Longeye by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Page B

degrees, the rest of who they had been, and so they had faded away entirely, rejoining the elements that had birthed them.
    It was also said that the keleigh never relinquished that which it had claimed, but if anyone could have managed the thing, Altimere thought, closing his eyes against the monotonicity of the mist, it would have been Drakin.
    The keleigh grew stronger on fear, on confusion, on pain. It melted away from power, confidence, and endurance. He had crossed the keleigh many times precisely by keeping his goal before his mind's eye, and riding on, refusing to accept any doubt of his safe arrival.
    So, then, this substance, which was so like, and yet subtly unlike the keleigh . He had allowed himself to be vulnerable and it had attacked that vulnerability. Before he attempted another contact with Rebecca, he must gain and hold mastery over his environment.
    He centered himself, feeling his kest warm at the base of his spine, and the tingle of banked power at his fingertips.
    "I am Altimere, of the Elder Fey," he said, and the mist eddied away from his voice. He rose with studied calm, and with a hand-wave dispersed his chair back into the surrounding murk.
    He took one step forward, another—a third.
    And the mist parted to let him through.
     
    Rosamunde was the wind itself, sweeping between trees and over low-growth.
    From behind them came roars and other noises, that sounded like shouts, or laughter, or both. Ahead was darkness, lightly etched with tree-shine, and the blazing silver bar that was Nancy, scarcely beyond Rosamunde's nose, her wings a smear of color painted on the dark air.
    Of the Brethren, there was no sign.
    Becca lay almost flat, the reins long since lost, her strong arm around Rosamunde's neck, the fingers of her weak hand tangled in mad strands of mane.
    Branches lashed her, as if they would unhorse her, but she clung to Rosamunde's back, and would not, would not fall. The sounds of pursuit fell behind, grew fainter, and fainter yet, until all Becca heard was the wind wailing in her ears.
    "We lost them," she said—or tried to say. She loosened her hold 'round Rosamunde's neck and eased slightly upward, groping for the reins, whereupon two things happened at once.
    The beast that had flushed them from their protecting bush roared out of the shadows toward which they were rushing, two creatures that looked as if they were made out of twigs shouting from its back . . .
     . . . and Rosamunde stumbled.
     
    "Stay close," Meri said to Sam Moore. "We will go quickly."
    The Newman smiled, blue eyes glinting, ripples of humor flowing through the hectic disorder of his aura. "I heard our good Lady give that command," he said. "But why do I come at all? I'll slow you."
    "You can run when it pleases you," Meri returned, settling his bow across his shoulders. "Besides, it will fall to you to take this Newoman in hand. It may be that she simply blundered from the path. But it also may be that she deliberately quit Sian's escort, in a reasoned attempt to escape. In either case, she may be more willing to come away with one of her own."
    Sam frowned. "A prisoner? I—"
    "Queen Diathen's prisoner," Meri interrupted, his attention more than half on the images beginning to form inside his head. "We neither of us wishes to disappoint her ."
    There was a pause, then a light snort, as if of laughter. "You're right there," Sam said. "Lead on, then, and I'll follow as best I can."
    Meri nodded, took his direction, turned to the right, and leapt into a run.
    It was a challenge to travel under the direction of trees. It required the ability to heed both the vision unrolling between one's ears, and the very real landscape through which one ran—and match the two.
    Meri had often done such hunting before his long sleep, and it was only the matter of a few heartbeats before he had picked up the way of it again. It was rather like seeing from both eyes at once—dizzying, disorienting, and oddly energizing.
    He