Without further argument, he seized her wrist in his hands and began to chant softly, allowing the trickling blood to form an enclosing circle. Before many heartbeats had passed, Lydryth began to feel weak from the steady draining, but she forced herself to mask her dizziness. When they were about two-thirds of the way around the circle, though, she stumbled. In answer Alon’s fingers clamped hard over the slash, and he muttered softly under his breath. The bleeding slowed and stopped.
“Go and bandage that,” he ordered, “then get Steel Talon and Monso ready to go. Don’t speak to me again until the spell is complete … I will need full concentration.” Then, drawing his own belt knife, he nicked his own wrist deeply and set to completing the circle of blood.
As he finished, his chant grew louder. . . . Slowly, inexorably, the candles began to darken. The words Alon was mouthing now made Lydryth’s head spin. She wanted to cover her ears, just as she had before, hearing Yachne. The Adept’s own lips twisted as he spoke, as though the words he pronounced tasted of bile.
The very air within the cavern grew as dark as the candles, curdling with foulness, murky with unseen shapes. Horrors seemed to gibber from the shadows, but every time Lydryth turned to look, there was nothing there. Resolutely, she forced herself to ignore them, and Alon, also.
Quickly she checked the fastenings of Monso’s saddlebags, fastened her quarterstaff into place beneath the stirrup on the horse’s off side; then she spread her cloak on the stony floor. “It is time. Steel Talon,” she said to the falcon still perched atop the pommel of the saddle.
With a harsh screech, the bird glided down and stood upon the cloak. Lydryth gathered up the edges, folding them up around the bird, thus protecting her flesh from those raking talons, that sharp beak. With the swathed falcon in her arms, she straightened up, turning to regard the Adept, only to see Alon, his head thrown back, a dark shadow half-obscuring his features, voice a last, loud call that she recognized from Yachne’s attempt.
The sound of that terrifying summons coming from her companion’s throat was enough to send the girl stumbling back against Monso’s side. The Keplian rolled his eyes, trembling violently.
Slowly, the deep, shadow-shot purple expanse of the dark mirror glowed foully to life. Their Gate was open.
Alon turned to regard his accomplishment with a look of such revulsion stamped across his features that Lydryth cried out in dismay. Then he staggered over into the corner of the cave and was thoroughly sick, heaving as though he could physically expel from his spirit the stain that Yachne’s incantation had left there. Finally, shaking, his features as waxy as the candles he had used (candles, Lydryth noted with part of her mind, that were now as pitchy black as they had been white before), he straightened, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
He spat one final time, then, obviously holding himself erect by force of will, walked over to Monso and mounted. Grimly, he held out his hand for the bundle that was Steel Talon, and, when the songsmith handed it to him, he hugged the falcon’s shrouded form against his chest.
“Can you get up?” he asked. He smiled a shaky, apologetic smile. “I seem to be short of hands to aid you, at the moment.”
“As long at Monso doesn’t kick, I can,” she said.
“No, he would not kick you,” he assured her.
Stepping behind the stallion, the songsmitb patted his rump. “Easy, boy.” Then she backed away a few paces and came forward again at a run to vault neatly up over the Keplian’s rump into her accustomed position behind Alon.
“Very nice,” Alon said, admiration lightening the sick weariness that tinged his voice. “That is a feat I never learned.”
“Obred, the Kioga herd-master, taught me,” she said absently.
“And now for Arvon … I hope,” he whispered. “Hold tight.”
He urged the Keplian forward.
With a squeal, of fear, the stallion plunged beneath them, back humping in protest. Alon shouted a harsh order, heels thumping against the creature’s sides. Still the horse resisted, shaking his head and snorting with terror. The smell of his fear-sweat was rank in Lydryth’s nostrils.
“Get up\” Alon shouted, then followed the order with a curse that made Lydryth gasp. His heels rammed his mount’s sides again, even as he slashed the reins savagely across the black’s neck, whipping him hard.
