The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [26]
One day that axe would be his.
* * * * *
As a girl, Robyn had spent many hours atop the high tower of Caer Corwell. These had been times of delight and disappointment, of joy and sorrow. Whatever her mood, however, the vista of green moor and gray-blue firth beneath glowering clouds or skies of limitless blue had never failed to soothe her anxieties and focus her mind.
Now, though she was High Queen of the isles, she found that the lofty perch had the same soothing and spiritual effect. Since her return to Corwell, she had spent parts of each day up here, sometimes accompanied by her husband or oldest daughter but more often, as now, alone.
The tower wasn't an eminent structure compared to grand Caer Callidyrr, where the royal family made their permanent home. It loomed high above this small castle, however, and when its height was added to the crowning knob of rock that served as Caer Corwell's foundation, it created a vantage almost impossibly remote from the sweeping grass and water below.
Today the clouds were friendly, clean and white, floating gently through the field of blue far overhead. Their shadows gave the limitless moor a dappled effect as patches of sunlight brightened the grass to an almost luminescent brilliance between darker shadows.
Some intuition that she couldn't identify drew her attention to the east, where the long line of the King's Road faded into the high distance. There, high above the ground, she detected a gleaming pinpoint of light. At first she thought that a shooting star, bright enough to flare in the daylight, crackled through the sky at the limits of her vision. But the thing didn't seem to move-at least not perceptibly. Instead, it remained fixed in place, if anything growing slowly brighter. She observed it for several minutes, far longer than any shooting star could last even if it found a way to stay in one place for the duration of its spectacular life.
Then the High Queen understood: The flare appeared to stand still because it approached her! Growing steadily brighter, it passed beneath the clouds, and as it neared Caer Corwell, it slowly began to descend. Now she saw sparks of light falling away from the thing in a stream, like embers dropping from a blacksmith's forge in the wake of his shaping hammer.
A sense of foreboding slowly closed about the queen. Vaguely she heard castle guards shouting an alarm, heard trampling feet as men raced onto the walls and lower towers to gape at the approaching phenomenon.
By this time, she could see that the spot of light was actually an object, and slowly it became more detailed, sweeping into a long curve to approach the courtyard itself. She saw a chariot of crackling flame, pulled through the air by two blazing horses and swooping downward with ever-increasing speed. It looked more like a diving hawk than a galloping horse.
Finally she saw the passengers, two men standing in the box of the chariot, one holding the flaming reins and the other, a tall, slender fellow whose trousers flapped around his long, sticklike legs, standing alertly beside the driver.
"Keane!" she shouted, recognizing the tall man at last.
And then the fact of his arrival struck home. This wasn't Bakar Dalsoritan returning with the magic-user to the Moonshaes.
Immediately her foreboding flared into a full sense of alarm. She wasted no time with the tower stairs. Instead, she pitched herself from the rim of the parapet, immediately altering her features into those of another creature favored by the goddess. As a white hawk, she spiraled through a descent into the courtyard of the humble castle, returning to her human body in the instant before her claws touched the paving stones of the wide enclosure.
The flaming chariot swooped over the castle wall. Keane waving frantically to deter dozens of archers who seemed ready to let fly even without the command of their captain. Fortunately the tall mage was a familiar figure to these men, and they lowered their weapons to stare in astonishment at the enchanted transport.
The chariot finally