Falcons of Narabedla by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

dreamy unreal quality, like noises through a nightmare. We had left the forest and were riding across a dark and hummocky plain. Moss padded our hoof-noises; now and then some small furry thing skittered across the track we were following and twice my horse shied at swooping birds and my heart stopped until I saw they were not the falcons of Evarin.
    Stark and black against a treeless horizon I could see the Dreamer’s Keep, between the small crescents of the two lesser moons. The largest one rode a golden orbit over my head. I rode hunched in the saddle, my eyes on the vast cairn only a few miles away.
    Suddenly a vast arch of lightning spanned the sky above the Dreamer’s Keep. Blue lightning. I heard Narayan groan like a man in his death-agony. Twisting in my saddle, I saw brooding horror on his face—mingled with pain—and a terrified satisfaction. “The sacrifice—I still—feel it,” he breathed in labored gasps, “I still—take from it—Mike! Mike—” His voice held unbearable torture, and the veins in the fair face stood out, black and congested with effort. “If I start to work for—them—promise—promise to shoot me—”
    â€œOh God—” I gasped.
    â€œMike, promise! Gamine!”
    Gamine spurred the horse to his side; I heard the low voice, sweet, almost crooning. Again the vast arch of blueness spanned the sky. Narayan dug spurs savagely into the side of his horse and raced ahead of us. On the plain, limned starkly against the sky, a horseman appeared. He rode low in the saddle, his horse carrying a double burden, but racing fleetly—to the Keep of the Dreamers. I cursed—I knew that lean crouched figure, knew it as well as my own! Adric rode to the sacrifice—and before him, limp across his saddle, he bore Cynara!
    The rest of that nightmare ride is a blank in my mind. The next thing I remember clearly is reining up beneath the lee of the gaunt pile of rocks-on-rocks that was the Dreamer’s Keep. There was no sign of Adric or Cynara, no sign of any living person, nothing but the incandescent blue lightning that rayed out now every four seconds or so; Narayan’s face was a white death-mask, and Gamine’s breathing came in short sobbing pants. I alone was free from the effect. My body throbbed and tingled with the weird energy set free in the night. We flung ourselves from our horses. Gamine tugged futilely at the torn veilings to conceal her face, and for the first time the blurred invisibility wavered and I caught a glimpse of one blue eye, blue as the sky lightnings that rose and flared and died.
    The lee of the tower dwarfed us with its massive bulk. Gamine clutched my arm, the cruel fingers digging bruisingly into my flesh. “Listen!”
    I strained my ears. All I could hear was a low, not unpleasant humming, like the singing drone of great bees or high-tension wires; but the sound struck both aliens with horror. Narayan opened his lips—
    I dug frantically in my other pocket; brought out the Toy Rhys had given me. At sight of it Narayan’s haggard face relaxed a little. He caught it from me with quick hands. “Free of Adric—” he breathed with that swift erasure of tension I had seen before. He drew a long, moaning sigh. He closed his eyes for a moment.
    Somewhere above us a scream rang out; a cry bestial in its mad appeal. It broke the static immobility that held us, and Narayan, sliding the Toy inside his shirt, turned and began to run around the Tower, Gamine and I panting at his heels.
    We came around the corner beneath an arching outcrop of stonework. No one needed to give orders; as one, we scrambled up on the ledge, crowding close together.
    I gripped my hand on the knife in my belt. It had a comforting feel. I needed that.
    A framed archway let us look down into the inside of the Keep. Below us a voice cried out despairingly—unbelievingly. “Adric—”