Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.) (53 page)

Then as Cyran was brought out of the palace by that filthy, half-blood traitor Taine, he leapt to his feet and savagely turned on her. ‘Liar,’ he snarled at the Moldan. ‘You
said I would have a chance to get home. You told me there would come a moment—’

‘Yes, I did,’ Aerillia said coolly, showing no concern whatsoever in the face of his wrath. ‘And it will. When the Dwelven spirits are released, such a mass migration between
the worlds and through the Well of Souls will weaken the boundaries for an instant, and—’

‘
What?
’ Hellorin roared. ‘You never told me that!’

The Moldan shrugged. ‘I didn’t tell you a lot of things, nor am I under any compulsion to do so. Be grateful I’m helping you at all. Now calm yourself, Phaerie Lord, and pay
attention to what is happening in your world. If you miss the crucial moment, it will not come again.’

Scowling, Hellorin turned back towards the gleaming ice patch that was the window into his realm. He glanced at it then dropped to his knees to look closer, cursing horribly when he saw Tiolani
being cornered in the palace courtyard by a horde of hostile Dwelven spirits and herded over to— ‘Aelwen!’ he roared, as if the Horsemistress could hear him. ‘Help my child
– she is your own flesh and blood. How can you ally yourself with these foul, accursed traitors?’

But it seemed as if Aelwen had done exactly that. Hellorin watched with horror, spitting out oaths as his daughter was browbeaten into releasing the Dwelven spirits. As soon as the last of them
had vanished, Aerillia called out, ‘Use the window as a portal. Do it now!’

The Forest Lord steeled himself to make the leap – and saw a sight in the mirror that filled his heart with such horror, grief and rage, he thought that it would burst.

‘Nooooo!’ he howled – and leapt.

Aerillia smiled to herself once more. In mindspeech, she sought her fellow Moldai and the Evanesar; Denali, Taku and Aurora. ‘So far, the plan is working,’ she told them. ‘All
this wretched time I’ve spent concealing my true feelings and persuading Hellorin to trust me finally has a chance of bearing fruit. Now, everything will be up to your friends from the
mundane realm – and the powers we placed in the Fialan.’

~

N
ow that their objectives had been achieved, Taine knew it was imperative to get away from Eliorand as quickly as possible. A sidelong glance saw
Aelwen already mounted. She reached for Asharal’s reins to take him with her, for she knew that Corisand would hate for even one of her people to be left behind, but Tiolani shrieked a
protest. ‘Leave him alone, you bitch. He’s mine!’ She ran forward, grabbing Asharal’s bridle and trying to pull the horse away. Suddenly there was a dagger in her hand.
Taine turned to help Aelwen – but there was a blur of motion to his right, as Cyran hurled himself forward. A terrible scream ripped the night apart – and there was the Archwizard,
kneeling over Tiolani’s body, his hands still locked around the hilt of the long Phaerie knife that he had twisted out of her hand and plunged into her heart.

Then from out of the palace came an earth-shattering howl of grief, of rage, of pain. The roof of the massive building burst apart in a hail of splintered wood and shattered tiles. There stood
Hellorin, grown to titanic proportions, blotting out the stars. ‘Fiend!’ he roared. ‘Murderer! My daughter, my only child, dead at your hands! You will pay for this with your
life, Cyran. Before I have finished with you, you will be begging for death.’

‘You dare talk of murderers,’ the Archwizard screamed back at him. ‘The Phaerie have slain my son.’

‘Damn it, I
told
him Avithan wasn’t really dead,’ Taine muttered, but the situation had already gone far beyond an attempt to reason with either ruler. Quick as
thought, he leapt into his saddle, snatching at the reins of Kaldath’s mount as he did so.

‘You will suffer every torment I can conceive,’ Cyran was still screaming at Hellorin. ‘Before I am finished,
you
will be the one who begs for death – and then I
will wipe the rest of your stinking race from the face of the earth!’

To Taine’s utter horror, the Archwizard was also expanding, growing in form into a behemoth to rival the gigantic Hellorin, and hurling curses and epithets at the Forest Lord. Their
attention was fixed upon each other.

‘Come
on
,’ Aelwen urged, and Taine turned his horse and took off, following her into the air as fast as the pair of them could go. Together they sped into the night with
Asharal and Kaldath’s mount behind them, following the fleeing Xandim.

