Vannor grinned back at her. “Indeed,” he agreed, “but Aurian taught me far more about the good side of the Magefolk character than the bad. Courage, loyalty, a rare honesty ...”
His words were interrupted as the air above him was split asunder by the belling of hounds, the clamor of horns, and the wild, triumphant hunting cries of the Phaerie, who came hurtling out of the sky like thunderbolts, bearing with them the ghastly trophies of their hunt. The Forest Lord had returned to the Valley.
Though Parric and Sangra had been arguing with him for some time now, Yazour refused to be browbeaten, intimidated, or persuaded into changing his mind. He was determined to head back to the Southern Lands, in search of his friend and mentor Eliizar, and admit to the older man then he had made a mistake. He should never have come north with the Magefolk—this was not his land, and now there was nothing left for him here.
Following the disappearance of Aurian, Anvar, and his friends among the Horsefolk, Yazour was finding himself very much adrift and alone in a land of strangers. Of the companions who had set out with the Mages from the Khazalim city of Taibeth, only he remained. Harihn, the young warrior’s former prince, had betrayed the Mages twice and formed an unholy alliance with the Archmage Miathan. As a consequence, he had been slain in the Tower of Incondor. Shia had followed Aurian and Anvar through the rift in Time, to meet some unknown fate. The winged girl Raven was now Queen of the Skyfolk, and when Yazour had last seen her, she had been well on her way to finding a new maturity, and beginning to atone for her former mistakes.
Poor Bohan, the gigantic eunuch who had been so devoted to Aurian, had perished at the Xandim stronghold, and even Schiannath, Chiamh, and Iscalda, Yazour’s newfound friends among the Horsefolk, had met with an uncertain fate when the Phaerie, freed by Aurian’s failure to master the Sword, had reclaimed their horses back from human form. In one lethal stroke the Xandim had lost their leaders. Schiannath the Herdlord and the Windeye Chiamh had been saved from the Phaerie but had followed Aurian in their equine form. Along with the remainder of the Xandim, Iscalda—Schiannath’s sister, who had befriended Yazour—had been transformed irrevocably into her equine shape of a white mare and claimed by Hellorin, the Phaerie Lord.
Yazour had been forced to look on, helpless, as the humanity of his friends had been ripped away. Aurian and Anvar had vanished, and the young warrior had been forced to remain behind, alone, because he had not been quick enough to follow them through the rift in Time. And now he must live with the guilt of his failure. Though his fellow-warriors Parric and Sangra were doing their best to be kind to him and make him welcome in their midst, the Khazalim soldier knew himself for an alien and an outsider. Without Aurian—without some point to his existence here—he could feel neither at home nor at ease.
“Yazour, don’t leave us. You’re our friend—we need you here.” Sangra returned to the attack. “There’s so much to do—so much to put right.”
Yazour sighed wearily and shook his head. “I want to go back to the South, to my own people,” he insisted. “I can be of far more use to Eliizar and Nereni now that Aurian is gone and her quest has failed. .. .”
“Failed! Don’t you dare say that, you bastard!” Parric snarled. Yazour ducked reflexively as a fist whistled past his face. The Cavalrymaster, beside himself with rage, pulled his arm back for another try, but Sangra, just as swift, caught his wrist before the second blow had time to descend. “Parric, no!” she cried. “That’s not going to help matters.”
The Cavalrymaster subsided, but glowered at Yazour with an unwonted look that mingled coldness and misery. “Don’t you ever say she’s failed,” he muttered.
“It isn’t over yet.” He jumped to his feet and walked stiffly away.—Yazour realized, too late, that his careless words had wounded Parric deeply.—He was sorry—he liked and respected the little man. Not knowing how to take back his words without making matters worse, he mumbled an awkward apology to Sangra and scanned the encampment, desperately seeking a diversion that would take their talk in a less painful direction. His attention was drawn by the sound of shouted imprecations, to the island across the lake. “Who is the woman yelling at Vannor over there?” he asked.
