Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.) (47 page)

Aerillia came out of her thoughts and looked across the vast expanse of her throne room, to where the Lord of the Phaerie was still muttering and cursing over the scrying mirror of ice. She took
a deep breath and gambled all.

‘Hellorin, listen to me. There may be a chance, just one slim chance, for you to get back to your own world and regain everything you’ve lost.’

Hellorin scrambled to his feet and charged towards her. ‘You know a way?’ he roared. ‘Why in all perdition didn’t you tell me sooner?’

She held up a hand and he stopped dead, as though he had run into a wall of stone. He was held there, helpless, raging soundlessly.

When Aerillia answered, the chill of a thousand winters was in her voice. ‘You may have power, Lord of the Phaerie, but if you take that tone with me, here on my own ground, death will
find you swiftly. There are few indeed with the power to end your life, but you had better believe that I am one of them. I did not tell you before because this possibility has only just occurred
to me. I hesitate to tell you now, because it is only a slender hope, and depends on your enemy the Windeye making one mistake. Everything hinges on Corisand’s use of the Fialan . .
.’

Hellorin forgot his rage and listened carefully as the Moldan of Aerillia outlined her idea. One chance, one opening, one mistake from the Windeye was all he’d need.

~

I
n the new hiding place that Taine had found for them, Iriana’s companions were beginning to despair. The journey here had almost finished
the Wizard, who’d been desperately weakened by blood loss from the wound she had taken.

They were now concealed in the centre of a dense thicket. Taine, with his part-Wizard heritage, had managed a spell to persuade the bushes to part, allowing access for the companions and their
mounts. Once they were safe inside, the undergrowth had closed back into place and grown over the top of their campsite in a domelike covering that protected them from the worst of the weather, and
also from being seen by any Phaerie flying over in search of them. Corisand, now back in her humanoid form, had made a roof for it; an invisible shield of solid air that kept out the rain and wind,
while preventing the heat from their fire from dissipating. Aelwen, just to be on the safe side, had cloaked the area with a spell of glamourie, to prevent the light from their fire being seen from
above. Here they did what they could for Iriana, applying what simple healing spells Taine and Kaldath knew between them, while Corisand worked her spells upon the air to keep it flowing in and out
of the Wizard’s lungs.

All two dreadful days, Corisand had watched over her friend, scarcely moving from her side and accompanied by Taine, Kaldath and Dael, who cradled a wretched-looking Melik in his lap, while
Aelwen did her best to make the rough shelter as comfortable as possible and the Dwelven kept guard around the perimeter of the thicket in case any enemy should come near. Boreas and his mate kept
watch from a tree nearby.

Corisand’s only focus was her friend. As the sun went down and the shadows gathered she kept her ceaseless vigil over Iriana, pouring all her energy and will to live into that still, pale
form. At some point during the night she must have dozed, for suddenly she opened her eyes and found that she was no longer in that dark, cramped little lair amid the thorny thicket. It was no
longer dark but daylight. She seemed to float, suspended in the air above an ocean inlet that twisted and turned, with one gigantic precipice after another dropping into the water from the hills on
either side. Small, tough evergreens, scrubby bushes, ferns and vivid green moss clung tenaciously to the steep crags, taking advantage of every tiny ledge and crevice to find a foothold, cloaking
the tough old bones of the rock in a tattered patchwork of viridian and emerald. Long, slender waterfalls plunged endlessly down; gleaming threads of silver against the dark grey basalt cliffs.
Beneath the Windeye the calm, rippling water murmured its ancient song, and all around her the air was shimmering with an opalescent mist interlaced with rainbows.

Corisand’s heart warmed and glowed within her. Her spirits, weighed down by weariness and worry, soared like eagles. The land was alive; she could feel its energy, its massive, powerful
life force that poured into her from all around. She was back in the Elsewhere – that much she knew. But where was this unfamiliar place?

Looking at the intricate, meandering coastline, she judged it to be somewhere near the tall, rocky pinnacle of the Moldan Basileus, but he was situated out in the open ocean, and she could not
see him from where she was. In case he was somewhere close, she tried calling out to him in mindspeech, but he did not answer.

But someone did.

