Parric jerked awake, as the owl that had roused him gave another soul-freezing shriek. Only senses deprived of sight, as his were, could have heard the soft, rushing whisper of its wings as it ghosted away. It must still be night—it was black behind his blindfold, and he could feel a cool, damp breeze on his skin. The relentless rain had stopped at last, to his profound relief. He concentrated, using senses honed by years of scoutcraft to tell him what his eyes could not. Ah, the terrain had changed. The heady, crushed-hay fragrance of the grasslands had been replaced by the heavy musk of forest loam, and he could hear the rustling murmur of wind among branches. The body of his mount was tilted, and he could feel its muscles straining as it hauled itself up a steep, uneven path.
The soft thud of the horse’s steps was replaced by the hollow scrape of hooves on a paved surface. A murmur ran through the ranks of Parric’s captors, and the beast came to a halt. Greetings were called out, and a babble of replies in the rolling Xandim tongue. Parric did not have to know the language to hear curiosity and consternation in their tone. Dim torchlight, interspersed with passing shadows, flicked across his blindfold. Then his horse stepped forward with an irritable snort, and they were moving again, climbing laboriously up the paved road. The Cavalrymaster gathered his wits in anticipation of meeting the leaders of the Horselords. Wherever he and his companions had been taken, they had obviously arrived!
2 The Windeye
There were voices on the wind that whistled around the slopes of the Wyndveil Mountain, whispering secrets across the stiff, frost-cracked grasses of the plateau, long and wide and wildly beautiful, that was the heart’s home of the Xandim. This meadow, once lush and green, and jeweled with poppies and starflowers in the summer that seemed to have fled forever, was split by a turbulent stream running out of a dark, narrow valley that vanished into the shadows of the mountain’s limbs. Within this haunted vale lay the barrows of the Xandim dead. Only for a burial would the Horselords pass the avenue of standing stones that guarded the valley’s entrance, and only the Windeye knew its secret heart, the twisted spire of rock cleft from the mountain, which stood like a tower at the valley’s end. The apex of the spire had been hollowed out in some long-ago age to form an eyrie, open to the elements, with walls of air and a roof of stone supported by four slender pillars. This Chamber of Winds was reached by a scanty stair of crumbling footholds cut into the mountain’s face and connected to the spire by a cobweb bridge of twisted rope. Only a Windeye would attempt the risky climb, and dare the perilous crossing. Only a Windeye would have the need. The keening wind shredded the misty weave of Chiamh’s shadow-cloak, hurling handfuls of sleet into his face as he sat hunched and freezing on the chill stone floor of the Chamber. He tried to ignore the storm’s distractions, reminding himself that he was the Windeye of the Xandim—blessed (or cursed) with the power to see beyond the vision of normal men, to perceive and understand the tidings of the winds. This storm, he knew, bore more tidings than most. The tortured, screaming air was swollen with portents.
The storm tore at his soaked and shivering body, flattening his tangled brown hair across his face, and the young Seer flinched from the evil Power that rode the wind like the shadow of dark wings. Coming from the north, it had haunted his nightmares—since the onset of winter. Slim, strong fingers on the wind clawed him with icicle nails. Eyes that held the merciless chill of eternal winter glinted in the darkness. Silver hair flowed like a deadly glacier, as the snow-laden winds formed the image of a face: flawlessly beautiful, its cold lips curved in a cruel, mocking smile. Her gaze passed over him, unseeing and dispassionate but painful as a blade drawn across his shrinking skin. Despite the windspun cloak of shadows that concealed him, he shuddered. If She should find him . . .
Chiamh shrank down on the exposed platform, withdrawing deep into the elusive depths of his shadow-cloak until the dark-bright shadow of her passing had sped away across the mountains. Tonight there would be more, he knew. Something had forced him from his bed to dare this lonely, freezing perch, and the terror of the Snow Queen’s passing. Turning his back on the evil north wind, the Windeye swung his blurred, nearsighted gaze toward the mountains, drawn like the nether point of a lodestone toward the south.
A sense of chill dissolution, like a wave of icy water, washed over him. Chiamh felt his weak-sighted brown eyes melting—glazing—turning to reflective quicksilver as his Othersight took control. The night turned bright and clear around him; the mountains changed from the dense solidity of stone to glittering translucent prisms; the writhing winds became turbulent rivers of silver light. The Windeye caught his breath in panic and screwed his treacherous eyes tight shut. Though it had been with him since childhood, he would never get used to this unnerving change! The lure of Vision tugged at him, demanding that he follow. Chiamh bit his lip, bribing his undisciplined fear with the promise of a jug of wine as soon as he got down from this dreadful place. From the past, he seemed to hear the voice of his beloved Grandma: “Eat your meat, Chiamh—then you may have the honeycomb” As always, her memory eased his fear, and Chiamh smiled. What a fierce old lady she had been How wise! How strong A warrior born, and the greatest Windeye in the history of the Xandim. She had borne this burden unflinching, and it was up to him, her heir, to bear it now. Scraping his dripping hair out of his face with cold-stiffened fingers, Chiamh opened his eyes, and directed the piercing silver beam of his Othersight across the mountains,
Spurning his earthbound body, the Windeye’s mind ripped loose to soar aloft and ride the unruly winds in pursuit of his Vision. Like a rainbow of jewels, the translucent mountains spun beneath him, A scattering of bonfire sparks seared his eyes, each vivid light a single, living soul, O Goddess—it must be Aerillia, the Skyfolk citadel! He had spun too far Out of control , . . Right over the mountains to the crystal lacework of the forest beyond, with its scintillant backdrop of desert sands ...