalanx and began to spiral down toward the steep, forested slopes of the summit. As D’arvan’s captor began to descend, the Mage’s eyes and mind seemed to blur for a nauseating instant- With a dizzying lurch, the scene below him snapped into its true perspective in the clear, cold northern light.—The hill was far, far bigger than he had thought—and every one of those trees, though given the outward appearance of a woodland giant by Phaerie magic, was a soaring tower.
The Forest Lord and his subjects had clearly done their best to make this city a true reproduction of their magical citadel Between the Worlds. Using their powers to transform nature, they had created a beautiful, functional—and living—home which extended high into the air via the groves of tower-trees.—D’arvan guessed it must also continue deep into the ground beneath the hill itself, for he could see many balconies and windows embellishing the ledges and sheer rock faces. The wooded glades were blooming gardens with bowers, streams, and fountains, and waterfalls cascaded down the hillside like drifts of pure white lace.
Behind the hill a range of towering mountains marched along the skyline. When the Mage saw streaks of snow on their peaks and the blue-shadowed walls of icy canyons he was horrified to discover how far north he had been brought. Closer to his destination, the scattered peaks dwindled into a less rugged range with lower crests. The nearest stretched long arms out toward the Phaerie city, enfolding its eminence within a broad green glen whose sides were cloaked in the darker green of forest. As the Phaerie steed continued its curving descent around the side of the hill, D’arvan could look into the valley, where a long and shimmering stretch of water lay, with cultivated farmland round its shores, and plentiful herds of cattle and sheep to graze the sheltered fields.—It was impossible not to be awed by the sight of this magnificent new kingdom that Hellorin had carved out of the lonely northern wilderness. While the Phaerie were exiled from the world, it had been easy to forget just how powerful, capricious, and dangerous the Forest Lord had really been. Now, as he saw the scope of his father’s vast accomplishments spread out below him, D’arvan’s heart beat a little faster with apprehension. They had not exactly parted friends, yet to have found him so quickly after his return through time, Hellorin must have maintained a constant vigil throughout all the years of D’arvan’s absence. And now that he had captured him, what fate had the Forest Lord in store for his wayward son?
The Phaerie steeds landed on a plateau far up on the eastern side of the hill.—D’arvan was hauled down from the horse’s back and surrounded by a group of Hellorin’s warriors. He just had time to hear Maya cursing at the top of her voice before he was dragged away. He caught confused glimpses of trees, smooth lawns dotted with flowers, and paved and graveled paths that wound uphill amid the glades. Curious Phaerie faces, with their large, deep eyes and sharp-boned features, watched curiously as he was hurried along in the relentless grip of his guards, until at last he was pushed through a pair of large double doors that pierced the hillside, and into the gloomy corridor beyond.
“Take your bloody hands off me, you outlandish bastards!” Maya snarled.—Neither her protests nor her struggles were any use—her abductors simply manhandled her more cruelly. Realizing that this was the time for circumspection, not fighting, Maya let herself go limp as she was borne away.
“But when I finally get my hands free to hold a sword again, Hellorin will be finding himself a few subjects short,” she vowed to herself grimly.—Her captors took her in a different direction from D’arvan, away round the side of the hill, always heading downward. Maya, though she was being jarred and jounced along, noticed that the trees grew thinner as they came to the northern face. The slopes became rougher and more desolate here, with stiff bracken and spiky gorse obscuring the winding trails. Great boulders patched with yellow lichen and shaggy green moss thrust through the thin soil like bones through the skin of a crow-picked corpse.
At the bottom of the hill on the northern side, the rock face was honeycombed with tunnels, each one closed off at its entrance by a barred iron gate and guarded by Phaerie bearing tall spears tipped with long blades that glittered with the same sharp, cold, merciless light that sparked from their eyes. Brief words in the incomprehensible Phaerie language passed between Maya’s abductors and the guards; then she was passed like some inanimate package from one group to the other. Her new captors plunged into one of the dark openings, and Maya lost sight of the daylight as she was carried inside.
The tunnel was damp, its earthen sides and roof shored up with rough planks.—Straggling roots protruded like reaching fingers through the cracks between them. The damp wooden boards were crawling with a skin of slimy mold whose greenish phosphorescence was the only light. The air was heavily tainted with the odors of wet soil and decaying leaf-matter, and cold with the bone-deep chill of the grave. The voices of the Phaerie, who had been talking softly among themselves in their own, strange, sibilant tongue, sounded flat and dead, hushed by the all-absorbing clay that surrounded them like a suffocating shroud. Maya, her body still numb with cold from the interminable journey through the thin, cold heights, her limbs held fast in the viselike grip of her Phaerie guards, felt as though the walls and roof were closing in on her.—It was as though her captors were trying to bury her alive. She fought hard against the panic that was threatening to rise within her. It seemed that the best way to overcome her overwhelming sense of dismay and dread was to close her eyes and blot out her surroundings by trying to think of some way out of this impossible situation.