Exodus of the Xandim (GOLLANCZ S.F.) (67 page)

Brynne nodded her agreement, but inside herself she made a vow.

I will come back, Valior. I’ll come back to you – you’ll see.

Though she ached with exhaustion, her heart was leaden with grief for her city and those who had been lost in its fall, and she longed with every fibre of her being for the
comfort and company of her friends from whom she had been parted so long, Melisanda, the Luen Head’s new mantle sitting heavily on her shoulders, left Ionor catching up on events with Chathak
and Thara, and made her way to the inn of the fishing village, which was being used to shelter the injured from the boats.

She knew from Chathak and Thara that more wounded from Tyrineld’s fall were being brought to Nexis by the Xandim, and the Healers that Tinagen had sent away from the Luen Hall before the
monster had struck were working at full stretch, some in a cluster of tents where they treated lesser hurts, and some in the settlement itself, where kind people had offered shelter to those in
most need. She was needed back in Nexis and would be returning soon, but first she had to deal with Incondor and Chiannala.

Melisanda knew that Lameron had already given the dread tidings to Incondor that the apport had destroyed the last small chance of ever mending his wings, and that he would be forever
flightless. Much as she disliked him, her heart bled for his plight, and for the way he must be feeling at present. If there was any way she could help ease him through this painful time, then of
course she would do it. As for the girl who had apparently taken Brynne’s identity – the Luen Head wanted very much to get to the bottom of that mystery. It was not her place to punish
the girl – her crimes were so grave that only the Archwizard could deal with them – but Melisanda was determined to find out who she was, where she had come from, and why she had done
such a terrible thing.

A blast of heat from the blaze in the inn’s fireplace met her as she entered. The low-beamed common room was seething, with every space at the tables taken, and people standing crammed
into the spaces between. The couple who owned the inn seemed to be everywhere at once, sliding with practised ease between the crowded bodies as they served drinks, collected empty glasses or
carried plates of grilled fish and warm bread, or bowls of soup that tilted at perilous angles but never quite seemed to spill. Everyone was talking at the tops of their voices about the
destruction of Tyrineld and the fleet’s narrow escape; in this closely packed space the din was tremendous.

Over the heads of the throng, Melisanda saw Lameron on the stairs, gesturing urgently to her. From the glowering expression on his pale, strained face and the dark glint of anger in his eyes,
she didn’t need mindspeech to tell her something had gone seriously wrong. Determinedly she pushed her way towards him, thanking providence that people made a deferential space for her when
they noticed the robes of a high-ranking Healer.

Lameron had turned back, and she caught up with him at the top of the stairs. ‘I’m sorry, Melisanda,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I just couldn’t stop him.’

‘Stop who doing what?’ But Melisanda’s sinking heart was already one step ahead of her exhausted brain, and when her assistant opened a door into a room that looked as though a
hurricane had passed through, she knew her instincts had been right.

‘Incondor.’ Lameron closed the door behind them and rubbed his hands across eyes that were bloodshot with tiredness. ‘When I broke the news about his wings he went plain crazy,
shouting and screaming, and piling curses on all Wizards. He was flailing about, striking out with blast after blast of his Air magic, and I couldn’t get close enough to stop him. As you can
see he’s wrecked his bedchamber – I don’t know what we’re going to say to the landlord. Then he called in mindspeech for his bearers, who turned up so quickly that I reckon
he must have had something up his sleeve all along. They brought Crombec’s porters with them too, who were plainly unhappy, but too scared of Incondor to say anything.’

Lameron paused for breath. ‘The long and the short of it is, they blasted a hole in the wall with their Air magic to enlarge the window – I can’t imagine why the people
didn’t hear all the commotion downstairs—’

‘Because they’re making too much noise of their own,’ Melisanda said. ‘It’s deafening down there. And Incondor’s room is at the back of the inn, so
there’s a good chance that no one saw them in the dusk.’

‘That must have been it. Anyway, they wrapped him up and pulled him into one of those nets and took off into the night – and what’s worse, that bloody girl went with
them.’

