Enchanted by Janine Ashbless

Author:Janine Ashbless
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780753518724
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Island

You will follow the path of the setting sun

To the eye where the waters will never run,

To your grief succumbing, protecting none.

LEAVING THE FOREST, the path broadened steadily. When it opened into an avenue and cold sunlight fell between the trees, she mounted her horse, certain the elf-lands were behind her. Puki had vanished, melting back into the bushes without a farewell or a last cruel word. Half-blinded by the setting sun after so long in the greenish gloom, she reached the forest’s edge where it gave way to a broad, fast-running river. This was the northwestern tip of the forest crescent, where the river Lan crossed from Cantaland into Minotha, at the beginning of its long journey down to Alvey Port. The last sunlight rippled across the water. Tying her clothes and weapons to the horse’s back, she led it into the river. Her toes cramped with cold. She plunged in, gasping; the current tugged them downstream and before they were halfway across she was clinging to the horse’s mane with numb hands. On the opposite shore, the gravel river bed cut her frozen feet like knives. Shivering violently, she struggled back into her clothes – damp, but not soaked – and built a fire.

The weather worsened as she rode. Kwestria was sheltered by the mountains bordering Udia, Minotha by its forests, but the delta land between the two great rivers was a wasteland across which howling gales drove snow and sleet. She found field mouse burrows and yanked them from hibernation to sudden death. All the time she was travelling, she meditated on the elves’ words, both the riddle and the warnings. The first line was self-evident, although she wondered why they didn’t just say ‘go west’. The second line was opaque, but might turn out to be as plain as ‘the craftsman swift’ had been. ‘Protecting none’: her first duty as queen was the well-being of her subjects. Perhaps, after all her mistakes, she had forfeited that right. They might live longer without her doomed attempts to protect them. ‘To your grief succumbing’: she was willing, but unable, to grieve. The heartsick remorse, yearning, and hope had left her numb, as though it were too big to feel. She just kept riding, to the limits of her and her mount’s endurance, collecting wood when she found it, building fires, sleeping, and waking to ride again.

She hoped to find a barge on the Toan, to avoid another chilling swim, but the river lay empty in either direction. Drift-wood bobbed in the ice on the water’s edge. Now Swift’s teaching or tools would have proved useful, she realised glumly. She found a log to help keep her afloat, tied her things on the horse’s back, and wrapped the reins tightly around her hand. It neighed angrily and reared when she tried to lead it into the freezing water until, yelling and beating it, she drove it in. The powerful flow swept them away. The horse flailed desperately, dragging

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