Medieval 03 - Enchanted

pattern that became more bleak
with each hour the storm raged.
    “Stagkiller found no sign that we had passed
Ariane in the storm,” Erik said. “She must have gotten
a horse somehow. She is somewhere ahead of us.”
    “It is so cold,” Simon whispered.
    “She wears Learned cloth.”
    “Is that enough to keep her warm?”
    “Eat,” Erik said, ignoring the
question. “We will ride until the storm eases. Then I will
send my peregrine aloft.”
    But the storm didn’t lose its strength until
the men were at the edge of the sacred Stone Ring itself. The
standing stones were not visible, for an icy mist clung to the
ground. Erik and Simon reined in their weary horses while
Stagkiller flopped on the ground and panted great puffs of silver
that were quickly swallowed in mist.
    The peregrine stepped from her saddle perch onto
Erik’s gauntlet, fluffed her feathers and opened her beak as
though already tasting the freedom of the wind. Erik whistled with
piercing clarity. The falcon answered with a rill of music too
sweet by far to have come from a predator’s throat.
    With a swift movement of his arm, Erik launched
Winter into skies that matched her name. The falcon’s narrow,
elegant wings flared and beat rapidly as she climbed into the icy
mist.
    Simon watched the bird with fear and hope combined.
Long after the brilliance of the mist-veiled sunlight made his eyes
water, he stared into the distance, his whole body tense.
    But it was nothing to the tension Simon felt when
Winter quickly arrowed back down out of the sky with a long,
keening cry. The Learned man whistled back and forth with his
peregrine until Simon wanted to shout at them.
    Then Erik turned and looked at Simon with grief in
his tawny eyes.
    “ Nay ,”
Simon snarled fiercely. “I won’t hear it! Ariane is alive .”
    Erik closed his eyes for a moment before he told
Simon what neither man wanted to know.
    “Ariane…” Erik’s voice
faded into an aching thread of sound. “Ariane is beyond your
reach.”
    “ She is
alive .”
    “Ariane lies motionless within the second
ring ofstones,” Erik said carefully.
“That is all Winter was permitted to see.”
    “Permitted? What in the name
of—”
    “The second ring,” Erik interrupted
curtly, “can’t be weighed or measured or touched. It
simply is . You have never acknowledged
that. Therefore, alive or dead, Ariane lies beyond your reach. We
shall see if she also lies beyond mine.”
    Erik urged his horse forward. Tensely Simon
watched. Once he had tried to track Meg into a sacred ring. He had
failed. Then he had tried to help Duncan track Amber, only to be
brought up short by another sacred circle of stones. Again he had
been baffled by the ancient secret of the stones.
    If there is any secret ,
Simon told himself savagely. If !
    Yet even as he doubted, fear blossomed in a
soundless black rush.
    What if she is there and I
cannot reach her ?
    No answer came to Simon save the growing certainty
that the ancient places would test him as they had tested Dominic
and Duncan in turn.
    But unlike the other men, Simon feared he would
fail. He had neither Dominic’s shrewdness nor Duncan’s
berserker will.
    How can I find something I
can’t see or hear or touch? How in God’s name did
Dominic and Duncan manage ?
    Erik’s horse stopped as though it had been
turned to stone.
    “It is closed to me,” the Learned man
shouted angrily. “By all that is holy, it is
closed!”
    Fear and anger combined in Simon, making him
savage. He spurred his horse toward the ancient monoliths whose
faces were veiled in mist. His horse galloped up the hill and then
stopped as though brought up against a keep’s wall.
    Simon had been expecting as much. He kicked freeof the stirrups and landed with catlike grace
on the uncertain ground.
    “There is no place I won’t go to find
Ariane,” Simon shouted at the stories, “and to hell
with what is and what is not .”
    Like a warrior going into battle, Simon strode
toward the monoliths looming out of the mist ahead of him.
    “Ariane! Do you hear me?” he
called.
    Nothing came back to him but a falcon’s
clear, keening cry rising from the throat of a Learned man.
    Simon set his teeth and kept walking. Tall stones
rose on either side. He stalked between them without looking to
right or left.
    “Ariane!”
    This time even the falcon didn’t answer.
    Simon kept walking. He walked to the mound in the
ring’s center, circled its base, and saw no sign that