‘Why in perdition didn’t you mindspeak me when it happened?’

‘I tried,’ Lameron protested, ‘but we were both so tired and there were so many others who needed your attention at the same time that I couldn’t make you hear me. It
wasn’t your fault – I know you were trying to reach your Healers in Nexis.’

With an acrid curse, Melisanda sat down on the clothes chest – the only unbroken item of furniture in the room – and dropped her face into her hands. Then all at once, her shoulders
straightened. ‘Do you know something, Lameron? After everything that’s happened today, I just can’t bring myself to care about Incondor. If the idiot wants to leave, then
that’s his mistake. In truth, he’s done us a favour. We have better uses for our limited time and facilities than to waste them on that ungrateful, arrogant pig.’

A fleeting frown crossed her forehead. ‘I really did want to get my hands on that girl, though. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she put him up to this, to get herself out of
trouble. He would have been very vulnerable to manipulation just then, having just received the most shattering news of his life. Still, at least we’ve found the real Brynne, and that’s
a comfort.’ She smiled wanly. ‘On first impressions, she seems much nicer than the imposter too. She’s packing now – I’ve just been talking to her. Though she’s
longing to see her parents again, it’s breaking her heart to leave these mortals who’ve been so kind to her.’

Melisanda got to her feet. ‘Right now we have far more important things to do than worry about either girl – the nice one or the nasty. I’ll try to get a couple of Wizards from
the Luen of Artisans over here from Nexis, to get this room patched for the landlord.’ She looked around at the splintered furniture, the shredded curtains and bedding, and the gaping hole in
the wooden wall where the window had been. ‘What a mess – and what a waste when everything is in such short supply. Really, I could strangle that Incondor.’

‘But under the circumstances I pity him too,’ Lameron said. ‘What a dreadful thing for him, to be denied the skies for ever.’

‘A lot of people were denied their lives today,’ Melisanda said sharply. ‘I’m saving my pity for them.’

Chiannala had pity for no one but herself. Her life had reached its lowest ebb. Her mind was in turmoil as she huddled by Incondor’s side in a swaying net borne by eight
struggling Skyfolk bearers. She was worn out from keeping the winged man’s pain under control single-handed, her hopes and dreams were in pieces, and her future uncertain. Despite the furs in
which she was wrapped, she was shivering with cold, and her jaws and ears ached from the rush of the icy wind.

The massive rift that the crazed giant had opened in the earth was now filled with mile upon mile of dark turbid ocean that heaved and swirled with colossal waves, splitting the continent in
half, and she only prayed that the bearers would make it across before their strength gave out. The cataclysmic shattering of the land had also produced wild weather – with savage gusts of
wind, rain and hail, and pockets of turbulent air that taxed the bearers’ endurance to the utmost, so that Chiannala could feel their terror beating on her, filling her mind with dreadful
images of plunging downward, out of control, and drowning beneath those huge and ravening waves.

Incondor stirred and moaned fretfully, and Chiannala, who’d been far too preoccupied with her own plight to have any patience with his wretchedness, was surprised to feel a sudden stab of
remorse and a rush of pity. She was not the only one who had lost everything.

‘I’m sorry.’ She stroked his brow and, exhausted though she was, strengthened their mental link to still his pain. At least she’d learned that much at the Academy, she
thought bitterly. Yet she knew that, in helping the Healers care for Incondor, she had absorbed some far more advanced techniques than her fellow students, even when the Wizards involved had not
consciously been teaching her. She had learned how to still pain, bring down a fever, stop bleeding, seal wounds, knit torn muscle and broken bones, and stimulate the growth of healthy tissue.
Furthermore, she was certain that, with some trial and error, she could learn to extrapolate and adapt the techniques she had learned to other areas of her Wizardly powers. Maybe all was not lost,
despite this setback. Why, if any of the Aerillians could be prevailed upon to teach her their arts, as they had done with Yinze . . .

At this point Chiannala’s hopeful thoughts ran into a wall. What would it be like in Aerillia? Would she fit in? Would she even be accepted? What if Queen Pandion, wishing to remain on
cordial terms with the Wizards, decided to send her straight back to Nexis?

