But, after a brief struggle (and a firm smack with the reins), the songsmith was able to force her mount onward. Vyar was trembling beneath her, but, having managed the Keplian, Eydryth found a mortal horse far easier to handle. Once he was given a lead to follow, Hyana’s grey, Raney, fell in behind Vyar.
Stiff-legged, trembling, the mare followed Monso toward the source of that glow. It seemed to Eydryth to be a forest, one that had died—died so swiftly that the leaves had had no chance to drop from the branches. They shone white, a rank, phosphorescent white, like the lichens which grew in some caves. The branches and trunks which sprouted those eldritch leaves were dull black, as if they had turned in a trice to solid pillars of rot. And from many of those branches hung lengths of dead, silvery moss, veiling the depths of the forest from their eyes like concealing tapestries.
If it had not been for the stomach-wrenching reek that emanated from that strange wood, that eye-searing aura of total wrongness, the place might have been termed strangely beautiful. As they halted just outside of the strange wood, Eydryth looked over at Hyana. “What do you make of it, Sister?” she asked, knowing that the other had the gift of seeing beyond the ken of humankind, into the spirit and future of things.
“Truly, this is a case where fair is foul and foul, fair,” Hyana replied. “If your Alon has followed the witch within, he has endangered not merely his body, but his innermost essence. To die in this place would leave one not only dead, but damned without hope of succor or mercy.”
“A path.” Jervon, ever the practical strategist, pointed to a distinct trail. “But there is no telling whether it leads to the right place.”
“If there is a path, then it is that way we must go,” Kerovan said. “Touching one of those ‘trees’—if such they ever truly were—would be as poisonous as inviting the strike of an adder.” Eydryth saw that the wristlet he always wore was softly glowing, warning, as was its nature, against evil.
“Will the horses take it?” Joisan asked, soothing her golden chestnut. “Varren is not happy even standing here, much less entering that place.”
“Monso is already going,” Eydryth cried, pointing to the Keplian, who was even now trotting up the trail. “Quickly, while he gives us a lead!” Her legs closed around Vyar’s barrel, but it took another smack with the reins to force the mare after the stallion.
The rot-trees (or so Eydryth had come to think of them) closed in around her. The soil beneath the mare’s hooves was grey, leached of life, sterile and powdery as talc. After a breath or two, Eydryth fumbled out her kerchief and tied it over her mouth and nose. She risked a swift glance back, and saw the others following her example. The horses were plainly not at ease in this “forest,” but none had balked.
Eydryth was in a fever of impatience, wanting to urge Vyar into a gallop, but, after Kerovan’s warning about the danger of touching the trees, she restrained herself… barely. Her conviction that Alon was in trouble grew until she was quivering like a plucked harpstring. She found herself remembering every moment, every passing touch between them since they had met, and was powerless to halt the images flowing through her mind.
The wood stretched away on either side of them, quiet and poisonous, but, somewhat to Eydryth’s surprise, they met no one and nothing. She had half-expected another contingent of web-riders. If there ever existed a place more perfect to have been their spawning ground, she had never seen it.
Glancing back at the others, she saw Kerovan’s wristlet glowing brilliant blue, as it had that day she and Jervon were nearly ensorcelled by the Keplian. But they did not need the talisman to warn them against the Shadow—or to tell them they were in grave peril. The rank stench surrounding them would not allow even a moment’s forgetting.
Steel Talon sat hunched on the cantle of the Keplian’s saddle, and Eydryth realized that the falcon was, rightfully, loath to perch on any of the limbs in this unnatural wood. She wondered how far this Place extended—they had already ridden for nearly a league.
Even as that thought crossed her mind, they came to the end of their trail. Suddenly the rot-trees ended, leaving a huge, roughly circular meadow in their midst. The “meadow” was covered in a short, sere turf, the color of ancient lichen. In its center rose an enormous rock, as large as a good-sized cottage.
Monso trotted swiftly into the meadow with a nicker of recognition. Eydryth followed the Keplian’s direction, then saw, silhouetted against that massive boulder, two figures.
Violet light surrounded one, emanating from the crystal talisman he wore. His hands were up in a warding gesture, and a violet haze wreathed them, shaped almost like a warrior’s shield. The other figure was undoubtedly Yachne, though she still wore a shapeless grey robe and hood, hiding her identity. Serpent-shaped trails of purple light shot through with dark-red streaks fell from the tip of her fingers, then launched themselves across the intervening space, aimed at the Adept’s head.
“Alon!” Eydryth shouted, and was off Vyar and running toward him before the mare even came to a stop. “Alon!”
Monso bolted toward his master; then, with a suddenness that nearly knocked him off all four feet, the half-bred stopped dead, as though he had run into some invisible barrier.
Which indeed he had, as Eydryth discovered a heartbeat later, as she, too, slammed into something unyielding. She fell hard, then lay winded. A moment later Kerovan grabbed her arm, and aided her to her feet.
The songsmith saw with horror what was happening. Evidently Alon had lost his concentration on his spelling when he had heard her shout, because, even as Eydryth focused on him again, the Adept was struck by one of Yachne’s snake-bolts of Power. He reeled, stumbled, then went down to his knees, plainly dazed.
“No!” Eydryth whispered in agony. Trapped behind the unseen wall, she was forced to watch helplessly. Seeing her and the other would-be rescuers, Yachne laughed aloud, gave the newcomers a cheery “thank you!” wave, then bent to her task. Horrified, Eydryth realized that she was completing the last closing of the spell she had employed to steal Dinzil’s Power. A dead fawn lay on the “grass” not far from her, its throat slashed. The blood-circle was nearly complete.
Eydryth pounded helplessly against the unseen barrier as the witch scratched her skinny wrist with the blade of the athame. In a trice she had completed the closing of her ghastly circle; then she began to chant.
Alon slumped forward onto his hands and knees as the mist began coalescing around him. “Alon!” Eydryth screamed. “Stop her! You must stop her!”
After a moment the young man wavered to his feet, then stared down in horror as the thickening mist suddenly billowed up, nearly waist-high. “No!” Eydryth sobbed. She was scarcely aware of her father putting an arm around her, as she turned to Hyana. “Does Yachne’s wall extend all the way around this clearing?” she gasped.
Her foster-sister nodded. “I can see it. A barrier of pale light, nearly as tall as the tops of these loathsome trees.”
“Can you break the spell?” the songsmith implored Joisan and Kerovan.
The Wise Woman shook her head. “I have been trying to do just that, ever since we came here, but this is no spell I have ever encountered before.”
Laughing delightedly, Yachne walked closer to Alon. The Adept was struggling to force the mist back down into the ground, using the glow given off by his crystal talisman. But, slowly, a finger-width at a time, he was losing that battle. The mist by now was up to his chest. Eydryth knew that if it completely enclosed him, the Alon as she knew him now would be forever lost—to himself as well as to her.
“Alon!” she screamed. “The sword! Remember the sword!” Cold iron or steel, she knew, was ofttimes a powerful weapon against evil magic. And the gryphon-sword had quan-iron, that bane of all Darkness, embedded in its hilt. “The sword!” she cupped her hands around her mouth to help her voice carry. “Try the sword!”