I remember little of the ride other than I knew I was dying. I was sad that I hadn’t made it back with my father’s horses or that I hadn’t brought their murderers to justice but I was happy that I’d found them, happy that I would soon be with my family. I was puzzled why I was galloping on a horse when I clearly remembered being bitten by a dust adder.
The pain was awful. It felt as if every cell in my body was being bathed in acid and torn apart. It felt as if my entire right side from my neck to my belly was clawed from the inside out by a rabid mountain cat. I threw up so many times that I thought I had broken my ribs. I remembered crying out that there was no need to kill the horses to save me as I was surely going to die no matter what. A strange girl’s voice told me to shut up as she urged Diomed to run faster and somehow, he did.
I knew we were alone; the other horses could not keep up and had fallen behind. I was afraid that the punishing run would kill their generous hearts for they would not give up until I stopped them or their hearts burst.
Only Diomed and Beau were still running and I could hear Beau’s agonized wheezing. I begged her to stop and let him catch his wind but the witch ignored me. I cried out, told him ‘whoa’ and felt Diomed slide to a stop and heard Beau’s faltering strides. Saw his dark head come into view blood streaming from his nostrils.
“Oh, Tobias,” she cried out. “What have you done?” She tried to get the stallion moving but he stood, staggering on four legs before he collapsed followed by Beau seconds later. I lay tangled among my beloved horses.
“You’ve killed them for nothing,” I said bitterly. She gathered me in her arms and swept my hood back, stroking my sweat dampened hair away from my face.
“Perhaps not, Prionsa. We are beyond the Gates of Mist and here, the Border between Magic and maybe is not so defined.” She threw her head back and called out, a long mournful song that pierced the fog and echoed off distant mountains. If unicorns and fairies existed they sounded like that. She waited, my heart beat and I endured pain so intense that I would go mad if I could.
Out of the darkness rode men. But men such as I had never seen before. Men of such stature and beauty that they could not be mere mortal men and they were on creatures like horses but taller, slimmer built as if they could ride the wind. The one in the lead dropped down to greet her and she spoke rapidly to him in a language that sounded like the trilling of birds. Sweet music.
He turned his face to me. His brow was high and level under deep gray wings, his eyes the same strange silver purple as hers. His hair was long and fell from a thin gold circlet on his forehead. Here was a King of such regal mien I wanted to bow to my knees. He touched the horses’ foreheads and I felt Diomed draw breath under me as he struggled to his feet and stood carefully avoiding me. His face loomed closer and at first, I thought he was kneeling until I realized he was lifting me in his arms.
He spoke to others. A score materialized out of the mists, each male as perfect as he was. I heard her say, “We left three other horses behind, Lyr Averon. And nine spiorad narnhghlon after us.” Those were the only words I could understand before I fell into a darkness that offered respite from the pain.
I was crystal clear in my mind when I woke up. Everything was a brilliant white and I had to laugh at my clichéd idea of heaven. I was surprised though, that my parents weren’t there to greet me. I looked around, I was in a room that curved gently in a circle and the walls were white grained wood with large bay windows. They were open and a breeze blew against thin white curtains. They almost looked like angel’s wings. I was lying on a mattress that hung from chains dropping from a really high ceiling that branched off like tree trunks. White linen under me and a white blanket on top that was made of nubby fibers like flax. Everything smelled like flowers and that crisp scent that came after a thunderstorm.
“Mum? Dad?” I called out and waited. I believed in God, I’d been raised that way in the religion preached by my father’s church and harbored the belief that my mother had instilled in me. Do only good, treat all animal life with compassion, if I had to kill, do it quickly and cleanly. Don’t let any creature suffer. Don’t kill unless it was for food or to protect my own life. Speak no ill of your neighbor and be ready to accept an enemy as a new friend. Trust your instincts and live a life that you would be proud to leave with no regrets.
She taught me that there was a greater being, one of love that stood over all life but that had given us creation and free will. That we chose our own destiny and that many had chosen evil over good. That if one lived a virtuous life, we looked forward to a reward after death.
My idea of that Supreme Being was not the short, rotund man in fussy robes that waddled into view. He had silver hair and eyes the deep pansy of a violet, merry cheeks and a little bow mouth.
“God?” I asked tentatively and he laughed at me. He sat on my bed and it rocked gently. His hands came out of his long sleeves and they were surprisingly delicate and dexterous. He patted my legs.
“No, Tobias Spencer. I am no God. My name is Belgrave. I am a Sorcerer of Healing.”
“Sorcerer? A wizard? You mean I went to hell?” I gaped. Sure didn’t look or feel like hell.
“No, dear boy. You’re not dead. Is that what you thought? No, no, no. You’re in the City of the Clouds. Across the Border Wall. Arianell brought you through and called Lyr Averon who carried you to my home. Where I saved you from the snake bite. Nasty creatures, those dust adders. Luckily, they can’t cross the Border Wall, either.”
I only heard ‘you’re not dead.’ Pinched myself. It hurt. I looked under the covers and I was in a white nightgown with a small bandage where I’d been bitten. It was sore but nothing remained of that mind destroying pain that I barely remembered. “But, dust adder bites are 100% fatal,” I protested. “How?”