Above the Windeye, on her left as she faced towards the inner part of the fjord, was a massive eminence with a rounded summit. The crags and ledges nearest to her had a strange trick of
structure, a combination of shadow, light and plant growth that resembled a face, but no human features were these. It reminded Corisand of no creature that she had ever seen – it was simply
the visage of some strange, primeval being that was essentially and powerfully itself. Then a voice, deep and rumbling like the roar of a distant avalanche, with a power that shook the Windeye to
her bones, came into her ears and mind.

‘Welcome, Windeye. We’ve been expecting you. I have heard much about you from Taku and Aurora, and all to the good. I am Denali, the Great One, the Earth mother of the
Evanesar.’ Her voice softened with a little humour. ‘I believe the others may have mentioned me.’

‘Indeed they did, O Great One.’ Corisand found her voice falling naturally into the formal cadences of the Evanesar speech. ‘I should have realised where I was, for Taku once
described your beautiful home to me. He called it the Labyrinth of the Mists, and hoped that one day I might be able to see it for myself.’

‘And now that you have?’

‘I can see that he did not exaggerate. In fact he described it perfectly, and with such wistful longing:
“Oh, the beauty! The calm, shining ocean; the miles upon miles of
convoluted cliffs and islands twisting and twining back upon one another to form bays and deep inlets; the thousands of slender waterfalls cascading down the cliffs in sprays of silver, and the
mists glowing softly with ever-changing rainbows.”
I don’t know why you have brought me here, but it is an honour and a joy that I will never forget.’

Corisand took a deep breath. ‘But by your grace, O Great One, I cannot linger at this time. My friend Iriana, who was here with me before and helped me defeat Ghabal and Hellorin, is
wounded in my own world, and may be dying—’

‘Fear not, friend Windeye.’ On hearing the new voice Corisand spun around and there, where there had previously been an inlet of shimmering water, was the great ice-serpent glacier
form of Taku. ‘Why do you think we brought you here this time? Iriana is also with us, and we will give her all the aid we can.’

‘Well, you didn’t actually think we would just leave the poor creature to perish, did you?’ The sharper tones came from above, and there, stretching across the sky, its
outspread wings made of ever-changing, scintillating colour, was the great eagle form of Aurora.

‘Look,’ Taku commanded. ‘Look closely, Windeye. Look into my heart.’

And when Corisand peered down at the glacier, there lay Iriana, frozen into a cocoon of clear blue ice. Unable to stop herself, she gave a cry of distress.

‘Oh, come now, Corisand,’ Aurora said. ‘You might have a little more faith in us. You should know we would never do anything to hurt your friend.’

‘I do know that – of course I do. It’s just that she looks so—’

‘Dead? No, I have her safe.’ Taku’s voice was more sympathetic. ‘Though when we brought her across she was hovering on the very boundary. But my Cold magic has kept her
life suspended by a slender thread, and we are here because the Great Mother of the Evanesar has offered her gift of healing.’

‘I will bestow it gladly,’ Denali said. ‘You did us a great service, far greater than you will ever know, in removing the Fialan from our world. We owe you this favour, and
more.’

Corisand detected an odd note in the Great One’s voice, and had an uncomfortable feeling that there was something she was not being told, but right now, Iriana was her only concern.
Anything else could wait.

In her deep, rumbling voice, Denali began to chant; an ancient song with no discernible words, as old as the bones of the very earth itself. The shell of blazing cyan-blue ice that enclosed the
Wizard began to pulse and glow, brighter and brighter as the energy built, until the radiance was blinding; piercing the soul and overwhelming the mind until Corisand was sure she could endure no
more; that she must fly apart and explode into a thousand pieces.

Then suddenly it was over. Silence fell; so profound that it beat against Corisand’s ears and she could hear the whisper of her own blood in her veins – and into that stillness, a
small, wondering voice said: ‘Oh.’

The Windeye blinked the last of the dazzle from her eyes to see Iriana, standing on the broad, rough surface of the glacier that was Taku and gazing up wide-eyed, with her own vision, at the
extraordinary alien face of Denali in the cliffs above. Corisand, about to call out, longing to rush over and hug her friend, found herself halted by the expression of profound respect on the
Wizard’s face.