Save yourself. Get Aelwen away to safety
.

Every fibre of common sense, every shred of self-preservation, every instinct of survival, screamed at Taine to escape while the two raging behemoths were distracted. They were certain to fight
now; they were committed by rage and grief to destroy one another, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Yet his loyalty and sense of responsibility kept nagging at him, urging him to go
back. Hellorin had exiled him and sought his death, while the Archwizard had given him a refuge and a purpose. Surely he owed it to Cyran to at least
try
to help him.

Reluctantly, ignoring Aelwen’s cry of horror, Taine thrust the reins of Kaldath’s horse into her hand, then turned and began to loop back towards Eliorand. ‘Keep going,’
he called to her. ‘Don’t stop for anything. I’ll be following you – I promise.’

‘Taine, no . . .’

Determinedly he blocked out Aelwen’s desperate calls, and sped back towards the Phaerie city. The protagonists were so huge that even from a distance he could see the battle taking place,
as spells sizzled and exploded between the pair of titans. Cyran, his shield glittering around him like a diamond, was using the Earth magic that was his birthright: the earth shook and jolted with
earthquakes, and great cracks opened up beneath Hellorin’s feet, making him dodge and leap to keep his footing. In some ways his powers were similar to the Old Magic, the powers of chaos,
that the Phaerie used. Hellorin, whose own shield was a misty-grey nimbus that half-concealed his movements, was using this magic now. Earthquakes, strangling vines that sprung out of the ground
and petrifaction spells were at his disposal – but he was far less limited than Cyran. He could also command the elemental forces that spawned tornadoes and tempests, lightning, hail and
floods.

The two terrible rulers were locked in deadly combat: spell after spell was launched, only to reflect off the other’s shielding and recoil back to strike randomly throughout the city. The
palace was already a pile of smoking ruins. Many of the Phaerie who had survived the attack of the Dwelven had been struck down by the indiscriminate magic, while the rest had fled screaming into
the night.

Even as he approached the outskirts of the forest, Taine knew that he could do nothing. This conflict had already escalated far beyond his own capacity to intervene. The battle was so fierce,
the magic so powerful, that already the fabric of reality was beginning to weaken in the vicinity of the combatants. Eliorand seemed to be fading in and out, its buildings wavering as if Taine was
viewing them through a shimmering heat haze. And the circle of unreality was spreading. Taine’s stomach contracted into a ball of ice as he realised that he was directly in its path.

He’d been a fool to come back! With a wrench he turned his mount to flee – but one of Hellorin’s massive hailstones smashed into his shoulder and knocked him from the saddle,
his horse thrown off balance by the vicious gale. He fell, twisting and turning in midair and crashed into the topmost branches of a pine. The springy boughs caught him and broke his fall, but he
struck his head and his vision exploded into flashing lights, while warm blood from a cut on his scalp poured down over his face. He landed face down across a thick branch, knocking the air from
his lungs, leaving him gasping. There was an agonising catch every time he tried to breathe that was the sure sign of a broken rib or two. He could do nothing for the moment but lie there, fighting
for breath while trying to shake the stunned confusion from his thoughts, and praying desperately that he could escape in time, before the shimmering circle of unreality reached him.

Aelwen, riding harder than she had ever ridden in her life, was closing rapidly on the fleeing Xandim. As she reached the head of the column, Iriana said, ‘Where’s
Taine?’

‘Hellorin is fighting the Archwizard. Taine stayed behind, and—’

‘Hellorin’s back?’ Corisand laid her ears back flat. Though that was the only way she could show her horror in her equine form, they could all hear it clearly in her mental
voice.

‘Cyran killed Tiolani.’ Until that moment, Aelwen hadn’t realised that tears were pouring down her face for her sister’s poor lost daughter. ‘Hellorin just
burst
out of the palace. He was gigantic, and was raging like a madman. Then Cyran grew in turn . . . We started to flee, but then Taine went back to help the Archwizard.’

‘The fool!’

‘The idiot!’

Corisand and Iriana both spoke together – and at that moment, they all felt Taine’s pain and fear as he fell. It was only a faint echo at this distance, but enough to tell them that
he was in serious trouble.

‘Quick,’ Iriana cried. ‘We’ve got to go back and help him.’

