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There were hundreds of lines to this charm, and if Will were to skip even one, it would not work. He had labored hard to memorize them all. Now, as he neared the final stanzas, Will felt the thoughts of the queen mare like a silvery brook flowing alongside his own. They were coming together now, moving as one, muscle upon muscle, thought on thought, a breath away from being a single shared essence in two bodies.
"Riding seems easy to he who rests indoors But courageous to he who travels the high-roads On the back of a sturdy horse."
She was breathing hard now. Horses could only run at a lull gallop for brief periods of time, though those who did not know them imagined them continuing thus for hours on end. The queen mare was winded—Will could feel a sympathetic pain in his own chest—and if she did not stop soon and walk it off, her great heart would burst within her.
This was the moment of crisis. Will had to convince her that accepting him as a rider was preferable to death.
Laying his cheek alongside her neck, still singing, he closed his eyes and entered her thoughts. There was neither color nor light in the queen mare's world, but her sensorium was wider and more varied than his own, for she was possessed of a dozen fractional senses. Riding her mind, he felt the coolness coming off of the walls, and the dampness or dryness of the ground before them. Tiny electrical charges lying dormant in the conduits and steel catwalks that flashed past tickled faintly against his awareness. Variant densities in the air slowed or sped sounds passing through it. Smells arrived in his nostrils with the precise location of their origins. Braids of scent and sound and feel wound together to give him a perfect picture of his surroundings.
Now Will thought back to the farmlands outside his old village, and recalled the dusty green smell of their fields and the way that in late afternoon the sun turned the seeded tops of the grasses into living gold. He pictured the cold, crystalline waters of a stream ru
He sang the last words of the charm. Now he found himself murmuring into the queen mare's ear.
"Ohhhh, sweet lady," Will crooned. "You and I, mother of horses—we were meant to be. Share your strong back with me, let me ride you, and I will show you such sights every time we travel together."
He could feel the tug of his words on her. He could feel her resolve weakening.
"I'll take good care of you, I promise. Oats every day and never a saddle, never a bit. I'll rub you down and comb your mane and plait your tail. No door shall ever lock you in. You'll have fresh water to drink, and clean straw to sleep on."
He was stroking the side of her neck with one hand now. She was skittish still, but Will could feel the warmth of feeling welling up within her. "And this above all." he whispered: "No one shall ever ride you but me."
Gently, tentatively, he felt her pleasure at the thought. Joyously, confidently, he showed her his own pleasure that she felt thus about him. Self flowed into self, so that the distinction between fey and horse, he and her, dissolved.
They were one now.
Will discovered that he was weeping. It had to be for joy, because the emotion that filled him now and which threatened to burst his chest asunder was anything but unhappiness. "What's your name, darling?" he whispered, ignoring the tears ru
"I shall call you Epona," he said, "Great Lady of Horses."
For the first time since he could nor remember when, he felt completely happy.
Will was in no hurry to return to the Army of Night's current bivouac. Epona was the swiftest of her breed; he would not arrive last.
"Take me where I need to be," he whispered in her ear. "But slowly." Then he gave the queen mare her head.
They made their way through the darkness by roundabout and pleasant paths. Occasionally a lone electric bulb or a line of fluorescent tubes flickered weakly to life before them, floated silently by, and then faded to nothing behind them. Downward they went, and then upward again. Once. Epona daintily picked her way up a long-forgotten marble staircase with crystal chandeliers that loomed faintly from the shadows overhead like the ghosts of giant jellyfish. They went down a long passage of rough stone so low that Epona had to bow her head to get through. Twice the ceiling brushed against Will's back, though he clung tightly to his mount. He was just begi
The roof of the cavern was not visible, but something glowed softly at its center. It was a ship.
The ship lay near-upright, sunk to the waterline in ancient mud turned hard as rock. It had a wooden hull and its masts lay broken on the ground alongside it where they had fallen. Luminescent white lichen grew upon the wood, glowing gently as corpse-fire. It looked like engravings he had seen of galleons and carracks, and it clearly had been there for a long, long time. How it had come to its final end in a bubble of volcanic rock deep below Babel was a mystery. Doubtless there was a curse involved, a great offense, a mighty spell, and an awesome retribution. Doubtless many had died here in horror and despair... But all that was in the past, and everyone involved was dead and gone to the Black Stone long ages ago.
Epona stopped by the stern of the ship and began to graze upon the lichen growing on its rudder.
Will slid off her back.
"Why are we here?" he asked her. "This was not where I wanted you to take me."
The mare tossed her head impatiently. Will's words meant nothing to her, of course, but she caught the note of reproach in his voice and emphatically rejected it. Feeling the tenor of her thoughts, Will cast back to his original command and realized that he had not visualized any particular place but, rather, had told her only to take him where he needed to be.
"Is this where I need to be, old girl?"
Epona crunched on a mouthful of lichen.
"Well, if this is where I need to be..." Will walked first one way and then another, looking for an entry to the ship, finally he scrambled up a fragment of one of the masts that made a kind of bridge from the ground to the gangway.
No lichen grew upon the deck, but an orange glimmer of lantern-light shone from a tiny window in the forecastle. Carefully, for the wood was soft underfoot and he did not trust it not to collapse under his weight, Will made his way to the fore. Something uncoiled within him and he was flooded with a dark sense of foreboding. He took a deep breath to settle himself, and then knocked on the door.
"It's not locked," the Whisperer said. "Enter."
Will stepped inside.
By the light of a single ceiling-hung lantern, he saw a shadowy boyish figure sitting at a desk at the far end of the cabin, reading. When Will entered, he put down the book and, rising to his feet, stepped into the light. "Hello, Will," he said. "Do you recognize me now?"
Will cried out in terror. "You!"
Before him stood Puck Berrysnatcher.
"I see you do, Good." The boy nodded to a chair. "Have a. seat. We must talk."