Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.) (10 page)

With a groan he opened his eyes and looked at her blearily. ‘What in the name of perdition just happened?’

‘Tell you in a minute,’ Aelwen said, and dropped her head between her knees. Everything was still whirling and she felt sick, but after a while the landscape settled down around her,
and she saw that they had ended up in some bushes.
Thorny
bushes, Aelwen thought, as she pulled twigs out of her dishevelled red braid, and carefully disentangled a briar that had hooked
itself, all along its length, into her sleeve. Beyond the tangle of undergrowth she could see a tall, dark wall of trees with pale sunlight flashing through the occasional gap in the branches.

She felt bruised and shaken, and the huge expenditure of energy, both physical and magical, that she’d used in the apport had left her muscles weak and her head swimming with weariness.
Taine looked no better. His long dark hair had come loose from the thong that tied it. Blood trickled from a deep scratch on his cheek, perilously close to his eye. His face was bone-white, his
eyes wide and dark with shock. He said nothing yet, but simply held out his arms to her. The jolt of their landing had knocked them apart, but now, without getting to her feet – she
couldn’t risk it yet – she moved gladly into his embrace.

It was only then that she noticed that both of them were shaking. They had come so close to dying! If they had not materialised in these bushes, but in the forest beyond, they might easily have
had a fatal encounter with a tree trunk. As it was, their bodies had simply broken brittle twigs, and pushed flexible briars aside. Aelwen was appalled by the narrowness of their escape.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured into Taine’s shoulder. ‘That was an insane thing to do. We’re lucky I didn’t kill us both.’

Taine kissed her gently. ‘Don’t be sorry. Far from killing us, you saved our lives.’ There had been a death sentence on his head, imposed by the Phaerie Lord long ago, that
Tiolani had intended to remove on their return, but she was now Cordain’s prisoner and he was determined to carry out his master’s will. Aelwen too would have fared badly, having
committed the extremely grave crime of stealing several of the Xandim steeds, and she’d acted on instinct to take the only way out, apporting herself and Taine – who knew where? They
could have ended up anywhere.

‘Don’t think about what might have been, my love. Right now we need to concentrate on what is.’ Taine’s words helped calm her, almost as much as his closeness did. Oh,
how she had missed him all these years. What an unbelievable joy it was, to have him back!

‘We’ll just take a minute or two to recover,’ he continued, ‘then we should move on and find a better hiding place than these bushes. Have you any notion of where we are,
or how far we’ve come?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Aelwen shook her head. ‘There was certainly no time to pick a destination. I acted on pure impulse. When those guards came at you I just grabbed you
– and went.’

‘They were coming at you, too,’ he reminded her gently, ‘but trust you not to think of that. You got us out of there, so now it’s my turn. One way and another, I’ve
learned a lot about wilderness survival over the years. I don’t suppose you’re carrying any food and water with you?’

‘A little.’ Aelwen felt quite smug to be able to say it.

‘You are?’ His eyebrows went up in surprise.

‘When I escaped from Eliorand, the night of that tremendous storm, I got stranded alone in the forest with nothing to eat or drink. I swore I’d never make that mistake again. Of
course everything is probably squashed out of all recognition.’ So far they had not moved from their sprawled embrace, but now she spared an arm to feel gingerly for the pouch that
she’d tied to her belt when they had set out – it seemed so long ago now – from Athina’s tower. It was still there. The jerky it contained would survive anything, and though
the bread had been flattened, the contents would nourish them nonetheless. The leather water bottle, slung over her shoulder and across her body on its long strap, was also intact, its contents
still in place.

‘Good.’ Taine sounded pleased. ‘I have some basic rations too. Are you ready to find out where we’ve landed? Let’s hope we’re far enough away from the city
that they won’t find us too soon. Though Cordain has seized the reins of power in the realm, he is still the Forest Lord’s Chief Counsellor. Hellorin put a death sentence on my head, so
Cordain will carry it out if he can – and you will meet the same fate for stealing Xandim. You know the law, Aelwen. We can’t let them catch us. We’ve got to get
moving.’

Though Aelwen didn’t feel like moving for the next century or so, Taine was already clambering to his feet, with a speed and ease which made her envious and faintly annoyed. It was all
very well for him, she thought.
He
had just been the passenger in the apport. She had done all the hard work.

