“I am not going!” Lydryth cried. “I will go on alone to warn Kerovan!”
“Go then,” he snarled, “and take my curse!”
Fury surged hot within her, but something in Alon’s eyes as he stared at her made her swallow and remain silent. She shifted her weight so she could slide down the near side of Monso’s rump. “I’ll go,” she whispered.
Steel Talon suddenly plunged out of the air, screaming shrilly. Monso shied. If the Keplian had leaped to the right, Lydryth would have been left hanging in midair, her destination the green meadow grass. But instead Monso moved to his left, dropping and lunging so that the songsmith found herself again in the middle of his rump.
Instinctively, she grabbed Alon around the waist, just as the stallion plunged forward with a heart-stopping buck. “No!” Alon yelled, struggling to regain control. The Adept’s legs closed on the stallion’s sides, trying to drive the half-bred forward, so his head would come up. He bent over, hands squeezing and releasing on the reins, trying to dislodge the bit from the Keplian’s teeth-
-and succeeded only too well. Grunting, Monso flung his head up. His heavy stallion’s crest with its crowning bristle of mane struck his rider full in the face. The Adept sagged, limp. He would have fallen were it not for Lydryth’s enclosing arms.
Even the smallest crowhop would have unseated his riders by then, but Monso had apparently abandoned his efforts to rid himself of his passengers. Instead, the Keplian’s strides began to lengthen. He broke into a swift canter, and then he was galloping.
Lydryth managed to grab the pommel of the saddle with both hands, then heaved herself up and over the cantle, until she was jammed into the seat with Alon. Groping for the reins, she snatched them from the Adept’s lax fingers, and, peering past his shoulder, began sawing at the stallion’s mouth.
Monso ignored her efforts. He was running now, moving with those long, swift strides that marked his fastest pace. “Monso!” she shouted into the whipping wind. Lydryth’s surroundings blurred as tears filled her eyes. “Easy, boy! Ho, now!” One black ear turned back to catch her words, but there was no other reaction.
They were heading east now, in the direction of Kar Garudwyn, flashing down the soft-packed road with the headlong rush of a forest fire. Alon’s weight swayed dangerously in the saddle, and the songsmith stiffened her arms to keep him from pitching headlong onto the verge. At the speed they were now traveling, such a fall could have been fatal.
Wedged into the saddle as she was, Lydryth herself was in little danger of falling, for Monso ran straight and leveled-out, his strides so smooth that very little motion was perceived by his rider. But as for control over the Keplian… she had none. The stallion might as well have had a halter on his head instead of a bridle, for all the attention he paid to the bit or her attempts to slow him.
Lydryth felt light-headed from fear. Monso was moving so fast that time itself seemed blurred. Had the Keplian been running for minutes? Hours? There was no way to know.
Summoning up all her strength, she attempted to sing soothingly, as she had done that day at the horse fair. But her words were blown away by the wind of their passage. Grimly, she tried putting pressure on only one rein, hoping she could so direct the Keplian into a slowly diminishing circle, but, again, her efforts were useless.
Alon stirred before her, then moaned, beginning to struggle feebly as consciousness returned. “Hold still!” Lydryth screamed in his ear. “Don’t move, or we’ll both fall!”
She knew he must have heard her, because, moments later, his hands closed over hers on the reins. Together they fought to slow Monso-still to no avail.
There was something ahead of them … to the left, off the road. A strange shape, like that of a giant, grey-stemmed mushroom with a spring-green cap, set on the crest of a hill. A black streak winged past them, stooping out of the air, and she heard Steel Talon’s shrill shriek. Monso abruptly veered off the road, and, if anything, increased his pace as he headed up the hill toward the crest.
Lydryth closed her eyes, offering up a silent plea to Gunnora that the racing Keplian would not encounter a burrower’s hole or a stoat’s den-or the sunken remains of a fence-at this insane speed.
The steepness of the hillside did not slow the Keplian.
