The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [170]
Laz landed on the riverbank to rest and to examine the sack he carried in his talons. It appeared to be whole and unharmed, though he decided to wait to open it to see what had happened to the objects inside until he was safely back on the physical plane. Sometimes they survived these trips; sometimes he found only a strange mass of fibers and a greasy sort of ectoplasmic slime, which tended to evaporate fast in actual physical air, leaving a stink of decay behind it.
As soon as he recovered his strength, Laz pictured Faharn in his mind, brought back every memory of him that he could, and combined them into an image of Faharn, still based on memory. He visualized Faharn’s neatly braided mane of black hair, glittering with silver charms in the sunlight, his cornflower-blue eyes that marked him as the member of a clan with slaves among its ancestors.
All at once the image changed and lived: Faharn was standing beside his bay horse, unfastening an empty nose bag from the horse’s halter. Laz focused on the image and kept his mind upon it as he hopped up onto his sack. With a caw that echoed, strangely hollow, across the dead meadow, he leaped into the air and flew. The image hovered in the air in front of him, always seemingly just a few yards away, never coming closer, till at last it disappeared into a shimmering silver lozenge of pure force: the gate out.
Laz swooped through the gate and found himself flying over a herd of horses, tethered out in a sparse patch of grass. He circled around and saw below him a scatter of crude tents, a campfire burning, and men, pointing up at the sky, yelling and waving. Voices floated up to him, “The raven, the raven!” With a squawk of greeting Laz circled lower until finally he found Faharn. He dropped his sack at Faharn’s feet, then tried to land in front of him. His damaged wing tips betrayed him yet again. He skidded to a halt on his tail feathers, then leaped up with a shake and a croak of rage.
“You’re back!” Faharn sounded on the edge of tears. “Feathers and all!” Tears or no, he grinned as if his face would split from it. “Thank the gods! Thank all the gods!”
Laz formed an image of his physical body, transferred his consciousness over to it, and banished the raven. He heard a click, saw a flash of blue light, felt every nerve in his body vibrate, and regained his human form. For a moment he stood dazed, blinking at the sunlight around him. The men—those he could recognize— started hurrying over to greet him. The strangers stayed some distance away, staring, murmuring among themselves. More than once Laz heard someone say “mazrak” in a hushed voice.
“Back, indeed,” Laz said. “With many a strange tale to tell you, too. Here, let me get dressed.” He knelt down and opened the sack. His clothing had stayed intact and free of the obnoxious ectoplasm. The black crystal, too, lay safely wrapped in rags.
Laz pulled his shirt over his head, then put on his brigga and laced them, a slow process with his maimed hands. When he finished, he paused to look around him. The camp sat in the middle of open land, mostly grass, though trees grew along the streams that wound through it. Stretching off to the horizon were grass-covered mounds of varying sizes, ranging from a mere ten feet or so across to massive artificial hills. They were all too circular in shape for natural features. Some, in fact, looked as if giants had leveled their tops with huge knives, while others peaked like roofs.
“Where are we?” Laz said, pointing. “What are those?”
“First question: about three hundred miles east of Braemel, as close as we can reckon,” Faharn said. “Second question: the Horsekin around here, and there aren’t a lot of them, call this the Ghostlands. Those barrows are the graves of our ancestors, I suppose. I don’t know who else