‘Come on, you can do it.’ He grinned at her and held out a hand. Unable to resist grinning back, she took it and let him haul her up. For a moment her head spun and she lurched
against him.

‘Are you all right?’ She heard the concern in Taine’s voice.

‘I feel as if I’ve been stamped on very hard, by a giant boot, but it’ll pass.’

‘Here, take my arm – no, not the sword arm, the other one – and I’ll help you.’

‘Just for a little while, until I pull myself together.’ With a flash of pain, she thought of her black stallion Taryn, the bay Alil and the pretty skewbald mare Halira, all left
behind in Eliorand when she had apported out of there. ‘I wish I could have brought the horses, too. It would have helped both of us.’ She was very aware that Taine had recently
suffered some dreadful injuries, after being mauled by a bear. First Iriana and then Athina had done first-rate jobs of healing him, but his body would still need time to recover its full energy,
strength and balance.

Taine, as he did so often, seemed to pick up on her thoughts. ‘It can’t be helped about our mounts, love,’ he said. ‘Or Tiolani. There was nothing you could have done.
Even
you
couldn’t apport the two of us, Tiolani and three horses too – though knowing how you love them, I’m surprised you didn’t try. Come on, we’ll help
each other.’

As they emerged from the undergrowth, Aelwen gave a gasp of surprise. There in front of them was a torrent of fast-moving water, so broad that the great trees on the opposite bank seemed to be
no bigger than the bushes they had just left. ‘It’s the Carnim, that flows between Hellorin’s lands and the realm of the Wizards. I brought us all the way back to the
border!’

‘By the Light, Aelwen! How did you manage that? No wonder you’re so exhausted. I see I shall have to watch my step in future.’ He smiled at her. ‘You don’t know
your own strength.’

‘It must have been pure instinct,’ Aelwen said, ‘to get as far from the Phaerie as I could. At least we’ll be safe from search parties for quite a while, since they no
longer have the flying spell.’

Taine frowned. ‘Unless Tiolani betrays us to save herself. If that has happened, they could have the flying spell right now.’

‘She wouldn’t—’ Aelwen’s protest died away. Try as she might, she couldn’t deny the possibility.

‘I think she would.’ His voice took on a hard edge. ‘Remember that, to Tiolani, it will seem as if we abandoned her.’

‘But I couldn’t have apported three people,’ Aelwen protested, horrified. ‘And we were the ones whose lives were at stake.’

‘Of course you couldn’t.’ He put a comforting arm around her shoulder. ‘And you’re right – we were the ones in peril. I don’t know what Cordain plans
for Tiolani, but he won’t risk hurting Hellorin’s daughter and angering the Forest Lord, should Hellorin come back. And if the Forest Lord cannot return to his body, then Tiolani is the
last remaining scion of his line, and the only one who can perform the flying spell. Cordain cannot harm her. As you say, we are the ones whose lives were at stake. But Tiolani might not see things
that way, and the worst of it is, she knows all our plans.’

The plans, such as they were, had been made in haste back at Athina’s tower, before they had all taken their leave of one another. If all had been well in Eliorand, and Tiolani had taken
up the reins of power, as they had expected, Aelwen and Taine had planned to meet Corisand and her companions – supposing
their
plans worked out, and they won the Fialan and found a
way to return from the Elsewhere to their own world – at a hidden place that Taine had discovered during his life of spying and concealment.

This location, closer to the border than the city, was where another river, the Snowstream, descended from the northern mountains and flowed down to join with the Carnim. Just before the
confluence the Snowstream plunged through a narrow gorge, and it was in this shadowy and secret place, filled with the roar and power of the constricted torrent, that Taine had found a cave,
partway up the cliff. It was far from easy to reach, but that only made it more secret and safe for the conspirators.

Since the Windeye and the Wizard would be forced to travel on horseback with no flying spell, it would take them a few days longer to reach the cave than Tiolani’s party. Had the plan
worked out, that would have given Hellorin’s heir time to assemble all the Xandim, on the pretext of taking a count of all the herds and studs, so that Corisand would be able to take them all
together when the time came to free them. When they met at the cave, Aelwen and Taine would be able to tell Corisand of the current conditions in Eliorand, and they could make further arrangements
from there.

