“Father!” she said, mock-reprovingly. “I said nothing of . . . of. . .”
“You did not have to,” Jervon said gently; then he sobered. “After so long unaware of anything, I see tonight as if I have been new-forged. My daughter is a woman, and a Wise Woman at that. All of this will take me some time.”
“Thanks to the Lady of the Green Silences, we will all have that time,” Joisan said. “But for now, I suggest that we ride!”
In the end, it was decided that Sylvya and Firdun would remain behind . . . over Firdun’s bitter protests. Kerovan reminded his son that he could track his sister by mind-link, and thus keep those at Kar Garudwyn informed as to their progress. As soon as all was in readiness, Joisan, Kerovan, Lydryth, Hyana and Jervon left the Great Hall together.
Outside Kar Garudwyn, Monso stood, chewing a mouthful of hay, awaiting them. The Keplian’s ordeal had left him thin and worn, but Dahaun’s red mud had again worked its magic, and his leg was nearly healed. The stallion had finished the water from Neave’s spring, and the water that Sylvya had given him after rinsing Dahaun’s box in it. Looking at him, Lydryth could scarcely believe that only two hours had passed since they had arrived at Landisl’s citadel.
She patted the Keplian, then swiftly saddled and bridled him. “Surely you do not intend to ride him?” Joisan said. “He needs rest, not more riding!”
Lydryth shook her head. “I will ride Vyar,” she told her foster-mother. “But Alon will need a mount, if we find him. And Monso will not be content to wait here for his master’s return. No stall or fence could hold him if he wishes to come with us … and he does,” she said, smiling as the stallion whickered, then pawed, as if he understood her perfectly.
She removed the reins from the Keplian’s bit, so he would run no risk of stepping on them, coiling them and tying them on the saddle. Even as she had predicted, Monso clattered after them as they descended the ramp to the valley.
Within minutes, the rescue party set out, trotting slowly in single file, with Jervon, who did not have the night-sight, riding in their midst.
By the time they had reached the road, and set out along it, Lydryth was barely able to hold herself back from galloping full speed along it. Her worry for Alon gnawed at her like some wild creature.
As they moved westward at a ground-eating trot, she chafed, realizing for the first time how slow a mortal horse’s gaits were, in comparison to Monso’s. The riderless stallion ranged ahead of them, scenting the air as though trying to trace his master that way.
Suddenly Monso shrilled his stallion’s scream into the night, then reared before them. Fearing that the half-bred had gone berserk, the riders drew rein, watching the Keplian anxiously as he stood pawing nervously in the middle of the road. The half-bred screamed yet again-
-and this time he was answered!
A shrill cry broke through the night air, and Lydryth suddenly discerned a blacker-than-black shape winging toward them. A shape that bore a white V on its breast.
“Steel Talon!” she gasped, as the falcon came to rest on the cantle of Monso’s saddle. She knew that the falcon would not normally fly at night, and her heart began slamming within her.
“This is the falcon you spoke of?” Kerovan asked.
“Yes,” Lydryth whispered, through dry lips. The bird looked straight at the songsmith and screamed again. “He has come to lead us to Alon,” she said, suddenly sure that she spoke truth. “He is even now in terrible danger!” Sixteen
5’teel Talon led them, winging from tree to bush, alighting always a short distance away, then voicing his shrill cry. Monso cantered after the falcon, and Lydryth and her family followed the Keplian.
Roads stretched before them in the darkness of the waning, now-overcast night-first the broad, well-traveled highway Lydryth had taken to reach Kar Garudwyn, then another, narrower way that turned south off the main route somewhere in Bluemantle lands. This secondary road soon deteriorated to little more than an overgrown, cart-rutted track.
All of the party, except for Jervon, could summon night vision at need, so they took turns riding point. In that way, no one person had to bear that burden alone. When Kerovan rode at the head of the group, Jervon rode beside him. As they companied side by side, Lydryth could hear the soft rise and fall of Kerovan’s voice, broken every so often by a quiet question or comment from her father. She guessed that Kerovan was attempting to fill in the missing years for his newly recovered friend.
Dawn was still more than an hour away when the little party reached the Place of Power that was Yachne’s destination. For the past hour, the riders had crossed moorland and picked their way across marshy hallows, for the trail had deteriorated to a game path, then dwindled away completely. If it had not been for the Keplian and the falcon, they would have been completely lost.
As they rounded a stand of brush, Lydryth, who was riding in the fore with Hyana, saw Monso stop. The stallion snorted, then stuck out his upper lip, exposing his teeth, as if he scented something foul. Steel Talon alighted on the cantle of Alon’s saddle a moment later. “Our destination lies just ahead,” Lydryth’s foster-sister said in a hushed voice. “I can sense that from the falcon.”
Peering through the night, Lydryth concentrated her night vision, making out a faint light from somewhere ahead. It brightened the way ahead, seeming as strong as the glow of a forest fire Lydryth had once seen-a forest fire that had burned itself down to embers. But the bard knew instinctively that whatever caused this light had no kinship with honest fire or once-living wood. The glow that now rose ahead of them was unclean.
Vyar, Lydryth’s Kioga mare, suddenly halted, ears pointing forward, then abruptly flattening as her nostrils flared. The songsmith felt her shiver; then, without warning, the horse ducked her head down to her chest and began backing away. If Lydryth had not driven her forward with her legs, she would have turned tail and bolted.
Hyana’s gelding shied also. Even in the darkness the songsmith could see the ring of white encircling the terrified creature’s eye. Kerovan’s voice came from behind them, floating softly on the pitchy air. “What chances?”
“The horses,” Lydryth kept her own voice soft. “They are balking. They smell something ahead that they do not care to approach.”
“Must we go on afoot?” Joisan asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps.”
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, Lydryth 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 Lydryth 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, Lydryth 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.” Lydryth 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.”