‘You’re probably one of the finest riders I’ve ever seen!’ Sorrel grinned at Grizhen. They’d raced to the top of a waterfall, where the flat plain ran to the edge of a precipice, and dropped dramatically, fifty feet to where thorns and slender birch grew in a rocky scrubland. He was proud of her, and proud of his own teaching, for he’d schooled her in riding since the day she could sit unaided. Like his four sisters, she had no talent for sorcery, but unlike them she did not hold him in any awe for it. To her, his magic was merely a part of him.

He blew carefully on his palm and a tiny, perfectly-formed horse, its body fashioned of stardust and mist, galloped into the air and disappeared. ‘A prize for the best rider in the salazhán,’ he grinned.

Grizhen giggled. ‘You still won, Sorrel! I am not the best!’

She dismounted and ran the last few feet to the edge of the falls, and, dropping to her knees, peered over. ‘There’s something about this place. I think it’s fey. Seren Foss. Even the name is magical.’

Sorrel joined her. ‘That is because the name isn’t in our tongue. It’s older than that. The song says a lady drowned here when her lover, the Goddess of Stars, jilted her for the Sun Lord instead.’

‘Those are old gods,’ chided Grizhen. ‘Too old for us now.’

‘We’ve lost their ways,’ Sorrel agreed. He cast the Rune for sleep, just in case any wild spirits should be disturbed by their presence.

Miles to the south, the land began to rise, and there the slender birch and blonde grass gave way to tall oaks and hawthorn and beech. Sorrel had travelled that way only once, but had heard from his cousin Bai of the richness of that land, how fertile and abundant it was. More of the poselenech, the settled folk, lived there, leaving the dry grasses to the likes of the Wind Star tribe. Further south still were palaces. He longed to see them.

‘They called it Seren Foss, before our people came to this land when they were driven out of the North. That river goes all the way to the sea,’ he mused. ‘I keep promising myself I will go, one day. Perhaps even take a ship to Cartha. If I do, I shall take you with me.’

Grizhen shrugged. ‘Isn’t that land nothing but desert and rock?’

‘The tower of Sanctuary is there, on one of the islands. I would like to see that. They say it’s so tall that its summit is perpetually wreathed in cloud.’

‘In a desert land?’ Grizhen snorted her incredulity. ‘The sun blazes down every day. There is no cloud.’

‘It isn’t desert. Cartha has vineyards and fields of barley not unlike those in Moreithin.’

‘Sanctuary is a blasted land. Cartha might not be desert but Sanctuary is. The mage who built it made it that way.’

‘Must you always argue?’

‘I’m just pointing out the flaws in your logic,’ she shrugged. ‘And you taught me that the land is like the mage that lives on it.’

The land is the mage. Sorrel flipped onto his back, his face to the sky. The sky here was wind and cloud, sun and starlight, where hawks soared and the small birds of grassland and riverland alike flitted. The stories of Sanctuary said that the sky above the tower was thick with ravens that darkened the blistering blue, their cries drowning the shrieks of the half-mad mage once imprisoned there, before he’d thrown himself from the only window and been sent to a more permanent, unbreachable prison. They called him rakshin-corth in his own tongue. Ghoul.

He knew a different name. He shivered as a breath of cold wind caressed his skin. It felt like an omen, the flap of grey wings over his grave. He flipped onto his belly and inched to the edge of the falls. The water cascaded down a narrow rocky gully to rise in a cloud of spray as it hit the wide, shallow pool at the bottom. A fall from here would kill a man, or break most of his bones. He inched further.

Grizhen tugged his arm. ‘Not so close, Sorrel!’ she squeaked. ‘If you go over, you’ll die!’

He shook her off. ‘I won’t go over.’

And if I did, I wouldn’t fall. Not in this world, anyway.

Somehow, he was certain of that.

They rode back to the salazhar at a leisurely walk, neither having the inclination to attend lessons that day. It was not a day for listening to the elders droning on about lore or history, or scribing the heavy, stilted letters of the Northern tongue. Such lessons had failed to stick in Sorrel’s head. He much preferred the flowing flourishes of the kánlaith, and found it the most useful to him, but his father had lately decreed that the men of the tribe would learn the speech and writing of their neighbours to the North and North-East. This was met with horror, which dissipated quickly under his fierce, hawkish stare. Trade, he said, was easier if the merchants could understand each other’s speech. A few older salazhani muttered darkly that trade neutered their standing of strength and conquest in the world, and preferred to take what they needed rather than pay for it, and remind their neighbours who was stronger. But Virishnu slammed his fists down on their resentment and declared that if ever a time came for war, the salazhán could muster more than two-thousand warriors and crush whichever army was levelled at it, and that was that, and in the meantime good relations, and prosperity, would be fostered by trade.

