‘Who cares? There’s plenty more where he came from.’
The blade of a long silver knife glittered in the starlight as it sliced easily through the meshes - then the net gaped open and the Phaerie were already turning, speeding back the way they had come. Dael caught a single glimpse of them as he twisted in the air and began to fall.
All around the clearing, the survivors of the Wild Hunt were picking themselves up, ministering to the wounded, or searching frantically among the fallen for missing friends and family. Though Gwylan the Huntsman had been killed, Darillan, his apprentice, gathered together a small group of helpers and set off in search of the missing fellhounds, while others searched for straying horses. The Phaerie mounts who had remained in the clearing were caught and tended by willing volunteers, and a trembling Corisand found herself being helped to her feet and checked for wounds, before she was tethered with the group of horses who had remained unscathed.
Unscathed in body, at least, she thought. She knew that in her mind and heart and spirit, she would never be the same again. Nor would her Phaerie masters - or the humans of this world. Once word leaked out and spread though their ranks, as it inevitably would, that such an attack had taken place and come so close to succeeding, would fear of what had happened to these rebels be enough to discourage others from trying the same thing? What would happen if it did not? And how would tonight’s happenings affect the human slaves already belonging to the Phaerie? The Forest Lord - if he lived, for his wounds had looked grave indeed - had lost his only son. Would he be content with the vengeance he had exacted upon the ferals? Or, in his grief, would he extend his revenge to all humans alike?
Corisand never knew what made her turn her head at that moment and look at Tiolani. The young woman was standing in the middle of the clearing as though overseeing the efforts of the Phaerie to recover themselves, but her gaze was turned inward. In the course of but a few moments, she seemed to have aged a dozen years. Her face, which so recently had been alight with girlish excitement, was now pale, cold and hard as marble, and her eyes were filled with a bleak, implacable hatred that chilled the Windeye to her very soul.
Suddenly Corisand realised that this girl would be the sovereign of the Phaerie until Hellorin recovered, if he ever did recover. If he should die, then Tiolani would be crowned as Lady of the Forest, and the prospects for the humans looked bleak indeed. But that was not Corisand’s only concern. Most important of all, how would the repercussions of the attack affect the well-being of the Xandim? She had a foreboding that after the events of this night, the world would never be the same for anyone.
Corisand shook her head. She was unaccustomed to thinking like this. It was difficult and it hurt. It opened up whole new concepts of past and future, cause and effect, conjecture, concern and a sense of responsibility she had never experienced before. Until a few moments ago, she had never even known that such a thing as a Windeye existed. Not for the last time, she wished that she could have remained in blissful ignorance for ever.
She watched in horror as the remnants of the Hunt were sent out again until, one by one, any remaining humans were rounded up or hunted down. The Phaerie, damaged and distraught though they might be, were not permitted to rest until all the vermin had been accounted for. Corisand was concerned to see that Tiolani had elected to ride out with the huntsmen, instead of returning home with the wounded Hellorin, in order to make absolutely certain that not a single human remained alive in the woods. Her hatred was so intense that it had overcome even her deep love for her father. With newfound understanding, the Windeye shivered at the thought of what this might portend. Tiolani’s rage at the mortals was uncontainable, and she had even vowed that all those human slaves who had been captured alive and taken away before the ambush had happened would share the death of their brethren before the night was out. A number of the Phaerie had been slain, which was crime enough - but it was clear that for the wounding of her father and the murder of her brother, she could not make the humans pay sufficiently dearly.
Corisand was spared any part in that final slaughter. Along with several other horses, she was in no fit state to be ridden. To her relief, she was left in the clearing with the wounded, their helpers and some vigilant guards. If Tiolani seemed to have aged a dozen years, Corisand herself felt as if she had aged a century in the course of this night, and was longing with all her heart to go home to the comfort and security of her own roomy box in Hellorin’s stable.
At last that interminable night drew to a close, bringing the return of the bone-tired hunters who, under Tiolani’s goad, had slaughtered every human they could find for miles around. Darillan and the other huntsmen collected together the hounds, and the Phaerie, weary, shocked and grieving, took to the skies and headed for home. With their departure, the forest fell into a wary and watchful silence. The cluster of primitive dwellings, which had once represented independence, pride and hope for a handful of rebels, stood dark and abandoned in its woodland clearing. Gradually it would fall prey to the elements, and the relentless overgrowth of brambles, weeds and saplings would blot out every trace.
It was almost daylight when the stunned and battered remnants of the Phaerie Hunt got back to Eliorand. The clear night skies had paled sufficiently to quench the glitter of the stars, and a crimson streak showed low on the horizon in the east. Corisand looked away from it quickly. It only reminded her of the blood that had been spilt that night. Instead she turned her gaze longingly towards the city and home - and was startled and confused to see the change that had taken place in her absence. As the light grew, the city of tall, slender towers, blooming gardens and leaping waterfalls took on the form of a forested eminence that stood high above the surrounding woodland. It almost seemed that the two images of woodland and city had been overlaid, so that the eye perceived first one and then the other.
Corisand was rescued from confusion by the new way of thinking that had come to her that night when the old Windeye had died. She realised that this strange glamourie, this shifting and changing, must be part of a Phaerie spelclass="underline" a carefully crafted illusion to conceal their city from hostile or unwelcome gazes. As the light grew, the magic that disguised the city would become stronger, probably reaching its peak when the sun was highest in the sky. The spell must not work on animals, she supposed, or she would have seen it before; but now that Corisand had been catapulted into the role of Windeye, she was finally able to perceive both the illusion and the reality.
Illusions, however, were the least of Corisand’s concerns on that night of terror and loss. Her mind had still been reeling from the revelations that had swept through her like a spring flood, changing the entire landscape of her mind and washing away so much of her previous, simple life. With Valir’s death had come the realisation that she and the other Xandim were captives, slaves, robbed of their birthright and trapped in this equine shape - though that had not always been the case. Long ago, there had been a choice. The fact that in the past, her people could take the same form as their captors had stunned her deeply - but less so than the knowledge that she and she alone now bore the responsibility of restoring them to what they once had been.
When it had been time to leave the forest, her body felt sodden with exhaustion, and she was shaking from the aftermath of her experiences. At least, because Hellorin had been wounded, Corisand would be led home with the other injured horses instead of ridden, and she’d been glad of the respite. Her mind had been opened to the inner world of the mental gestalt that enabled not only mindspeech, but also the ability to see into another’s mind, to sense their thoughts and feel their emotions. This was the wellspring from which all magic stemmed, though the new Windeye was far too stunned to understand the implications immediately.