Taurin, let me not fail. Not again. Not—
The desert sun is not kind to mourning cloaks. I’m pressed against the horse’s sweaty neck, my face in its mane. It smells warm and feels solid, and there’s a constant twitch in its hide.
It doesn’t like me, and if I sit up, I can see its unhappy rolling eyes, flattened ears, and bared teeth.
But I don’t need another reminder of what I am. I close my eyes and hold myself together. Sun rays pour upon me. Heat spreads through every part of me, exciting every atom, sending it into a frenzied spinning. The bonds holding me together are taut and strained.
I say the words again and again: lalita vey lalita vey. Taurin… itauri… eilendi. The inside of my skull feels hollowed out and dry, every thought that wells up is snatched away by the hot hungry air.
A gust of wind catches my cloak, sets it streaming to one side. Particles spiral away from the edges, vanish into the landscape. Many atoms are barely holding on. I grit my teeth and haul them in. I feel myself start to lose shape and solidity.
Alarmed, I tether myself to the thing nearest me.
The horse.
I sink slightly into it, send tendrils of myself burrowing into its flesh, anchoring to its bones.
The horse jerks, its gait is stuttering, unsure.
I can control it.
I loosen the ropes and the horse breaks into a panicked gallop, muscles bunching, desperate to throw me off.
Shouts behind me, hoofbeats pounding on either side. A hand grasps the bridle and my horse whinnies, high and shrill. Its panting is loud in my ears.
I send more tentacles into it, learning what a tug here, a slackening there does. I find its nerves and its brain, send thoughts of calm into it.
By the time the baradari are in control of the situation, I’m in control of the horse.
I keep its brain in a dull stupor, numbing its sense of my presence. I urge it to follow the other horses, keep its gait at a bone-jarring trot. I look out of its eyes and hear with its ears.
A hand shakes me, but I dare not lift my face.
What if I’m fused to the horse, my skin melded into its hide?
A voice says water and I hear the precious liquid sloshing in its skin.
I don’t answer.
The men withdraw. I could hear their conversation but I don’t want to. Don’t want to hear the words abomination or witch or demonspawn.
Something huge and light falls over me. The horse and I flinch; I catch a flutter of white. The intense heat on the back of my head eases.
Shade. They’ve given me shade.
I want to say thank you, but it’s hard enough controlling the horse.
We both hate this, it and I.
How long do I have to do this? Every moment merged with the fearful unhappy beast is like an itch I can’t scratch.
I close my eyes and sing in my head. I sing the Greater Invocations, the Noonday Prayers, the hymns for the ordinary people.
And in the middle of those I slip in, Taurin, be with Kato. Help him, Taurin! Let us not be too late!
I feel our approach long before I raise my head and see it. The light changes, goes from a hammer-blow to a dancing patter. Light drops, I used to call them. As the light changes, so does the heat. No longer a searing, tearing beast, but a simmering cauldronful of comfort.
The air changes as well. Its dryness no longer sucks at my breath and tugs at my atoms. There’s a tinge of coolness in it, a hint of moisture. Instead of space stretching up and on all sides for miles, we’re hemmed in, going through a narrow canyon. The hoof beats sound different, echoing off the walls.
I lift my hand and let it run across the surface on my left. It rasps like sandpaper against my fingertips. I know without looking that the walls are bands of warm red, pale orange, and happy yellow, like solid sunshine.
Antel Canyon, home of the eilendi. Also known as the Light Wells.
And then I hear the bells, jingling sweet and silver and just a touch out of place. Their notes pierce me to the marrow, flow in mirrored shards through my thin gold blood.
I straighten, throwing my head back.
Walls flow upwards in graceful curves to right and left. They flirt with each other over our heads, now touching, now merging, now moving apart. Shakes of sunlight dapple the ground—the damp brown soil of an ancient riverbed. The scent of water and growing things wafts to my nose; tiny plants put out tendrils of fresh green across the bottom of the walls.
We’re in single file, following the twists and turns of a long-gone river. My gaze trails across markings in the wall, all but invisible to the naked eye. Eilendi markings, etched into the strings of this place. If I try hard enough, I could probably still read them, but memory supplies the words.
Rakshara gave up her golden voice to Taurin this day… Maro sets out today on an adventure… Baral, who will always be remembered…
I stop before memory gives me familiar names, familiar faces.
No. It is of no use to think on the past.
I am outcast. Darkchild. Even if Taurin has pity on me, I belong at his feet with all the rest of the miserable twisted creatures of the world instead of in his arms with the singing eilendi.
A tunnel opens up in front of us, a mouth expelling ancient, musty breath. There’s a flicker of movement to one side of me. I glance up and see sunshine glinting off the a guard’s crossbow. He’s lying on his stomach, bow pointed at us.
He’s not the only one.
My eyebrows draw together. Since when did eilendi post guards at Antel Canyon?
Since when did the eilendi feel threatened in their own stronghold?
Unease threads, cold and snakelike, through me. It adds to the acid churning of my stomach, that fragile mourning
