Strange Attractors - Kim Falconer [12]
The horses took little encouragement to retreat, but they weren’t fast enough. A shower of arrows fell, one skimming Kali’s shoulder, the others glancing off the rocks. The mare squealed but kept backing. The portal whisked them away. Kali didn’t have time to focus on a new destination.
‘Jarrod! Are you with me?’ She tested her shoulder. No blood. ‘Jarrod?’
‘Over here.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You’d better come see for yourself.’
She dismounted and led the mare further back into the corridors. When she found Jarrod, he was leaning over Teg. The Lupin wasn’t breathing.
Shaea stared at the ground. All she could see was a pothole in the rutted wagon track, a deep rent where the wheels of a cart had been stuck. This couldn’t be a door to another world. No way. It wasn’t even a place to hide. A mud worm would have trouble finding shelter here. She examined the area for some other means of escape but nothing came into view save the charging Corsanons. At the sound of a kingfisher, she looked up.
There was a high rock face in front of her, impossible for the horses to climb. They couldn’t have gone that way. The road itself ran north and south and there was no movement for as far as her eye could see, and that was to the horizon, both ways. ‘Where in all the demon’s magic did they go?’ she whispered.
They had vanished in a snap. One minute they were in front of her, the horses baulking when they tried to get them to climb. Idiots. No horse could manage that cliff. When she looked again, after marking the warriors’ approach, they’d vanished. It was like they’d dropped out of sight, falling foot first into the underworld. But nobody could do that, could they? It was only a child’s story—a witch who could disappear into the ground. She twisted around again to gauge the distance of the warriors. Too close! The sun glinted off their drawn swords and she could feel the ground beneath her rumble as the horses thundered towards her. She had to hide, and quickly. The Corsanon troops were out for blood and she had no intention of letting them have any of hers. ‘Damn you, witches! Where did you go?’
She swung the shovel from her shoulder and thrust it into the ground, blinking as a purple light wisped through the air. Before she could investigate, the rumble of the troops turned into shouts. The blow and churn of the horses brought her head around again and she saw how fast they’d advanced. ‘Damn you too, Corsanon pigs!’
If this was a portal, it was shut tight and they’d left her no key. She stomped the shovel with her foot, sinking it deeper into the soil, and started up the cliff, her tattered brown cloak a perfect camouflage. She scrabbled over boulders, pressing herself flat and climbing higher and higher up the quarry wall. They couldn’t ride after her. She was safe from that threat, but their scouts might follow on foot. Of course, their bulk would slow them down, if they could manage at all. No one she’d ever known could climb as well as her, not even Xane. Like a spider, she could find footings and handholds where there were mere juts of rock to grasp. She could squeeze into cracks only a waif of a girl would fit. Her thin, boyish body wouldn’t have made her much on the streets of Corsanon but it was her best friend here. Like the witches she’d been tracking, she vanished, leaving only her shovel behind to baffle them.
CHAPTER 3
TENSAR & CORSANON, GAELA
Shane leaned over the cave pool; his torch illuminated the water. It was a familiar place, the caverns that bordered the Black Swamp, and the sensation of standing there, peering into the depths of the pool, brought back memories of his travels with Rosette.
The surface of the water was like a mirror revealing the outline of his body, a silhouette. He couldn’t spot Selene behind him, but he knew she was there. He could feel her breath on his neck. And what was that sound? Was she actually tapping her foot? ‘Can you relax?’ he said, his jaw barely moving.
‘Not really.’ Her voice was cool, a contrast to the cave’s sultry atmosphere.
‘Then at least back