Iriana bowed deeply. ‘Madam.’ Her voice rang out across the gulf of air between herself and the ancient being. ‘Like calls to like, and I know it was your elemental Earth
powers that forged the link with my own Wizardly Earth magic and brought me back. I am honoured to be in your presence, and deeply grateful that you saved my life.’

‘Child of the Wizardfolk, you are more than welcome,’ came Denali’s reply.

‘Well, there’s gratitude for you.’ Aurora shattered the gravity of the moment. ‘Don’t mind
us
, will you? Taku and I – though we brought you here in
the first place – didn’t have a thing to do with it at all.’

Iriana laughed, and held up her arms outstretched towards the mighty shimmering figure in the sky. ‘Aurora, I love you.’

‘
What?
’ For once the great Evanesar of the Air seemed at a loss for words. ‘Now, let’s not get carried away, Wizard.’

Iriana laughed once more, and knelt to lay a hand on the white, sharp-ridged surface of the ice serpent’s back. ‘And I love you too, dear Taku. I’m more than grateful that you
brought me here and saved my life. I felt that I had gone away on a long, long journey, then I heard you calling me.’

Then she leapt across the intervening space between herself and Corisand, and hugged the Windeye tightly. ‘Corisand, my best, my dearest friend. All the while I was slipping away I knew
you were there, unmoving, unresting, holding me to the world with the sheer force of your will.’ She laughed. ‘You weren’t about to let me go anywhere.’

‘Not if I could help it.’ Corisand laughed too. ‘You promised to help me save my people, remember? I wasn’t going to let you get out of that so easily.’

‘You speak more truthfully than you know,’ Taku said. ‘It was your need, Windeye, that called to us, and though it would not normally be our policy to intervene in
Death’s realm, you and Iriana need one another, and we, here in the Elsewhere, need both of you.’

The great serpent’s head, with its vivid blue eyes, reared above them, and Corisand could feel the concern in that steady gaze. ‘You must beware, my friends. Hellorin has regained
his strength and is plotting again. We know that he is seeking a gateway back into your world – and even worse, our own brother, Katmai, the Evanesar of Fire, has been moved to pity by the
plight of the Ghabal. His quarrel with us, the rest of his Elemental family, has been long and bitter, for he always felt that we should have intervened in the matter of the Fialan, and found a way
to take it for ourselves. Now he has allied himself with the Mad One. If the Lord of the Phaerie finds a way back to your world then Ghabal will surely follow, and with Katmai’s power added
to his own, there is no limit to the damage he could wreak.’

‘But what can
we
do about it?’ Corisand asked in dismay. ‘How could we possibly fight a Moldan and an Evanesar together, not to mention Hellorin?’

‘Katmai cannot follow you into the realm of the mundane. The presence of an Evanesar would be too much for the fragile fabric of your reality – it would be torn apart like a cobweb.
Our brother has simply used his powers to increase those of Ghabal, which makes the Moldan a formidable adversary indeed. We other Evanesar can, however, use you and Iriana as our emissaries in
much the same way. We cannot give our additional powers to you directly, but if we could but pass part of our power into the Fialan—’

‘The Fialan?’ Iriana interrupted. ‘But, madam, that’s impossible. Think of the battle we had to get the Stone out of this realm. We dare not bring it back
again.’

‘As I was about to say,’ replied Denali with some asperity, ‘it would be impossible for us to use the Fialan. You and Corisand, however, would be our conduits – if you
were prepared to take the risk.’

‘Great One, no!’ Taku protested. ‘Their forms are too frail. They were never meant to endure such immeasurable energies.’

‘Then we are lost, for unless we find some way to confine the magic for long enough to get them back to their own realm and drain it into the Fialan to make it safe, then Ghabal will be
able to rampage unchecked through the mundane world.’

The silence stretched out as all of them tried to think of a way to put their plan into action. ‘Surely there must be some way to shield them from these titanic powers,’ Aurora said
at last.

Shield – shield! The word suddenly set off an explosion of ideas in Corisand’s mind. ‘Wait,’ she said excitedly. ‘We know that I can make air into a solid shield to
stop hostile spells from coming through, and so can Iriana. Could there be a way to make a shield that can hold magic in, instead of keeping it out?’