Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.)

  ‘Nothing,’ the Dragon said hastily. ‘Only concern for our friends, that’s all. Nothing else.’

  Kea wasn’t having that. ‘Now listen,’ she said sternly, ‘we may not have known each other very long, but I thought the three of us were friends. Don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong, because I know better. How can we help you, Lituya and I, if you won’t tell us what the problem is? We’ve just been discussing how bad it is for Chathak not to open up to his friends. Don’t you go making the same mistake. We’re strangers here, and far from home. We have to stick together.’

  The Dragon hesitated. Then, through the skylight, Kea saw her lower her head to the floor, a picture of abject misery. ‘Kea, I’m so worried,’ she moaned. ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I don’t know what to do. I wanted to be here with Chathak so much, but a few months ago I needed to mate, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to travel, bearing an egg. So I altered one of our healing spells, just a little, so that the mating would not take and I’d be free to come to Tyrineld.’

  Her distress was so palpable that the other two had no trouble guessing what had happened. ‘And now you’ve found out that your spell didn’t work, and you are carrying an egg after all,’ Lituya said softly.

  ‘Oh, you poor, poor thing.’ Kea scrambled through the open skylight and glided down to settle beside the Dragon’s head, stroking her shining scales in sympathy. ‘I know it would be a wrench to leave here, especially when Chathak is so unhappy, but is there no way you can get back home before you’re ready to lay your egg? We would be very sorry to lose you, Atka, but if your people could apport you here, surely they could do the same to get you back?’

  ‘I can’t go home that way. It took the all the Dragonfolk in Dhiammara, working in concert, to apport us so far, and they only risked such a difficult and dangerous thing because it was an emergency. Chathak was desperate to get back when his brother died. Esmon was the experienced traveller and warrior in the group that the Archmage had sent out. If he had been slain, then Chathak knew that his friends Avithan and Iriana must be in desperate straits. He felt that he must be here in Tyrineld, and my people were happy to help. However, it takes a long time to recover from the working of such powerful and intense magic, and the Dragonfolk will be weak and exhausted for some time, until they can recover their strength. They could not bring me home so soon. By the time they can, the young one will already be here, and it will be too late, for a hatchling could not withstand the stresses and strains of such a great apport, or even a sea voyage, until it is older. And if there is no time for an apport, there would certainly be no time to get me back by sea.’

  Her voice rose to a wail. ‘I don’t know what to do. This is my first child, and I will be all alone here. And how can I tell my people? I told them the mating hadn’t taken, and I really thought it was true at the time, but I was wrong. I had no right to come. I’ve let everybody down, and Aizaiel, the Dragonfolk Matriarch, will be so angry with me. And what will happen to my hatchling? It’s so cold here, compared to home. How will I even hatch the egg, let alone care for a little one?’

  While Atka had been speaking, Kea’s brain had been racing. ‘Now listen, Atka,’ she said sternly, ‘you simply cannot keep this to yourself. If the Wizards know of your predicament, I’m certain they’ll do everything in their power to help you – but you must tell them first.’

  ‘But Chathak is the only person in the city I know, and right now he’s in no fit state to be interested in my difficulties.’

  But Kea, because she had moved in with Yinze’s friends, knew the Wizards a little better than the others, and thought differently. ‘You know, my dear, this might be exactly what Chathak needs. A distraction to take his mind off his own unhappiness. Atka, you must tell him. I’ll stay with you if you like. I’ll fly over in the morning and tell him you need to talk to him, and Melisanda too. From what you were saying, it sounds as if we’ve no time to waste.’

  While the visiting Magefolk held their conclave and Atka shared her worries, Avithan’s companions were gathered in their usual place, with food in front of them which no one had touched, though they all were drinking wine.

  They had all been dealing with the loss of their companions in their different ways. Melisanda had thrown herself into her work; she had recently been promoted to the position of second-in-command to Tinagen, Head of the Luen of Healers, and was just getting used to her new responsibilities. She was sharing the care of the white cub that Yinze had brought back for Iriana with Thara, who had sought comfort from her garden and the growing things all around her. Ionor had spent most of the day at sea, spending time with Lituya out in the bay and submerging his sorrow in the great group mind of the Leviathan.

  Yinze and Chathak had found it harder to cope, for their losses were more intimate. Iriana, though a fosterling in his family, was the sister of Yinze’s heart. They had grown up together and a special bond had developed between them. Chathak had not only lost friends but also a brother, Esmon, and he seemed to be taking the deaths worst of all. Yinze was angry, and had found an outlet for his rage by training with the Luen of Warriors, who were themselves mourning the loss of their leader. They understood his needs and were glad to help him. Chathak, however, had turned his grief and anger inward, and was silent and morose. The others, seeing how pale and haggard he looked and knowing that he had been neither eating nor sleeping since Esmon’s death, had tried to draw him out and help him express the painful emotions that gnawed at his heart and mind, but so far he had turned away their every attempt. It had been a great triumph for Melisanda that he had finally joined the others tonight, for he had shut himself away alone all day. Now that he was with them, in the hope of persuading him to communicate, they began to recount their own experiences of Esmon’s passing.

