Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

They talked a little at first. Dorlyth questioned Pelmen further about the nature of the pyramids, and the shaper related all he knew. Then Dorlyth asked about Rosha’s chances of actually getting inside the High Fortress without being detected. Pelmen’s answer dispelled any hopes.

“The castle’s alive,” he muttered. “Alive and malevolent.”

“Then there’s no way the boy could succeed?”

“None.”

“Not even if the Power intended him to?” Dorlyth argued, raising a shaggy eyebrow.

Pelmen glanced over at him. “Perhaps there is a way, if that be the case.” He looked askance at his friend, and asked, “You believe that’s a possibility?”

Dorlyth snorted in response and urged his horse to move faster.

“I could fly,” Pelmen suggested, but Dorlyth again refused the offer. Pelmen’s cloak continued to cover the glade.

Neither man spoke for over an hour. Each was absorbed in private conversations with himself. This pursuit reminded Pelmen of his unsuccessful search for Serphimera. Despite his effort to blank them out, the anxieties flooded his consciousness again. All he could think about were his lady’s beautiful emerald eyes.

Dorlyth thought only of his son. He imagined himself in Rosha’s place, hungry for adventure, yet pursued by friends

intent on preventing him. What would he do? Twice they lost the trail completely, only to pick it up again through Dorlyth’s imaginative identification. “He’s just like me, you know. I taught him all he knows.”

Abruptly the trail grew clearer—entirely too clear, in Dorlyth’s thinking. He looked across at Pelmen in dismay.

“He’s decided he’s lost us and picked up speed,” the shaper suggested.

“It doesn’t take that much longer to hide your tracks. And you can’t make any speed through woods this dense anyway. It doesn’t make sense.”

“He’s young. He’s in a hurry. Come on.” They spurred their mounts forward and raced along the clearly discernible trail, churning up an orange spume of leaf fragments behind them. The tiny pair of auburn and gold wings of a nearby butterfly went unnoticed in that splash of autumn color.

They broke from the woods together with a crash of brush. Pelmen screamed, “Stop!” and yanked back on his reins, but Dorlyth had seen it himself and already was reining in his mount. Piles of leaves skidded them forward, but both horses managed to stop just short of tumbling off the edge of the cliff.

They gazed over a precipice into a chasm two hundred feet deep. Across the yawning fissure they faced another cliff; on top of it, the forest continued on. “How could he jump that?” Dorlyth exclaimed.

“He didn’t,” Pelmen spat before his friend had finished. “We’ve been duped!” They wheeled their horses in alarm and would have plunged back into the forest. Instead they both gasped at the wall of fire that blocked their retreat. Violent spires of flame soared fifty feet into the air, stretching high above the bare upper branches of the oaks and walnuts.

“Mar-Yilot!” Pelmen barked. It was clearly the Autumn Lady’s style.

“It took her a towering rage to build this blaze!” Dorlyth shouted, his face gone white with shock.

“She’s an illusion mistress! Remember her ploy in the Downland’s skirmish and ride!” They’d faced Mar-Yilot’s fire ring together before and found that only part of the flames had been real. Finding the illusory blazes had taken skill and some risky gambles, but they’d succeeded in breaking out and leading their army to safety. Although he could smell smoke, Pelmen

hadn’t yet felt the heat. Perhaps this fire was all illusory, and the smoky scent a trick as well. Dorlyth had been right; Mar-Yilot couldn’t generate a fire this big without feeling genuine wrath, and they had done nothing at all to harm her.

They angled for the outer edge of the flames, hoping to skirt them to freedom. But the fire sprinted before them, and now the furnace-like heat hit Pelmen in the face. They turned their mounts before it, racing the conflagration to the cliff. It beat them easily, and they turned their backs to it and rode wildly along the precipice, hoping to skirt the blaze at its other end. They failed. The arc closed, trapping them.

Dorlyth reined in, then leaned down to whisper soothingly to his terrified animal. Pelmen bolted on, unwilling to accept any fire as real until it scorched his face. Blistered, with Minaliss protesting vigorously, he turned away, and rode back to face his companion of so many victories.

Dorlyth’s color had returned—or perhaps he’d just roasted his cheeks. He wore an enigmatic smile that Pelmen didn’t like at all. The wizard refused to acknowledge it. “We’ve got to jump,” Pelmen snapped, jerking his thumb toward the chasm.

“Not a chance. Our horses are weary from the morning’s ride, and they’re terrified. With reason,” he added, glancing up at the roaring, red-orange wall.

“We’ve got to try! It’s our only chance!”

“My only chance.” Dorlyth smiled serenely. “You’ll fly out.”

“No!” Pelmen shouted. “We’ll both go out on horseback! They can make it. I’ll show you!” Pelmen hurriedly wrenched Minaliss around to face the fire, rode as close as the blaze would allow, then wheeled back toward the precipice and galloped for it. The horse responded eagerly, desperately fleeing the fire, but the brittle leaves provided little footing, and the animal jumped too soon. Pelmen left its back on the wing. Without the extra weight, Minaliss was able to get his forelegs onto the turf of that far cliff.

Momentum carried the horse up onto the shelf, and it turned with a snort to look back across the chasm.

Pelmen had swooped down to stand beside Dorlyth, a man once again. He struggled to look hopeful.

“You see? You can make it!”

Dorlyth looked at the ground. “That Minaliss is a marvelous horse. Yet even without your weight, he barely made it. Mine

never would—especially with me aboard its back. Although it may have to jump eventually. As I might.”

The old warrior eyed the edge.

“Don’t talk like that! We’ll get you out!”

“You’ll keep trying as long as I let you,” Dorlyth murmured. “But I won’t let you try much longer. For me, the day is lost. It had to come. Inevitably it had to, though I’d never imagined this…”

“Stop it!” Pelmen said frantically. His face wore the panic of a healer who finds himself helpless.

“And don’t feel guilty!” Dorlyth snarled. “My day would have come much sooner but for you! My only question is, why this? What’s made the woman so angry?”

“You know, Dorlyth mod Karis,” a soft yet savage woman’s voice spat out. Dorlyth had his sword out, slicing toward the source of it, before she finished her sentence. The blade whistled through Mar-Yilot’s wispy body, touching nothing but air.

“She’s miles away,” Pelmen muttered.

“One can always hope,” Dorlyth answered.

“No. One cannot always hope, Dorlyth mod Karis. You cannot, any longer.”

“Why him?” Pelmen raged. “Why not strike at me directly!”

“I’ll get you eventually, Dragonsbane.” She used his title mockingly. “You’ve robbed my Syth of hope.”

“What?”

“But first I take your friend, for it was he who sprang the trap!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Pelmen roared.

“My lover stares at hell and you claim no knowledge?” Mar-Yilot screamed.

“None!”

“You lie! It was you who locked him in a spell of dread!”

“I’ve never laid a spell of dread!” Pelmen shouted.

“Pelmen, fly on,” Dorlyth muttered earnestly.

“I’ll not leave you! And I’ll not let this witch go until—”