With a suddenness that sent Lydryth’s head snapping painfully back, Monso launched himself at the Gate.
Their first such crossing had been disturbing enough, but this one was agony. A great shadow seemed to envelop them, and they hung suspended in a darkness so profound that Lydryth feared she had been blinded by it. Her spirit quailed before the sense of evil, of wrongness that this Gate held. She found that her mouth was open as she tried desperately to scream, but no sound emerged. It was like the worst of nightmares, where the dreamer struggles vainly to awaken-except that she knew this was no dream.
How long that passage took-minutes, years, centuries- she could not tell. But at last she heard Monso’s hooves strike hard ground with a thump, even as the world reappeared around them.
In the west, the sun was setting-and it had been well before noon in Escore! Lydryth stared around her, noting the colors and varieties of vegetation, the shapes of the distant mountains, then sniffed the air. “We did it,” she said, softly. “This is Arvon.”
“Good,” Alon said, grim with exhaustion. He halted Monso, then slipped off him, murmuring apologies for having whipped him. “I am sorry, son,” he whispered, then stooped to lay Lydryth’s cloak on the ground. Steel Talon shook himself free, then flew to the branch of a nearby oak, screeching an ear-piercing protest against such a form of travel.
Numb, the songsmith slipped off the Keplian’s back, then stood trembling, watching Alon repentently stroke his horse. Monso shoved his nose against him with a soft nicker.
“That was terrible,” Lydryth whispered, when her voice was once more under her control-barely. “I could never do that again . . . never.”
“Nor could I,” Alon agreed, soberly. His face was set in new, harsh lines, making him appear far older, far harder than he had only yesterday. “If it weren’t for Yachne, we would never have had to take such a desperate route. When I catch up to her, she will pay for this.”
“Will we able to capture her? And, if we do, is there some way she can be stripped of that terrible spell?” Lydryth asked, shivering as she remembered the witch’s power.
“If there is, I don’t know it,” Alon said grimly. A cold, hating glint awakened in his eyes, disturbing Lydryth profoundly. His voice rang out suddenly with the strength of one taking a sacred vow. “But worry not. After I find her, I swear to every god that is and ever was that she will present no further threat to anyone!”
Lydryth stared at him in horror. “Surely you do not mean . . . ,” she began, only to have him nod, his mouth naught but a grim slash.
“Oh, but I do,” he said softly, in a cold voice so cruel that the songsmith backed away a step. “When I find her, I intend to kill her.” He slanted a warning look at his companion. “And don’t even think about trying to stop me. Lady Songsmith.”
Ten They passed no farmsteads, no villages, saw no distant lights. Herds ofpronghorns and deer stared at them curiously, not particularly alarmed at their presence. “Man is not a predator they know,” Alon observed. “We are indeed far from any villages or farmsteads. How far do you think we are from Kar Garudwyn?”
“Four days’ ride-perhaps more-but that is only a guess,” she replied. “If my reckoning is correct, we should strike the edge ofBluemantle lands late tomorrow or early the next day. Then we will make better time, traveling the roads.”
“Perhaps we should not go to Kar Garudwyn immediately. Perhaps we should seek Yachne first,” he suggested.
Lydryth shifted position, trying unsuccessfully to ease the sore muscles in her thighs and buttocks and sighed deeply. “No,” she said, after a moment’s consideration. “We must go to Kar Garudwyn first.”
“Why?” he challenged. “Yachne is the threat. The sooner I deal with her, the sooner your foster-father will be safe.”
Lydryth repressed a shudder as she remembered precisely how her companion proposed to “deal” with the renegade witch. But she forced herself to mask her feelings as she responded, evenly, “Because if we can but reach Kar Garudwyn, there is a Place of Power nearby, where Kerovan can seek refuge. It is called the Setting Up of the Kings. From what I know of the workings of magic, if Kerovan went there, Yachne’s summoning spell could not pull him away; he would be protected.”