As she walked down the steps into the courtyard, Tiolani could feel every eye upon her. For a moment her courage failed her, but she knew that if she retreated now, she would never have the courage to try again. While she’d been dressing she had hastily run through all the details of the spell in her mind, and she could only hope that she remembered everything correctly.
Praying that her nervousness did not show, Tiolani walked across the courtyard with her head held high. When she approached Asharal, he was plunging and sidestepping, despite the best efforts of Aelwen who held him, her brows together and her lips pressed tight in an expression of profound disapproval. Tiolani met her eye coldly, daring her to comment and refusing to feel guilty. Her father may have forbidden her to hunt with her new horse, but Hellorin wasn’t here now, and it was up to her to make her own decisions. Without a word to the Horsemistress, she mounted and rode into the centre of the courtyard, her stomach churning. ‘Are you ready, Darillan?’ she called.
‘I’m ready, Lady Tiolani.’
With a sweep of her arm she included all of the hunters in the courtyard. ‘Then let’s ride!’
Tiolani took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on the spell. It wasn’t easy when she was the focus of every eye in the place. To make matters worse, Asharal was shifting and fidgeting beneath her, interrupting her train of thought every time she tried to gather her will. Tiolani knew an instant of doubt. Had it been a mistake after all, to ride the excitable young horse? Had Aelwen been right? The very idea of having to admit to the Horsemistress that she had been wrong was enough to sting her into action. Aelwen didn’t know everything. Sharply, she pulled Asharal back under control, holding him in tightly, and reining in her wandering concentration at the same time.
Reaching deep inside, she focused on the elements of the conjuration, building an image in her mind of the Wild Hunt climbing up through the air and riding the skies over the forest. The more detailed and vivid her image, she knew, the stronger the magic would be. Once she had it clear in her mind, she drew on the Old Magic and accessed the elemental powers of Air, letting the forces build up and up within her. When she felt that the magic was strong enough, she poured it into her image of the Hunt in flight, and then let it go, feeling it flowing out through her fingers to cover the riders, their horses and the hounds.
She did her best with the spell, though she knew it wasn’t the same as her father’s flamboyant magic. Lacking the glittering splendour of Hellorin’s conjuration, Tiolani’s effort only summoned a sickly greenish luminescence that gave the Wild Hunt a grim spectral appearance. Good enough, she decided. It matched her mood entirely. When she took off, followed by Darillan and the pack, then the rest of the Hunt, the horses lumbered into the air with some effort. Nevertheless, she had done it, and she would certainly improve with time. Tiolani felt a warm glow of triumph within her. At least she had made a start on fulfilling her new responsibilities. For a moment she thought of Hellorin, who still lay on the brink of death with the healers doing their utmost to keep him alive, and her resolve hardened. She wouldn’t let him down. She would take the best possible care of his realm, and in doing so she would honour the memory and avenge the death of the brother who was no longer there to take his rightful place.
The Hunt was a bloodbath. This time, Darillan took his hounds to the south-eastern reaches of the forest, where the scouts had previously spotted signs of another band of ferals. These were wild humans bred for the Hunt and, though they were more primitive and less intelligent than their slave counterparts, they were much more crafty and wise in the ways of the forest than the escaped slaves. Nevertheless, it didn’t take the hounds long to track them down.
Tiolani was not the only one out for revenge that night. There was no suggestion of capturing any of the prey alive, and every member of the Wild Hunt set about the killing with grim purpose. In the ensuing carnage she acquitted herself well, not only managing to control her difficult horse through sheer force of will, but also bringing down a number of mortals on her own account, slaying them with both sword and bow. Men, women and even children - it made no difference to her. The crunch of bone, the spurting blood and the cries of agony and terror all served to assuage her grief a little, and by the time there was nothing left of the human colony but piles of slaughtered corpses on the blood-soaked forest floor, she felt calmer and more at peace than she had done since her father’s fall and Arvain’s death.
She rode home with the gore cooling on her body. It reddened her arms and chest, and covered her face in a stiff, stinking mask, plastering her hair down to her skull. Tiolani smiled grimly to herself. She had waded in so much human blood that night that it had soaked her garments - and it felt wonderful. And she had only just started. She knew that now. For killing her brother, she would visit death upon the humans a thousandfold.
Tiolani had been in control while she was out with the Hunt and there was killing to be done. When she returned to Eliorand, however, all her fears and worries surfaced once again, and her grief returned with overwhelming force. She realised, then, that there would be nothing for it but to ride out with the Hunt each night like a driven creature, for only in the killing could she forget her troubles for a while. It would be much more difficult, however, to get through the days, with so much to learn about ruling, the additional burden of new responsibilities, and long, wretched hours spent sitting by Hellorin’s bed, talking to her father in the hope that one day he would open his eyes and respond to her. And how could she face day after day of this grief? The Phaerie were unaccustomed to the death of their own, for it happened so seldom. How could she bear the loss of her beloved Arvain? Things might have gone ill for her indeed, save for the discovery that she was not alone in her sorrow.
Ferimon had been her brother’s best friend, and the object of Tiolani’s girlhood dreams and fantasies for several years. Unfortunately, Arvain had discovered her infatuation for the handsome blond courtier, and his merciless teasing had eventually been enough to put her off the whole idea. She could never be sure that he hadn’t told his companion about her feelings, and the idea of them laughing behind her back made her want to die of humiliation. Ever since then she had avoided Ferimon, just in case. Her pride would never allow her to risk putting herself in such an embarrassing position. Doing without him had been difficult at first, but as time went by she had tried to avoid his company, and if she still looked for him around every corner - well, only she would ever know.
In her own grief following her brother’s death, she forgot how deeply Ferimon would also be affected, until he came to her two days after Arvain had been sent to his rest. The funeral had been very hard on Tiolani. Robed in red, the colour of death and mourning among the Phaerie, she had led the procession of mourners out from the palace to the massive amphitheatre, its basis a natural hollow in the land, which had been constructed on the northern side of the hill, facing the fertile vale of the Phaerie heartlands and the soaring peaks beyond. There her brother’s body was incinerated in a single flash of magic, and the remains taken aloft on horseback to be broadcast to the winds. As Arvain’s sister, it had been her duty to perform the ceremony and scatter the ashes, riding aloft over Eliorand with an honour-guard of Phaerie in the sky behind her.
It was the most terrible thing Tiolani had ever been obliged to do, but somehow, for the sake of her brother, she had managed at least to maintain the appearance of being strong and brave throughout the proceedings, though she had not been able to eat a single morsel of the feast afterwards, and had only choked down a cup of strong wine, in a toast to Arvain’s memory. Though she had gone through the day with jaws clenched and her hands knotted into white-knuckled fists, at least she had comported herself with dignity right to the very end, but when she finally regained the sanctuary of her chambers, she collapsed on the bed as though she had been clubbed, and made herself so ill with weeping that Varna had been forced to send for the physicians.