As the hide domes of the roofs came into view, Sorrel baulked at the thought of spending the rest of the day confined to studies. As the only son of the chief, it was his duty to instruct the young boys in the arts of war, but he found he had no stomach for it today.

He twisted in his saddle to look at his sister. ‘Tell our father and mother that I will not be back until later. Tell them I have something I must do.’

‘What? What is it you must do, Sorrel? Will you be far?’

He shook his head with a smile. ‘No, carázha. I am not going far. But I can’t be with my people today. Tell them it’s important and I would not shirk my duties else.’

She rolled her eyes at him, but nodded. ‘I’ll tell them.’

‘Thank you, carázha. I’ll be back by dusk.’

Sorrel rode until he'd left the salazhán far behind and out of sight. He had no clear idea what he rode for, only that he could not shake the feeling that there was something that he needed to discover, out on the wild grasses. A sense of unease had followed him since waking. He wanted only to face whatever evil was causing it, to lay it to rest, so he could sleep in peace. It was too soon after his last foray to be travelling the High Roads again. If he tried it, his bones would shatter and break. He had learned that the hard way. It wasn't a lesson he wanted to repeat.

He came to a narrow brook and dismounted, dropping the reins over his horse's neck to let her drink from the deep, clear water. He looked about him. The sun was high, almost at its zenith, and the wind had blown up. It bent the tall grasses, silver-bladed, to the wind. A little further downstream a small stand of bright poplar saplings bowed and bobbed under its attentions. He knelt, cupped his hands into the cold water, and drank deeply.

A whisper of wind came idling toward him through the grass and he sat up. A shadow clouded the rough stalks. He squinted but he could not focus on it. The sun blazed through his skull. He closed his eyes.

All at once black wings filled his vision, their wind thunderous in his brain. He recoiled, spitting aloud his banishment spell, but still the wings beat, faster and faster. Claws raked at his arms as he flung them up to protect his face. He swore and fumbled at his belt for his knife. He was flung backward, to lie gasping in the grass, his knife tossed away from him and his arms pinned by an invisible force to the ground.

‘Open your eyes, son of thorns,’ a voice rasped.

Sorrel obeyed. Standing over him was a dark shape, tall and thin, his black hair flying about his shoulders like a cloak of raven wings. His face was obscured, thrown into shadow by the halo of bright sun behind him.

He moved back and gestured for Sorrel to rise. ‘You know who I am.’

It was a statement, not a question. Sorrel nodded.

‘You came to the Black Gates of my realm, where the tool of my imprisonment lies shattered.’ Another statement, spoken without accusation, as if the man were pondering on a puzzle he’d long struggled with. ‘And that Riverstone you have? I know who gave it to you. Have a care to come no nearer to her, son of thorns. She will have your soul, and your body with it. She will claw you asunder before she lets you near me. Have a care.’

‘What does she want with me?’ Sorrel rubbed at his wrists, still burning from invisible bonds. He wondered what magic this creature had. The tales were infuriatingly vague.

‘She wants blood, fire, death,’ said Morien. He held out his hand, palm up. ‘I do not.’

Sorrel glanced at the offered hand. Nestled in the pallid, linen-grey palm was a miniature raven, carved from some milky stone, swirling colours of sky and night hidden in the depths. Sorrel thought it was like a storm viewed behind a veil of mist.

‘Take it,’ said the mage. ‘It will protect you.’

Sorrel reached out to take the raven, and closed his hand around it. But as he opened it again to examine the bird, only water dripped from his hand, curling into the air like gems of liquid smoke, and the raven was gone.

And so was the man who had given it to him.

But across the horizon, the grasses had turned to fire, and a red wind bent them to the blood of the earth. Sorrel sank to the ground and spread his fingers into the roots of the tough stalks, heedless of their razor-cuts lacerating his skin, and bent his head to his knees in despair.

He heard the pulse of the earth like the thundering of blood in his veins. To his trance-like vision it seemed like his blood flowed into the land itself, and back again, connecting him, sustaining him. His body became fibrous and tough, his blood became sap, and every inch of him pricked with thorns. He was suspended in time. He was time itself. He watched, timeless, as the grasses burned and bled; flesh torn to shreds, bones bleached and crumbled to dust.

On the wind he heard a voice, faint and full of hatred.

Am y’malach nam Au. Marau am Carizh Au!