‘You should be grateful you’ve a choice.’ Kelon glared at her. ‘It seems to have attached itself to me in some way. It sticks with me wherever I go, but really it appears to want me to follow it. I decided that the only way to shake it off was to find the caster.’
The feral girl’s eyes grew round as moons. ‘My friend, I salute you. You must have balls of iron.’
‘Balls of fire, more like,’ jested some wit from among the bowmen, gesturing to the glowing sphere. ‘Still,’ the wisecracker added, ‘this wants some thinking about, Danel. Seems to me we don’t want nought to do with no strange magic. And if we take him with us, the thing’s latched on to us, too. Seems to me that we have but two choices. Either leave him to go on his way, and take that bloody unnatural thing out of our territory - or kill him, and get rid of it that way.’
Kelon thought fast. ‘If you kill me, what’s to stop the spell attaching itself to one of you instead?’
Danel - as her name had turned out to be - hesitated a moment, gnawing on a grubby, bitten fingernail. ‘Let him go,’ she decided. ‘It’s not worth the risk, and I’m certainly not taking him to any of our hideouts with that thing following him.’
‘We could take his horses, at least,’ a woman said hopefully. ‘There’s enough meat there to feed everyone twice over.’
Kelon’s hand tightened possessively on Alil’s bridle as he surveyed the ring of ferals. Though they looked like a murderous crew, with their bows trained on him and their grim, uncompromising eyes, a closer look betrayed gaunt, shivering flesh beneath the threadbare tatters of clothing that hung from their bony frames. Their hollow, pinched faces spoke of hunger and privation far beyond his own understanding. For the first time, he realised that the Phaerie view with which he had been raised - that humans were little more than useful animals - was wrong.
Danel interrupted his thoughts. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not that it isn’t tempting, but I don’t want to risk causing any trouble with that cursed spell thing. If whoever cast it is leading him towards them, then they want him for something, and I’m not going to get in their way.’
She nodded brusquely to Kelon. ‘On your way, stranger, and our thanks for killing that whoreson filth, though we could have done it ourselves anyway,’ she ended on a note of pride. ‘Go on - what are you waiting for? Get you gone, and your strange spells with you.’
‘Wait.’ Kelon did not want to push his luck - every instinct was screaming at him to get out of there as fast as possible - but he had to know. ‘Why do you hate Ferimon so much, Danel? How do you know him?’
‘Don’t tell him,’ someone cried, but the feral leader ignored the interruption.
‘I don’t see the harm in telling him. Not at this point. And someone ought to tell the Phaerie the truth, before any more of us get slaughtered by her bloody Hunt.’
She turned back to Kelon. ‘It’s like this. A few months ago, when the winter was at its coldest and we were having a real struggle to survive, that one turned up.’ She gave Ferimon’s body another vicious kick. ‘Brought us food and blankets, didn’t he? Warm clothing and healing herbs and stuff. Said he sympathized with our plight. My father was leader . . .’ She paused, closed her eyes and swallowed hard. ‘He trusted the lying weasel. Ferimon had a plan, he said. If Hellorin was out of the picture, the human slaves in Eliorand could be freed. He gave us weapons, these good bows, and set up an ambush—’
‘That was Ferimon?’ Kelon gasped.
‘None other. I never liked his scheme, but my father thought the risk worthwhile, and so we walked into the trap like a lot of innocent babes. Since Hellorin fell, his accursed daughter has hunted us down like rabid dogs, along with all the other ferals in the forest. Who naturally blame us for their troubles, and now we’re beset by enemies on all sides.’
‘While Ferimon seduced Tiolani and gained power in Eliorand,’ Kelon said.
‘And my father was killed by the Hunt.’ Though her voice was steady enough, she could not keep the telltale tremor of emotion from her voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kelon said softly. ‘I wish I could help you. My deepest thanks for saving my life from Ferimon’s creature and its minions. Go well, all of you: especially you, Danel.’
‘Go well - what’s your name, stranger, anyway?’
‘Kelon.’
‘Go well then, Kelon. Good luck to you.’ And with that, she and her companions melted back into the forest, leaving him alone with the cooling body of his foe - and the mysterious glowing sphere that waited to lead him on his way.
Hidden, helpless in the undergrowth, a deadly blade at her throat in the hands of a desperate human, Tiolani was forced to listen as her life was smashed into jagged shards. The only way she could ever have believed that Ferimon would betray her was if she heard it from his own lips - and now she had. Much as her mind twisted and turned to try to evade and deny, there was no escape. Thoughts and memories cascaded through her mind with lightning speed, as all her actions of the past months came crashing down on her. Her unquestioning trust in Ferimon, the way he had persuaded her to dismiss her father’s old counsellors and surrounded her with his private guards. The way he had been always at her side, enfolding her, as she had thought, with love and security, even though he had never shown the slightest interest in her through all the years she had worshipped him as a young girl, before she had lost her father and brother. Why had she not suspected? How could she not have seen? Through advising her, helping her, influencing her decisions and her thoughts, he ruled the Phaerie just as effectively as if he had been Forest Lord himself. And she had let him. Her face was hot with shame.
She had loved him with all her heart, and he had made a fool of her. It had all been a lie - an evil, calculated lie. For cutting him down like a dog, Kelon deserved any reward she had in her power to give.
A chill ran through Tiolani as she thought of her father. Was it not strange that he was taking so long to recover? Ferimon had always been so very quick to lull her fears and concerns, encouraging her to enjoy this chance to rule. Had he bribed the physicians somehow? If she had thought to investigate more closely, would she have had Hellorin back with her by now, as healthy and powerful as ever?
Oh, how she wished he was back!
She thought of Aelwen, whom Ferimon had represented as a meddlesome hag who deemed Tiolani unfit to rule. She realised how wrong she had been to distrust and resent the Horsemistress. Aelwen, whose help she had lately scorned, had taught her to ride and had been there, steadfast and stalwart, all through her life, and Tiolani had repaid her with anger and vicious threats.
Oh, how she wanted her now!
If that were not enough, there was worse, far worse, to come. She could blame Ferimon for so many things, but she, and she alone, had been responsible for all the slaughter. The image of Ambaron came back from the dead, his face contorted with fear, his eyes fierce with accusation, filling her with horror, guilt and remorse, and behind him the other Hemifae she had executed on the slightest pretext: partly because they had dared to question her actions, but chiefly because of their part-human heritage. She had carved a bloody swathe through the slaves in Eliorand, and in the Hunt she had bathed in gore, and revelled in her thoughts of retribution and revenge.
They deserved it. They killed my brother.
True. But Ferimon had arranged that deadly ambush; he had provided the weapons and used the ferals as his tools. And how many of their fathers, mothers and children had she slain? While she’d been forced to listen to the ferals talking among themselves, it had no longer been possible merely to view them as savage forest animals. The leader, in particular, had struck a chord with her - a young girl just like herself who had been thrust into the responsibilities of leadership after her father had fallen.