Page 56 of The Simurgh

His mind’s voice broke with desperate intent. And a miracle found its way through the monumental magick at work.

Hesitation,yearningto stay, pulsed through him. Wound itself around his veins, tugged at his depths. Gripped his heart. The wildness had heard his cry, and better still, the beast was listening.

A wondrous cease-fire occurred, in a battle Pitch had never thought to stop fighting.

Resist them. Defy them. It is what your maker intended for you…for us.

There, in the midst of the maelstrom, at the heart of the cage, the wildness stood down.

Waited on him, as all else burned.

Elation soared through Pitch.That’s it. We can…

The sorcerers’ recital grew louder. Gabriel’s hands squeezed Pitch thin. And Iblis’s eyes burned and swirled like the lava flow of the River Lethe.

‘Too little, too late,’ the Archangel snarled.

The summons of the sorcerers, the Archangel and the Exarch consumed Pitch. A wildfire of ice and flame.

The beast shifted, morphing into something mindless. The tenuous hold on Seraphiel’s creature slipped from Pitch’s grasp, the Cultivation maddened by a desire to escape that no amount of pleading could restrain.

The cage shattered. The wildness soared towards its false freedom.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY RODEat a hectic pace. An unnatural speed that blinded Silas with tears, the evening just one long black blur around him. There was a fog, he thought, for there was a lightness closer to the ground, but Lalassu moved him through it like an arrow shot from the bow. She held him secure, woven in with her mane as their pace superseded anything resembling sensible. Silas sat with his own cold memories of how Hastings had done just the same, keeping he and Pitch held together as they raced for some illusion of safety.

Silas clamped his fingers together so he could feel the firmness of the ring. How often had he whispered to this piece of blasted metal? It had become akin to an addiction. But he found a comfort in imagining that his words might find his prince. A delusional comfort, he was near certain, for there must be astonishing powers at play to keep the bandalore from whispering back to him. So he journeyed blindly.

But not without hope.

The certainty of being on the right path was a tiny pearl inside him, forming in doubt’s grit. Growing with every equine stride. He touched his thumb to the ring.

Perhaps the bandalore spoke after all, and he’d been listening for a shout, when it was the tiniest of whispers that came.

Silas and Lalassu churned their way over the miles. He saw nothing but blurred landscape. If there were any hint of the carriage, airborne or not, he did not spy it.

On they ran.

Do not give up hope.His words to the prince. So Silas should bloody well follow his own advice.

He was so absorbed with keeping his panic buried, that he did not notice the mare slow until the slam of his arse against the saddle jolted him back to the here and now.

‘Is there something wrong?’

Lalassu tossed her head, and the lengths of her mane swept forward, like a fantastical headdress.

There beneath the silvery glow of a night sky smeared with cloud, was a smattering of houses, down in the shallow depths of a valley that lay at the foot of a great hill. The hill had an entirely flat top, like a table for a giant. Silas swallowed, not enjoying how the thought stirred memories of the Herlequin. Nor how perfectly this view matched that of what he’d seen through the eyes of the teratism.

‘That is Pendle Hill.’

A definitive toss of the head came from the mare.

Christ, this could be the very spot where the teratism had stood. The view’s exactness was striking. Perhaps no coincidence at all. His bond with the dead was strong. Perhaps a trace of the teratism drew them here.

Silas’s fingers went again to the ring. He felt nothing untoward, heard no notes that might place the dead around him. The scythe was dormant, as still as the valley appeared to be. All of it illuminated by a glow that normally came with a full moon. There was none visible through the cloud cover, and even if it had poked through, he knew the moon a waning crescent.

The hour must be late, for even amongst the houses, there was very little sign of candlelight, most of the homes veiled in darkness. Silas could detect no movement within the narrow streets, but what he could see was the church, with its rather obtuse tower capturing much of that strange silver glow. The tower was squat and perfectly square all the way up, different to the more needle-like spires favoured in other counties. A simple church lay with it, rather small. Certainly unimpressive.