Page 7 of Seducing the Sorcerer
Fenn clung on, too astonished to do anything else. His coat was flapping, his hair whipping back. It was cool but not cold and the moon seemed larger and brighter than it should be. An owl flapped out of their way. The horse moved easily, graceful as a swallow.
This could not be happening.
Could he be dead? Had he worked too hard in the hot sun with too little food for too long? Walked with his sacking burden to that stand of trees, lain down and died quietly, un-mourned. A dead vagrant.
Maybe. Because this—
—this was heaven.
What else could it be?
He checked his position, sat a little straighter. He felt like a boy again, alive with the frosty exhilaration of an adventure on horseback. Everything was beautiful and wonderful and nothing mattered. He could ride all night and never get tired. It was like being midway through the first drink, and yet it was better than that. Because it went on and on and it didn’t disintegrate into clumsiness and confusion and the burn of shame and anger. It kept on, shining bright.
He patted the horse’s shoulder. “Come on, then. Come on you ugly great sacking bastard. Show me what you got.”
At his encouraging tone, the horse gathered itself, tossed its head, and put on speed. Now they were streaking through the air so fast the land below was a blur of silver and black. The horse wasn’t galloping any more. It was simply flying, front legs thrust out before it, back legs trailing behind. They were gaining height. Fenn closed his eyes.
He’d never been a religious man. They said the nine deities lived in heaven; a pleasure garden where nobody worked or felt pain or sorrow. But nobody had ever mentioned horses, so he’d assumed, if he went there, he’d no longer be interested in them, and that sounded like hell to him.
But perhaps we all get the heaven we most desire?
Except, why a sacking horse? Why a goggle-eyed, loll-tongued scarecrow? Why not something a bit more sublime, a bit more beautiful?
Well, but why try to understand the Gods? Wasn’t that the point, that they were beyond mankind’s ken? They had sent him this horse and it was the most wonderful thing he’d ever known.
Or perhaps this was how one got to heaven? Maybe this wild ride was his last. He wouldn’t be sorry to leave the world, but maybe he ought to take one last look at it. He opened his eyes and watched the land passing beneath him: fields and towns, dried-up rivers and roads, woods and castles, hills and bridges.
But heaven did not materialise. The minutes turned to hours and the novelty of the experience began to wear off. Being dead was only a fantasy. He was very much alive and this whole thing was far more likely to be magic. That rune on the horse’s chest could be nothing else.
Not that Fenn knew much about sorcery. Crystal-fixers used it; they jigged crystals to make lamps shine and velocipedes go. Mandillo had burned with balefire sent by a sorcerer from Lutia. And Morgrim had, eventually, put that balefire out with more sorcery. But that was the extent of Fenn’s knowledge.
A cold trickle of fear ran down his spine.
He tried to urge the horse to land but it would not respond to his commands and he wasn’t sure what the aids for “please land gently on the ground now” were anyway. He clung on, trying to decide what direction they were going. South. No, south-west. His back ached and his legs were numb. His hands were shaking. The moon was a silver disc. It must be well past midnight.
Were they going somewhere, or would they fly forever until he grew too weak to stay astride? When he’d got on the horse, he’d thought he didn’t care if he died, and yet now death lay beneath him, he instinctively clutched tight to its mane and forced himself to keep his balance.
But wait. The ground was getting closer. A grassy mountain-side flashed by, sheep scattering beneath them. They crested the shoulder of the mountain and there was the sea, glittering in the moonlight. They swooped across a bay full of ships, steep cliffs to his left a-shimmer with pale waterfalls. They were heading for a city. A city balanced on top of tall pinnacles of rock.
It must be Paravenna, the capital, because that was famous for being an eyrie of a city, a city of a thousand high wind-whipped bridges and a hundred dizzying crevasses. A royal city, home of queen and government and sorcery. A jewel of a city perched over a deep harbour. Fenn had never seen it before, but it could be nowhere else. They’d come hundreds of miles! In what could only be a few hours.
The horse gained height and flew inland, over the sleeping city, over the black abysses that separated the buildings into a mosaic of life and of doom, over the jumbled roofs and narrow streets, over long zig-zagging stairs and pleasure gardens and pavilions and tinkling fountains, everything deserted in the night. For a moment, Fenn was eye to golden eye with the statues of the nine deities who gazed out to sea from the roof of a great temple. The horse wheeled and they were flying back towards the sea, over the palace, its famous green dragon-scale spires grey in the moonlight, its green pennants ghostly.
Beyond the palace a lone finger of rock rose out of the sea. It was joined to the city by the perfect graceful arc of a single narrow stone bridge. And upon the finger of rock seethed a vast black mass, amorphous against the summer sky. Fenn ducked his head instinctively, but they flew into it. It was cold and wet and the dark intensified. A cloud.
A cloud in the middle of a clear summer’s night?
The horse banked again and Fenn had a heart-stopping glimpse into a lighted window; a figure with long black hair sat slumped over a desk, face in hands in an attitude of exhaustion or despair.
So, there must be a very tall tower inside the cloud.
A lone tower. Near the palace. A black tower, fashioned from rough-hewn stone.
That meant something. Something bad.
But before Fenn could work out what, the horse was descending into a small, rain-washed courtyard at the base of the tower. A loggia ran around the edge of the courtyard and under its shelter several cressets burned red. Not with red crystals but with actual fire. Wide stone steps led up to a huge double door set into the tower. The tower loomed above like a threat; its upper parts lost in those strange clouds. Opposite the tower, at the other end of the courtyard, stood a gatehouse—a squat building with battlements and a formidable portcullis lowered to the ground.
No way out.