  Ionor had started it, telling of his arrival back in Tyrineld the morning after Esmon had died. ‘Fortunately, I was already close to home when I felt it,’ Ionor said in his quiet voice. ‘Lituya and I were already heading north with the Leviathan on their summer migration when I got Cyran’s message to return to Tyrineld due to the situation with the Phaerie.’ He grimaced. ‘I might as well tell you now that I wasn’t going to come back, initially. I was having such a wonderful time and learning so much with the Leviathan, and I was really looking forward to seeing the northern fjords and mountains with them. I was going to make some excuse to the Archwizard about not having learned enough yet – then Esmon’s death changed everything. We headed back here with all speed.’

  He sighed. ‘When we came in sight of Tyrineld, it looked so peaceful. I remember surfacing, blinking in the bright moonlight and coughing out water as my lungs changed from breathing underwater to breathing air. I’d made this transformation so very many times over the past months that it was second nature now, with none of the choking and panic I felt when I first joined the Leviathan.

  ‘I came with mixed feelings. It would be good to be home, of course, and to see all of you again – but I felt so dreadful that it had taken such a terrible thing as the loss of Esmon to bring me back.’ He glanced at Chathak, to see if his friend would take this opportunity to speak, but Chathak looked away, refusing to meet his eye, so he continued, ‘I’d been missing you, and so many other things I’d always taken for granted. Candlelight. Sunshine. Making toast in front of a glowing fire. Snuggling into a warm, soft bed at night. Hot food. Flowers, their colours, textures and perfumes. The smell and taste of spices. The feel of grass underfoot. Dry hair, dry clothing, dry everything.’

  ‘We can all breathe underwater, but you’re the only one who has ever stayed down there for such a length of time,’ Melisanda said, with one eye also on Chathak. ‘I’m very interested in this spell you used. Tinagen, the Head of my Luen, had a part in creating it.’

  ‘It was an incredible spell,’ Ionor agreed. ‘Without it I could never have lived with the Leviathan all that time. My skin would have sloughed off, for a start. But the magic did far more than that. It
protected me from the immense pressures of the depths, and prevented me from feeling the chill of the water.’

  ‘They were very advanced enchantments,’ said Yinze.

  ‘They certainly were – and it took me a long time to learn to trust them, to trust my own powers and those of the Leviathan who were helping me maintain the magic. I learned so much from them. They became my brothers and sisters, my friends, my family, as close as you dear friends on shore. I’m going to miss them desperately, just as I missed you all while I was away. I might still call Tyrineld home, but the vast green oceans of the north and the warm blue seas of the south have captured my heart, and so have the Magefolk of the boundless waters.’

  ‘You said that you were already heading north,’ Thara said. ‘How far were you going?’

  ‘A good deal further than Tyrineld. We were going up to where the mountains north of the Phaerie realm drop into the sea. The coastline is very broken up there, with inlets, fjords and islands where each year the seas turn emerald green with the summer plankton bloom.’ He sighed. ‘I’d wintered with the Leviathan in the warm southern ocean with its coral reefs and brightly coloured fish, and that was beautiful, but I was so looking forward to seeing their summer grounds; the mountains, the sea otters and the soaring eagles. But sadly, it wasn’t to be. And then we lost Esmon, and my own disappointment meant nothing.’

  ‘I was just planning to leave.’ Chathak spoke out abruptly. Ionor and Melisanda exchanged a glance. Their plan seemed to be working.

  ‘I was so far away in Dhiammara,’ Chathak continued. ‘It’s amazing that I felt it at all – yet Esmon was my brother, and when I felt him go, when I felt that tie between us break, it almost brought me to my knees.’

  Without being aware of what he was doing, he was crumbling a piece of bread on his plate, his tense, fretful fingers shredding it into fragments. ‘It was night, and I was packing to leave the city. Atka was with me, laughing at me because I had managed to accumulate so much stuff in such a short time. I can even remember what she was saying: that Wizards are such packrats. Our soft, frail little bodies need so many aids to keep them alive. Then apart from all the clothes and blankets and knives and so on, there are all the mementos and trinkets we feel we must drag around with us; all the books, the writing materials . . . She was most amused by it all.

  ‘Then suddenly it hit me – that shocking jolt of loss and pain and emptiness. That was when I knew Esmon was gone.

  ‘Atka was a true friend that night, conferring with the Dragonfolk Elders and even the Matriarch herself, and talking them into changing their plans and arranging things so I could come home as quickly as possible. It took the coordinated efforts of the entire Dragon race to perform the apport that sent us back here, using the images they gleaned from my mind, but it was the only way.’

