Schiannath stiffened to a thrill of hope. With the pain of his own injury, he had forgotten that last kick into Phalihas’s ribs. Had it done more damage than he’d thought? There was only one way to find out—but first he must expose himself. If Phalihas was only feigning, and saw that limp…
Setting his teeth against both fear and pain, he took a hesitant, nobbling step forward, then another. His enemy’s head swung up sharply: a new fire kindled in the depths of his dull eyes. Scniannath froze, heart pounding. Phalihas gathered himself—and charged. That was what Schiannath had been waiting for. As the black stallion came lumbering toward him, he sidestepped clumsily, and reared with a shrill scream of triumph that changed to choking terror as Phalihas’s head whipped round to close great slablike teeth around his throat. Schiannath felt himself toppling, dragged down by the other’s weight. In the last remaining second, he lashed out with one last desperate effort. His uninjured hoof came smashing down upon Phalihas’s skull—and the two of them crashed down together into darkness.
Iscalda screamed as she saw the stallions fall. She ran forward, tearing herself away from the strong hands that tried to hold her back. As she broke free, she was aware of others beginning to follow, streaming out behind her with shouts of excitement or concern, but her anguish for her brother lent wings to her feet—and with the start she had, she easily outdistanced them all. With an effort she stifled her sobs to keep her breath for running, but kept her eyes fixed, through a haze of tears, on those two dark shapes that lay so ominously still on the blood-soaked ground. The final stages of the battle had taken the stallions a long way out across the plateau. Iscalda pounded on with sweat trickling down into her stinging eyes, trying to ignore the catch in her side and her shortness of breath. Schiannath!. Though she had no breath to speak, the cry was wrenched in agony from her heart. Would she never reach him? It was like trying to run through water; like her childhood nightmare, when she’d fled in terror to evade pursuers, but for all her running and running she stayed stranded in the exact same place.
Ahead of her, one of the dark humps stirred. She stumbled; looked again. Surely she must have imagined that feeble movement? The low, slanting sun was in her eyes, obscuring all detail. No! She was not mistaken! One of the stallions was struggling weakly, trying in vain to rise. With a gasp, Iscalda redoubled her speed. One of them was still alive—but which one was it? Which?
Then she heard, ringing raw and shrill across the plateau, a stallion’s scream of victory. Iscalda would have known that voice anywhere. Schiannath! Unstrung with relief, her legs collapsed beneath her, and she fell to the crisp, cool turf weeping tears of gratitude.
Nonetheless, Iscalda was still one of the first to reach her brother. Aurian, thundering across the plateau on Chiamh’s back with Shia racing alongside, caught up with her just as she was struggling to her feet. The Windeye had kept his wits about him, and taken a moment to change to his equine form, and when the Mage saw the struggling girl, she was quick to go to her aid.
“Come on!” The Mage reached down a hand and all but yanked the exhausted Iscalda up behind her. Then they were off again with such speed that, in less than a minute, they were at Schiannath’s side. The stallion was in too much distress to recognize them. He was floundering, struggling and plunging and slipping in a pool of churned-up mud and gore, trying in vain to get to his feet. His dark-gray flanks were unrecognizable beneath a thickly plastered coat of blood and clay, and his rolling, white-rimmed eyes were glazed with pain and panic.
Muttering a shocked imprecation, Aurian swung off Chiamh’s back and ran toward the stallion, Iscalda at her heels. “Hurry,” the Mage yelled. “He’s so terrified, he doesn’t know what he’s doing! We’ve got to try to get him up before those idiots arrive.”
He would not let them approach him, despite the fact that the great cat was keeping well back, out of his sight. When they tried, he struck out wildly with teeth and an awkwardly held forelimb that was plainly injured. “Schiannath, it’s me, Iscalda,” his sister cried, but her words were lost in the sound of his angry screams. But if she could only get him to see her… She turned quickly to the Mage. “Aurian, if you can distract him, I’ll try to reach his head.”
Aurian nodded. “Be careful,” she said briefly, and ran toward the horse from one side, waving her arms and screaming like a banshee. Schiannath flattened his ears and turned toward her—and quick as a flash, Iscalda darted in and grabbed hold of his muzzle before the snapping teeth could reach her. Aurian held her breath. Already the crowd of Xandim were starting to arrive, and she knew that if Iscalda couldn’t reach him soon, she’d never do it with a lot of people crowding around. Schiannath plunged, trying to shake her off, but his sister hung on grimly, refusing to be dislodged. Putting her mouth close to his ear, she yelled: “Schiannath! Schiannath! It’s Iscalda! It’s all right, you’re safe now. You’re safe with us. Come back to us—please. You won, you’re safe…”
As her soothing litany penetrated the stallion’s terrified consciousness, his struggles ceased. Beckoned in by Aurian, the other companions arrived, gasping for breath, and helped the exhausted beast to find his footing while Chiamh and Yazour kept back the crowds with the aid of a snarling Shia. Once up, Schiannath stood there trembling with weakness, his head hanging low, but slowly, to the Mage’s vast relief, the light of intelligence began to creep back into his eyes.
Not that Schiannath was calmer, Aurian went cautiously forward to examine him with her Healer’s senses. When she had finished, she spoke to him quickly: “Schiannath, listen to me. You’ll be all right, and I’ll help you—but don’t try to change back yet. You’re too exhausted. Do you understand? Let me heal you first, and then you can think about changing.”
Chiamh, in the interim, was addressing the crowd. “O Xandim—I give you your new Herdlord: Schiannath, victor of the Challenge. May the Goddess grant that he govern you wisely and wefi—and may her curse fall swiftly on any who dispute his rule, which was decided fairly under Xandim Law.”
There was not much cheering. Judging from the expressions of the Xandim—some disappointed, some angry—Aurian knew that they had all been counting on Schiannath to lose. She wanted to spit in their faces. Ysalla came forward for the Elders, her face set like stone. “And what is the will of the Herdlord?” The savage mockery in her voice was like the lash of a whip.
In her mind, Aurian caught Chiamh’s anguished tones. “Can you help him, Lady? Schiannath must address them soon, or it bodes ill.”
“I can, but it’ll take a while,” the Mage replied in the same silent fashion.
“I doubt that we have a little while,” the Windeye pleaded. Already, a restive murmur was beginning to spread throughout the crowd.
Aurian felt the raw power of their hostile anger and came to a decision. “All right. Anvar, you shield our own folk as best you can. This bloody lot have energy to dissipate, so I’m just going to borrow—”
“Aurian—you can’t! The Mages’ Code—”
“Oh, bugger the Mages’ Code—just this once. It’s in a good cause. I’ve done this before, in the Nexis riot, and the Khazalim Arena. They’ll take no hurt at all…” Even as she was reassuring him, she was readying herself. Surreptitiously, she took hold of the Staff of Earth that was tucked, as always, into her belt. Laying the other hand on Schiannath’s drooping head, she reached out with her will to the aura of smoldering rage that hung over the crowd and took it into herself, forming a channel through which the purloined energy could be passed to the gray stallion by way of her hand. As she had promised Anvar, it took very little—and the crowd had more than enough to spare. Moreover, the exchange of energy had an unexpected benefit. As she drained away the power that fueled their anger, Aurian noticed a change come over the assembled Xandim. They seemed more relaxed: less uncertain, less unhappy, and definitely far less hostile. Fleetingly, she found herself wondering if the happy outcome to the Nexis riot had been entirely due to the coming of the rain—and then put the thought aside to ponder later.