“No, he’s not,” said Lucas before I could answer. “He has to accustom the horse to being ridden before anyone else can even try.”
The stallion reared, trying to shake Paul off. There was nothing I could do but watch; my magic could not penetrate the nixie’s barrier. The stallion came down again, Paul still firmly on his back. The whole herd swept off, galloping across the plain, and disappeared from our view.
“The nixie’s not going to wait passively for two hours or two days or whatever it takes Paul to calm down that stallion,” said Lucas. I thought this one of his more intelligent recent observations.
Vor seemed to think so too. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said with his quick, fleeting smile. “I’ll try to keep her occupied.”
Lucas and I both turned to stare at him. “Oh, I’ll readily admit I’m not in the right mood right now,” he said playfully. “But nixies, happy nixies, can put one in the mood very easily. They do say that, if you live through the experience, satisfying a nixie is something you never forget.”
Lucas cleared his throat as though about to speak but changed his mind.
“The two of you are bound by oaths of marriage and of wizardry,” Vor continued, “but as long as I’m back home in the borderlands, I might as well take advantage of an opportunity I’m not likely to be offered down in the cathedral city among all the priests. With a little conversation, a little wine, and a few games, I should be able to stretch it out for several hours.”
Lucas and I had nothing to say. “Oh, Lady!” Vor called, moving back toward the center of the grove. “Where are you? Could you bring your delightful form closer to mine?”
He was gone. Lucas and I looked at each other. I arranged him as well as I could, his leg propped up before him, and sat down to wait.
An hour passed, and the horses reappeared in the distance. I thought I spotted a dark shape still clinging to the stallion’s neck. The stallion was not running now but walking.
“It looks like he may be taming that stallion,” said Lucas with reluctant admiration. “Look at how easily he’s sitting now.”
Paul slipped down from the horse’s back, a hand still in the mane, then leapt back up again. The stallion jumped, but this time only a small jump, and Paul guided an incipient gallop back into a trot.
Then he was off the stallion’s back again and moving toward the black mare. I could see him stroking her, talking to her, and then suddenly he was on her back and she was running, and the entire process started over again.
The whole herd disappeared around the far side of the grove. I thought of following them but was afraid of doing anything that might startle the horses. Paul was going to need absolute concentration to try to tame two wild beasts that galloped like something out of legend.
I wondered again where Bonfire had really come from. Having seen the bay stallion and the black mare up close, I was now certain that Paul’s red roan stallion had come from these borderlands. If the renegade wizard had been up here to find a gorgos, he might have taken back a horse for Prince Vincent at the same time. I was even more convinced that that horse was a trap.
Another hour passed. I was so tense that the very tension made me yawn with exhaustion.
And then Paul was back, appearing abruptly before us, riding the stallion and leading the mare with a hand on her mane. Both kept taking nervous little steps and jerking their heads up, but they kept coming. They passed without difficulty through the nixie’s barrier. Extreme fatigue and delighted pride were both on Paul’s face, but all he said was, “Where’s Vor?”
I let my mind slip away through the trees until I found him. Standing in the flow of magic by the edge of his mind, I called softly. “Vor. Paul’s back. We’re going now.”
Very few people not trained in magic can hear a wizard speaking to them directly, mind to mind. But there was an abrupt stir and I returned to myself, knowing he had heard. “He’s coming,” I said.
“The mare’s a little gentler,” said Paul. “You and Lucas try mounting.”
I rose up in the air, bringing Lucas with me, and set us down on the mare’s back as gently as I could. Vor came out of the trees, his face ashen and running with sweat but giving us a complacent smile. Paul reached out a hand, and Vor scrambled up behind him.
“Hold onto my waist,” said Paul. “All of you, keep your heads down and tuck up your feet. Let’s go!”
Paul urged the stallion forward, and the mare followed. The stallion was out in the plain again in a second, but Lucas’s wounded leg stuck out sideways from the mare’s back, and it hung up on the nixie’s barrier.
Lucas grunted with pain, and I caught him just before he was dragged backwards off the horse, just before the mare bolted out from under both of us. With a firm hand on her mane and my best imitation of Paul’s voice in her ears, I turned her in a tight circle and tried again.
And this time we went through, free of our leafy prison. “Run!” cried Paul. “Here comes the nixie!”
PART SEVEN — THE BISHOP
I
The graceful green form stood on the edge of the grove. Waves of sensuous emotion broke around us, but we kept galloping.
When the nixie’s call to us did not succeed in a few seconds, she tried to call the horses. Paul’s stallion threw up its head and stopped so suddenly Vor almost slid off. The mare too skidded to a halt and looked back.
But while a dead flying beast’s skin has no choice but to answer a call designed for flying beasts, a living horse can make a choice. Paul shouted to the horses and, almost reluctantly, they turned away from the grove, and abruptly the attraction spell dropped and we ran again.
Although Paul had been riding these horses hard for several hours, they showed no sign of slowing now. Half my attention had to go to the lifting spell that was all that held Lucas on the mare’s back. I was not nearly the horseman Paul was, and I quickly fell behind
But it did not matter. We were free.
After five miles, at the hills that ringed the plain, Paul pulled up the stallion. “The horses don’t want to go farther,” he said. “And I don’t want to exhaust them.” A light dampness had finally broken out on their coats. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. Lucas, the wizard can carry you.”
None of us objected, not even Lucas, whose ankle had been healing nicely in the nixie’s grove until the slam against the invisible barrier had twisted it anew. We slid to the ground and Paul embraced both horses, putting his cheek in turn against each of their necks. “Goodbye, my beauties, my lovely ones. I’ll give your greetings to Bonfire.”
He then turned to the rest of us. “The nixie made us fight among ourselves, but if we are going to make it home again we all have to help each other.” All of us nodded soberly. Paul was clearly our leader now. I thought it a nice diplomatic touch for him to blame our disagreements on the nixie. We stumbled up into the rocky hills, Lucas hovering a short distance above the ground due to my magic, and the horses pranced away across the grass to rejoin the herd.
It took two days to get back to Vor’s people’s valley. Vor was able to climb up and down even the steepest inclines without difficulty, but on several occasions I had to carry both princes up a nearly vertical slope or across a crevice.
Late the second day, when cool blue shadows stretched out across the barren land, we finally reached a river, rimmed on either side with verdure, and followed it upstream until we came through a narrow divide into the valley.
Word spread quickly that we had arrived, and people came hurrying down from their homes in the cliffs to greet us. I was too tired to notice much of what was happening, except that Vor gave everyone a lively account of our exploits. Several long-fingered women brought hot stew, which certainly helped. As the stars came out, lights twinkled on all up and down the cliffs, and, as Paul had hoped, it looked like fairyland. Someone realized that, although Vor seemed prepared to talk all night, the rest of us were about to fall asleep sitting up. We were boosted up ladders and given blankets and dropped into oblivion at last.