Monso was now moving so swiftly that Lydryth felt as though she were astride Steel Talon, flying, rather than riding a landbound creature.
As they reached the top of the hill, Lydryth blinked, and suddenly the mushroom-shape before them sprang into clear view; it was a circular grove of mammoth trees with pale-grey trunks, topped with feathery green boughs that sprouted only from their uppermost heights. Monso slowed to a gallop as he began moving around the perimeter of the huge grove.
The trees stood so symmetrically in a circle that their planting must have been the work of some hand, not nature’s happenstance. A loud, rasping sound now reached the songsmith’s ears, and she realized that Monso was finally winded, his breath rasping like iron filings. White foam curded his neck.
“Can you stop him now?” she shouted into Alon’s ear.
“I’m trying,” came his grim reply.
But the Keplian galloped on, around the narrow trunks that almost formed a natural barrier, so close together did they grow. They were on the eastern side of the hill now, following the curve of the grove.
Lydryth glanced down at the thick green grass beneath them. “Should we jump?”
“You jump,” Alon ordered, leaning back against the reins, his shoulders working. “But I stay with-”
He broke off as Steel Talon again flew past them, screaming his piercing cry. Immediately Monso planted his forehooves in the turf, tucked his hindquarters beneath him, and skidded to a halt. Both riders were thrown forward, slamming into him and each other with bruising force.
Alon began to curse the stallion, then, in a frenzy of anger, lashed the black’s neck with the end of his reins. Lydryth was shocked by the savagery in his voice, the vicious snap of his blows against the sweating black hide.
Steel Talon screamed again.
Their mount lunged forward in a huge leap, bucking like a demon-horse possessed. Lydryth clung grimly through one leap-two-then felt herself slipping as the Keplian sunfished, flinging his hind legs up and out behind her head, then twisting in midair like a serpent writhing with a broken back.
The bard felt the wind other own passage as she was hurled into the air. Following instinct learned from years of training horses with the Kioga, she curled into a ball, ducking her head to protect it. Monso was bellowing with fury, and she had one final moment to hope that he did not land on her during one of his frenzied leaps.
As she struck the ground, Lydryth managed to roll, absorbing most of the impact on the soft turf. Even so, she gasped, feeling as though a giant hand had wrung her chest and back.
Dazedly, she raised her head, saw Alon grimly clinging to the madly plunging stallion, but it was plain that the Adept was losing his battle. Blood was running freely from his nostrils; he had abandoned pride and was gripping the pommel of the saddle with one hand, even as he fought stubbornly to pull Monso’s head up and drive the horse forward.
As she lay there, struggling to catch her breath, Lydryth felt a strange warmth tingling along her left arm. Fearing the worst, she turned her head, but her fingers curled at her command, there was no bleeding or break. The bard saw that Monso’s buck had thrown her almost within the only opening in the giant circular grove of uncanny trees. Her left arm lay within the opening-and from it, a sensation was spreading.
Warmth . . . comfort. .. healing . . . light. It was all those things, and more. Much more. The light crept within her, spreading, filling her with peace, driving out the anger, the wrongness that had frightened her during the past days when she had felt it trying to possess her. The sensation of being healed of a dark sickness of the spirit was so compelling that she stared at her arm, transfixed, forgetting Alon, forgetting the battle between mount and master raging still behind her.
Cautiously, she levered herself up on her hands. Her head still spun from the fall, her ears rang with weakness, but the urge to drive out the Darkness that had been growing within her drove her onward. Lydryth crawled slowly, not halting until her entire body lay within the entrance to this strange place.
Light and warmth enveloped her, soothing body and spirit. Understanding grew as it did so, knowledge of what had been happening to her, the reason that both she and Alon had been reacting so strangely. Ever since they had jumped through that Dark Gate, a malignant Shadow had grown within them, a darkness of spirit that was now being driven out by the light and life of this hallowed Place of Power.