Tiolani shrank within herself as she heard the voices drawing closer.
‘Get a move on, you lot,’ Danel urged. ‘Hurry up and finish stripping those corpses and don’t forget the one in the net. You lookouts - keep an eye on the skies. I’m guessing that the storm will stop the others coming back this way for now, but we won’t have long.’
Someone touched her. Tiolani felt her flesh trying to cringe away from those intrusive hands, and it took every ounce of control that she possessed to remain as limp and silent as the corpse she was pretending to be. They had her surrounded now - close, so close - she was desperate to vomit from the human stink of them. Their filthy hands lifted her, prodded her, turned her this way and that as they tried to disentangle her from the net. Somehow, she kept herself still while they released her from the net’s folds. She didn’t move, she barely breathed, she didn’t make a sound. She let them paw and handle her, fighting down her fury and disgust in a desperate effort to survive.
All to no avail.
When they began to remove her clothing, Tiolani finally betrayed herself. A gasp, a flinch - she had no idea what she’d done, but suddenly the dreaded cry rang out.
‘Hey! This one’s alive.’
Tiolani’s eyes flew open, as another voice cried, ‘I know her - it’s Hellorin’s daughter.’
‘Good,’ someone else said. ‘Then we can put an end to the bastard’s line right now.’
Above her, Tiolani saw the flash of a knife, but suddenly the leader shouted, ‘Stop. Wait. Don’t kill her yet. This wants thinking about. Just put her out of action for now.’
Tiolani never saw what hit her - a crashing blow to her head. There was a flash of light, and blinding pain, then only black oblivion.
Survival was the imperative for Cordain, once the Forest Lord’s Chief Counsellor. Demoted to a wary outcast in the Phaerie Court, he followed the Hunt nonetheless, for he deemed it wise to keep a close eye on Hellorin’s daughter. To his utter horror he saw her fall, saw the fate of Ferimon and Darillan and, with fast-beating heart, saw the net crew streaking down in pursuit of the plummeting Tiolani. Automatically, he turned to follow - then the calm pragmatism that had always proved so invaluable to Hellorin took over.
If the net-bearers could not reach Tiolani in time, then no one could. Meanwhile, with Ferimon, Darillan and their ruler having fallen, the remaining Phaerie were leaderless and milling in confusion, right in the path of the storm. Someone had to take command. Calling loudly with both voice and mind, Cordain rallied the hunters to him and by a miracle they obeyed, speeding away from the advancing bank of sinister cloud. His relief was short-lived, however. Even as they fell into place behind him, he felt the flying magic beginning to drain away. His horse dipped a little, then recovered, but he knew that the animal was working harder now to stay aloft and keep going. A wrenching feeling of grief and dismay joined the ebbing sensation of the spell. What had happened to his old friend’s daughter? Clearly the rescuers had not reached her in time. But was she merely injured and unconscious? Or lying dead and broken on the forest floor?
Cordain’s mind raced, his thoughts flying this way and that in panic:
With the flying spell weakening we can’t stay aloft in the storm.
If we aren’t dashed to pieces we’ll be stranded.
Ferals now have weapons to attack even a large group.
No protection from lost and scattered hounds.
On the ground, we change from hunters to prey.
The way became clear. He must save what lives he could. Leaving Tiolani and the net bearers to their fate, he gathered the remaining Phaerie and fled homeward at breakneck speed, in a desperate attempt to reach Eliorand before the spell ran out completely.
No matter how unstable she had become, no matter how badly she had treated him over the last months, he hated leaving her, and every stride through the sky was dogged by strangling feelings of guilt that pursued him as relentlessly as the advancing storm. Hellorin was his dearest friend and he had known Tiolani since she was born. Even in the privacy of his own thoughts he shied away from the stark truth - that the death of the Forest Lord’s daughter would solve a great many problems.
To Corisand, the battle with the storm seemed an unending nightmare as she fought against the swirling gusts, desperately trying to find a safe way down. Suddenly something hit her, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. The wind had hurled her into the upper boughs of a tree, pulling the other horse after her. Luckily this part of the forest was mainly evergreen. If she had tangled up in an oak, Corisand hated to think what might have happened. She might easily have been impaled, broken a leg or, worse still, her neck. As it was, the brittle upper branches snapped and splintered, and she managed to struggle free of the fir with only bruises and scratches to her name.
Her heart in her mouth, the Windeye set course upwards once more, dragging her companion after her. She began to wonder how much longer she could keep the two of them together like this. Her neck ached, and her jaws were nearly breaking from hanging on to the slippery, rain-soaked leather of the other mare’s reins. Yet what else could she do?
Keep going. The keening of the gale and the loud concussions of thunder hurt her ears, and made it difficult to think. The Windeye struggled on, soaked and frozen; fighting to maintain a height that kept her beneath the worst of the turbulence, but above the level of the treetops. Though her only concern had been to reach the ground, she must now strive to avoid hitting another of the forest giants. In lightning flashes, she could see that she was currently above a dense belt of woodland. She had no other choice but to persevere, and hope to hit a thinner patch soon, so that she could get herself and her companion down. Because of the thickly mounded storm clouds, the night was utterly black, so apart from the brief glimpses she gained during the flashes, she had no idea how close she was to the tops of the trees.
Corisand was peering anxiously downwards, ready to snatch all the information she could from the next split-second flare of lightning, when she sensed, with the extra intuition that seemed to come with being a Windeye, the presence of horses somewhere far below. As another flash split the sky with a streak of blue-white light, the veils of rain below her blew aside and she saw a pool that shimmered brightly in the lightning-glare. She glimpsed a clearing - a wonderful, blessed clearing - far beneath her and, without hesitation, she plunged downwards, hauling her companion (Halira - what a time to remember that) behind. Down here, the trees broke the force of the violent gale, and she managed to fight for enough control to glide safely down, though the ground itself was now obscured once more by the violent downpour.
She almost landed right on top of them. Just in time, Corisand wrenched herself aside as she saw the dim forms below, and came down hard in a fountain of mud. The ground was cut up in the centre of the clearing, and two dark corpses slumped nearby. There was the rank smell of a terrified horse, and the stench of blood and death. Something very bad had happened here, and she had put them right in the middle of it. She spun, ears flat, ready to fight or flee, and caught the glint of a sword in the murk. On the wind came the ringing challenge of a stallion, and then two voices, raised in surprise:
‘It’s not the Hunt.’
‘It’s only horses.’
Cautiously, two people emerged from the trees at the edge of the clearing, accompanied by a magnificent warhorse - an ordinary animal, not a Xandim, Corisand was disappointed to note - who clung as close to the woman’s shoulder as a shadow.