“Magic, of course. Well, that and my superb healing spells. You’ll be happy to know that the Lyr’s men rescued your horses. All of them. Arianell made sure I was to tell you that when you woke.”
“I’m not really dead?” I asked dubiously.
“I prefer to think of it as ‘alive’,” he smiled. “Though, you will be a trifle weak and depressed for a while. Would you like something to eat? Drink?” At my hesitation, he added, “don’t worry. We eat the same things you do, nothing here will poison you.”
Slowly, with his help, I rose from bed and pulled on the thick velvet robe of pale blue that he seemed to pull out of the air. Belted it around my tender waist, it still hurt from the bout of puking that had left me sore in the ribs and belly. Warm and shaky, he held me as I took tentative steps towards the wall and it split open to reveal another room where there was a table, chairs and a couch, a small balcony protected by a railing made of living tree branches. When I asked to look, I saw that we were inside a huge tree whose branches went up hundreds of feet over my head and yet were clearly still hundreds of feet from the ground.
Other giant trees stood around us, the sun winking off the windows in their trunks. Many were white but the predominant color was a reddish brown. The crown of these trees was a pale green so far above me that I could barely see their leaves. There were branches lower down but they seemed more like covered bridges connecting certain trees to others. An entire community living in the forest giants. I saw wildlife, too. Birds and butterflies, dragonflies of such beauty that I was speechless. I asked if I could sit near the open balcony so I could gape. He arranged me on a couch and pulled in front of me the table made of silken pale yellow wood grained like bird’s eyes. He went to another door in the wall and opened it to reveal a younger version of himself and female. I heard him say something but couldn’t understand the trilling music of what were clearly words. He turned back to me. “I ordered a light meal of breakfast things.”
“Tea?” I asked hopefully and watched as my hands shook. Laid them in my lap. Looked around at the austere room, with no pictures, no knickknacks and the more I stared, the more detail I saw in the strange yet soothing grain of the walls, the curious reflections off windows and the patterns on floor and ceiling. I saw designs very much like those on Arianell’s belt and embroidery. Subtle and mysterious.
“Arianell?”
“She’s caring for your horses,” he said and sat opposite me. His purple eyes studied me deeply, his merry air gone. “How do you feel, Tobias?”
“Please. Call me Toby,” I hesitated, not sure why I wasn’t terrified that I was in the Borderlander’s stronghold. After all, they were supposed to be monsters and human flesh eaters. “Tired. Weak. A little shaky,” I answered. “Hungry, too.” I was and that surprised me. I still couldn’t get my head around the idea that I wasn’t dead. I’d heard of only one person who had ever survived a dust adder’s bite and that was only by amputating the man’s arm at the elbow. He’d been bitten at the wrist and only his quick act of chopping off his arm had saved him. Of course, he had died from blood poisoning three weeks later.
“What is this place?” I asked. He patted my hands and smiled at me. I saw no canines, no fangs and no blood lust in his eyes.
“This is the home of the Elassa, the City of the Clouds you call it in your language. We call it Tir Nan Tuatha Don. It is the capital city of our empire. No mere human has ever been across the Border without carriage by one of us. To cross alone and unaccompanied would kill a human.”
“The men that chased us? They are dead?” I asked with some satisfaction.
“Most were dispatched by Lyr Averon’s Faet warriors. A handful escaped but it will be many days and hundreds of miles before they escape the Barrier of Mist. Nor will they emerge where they went in. The mist is an entity of magic and has properties even we do not understand.”
“Am I a prisoner here?”
He stared and then laughed which ended in a snort as his belly wiggled under his robes. Today, he wore a pale peach that looked surprisingly nice against his tinted skin. He was more white than I was, not the fawn colored skin like my ruddy father. Still, I remembered how fair my mother’s complexion had been and how she had protected it from the sun.
“No, you are no more a prisoner than I am. You may travel anywhere upon this land that you wish or desire.” He lifted my arm and exposed my own skin, just two shades darker than his own. “Did you not see the differences between you and your neighbors? Your skin tone, your own eyes? Your affinity for horses and wild animals? Do you not speak more than one language?”
“Yes. My father taught me seven.”
“You are half Elassan, Toby. Your mother was one of us.”
“How? Where could my father have met her? He only came over to the Newlands to fight in the war for the Emperor,” I protested.
“Your mother was a daughter of the House of Averon, of the High Court. She ran away from her father’s choice of life companion, and she refused his advice. So, she escaped to the City of the Gates and lived there as the daughter of a textile merchant. That is where your father met and wooed her. They fell in love and she quickened with you. The war was started but she managed to get a message to your father and he rescued her. She tried to save others but none would believe until they were standing at the gates torching it.”
“How do you know this?” I sobbed.
“Your mother when she was dying came to us and told us her story,” he said softly. “It is something our people can do at times of great distress or at the verge of death.”
“Why didn’t she wait for me?” I cried, tears gushing from my eyes. I cried as if my heart was breaking and he folded me into his embrace. It was like being cradled by a warm, plump grandmother.
He whispered in my ears. “She told me she loved you with all her heart, Toby. Forever and always.” I cried myself to sleep and they didn’t even wake me to eat.