  He shuddered. ‘It was a horrible way to travel. We were never designed to apport that far. Instead of being instantaneous, it actually seemed to take time, and for the space of a few heartbeats we were lost in a dreadful, lightless, airless void. I’ve never been so terrified – I actually thought that something had gone wrong, and we’d be trapped in there for eternity.’ He looked down at the scattering of crumbs on his plate, all that remained of his mangled piece of bread, as if he had no idea how they’d come to be there. ‘Then after I got back here, I found that Avithan and Iriana had been with Esmon when he died. When we felt their passing this morning, I just didn’t think I could bear any more grief.’

  ‘And then Iriana returned again at sunset, and who knows what has happened to her in the meantime; where she went, or what we’ll find when we meet her again. To all appearances she certainly died, but if that’s true, how could she have come back? And how could anyone not be changed by an experience like that?’ With a face that was hollow-cheeked and pale, Thara was not looking her usual self. ‘What I also don’t understand,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘is how Cyran knew that something else was going to go wrong. He had set off to find Iriana and Avithan a couple of days before – before we lost them. There was a rumour going around that there had been some kind of message or warning, but no one seems to have noticed a messenger arrive.’

  ‘I don’t care how he knew.’ Yinze picked up his knife, his fingers clenching around the handle as though he wanted to plunge it into the Archwizard’s heart. ‘I want to know what that stupid son of a whore was thinking when he sent our friends on such a fool’s errand in the first place. It was bad enough sending Chathak’s brother and his own son into danger, but a blind, inexperienced girl like Iriana . . .’ His words ended in a growl. ‘The bastard should have done his own stinking dirty work. He should have been the one to go off into the forest to be killed.’

  ‘Yinze,’ Melisanda said gently. ‘Though we all share your anger, such disrespectful words and thoughts about the Archwizard are dangerous.’

  ‘Do you think I care?’ Yinze snapped. That morning, when they had experienced the passing of their friends, he had been distraught. He’d been all for setting out north after Cyran then and there, but had been preoccupied with his mother at first, who was also grieving the loss of Iriana. Then, out of the blue, had come the extraordinary knowledge of Iriana’s return.

  ‘I can’t rest, knowing she’s out there; not knowing what has happened to her, or if she needs help.’ Yinze spoke into the silence. ‘I intend to go and find her, and if Cyran can’t do it, or if Sharalind won’t send out a search party from Tyrineld, then I’ll go myself. Who’s coming with me?’

  ‘I am,’ Chathak said. ‘I can’t stand not knowing. What did go on up north in the forest today? What happened to our friends?’

  5

  ~

  KALDATH

  Some hours earlier, far away to the north, in the realm of the Phaerie, Aelwen was wondering what had happened to herself. She came awake slowly. She felt dazed, exhausted, and she ached in every inch of her body, right down to her bones. The landscape – trees and bushes – was spinning around her in a nauseating fashion, and she felt unsteady and fragile, as if her hold on the solid world had shaken loose.

  Casting her mind back with difficulty, she remembered the tower where she had found her long lost lover Taine after so many years apart; where the powerful and enigmatic Creator, Athina, had given sanctuary to a motley band of fugitives including Tiolani, daughter of Hellorin the Phaerie Lord, the blind Wizard Iriana and the escaped human slave Dael. And after a lifetime of caring for the Phaerie steeds, Aelwen had discovered, to her profound shock, that they were the Xandim, an ancient race of shapeshifters, enslaved in their equine form by Hellorin’s magic.

  Corisand, the Windeye, or shaman, of the Xandim, had travelled into the magical otherworld of the Elsewhere with Iriana to attempt to recover the Stone of Fate, which she needed to free her people from the Forest Lord’s spells. Meanwhile Aelwen, Taine and Tiolani had gone back to the Phaerie city of Eliorand, so that Tiolani could rule in her father’s continued absence and prepare the way for Corisand’s return. On their arrival, however, they had been arrested by Hellorin’s Chief Counsellor Cordain. Then – it all came back to her! She had grabbed hold of Taine and apported, a fearfully dangerous move even in the most ideal of circumstances, which these were certainly not, for she’d had no idea of a destination in her mind, but had simply made a blind and desperate leap into nowhere.

  Why, she thought with a shudder, we could have materialised anywhere. In the middle of a tree trunk, or underground – anywhere. But it appeared that luck had been with her. She vaguely remembered hitting something hard with her shoulder and stumbling, tangling her feet with those of Taine, who came down in a heap beside her. Then blank nothingness, until now. She sat up, looking around her wildly, but to her relief her lover lay beside her. He looked very pale but was breathing easily, apparently in the same deep sleep from which she had just awakened. She could only assume that the stresses of the apport had shocked their systems so badly that they’d needed this rest to recover. Still dazed an
d disoriented from her immense effort, she knew little more for a few moments save that her heart was still beating, and that Taine was safely with her. Gently, she reached down and shook his shoulder. ‘Taine? Taine, wake up.’

  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.’