‘She won’t.’ Incondor’s mindspeech was faint as a whisper. ‘She’ll feel so sorry for me, crippled as I am, that she won’t deny me your healing abilities
and the comfort of your company. I’ll tell her I need you to take care of me.’

‘And I
will
take care of you,’ Chiannala promised.

Too bloody right, she would! He was her only hope for the future. And if she could get through this night, and the difficult days that would follow, who knew what fate might bring? One day she
might still be able to bring her vengeance down upon the Wizards, and make them sorry for rejecting her because she was born a half-blood.

~

T
he frontier settlement of Nexis did its best to shelter the survivors from Tyrineld. Many were lucky to be alive. Without the Xandim, the small
handful of visiting Winged Folk, the mortal fisherfolk and the Leviathan, many more Wizards would have died in the disaster. The Windeye had called her people together and used the Phaerie flying
spell once more. Some of the Xandim had ferried Wizards to Nexis with the news, to find them already preparing for disaster, since the backlash of so many Wizard deaths had travelled all that
distance.

The injured Tyrineldians had been left behind in the settlement, and the Xandim had returned with Nexian helpers carrying ropes, nets, blankets and medical supplies. All the next day the Xandim,
each of them carrying a Wizard, had flown back and forth over the heaving, debris-littered stretch of sea where Tyrineld had once stood, searching for survivors, along with the Leviathan, who were
strong enough to withstand the turbulence beneath the surface.

By nightfall, the rescue attempts had finally been abandoned, and the exhausted Xandim flew into Nexis to find the rescued Wizards huddled in small, shocked, shattered groups
around massive bonfires that had been kindled outside the town, where a village of tents and temporary shelters had been erected to house the refugees who could not be accommodated in the
Nexians’ homes. Luckily, Sharalind had been in the process of setting up advance supply caches for her army in Nexis, so tents, blankets, clothing, food and weapons were all available.

While others had been seeing to the rescue and well-being of the Tyrineldian survivors, Avithan, unopposed in his assumption of the rank of Archwizard – even most of the natives of Nexis
accepted him as such, perhaps out of respect for his parents, or because of the grim, obsessive mood that had overtaken him since the loss of his family and home – had been giving thought to
the future. While his heart was still reeling with shock and grief, and barely able to take in the magnitude of the catastrophe that had befallen his city and his people, his training as the son of
the Archwizard took over, submerging his emotions beneath the need to act; using the necessity to secure a future for the surviving Tyrineldians as a shield against the anguish that threatened to
overwhelm him.

He spent the hours after his arrival in Nexis meeting with the most wealthy and established traders and merchants in the settlement, with a proposal to make Nexis the new capital of the Wizard
realm. All but a handful, who were easily outvoted, had welcomed his plans with open arms, foreseeing all the possibilities that would suddenly become available for expansion, and the amassment of
far greater wealth. Their informal cartel constituted the closest thing to a ruling council within the settlement, and they were more than willing to become co-founders of the new regime.

While the able-bodied Wizards scurried to organise supplies and sleeping places, and settle the refugees into their encampment, most of the Xandim found it easier and more
comfortable to remain in equine form as grazing was available, whereas human food was at a premium. Corisand made sure that they were settled comfortably, a short way upriver from the settlement
where a cluster of scrub willows grew along the waterside and provided a nominal windbreak and shelter. Aelwen and a bruised and battered Kelon were more than happy to perform their traditional
tasks of rubbing down cold and weary muscles, and finding their charges comfortable places in which to rest. Following yesterday’s glorious sunset, the weather had deteriorated to cloudy and
damp, with a raw chill in the air. Nightfall had been hastened by the heavy sky, and swirling wisps of ground mist threaded between the furze bushes and clumps of stunted trees that lined the
river. The scent of autumn and the smoke from the encampment fires drifted in the air, along with the clamour of the settlement, muted by distance.

‘Almost like old times, isn’t it?’ Aelwen said.

‘Almost – except it’s strange to think that these aren’t animals but people that we’re caring for.’