Opening Acts

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  Elen held fast to her vision of Hesperia. Blanca moved from a walk into a long-strided, smooth but powerful canter. The hills of Faerie rolled past, soft and green at first, but growing sharper and more jagged as the road ran on. The light never changed; time passed, it must, but there was no way to judge how fast or how slow it was passing.

  With a worldrunner under her, Elen had nothing to fear. No hounds stalked her. No skeletal Hunt haunted the road behind her.

  Blanca's calm washed over Elen. The mare knew where she was going, and she fully expected to get there, safe and whole and with her rider still on her back.

  Elen had always been able to feel what horses were feeling, and mostly she could guess what they were thinking. They did most of their talking with their bodies, with the slant of an ear or the turn of a head or the wrinkle of a nostril.

  This was like that, but it was stronger than anything Elen had felt before. What had scared her in Ymbria, and what still made it hard to get enough air into her lungs, was how right it felt. This big white creature belonged here, striding along under her, taking her where she needed to go. One moment, Elen had been her sturdy and independent self, riding any horse she could get a leg over, loving a few and liking most of them. The next, she had found herself so much a part of Blanca that she could hardly tell where she left off and the mare began.

  Blanca seemed perfectly comfortable with that. Elen had never been raised or taught to expect it. None of the stories talked of any such thing. Worldriders were riders and messengers, trained to navigate the worldroads on the backs of worldrunners. Worldrunners were a particular strain of horses from Earth, who had to be born there and could not be born or bred elsewhere. People had tried it over and over; the best they could hope for was that the mares never got in foal at all. If they did, the foals died, or were born so twisted and broken that they could not survive.

  Elen squeezed her eyes shut. This was doing her no good at all. She had to stop panicking over the horse and remember where she was going. Hesperia. Pastures. Horses.

  Blanca's canter slowed. The air around Elen was distinctly hotter. The light through her eyelids was piercingly bright. She smelled dust and heat and something sharp and pungent that had a distinct aura of green. She opened her eyes.

  This was not Hesperia, unless Hesperia had gone to desert since Elen last heard of it. These pastures were not even slightly green. The trees that dotted them were low and gnarled. Mountains rose steep and jagged above them to an achingly blue sky.

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  About the Author

  Caitlin Brennan is the author of over three dozen acclaimed novels, including The Mountain's Call, The Serpent and the Rose (as Kathleen Bryan), and World Fantasy nominee Lord of the Two Lands (as Judith Tarr). She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.

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