“Why, that’s Aurian’s mother, the Lady Eilin,” Sangra told him. “She lives alone here in the Vale. The poor soul—I don’t blame her for sounding so angry.—How can she bear it? Her daughter is gone, her Valley burned, and her tower in ruins. She’ll be lonely now for sure—in fact, depending on what’s happened to Miathan, she could be the last of her kind.” The warrior shook her head. “The death of the Magefolk—who would have thought that would happen in our lifetime?”
Poor woman! thought Yazour. The only one here of all her kind—just like me. He looked again at the slender figure, his heart aching in sympathy. She seemed so isolated; so vulnerable. And she was Aurian’s mother. . . . An idea began to take shape in Yazour’s mind, but before it could resolve itself, the voice of the Forest Lord thundered down from far above:
“See your prey, my warriors. Take them now!”
“Take cover,” Vannor yelled. “The Phaerie are attacking!”
How dared they. Eilin’s anger, so recently directed at the hapless Mortals, now found its true and fitting target. “No!” she cried. She ran back across the bridge toward the fires, Vannor a stride behind her, even as the Phaerie came arcing down out of the sky. Eilin reached the great campfire ahead of the Forest Lord. All around her people were drawing swords, shouting, running, crazed with panic.
“Stay by the fires.” The Mage augmented her voice by magic until it rang out clearly above the noise. “Stay close to me—it’s your only chance!” As the terrified Mortals began to collect around the great bonfire, Eilin looked wildly around her. A staff—she needed her staff! But she had relinquished it to D’arvan, long ago, and now it had gone with him to some unknown fate. All she really needed was something through which to focus her power.... Through a gap in the gathering crowd, she saw Hargorn’s abandoned sword, still planted upright in the mud by the edge of the lake. The Earth-Mage ran and snatched up the unclaimed blade. She poured her power into the sword and felt a shock run through her as her magic took on a sharp, raw, aggressive edge far different from the nurturing forces concentrated by her staff.
Closer and closer the Phaerie came, sounding their silver horns and singing their eerie songs of death as they rode. Already they had descended to the level of the treetops. They were an awe-inspiring sight, terrifying in their beauty. Now freed from that amorphous otherworld in which they had been imprisoned, they had cast off their grey and shadowy forms, and now were clothed in robes of shimmering, many-Hued luminescence that trailed behind them in sparkling drifts like comet tails. The Phaerie rode bareback, but the horses, with their streaming manes and tails, were controlled with bridles and reins of pure white light, and sparks flew from their hooves as they raced through the air. As the riders reached the tops of the trees, everything that their trailing vestments touched took on the same mysterious radiance, to be limned in frosty rainbow sparkles that spread from branch to branch, outlining the boughs and leaves in delicate traceries of light.
Eilin forced herself to ignore the beauty, remembering the cold, cruel hearts and minds that concealed themselves behind such glorious magic. She cried out once, to focus her powers, and struck the ground hard with the point of her sword. A dome of glimmering green force sprang into being over the entire encampment to shield the helpless Mortals just as Hellorin came charging down heedlessly, on the heels of his hounds and in advance of his followers, heading straight into the midst of the camp. As the shield sprang up in front of him he tore at the white mare’s mouth, trying to divert her from her headlong course, but it was too late. As one by one his hounds came within range of the magical barrier, they were stung by sizzling bolts of green lightning. Yelping, they recoiled and retreated. Terrified by the roaring wall of light that had appeared almost beneath her hooves, Iscalda reared and shied to one side. The Forest Lord, caught off balance, lurched forward across one snowy shoulder and fell. Striking Eilin’s barrier in an explosion of emerald light, he slid down the shield’s curving hemisphere in a spray of spitting green sparks, crying out in agony as he slithered inexorably and ignominiously to the ground. The mare gave a shrill scream of triumph and bolted, vanishing into the trees.