‘I’ll go.’ Aelwen, sick with guilt that she had left him, had let the two mounts that she was leading loose to follow the other Xandim, and was already turning her horse.

‘Wait, you can’t,’ Corisand shouted. ‘If Hellorin is on the rampage, it’ll take the Fialan to help Taine now.’ Automatically she began to turn back, but found
the column of Xandim faithfully following her.

‘Stop, Corisand,’ Iriana said urgently. ‘Get your tribe to safety – they’ll only follow you. I’ll take the Fialan, if you can keep up the flying spell without
it for a while.’

‘But you can’t go alone,’ Corisand protested. ‘It took both of us to deal with Hellorin in the Elsewhere. Besides, you need my vision.’

‘I’ll go with you, Iriana.’ Dael’s voice was shaky but determined. ‘I’ll be your eyes.’

Iriana gave him a grateful smile. She knew how hard this was for him, how much of his courage it had taken. She turned to the Horsemistress. ‘Aelwen, if you—’ But Aelwen was
gone. She had used their moment of distraction to slip away from them, and was heading back towards Eliorand as fast as she could go. Iriana spat out a rancid curse that she had learned from Esmon.
‘Come on, quick – I’d better get back there before we have two of them in trouble, instead of just one.’

‘It’s madness, risking the Fialan like this,’ Corisand said as they landed to transfer Melik’s basket to her back, while Iriana took a horse that had belonged to one of
Cordain’s warriors, and was still saddled and bridled. ‘We have no choice,’ the Wizard said. ‘We can’t let him run amok in this world again. Hopefully he’ll be
weakened enough by his battle with Cyran to let me send him back.’

‘We’d better hope so.’ Not without a dreadful wrench, Corisand let Iriana lift the Fialan’s pouch from around her strong, arching grey neck, and hang it round her own. As
soon as it made contact with the Wizard, she was flooded with the Stone’s vibrant energy, so strong that she felt as if she might be unable to contain it all, but might explode at any second.
Quickly she mounted, and she and Dael took off, leaping into the sky.

‘Be careful,’ Corisand called after her.

‘I will. I’m counting on Hellorin being preoccupied with Cyran. You get your people out of there.’

‘Just remember that where the Forest Lord is concerned, it doesn’t pay to count on anything.’

Though Iriana knew her friend was right, she couldn’t let that stop her. Keeping close to Dael, she sped back towards Eliorand as fast as she could go. It felt strange using human sight
again, instead of equine or feline vision. Iriana felt a little uneasy, not being able to see what was happening around and behind her, but she told herself firmly that in the present circumstances
she’d be better off focusing on what lay directly in front of her. Like Taine, she heard the sounds of the battle, the sizzles and crashes and loud detonations of the spells, long before she
reached the city, and saw the jagged flashes of lightning flare across the seething sky, but it was only when she neared the outskirts of Eliorand that the full horror of the conflict came home to
her.

Iriana looked on aghast, her hands growing slippery with sweat on her horse’s reins, at the rippling circle that denoted the weakening of the fabric of reality which spread out from the
warring behemoths that were the Archwizard and the Forest Lord. Hellorin looked to be getting the best of the fight; he was still glowing with the energy and unearthly vigour that had come from
spending so much time in the Elsewhere. Cyran was retaliating with everything at his disposal, but sweat was running down his face, and there was a weary sag to his shoulders. Nevertheless he kept
on fighting, replying to every attack from the Forest Lord, and giving back as good as he got. The battle was becoming more and more frenetic – and every time they smote each other with
another spell, battering away at one another’s shields, the rip in the fabric of reality spread wider.

This had to be stopped.

To her frustration, Dael’s eyes suddenly swung away from the duel and began to scan the treetops on the edge of the forest, where a lone horse, its reins entangled in the branches of a
tree, was struggling and flailing in its attempts to free itself. ‘Dael,’ she said sharply, ‘keep your eyes on Hellorin and Cyran.’

‘But Taine – didn’t we come to save him? He must be down there, close to where his horse is.’

‘We can’t spare the time for Taine.’ It wrenched Iriana’s heart to say it, but there could be no question of her priorities. ‘Hopefully, Aelwen will be able to help
him. We’ve got to stop Cyran and Hellorin, before those two idiots destroy the world.’