That had been the plan – until Hellorin’s Chief Counsellor Cordain had ruined everything. Tiolani was now his prisoner, and she knew everything, including the location of their
meeting place. Would she use the information to purchase her freedom? When Corisand and the others arrived at the cave, would there be a mounted patrol of Phaerie warriors waiting to trap them?

‘We need to move, and fast,’ Taine continued, ‘but which way shall we go? Back towards Eliorand? To the cave? Or should we return to our friends at the tower and warn them of
the danger? Right now, we don’t know whether Iriana and Corisand succeeded, or if they’re even alive.’

Aelwen saw the shadow of worry pass across him: the sag of his shoulders; the biting of his lower lip; the fleeting frown. ‘They’ll be all right,’ she reassured him.
‘Look what they went through before we met them. They’re survivors, and between them they have a lot of resources to draw on. If anyone can bring the Fialan back from the Elsewhere,
they can.’

Taine took a deep breath and straightened. ‘You’re right, of course. Together, combining their two different sets of powers, they’re a force to be reckoned with. But if they do
get the Fialan, we can’t risk them being ambushed when they come to meet us. Because if Tiolani exposes the rest of us to save herself, Corisand and Iriana could walk straight into a
trap.’

Aelwen stared at him, appalled. Unaccustomed to intrigue, her mind had been concentrating on their own present peril, not the future risks to their other companions. ‘Whichever way we go,
I can’t get us there yet,’ she said. ‘Not with another apport. I expended too much energy bringing us all the way here.’

‘You’re right,’ Taine agreed. ‘You ought to eat, and then sleep for a little while, supposing we can find somewhere safe. Besides, we need to think things through very
carefully before you take us on another jump. We were lucky last time. Next time we need to know exactly where we’re heading, and we should probably do it in stages, so it doesn’t
exhaust you so much. If you’d burned yourself out last time, attempting so much . . .’

‘Don’t.’ Aelwen shuddered. ‘We might never have materialised at all, either of us. Would we have died? Or been caught for all eternity in some endless limbo? It
doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘We won’t think about it. It didn’t happen and it won’t happen next time, because we’ll plan it out and take greater care, making several small jumps.’

Easy for you to say, Aelwen thought. But she said nothing, because she knew that he was right. It would be difficult, time-consuming and downright dangerous to try to get anywhere on foot in
this vast forest full of predators. Her apport skills at least provided a way out, and the river gave them a very rough idea of their location. She studied the direction of the flow. ‘If
I’m right, it looks as though we’re on the Phaerie side of the border,’ she said.

‘You are right,’ Taine replied. ‘We are on the Phaerie side. And it looks as though we were asleep, or unconscious, or whatever it was, for quite a while.’

While they had been talking the sun had gone down, and a shadowy dusk had crept around them as stealthily as the swirls of mist that were rising from the river and curling around their feet.
Aelwen pulled her cloak tightly around her shoulders and shivered – but not just from the evening chill. Something had changed. Something was very wrong. Now that the daylight had gone this
place felt different; an uneasy, uncomfortable atmosphere surrounded her like a miasma, as though she was being watched by hostile eyes. A profound silence had fallen. There was no sound of wind in
the trees, no sleepy chirrups as the birds settled down for the night, no rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth. Even though she could see the river quite clearly, she could no longer hear
it running.

She looked around to see if Taine had noticed the alteration in the atmosphere, but he was still talking, thinking aloud, absorbed in their plans. ‘Maybe we should head back towards the
tower. But we would probably miss the others in the forest. So the cave is probably best. If we—’

Then the nightmare broke loose. Without warning, they were engulfed in darkness – then a horde of terrifying ghostly forms exploded into existence all around them: speeding towards them
from the forest’s edge, rising from the river mist, falling from the murky skies above. The air was pierced by the shrilling of angry shrieks and howls in strange, inhuman voices, and there
seemed to be words in the screeching, though they did not understand the language. An odd shivering in the air, like the heat rising from a courtyard on a summer day, made the apparitions visible
against the surrounding gloom, and in these roiling shadows, flashing out like lightning through storm clouds, was the deadly glitter of fangs and claws, and eyes that burned with a white-hot
rage.