Sky Trillium. Julian May

will never force me to accept him! Let him marry one of Queen Jiri’s daughters.’

      ‘Jan, my dearest!’ Queen Anigel hastened to intervene. ‘I beseech you to forbear. This is not the place for such discussion. Let us wait until we reach the next hostel, and – ‘

      Her words were drowned out by a colossal thunderbolt. Simultaneously the mireway shook as with an earthquake, and a flash of light blinded all beholders. The rain now fell prodigiously. Shouts arose from the shocked knights, who had withdrawn some distance in order to give the royal family privacy. The fronials shied in terror from the unexpected noise, and the King forgot his anger as he strove to prevent his daughter’s crazed steed from slipping off the road into the swirling floodwaters.

      Prince Nikalon was similarly occupied with the distraught mount of his mother. Anigel’s ramping white beast pawed the savage downpour with its split hooves and tossed its antlered head wildly. The Queen regained control only with difficulty after Niki dismounted and clung to her bridle. Several ells away, the young fronial Immu rode lay on its belly near the road’s left-hand edge, shaking with terror, while its rider urged it vainly to rise. But then Princess Janeel’s animal escaped Antar’s grasp and nearly trampled the colt and Immu as it galloped back down the road toward the main column.

      Oathed Companions!’ cried the Queen. ‘After the Princess!’ And to her son, ‘Save Immu! Look – the verge of the mireway near her is crumbling!’

      Prince Nikalon leapt back onto his mount and went pounding down the rain-lashed road. Leaning from the saddle, he swept up the little Nyssomu woman just as the fronial colt tumbled down the embankment and vanished without a sound into churning muddy water.

      ‘Bring Immu to me, Niki,’ the Queen shouted, ‘then aid your father and sister!’

      Anigel could not understand why the Oathed Companions had not come to the rescue. Her sight of the knights on the road ahead was obscured by the pounding rain and the growing darkness, but she heard their shouts amidst continuing rumbles of thunder and a strange rushing sound. When Immu was safe on the pillion behind her and the Prince gone to Antar, who had halted Janeel’s runaway mount some distance away, the Queen put spur to her fronial in order to fetch the Companions. But the white beast skidded to an abrupt halt after taking only a few bounds.

      ‘Great God, the road!’ Anigel screamed, looking down from the saddle.

      Between the Queen and her knights stretched a steep break in the mireway over five ells wide. It appeared that lightning had blasted the road asunder. High water formerly impounded on one side of the causeway was now pouring through, laden with downed trees and other floating debris. Before Anigel could recover from her astonishment another brilliant flash and a shattering clap of thunder rocked the Mazy Mire, causing her mount to stagger.

      ‘Hold tight, Immu!’ she cried, reining the animal’s head far to the right, so that it whirled in tight circles, squealing. But it did not panic this time and she was able to calm it at last, urging it back toward the King and the children.

      Then the beast again stopped abruptly. Anigel gasped as she saw a second gap in the mireway, narrower than the first but growing wider every second as swift waters chewed away at the road’s foundation.

      The Queen and Immu were marooned on a small island of cobblestone pavement in the midst of a raging flood.

      ‘Ani!’ howled the King, and Nikalon and Janeel cried, ‘Mother!’

      Thunder seemed to give a mocking answer. The Oathed Companions stood helpless on their side of the severed road, but several carts and numbers of men-at-arms had finally reached the King. One quick-thinking fellow dashed up to Antar with a coil of rope, and both father and son dismounted and helped to fling it across the water.

      Anigel and Immu also slid from the saddle, crouching at the lip of the shrinking section of mireway. Twice the rope failed to reach them; but on the third throw Immu took hold of it, screeching in triumph and nearly falling into the rising flood.

      ‘Come!’ the nurse cried to the Queen. ‘Knot it about your waist!’

      Anigel tried, but at that moment the waters undermined the roadbed beneath and the cobbles under her feet shifted and separated. She fell into a shallow, water-filled hole, her arms and legs entangled in her long raincape. Dropping the rope, Immu scrambled to Anigel and helped to free her. Queen and nurse crawled over the treacherous, dissolving surface while the King recoiled the rope and flung it again and again across the widening breach.

      But the line kept falling short, and soon the island of roadway would be entirely washed away.

      ‘Your trillium-amber!’ Immu screamed at the Queen above the roar of the storm. ‘Bid it save us!’

      They were clinging to each other. Anigel took hold of her magical amulet with one hand, holding Immu tightly with the other. Behind them, the white fronial scrabbled and shrieked, consumed with terror. The ground melted under it and it was swept away into the torrent.

      A third monstrous explosion sounded at the same time that lightning struck. Stones, broken timber, clots of muddy earth, and roiling mist filled the air, together with shouts from the frustrated rescuers.

      Queen Anigel felt herself falling, felt Immu torn away from her grasp, felt strangely painless blows from the wind-flung branches whirling all around her, felt her slow slide into dark, rushing water that filled her mouth and nose, choking off her prayer to the Black Trillium.

      Then she felt nothing.

       CHAPTER 8

      The viaduct on Mount Brom was situated in the Cavern of Black Ice.

      Long ages ago it had given the Vanished Ones access to their mysterious storage place deep in the Ohogan Mountains. And now, as Haramis had anticipated, the viaduct provided the sorcerer Orogastus with a means of entry to her Tower. Through her magical Three-Winged Circle she watched him emerge out of nowhere, through a dark disc without thickness that vanished with a loud bell-chime as soon as he was beyond it. He wore his silver-and-black Star Master regalia, including the gauntlets and the awesome starburst headpiece that hid the upper part of his face.

      He stood quietly in the very middle of the cavern’s obsidian-tiled floor, looking at the vault of quartz-veined granite soaring overhead and at the hundreds of alcoves, compartments, and roomlets on every side. The peculiar illumination of the place, shining from unseen sources, caused the icy extrusions in the rock crevices to gleam like polished onyx.

      The sorcerer seemed bemused as he walked slowly toward the exit, perhaps remembering the time that the Cavern of Black Ice and its wondrous contents had belonged to him. The glassy dark doors to the chambers and niches were all open. A few sophisticated trinkets and trifles remained, but were useless to his purposes. The compartments that had contained ancient weapons, or other devices intended to intimidate or harm, were empty.

      ‘So you destroyed them, did you?’ He addressed thin air, knowing she viewed him through her talisman. ‘And yet you kept the most deadly instrument of all! Did it never occur to you that the other two parts of the Sceptre of Power would be denied their greatest, most awful usage if there were no Three-Winged Circle?’

      Haramis said nothing. She had thought of it, had even contemplated throwing the Circle into one of the active volcanos in the Flame-Girt Isles when it became obvious that the other two talismans had passed into the hands of a person unknown. But that small silvery wand had been purchased at such a great cost to herself; and the original purpose of the Threefold Sceptre, thwarted twelve thousand years ago, had never ceased to intrigue her. She could not bring herself to cast the talisman away.

      Orogastus reached a large wooden door encrusted with hoarfrost and addressed her once more. The set of his mouth had become ironic. ‘Do I have your permission to enter the Tower, White Lady? It is mine, after all, even though you have made free with it for these sixteen years.’