They passed the last of the open land and were back among the winter-bare trees, where patches of ice still covered the ground. Cilarnen expected them to slow down over such treacherous footing, but they didn’t, and his heart hammered in fear—not for himself, but for the splendid chestnut Hyandur rode. If she slipped, if she fell, lameness would be the most fortunate outcome she could hope for. A broken neck—a broken leg—
But she danced over the ice as if she had wings, with the mule thundering after. The sun was higher now, flickering through the branches, the light making Cilarnen’s head pound with feverish pain. His hands and face were numb with cold—it was as if he couldn’t remember ever having been warm.
In the distance, the trees thinned out again. The road rose in a gentle curve, and he could see a gateway of sorts—or at least a place where someone had placed a large post at either side of the road. What could it possibly mark? There was nothing around it, and the land looked very much the same on one side as on the other.
But it must mean something, because Hyandur was already slowing the mare as they approached it. The mule was only too glad to slacken its pace without any urging on Cilarnen’s part, and both animals passed between the posts at a dead slow walk.
It was snowing on the other side.
Or rather, it had snowed, recently and heavily. And the air was sharp with the promise of more, far colder than the air on the near side of the posts.
“This is the boundary of the City lands,” Cilarnen said in sudden realization. Or at least, the boundary of the Home Farms.
“Yes.” Hyandur dismounted from the mare and began to walk back and forth with her through the fresh snow, speaking gently to her.
Cilarnen dismounted from the mule, wincing and staggering with stiffness. He rubbed its nose apologetically. He wasn’t sure what to do with mules. But he supposed it couldn’t hurt to treat it like a horse, and so he coiled up the lead-rein that Hyandur had released and began to lead it back and forth, as he had seen the grooms do with horses in his father’s stables.
As he did, he looked back toward the boundary. The snow made it easy to see. The snow just… stopped, as though it had run into an invisible wall.
As it had, of course. A wall of Magecraft. just as Undermage Anigrel had said, the High Council must have extended the boundaries of the City to cover the entire valley once more.
He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. The High Council had reversed its decision. The Home Farms were part of the City Lands once more, just as he and the others had wanted.
He’d ruined his life, caused his father’s death, his family’s disgrace, for nothing.
“You may stop now,” Hyandur told him, breaking into Cilarnen’s chaotic thoughts. “Unsaddle the mule, and build a fire in the brazier. We will rest here before going on.”
Cilarnen stared at him, too shocked to react. The Elf was giving him orders?
Hyandur regarded him for a long moment.
“If you cannot do that, then go to the well and draw water for the animals. They are rested enough to be ready to drink. The well lies over there.” He pointed in the direction of a snowy cylinder of rock.
Cilarnen hesitated, but the mule nudged at his shoulder, then lowered its head to mouth at the snow, obviously wanting water. There was no reason for the animals to suffer just because they belonged to an Elf. Reluctantly, Cilarnen trudged off in that direction, tucking his hands into his armpits to warm them.
He had never seen a well in his life, but it was a simple mechanical design, with a crank and gears to raise and lower a bucket on a rope, and after a few tries, he managed to get the cover off, find the bucket, and fill the trough at the well’s foot with water.
If he’d had his Magegift and Wand, he could simply have Called the water up out of the well. As it was, it was at least a chime before he managed to fill the watering-trough, and he was sweating and damp—and very irritated with the Elf—at the end of it. If this was servants’ work, then the servants in House Volpiril had not had as soft a life as he’d imagined.
But as he turned back to collect the horse and the mule, he forgot all his lesser problems.
Racing toward him, along the last patch of open ground between the woods and the marker-posts, was a pack of Stone Hounds.
They looked just like the pair outside the Arch-Mage’s house, yet these were horribly animate, their fanged jaws opening and closing with soundless barking. There were almost a dozen of them, perfect in every detail from the spiked collars around their necks to the curved nails upon their feet. Every aspect of their manner spoke of murderous threat.
There was no Mage with them.
He ran back toward Hyandur and the animals—thinking he might be able to save the mare, at least—but before he could reach them, the Outlaw Hunt reached the invisible border between the lands claimed by the City and the world beyond.
They stopped as if they had run into a wall.
But even then they did not retreat.
Like any hunting pack frustrated and kept from taking its prey, they milled back and forth on the far side of the invisible wall, their unblinking gaze fixed on Cilarnen. Some crouched on their haunches, barking silently. Some dug at the frozen ground, as if it were possible to dig beneath the magick and reach their intended prey. A few of the Hounds kept trying to cross the boundary, only to be flung back each time they tried, as if by some invisible hand.
The leader of the pack, a mastiff carved of white granite, simply stood at the far side of the posts and glared fixedly at Cilarnen. If it were possible for unliving stone to radiate murderous rage, the creature did.
Watching the pack go mad with failure, a slow cold wisdom settled over Cilarnen. The Elf had not lied. Anigrel had not lied. Tiedor was dead—any of his friends who might be Banished after him would die.
But Banishment was never meant to be a death sentence! It was only meant to cast people out of the City, not to kill them!
He did not know why this terrible ancient custom had been revived, but now he knew this: the Outlaw Hunt was not meant to conduct Outlaws to the borders of City Lands, but to kill them.
And if he had not had the great good fortune to run into Hyandur last night—if the Elf had not aided him for mysterious reasons of its own—he too would be dead now, savaged by stone fangs.
“You may take the animals to drink, now. Take care that they do not drink too much at first,” Hyandur said, coming up to Cilarnen where he stood, still frozen in shock, watching the stone Hounds flail at what was to them an impassable border.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” Cilarnen said, though he could not at that moment have said what he was apologizing for.
“They will not break through,” Hyandur said. “It is, however, unsettling to watch.”
Cilarnen shook his head, unable to stop thinking of himself surrounded by the Outlaw Hunt, pulled down beneath those unyielding stone bodies. He took the animals’ lead-ropes—Hyandur had unsaddled them while he’d been fighting with the well—and turned away.
—«♦»—
CHILD of the City and Mageborn he might be, but Cilarnen knew something of caring for horses. He was careful to let neither animal drink as much as it wished to, and when they were done, he brought them back to where Hyandur had laid out a ground cloth and the brazier. The Elf was brewing tea, indifferent to the Stone Hounds that waited beyond the Border.
They had stopped attempting to batter their way through the boundary, and now simply stood in a silent row, gazing hungrily toward Cilarnen. Eleven unmoving granite forms—but Cilarnen had no doubt now that if he took one step back across the Border, they would rouse terrifyingly into life.
And the Council’s decree—its true, its secret decree—would be carried out.
Death for Cilarnen Volpiril.
But Mages do not kill…
“Come, stranger. We will drink tea,” Hyandur said. “Then we will move on.”
Cilarnen wrapped the stiff felt of the Felon’s Cloak around himself. “I… my name is Cilarnen. Thank you for saving my life.”
Hyandur bowed his head slightly. “The Outlaw Hunt is a foul thing. I would willingly leave no creature to its mercies. Perhaps someday we will talk of what caused you to leave the City.”
Cilarnen just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it, or even think about it. The farther away the events got, the less sense they made to him. All he knew was that people were dead, and it was somehow his fault.
He didn’t want to ask where the Elf was taking him, either. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he didn’t care, or was afraid of what he might hear.
—«♦»—