The Innocent Mage (66 page)

With arm upraised Morg opened his mouth to send himself to safety and leave the carriage plunging towards its destruction. But one wheel hit a half-buried rock on the side of the road. Shattered. The carriage leapt into the air and before he could save himself Morg was thrown out. Striking the road hard, splintering fragile bone, tearing vulnerable flesh, he rolled and rolled and rolled until his head struck another rock and his pell-mell progress halted.

By which time the magic-maddened carriage horses had galloped the king, the queen, the princess and their coachman clean through the wooden safety rail and over the edge of Salbert’s Eyrie. As though they had wings. As though they could fly. Their screams, falling, echoed the skirling of the eagles that rode the thermals high above the hidden valley floor. Then the screams stopped, abruptly, and a fusillade of echoes rang out as the carriage and its passengers and its horses shattered on the slopes of the unforgiving Eyrie.

And after that: silence.