"It cannot be half as bitter as the first."
"My horses have been drinking from it," Hearn said, with a twinkle in his eye, "so that tells you something. A speedy journey to you, lad." He took a step backward. "My lady Morgan."
Morgan didn't feel at all as if she merited that sort of title, but then again, she was riding an Angesand steed. If anything was going to make her feel important, it was that.
They left the keep in grander style than they'd entered, riding ahead with five obedient horses trotting along behind. Morgan looked at Miach once they were clear of the village.
"Will they follow us, do you think?"
"I certainly hope so," he said, with feeling. "I daresay I couldn't catch them, could you? "
"I could not indeed," she said, feeing somewhat alarmed.
But the alarm proved to be ill placed. The five riderless horses followed unquestioningly, their gear jangling merrily, as if they merely rode off for a lark, not into darkness.
Morgan frowned thoughtfully at that. Perhaps she would do well to look at the journey from a horse's point of view.
Then again, she suspected the horses weren't dreaming her dreams.
It took them several hours to find their comrades. Morgan would have taken pleasure in their astonished looks, but her leg ached and her dreams nagged at her. She was very grateful to stand on solid ground and allow Miach to tell their tale. She unsaddled her horse and turned him loose, accepted a plate of what Paien had on the fire, then excused herself and walked off across part of the plain that seemed to be uninhabited.
Reannag followed her.
She was a little unsettled by how long it took her to notice that. At first she noticed the breathing, then the footfalls that came in fours and not twos. She looked behind her.
Reannag came to a halt and returned her look.
"I'm off for a walk," she said.
He snorted at her.
Morgan almost smiled. She turned completely around and very slowly and carefully walked back to the horse. She reached out a hand and stroked his nose.
He made more snorting noises.
"Well," Morgan said, almost at a loss. "Indeed."
Reannag offered no opinion on the matter, but he did bump her hand. Then he followed her when she walked back toward camp.
Morgan wasn't sure how she felt about the responsibility of a horse, especially a horse that seemed to have taken a liking to her, but it was too late to complain now. Besides, it would allow her to take the blade to the king in good time. There had been a moment or two when she thought she might not manage that. Reannag would allow her to succeed and for that she would be grateful.
Perhaps it spelled a turn in the tide of events.
Unfortunately, that turning of tides did not last.
That night she dreamed.
It was the same dream she'd had the night before. She was comforted at first by the presence of the girl's mother, but that comfort did not last, for she knew what was to come. She followed them very reluctantly to the glade, then watched with dread certainty as events unfolded as they had before.
The little girl hid under the eaves of the forest. The mother went forward to argue with the man who was so full of darkness. Only this time Morgan noticed that they were not alone. There were others there, lads by the look of them. She would have stopped to count their number, but she didn't have time. She listened to the man lift his arms, speak his words of horror, then watched in astonishment as evil gushed up from the well before him, as if it had been a geyser of water.
It surged upward, then crashed down upon the glade. It rushed toward her in a wave of blackness and horror.
Her first instinct was to protect the little girl standing next to her, but she knew she couldn't. She was not there in truth. Even so, she leaped toward the girt, to cover her with her own body if necessary. As she put her arms around the girl, she heard the girl whispering words.
Words she recognized, but did not understand.
And still the evil rushed toward her with horrifying swiftness.
