A Princess of the Chameln Read Online Free PDF

Everything depended now on poor Moon and on Sharn’s ability to stay in the saddle. They had no protection; the road led round the head of the lake, a stout causeway of wood and stone set in marshy ground. The village rose up before them; the ancient pile dwellings hung in air over the lake shallows. The barns and the Meeting Hall on higher ground were roofed with red shingles, still wet from the storm.
    They rode on steadily; there was a sound in the air; Aidris did not need to look back. The call of the silver hunting horn had drawn out archers, to shoot them down as they rode. The danger was so great that it made her senses more acute. She saw the hump of a wooden bridge drawing near, saw an arrow strike into its right-hand rail. She shouted to the prince, urging him forward, and took in at the same time the marsh below the bridge covered with blurred clumps of white. She swung Telavel off the road at a soft place and rode into the marsh.
    A hard hand thumped her shoulder and another shook her saddle. Sharn Am Zor was on the bridge, clinging desperately to his pony’s neck, but lasting. Then the air was alive with angry sound and hurtling white bodies. A hundred swans flew up honking with fury as Telavel splashed among them. They brushed Aidris with their heavy bodies and huge webs; they screened the bridge and the marsh with their beating wings. Aidris rode on, feeling her breath come in strange gasps. She brought Telavel out onto the road again beyond the bridge, while the swans still wheeled and circled noisily.
    Sharn was safe. He had ridden into the shelter of a tall thatched archway over the road on the outskirts of the village. Two men came from their boat, a woman in a red tunic came running along the jetty of the first house. Up ahead a small crowd of figures pressed down the causeway.
    Aidris rode slowly under the archway. The sunlight was fading a little, something seemed to drag her downwards, she could hardly hold the rein. Sharn had dismounted. He stood propped against the trembling Moon, still hugging her neck.
    â€œAidris . . .”
    He could only stare and stare at her.
    â€œChild!” said the woman. “Dear merciful Goddess, who has done this? Get help here . . . take her down.”
    â€œShe is Dan Aidris!” cried Sharn Am Zor. “We were attacked!”
    Dimly, as she was lifted from her horse, Aidris saw half a dozen men and women rush onto the bridge shouting angrily. A child came by nursing a dead swan with an arrow through its breast. Among the persons who lifted her down she saw a young man with long flaxen hair and a pale face. He wore a spray of oak leaves in his straw hat. She twisted her head to look for the blue riders, but saw only the long arrow embedded in her own left shoulder.
    She saw a candle flame and dreamed that she was in the world of the stone. The Lady of the stone was caring for her; the Lady had taken all her pain and care away. She had healed the world and made it whole again. The dream vanished with the whiff of fever herb and the feel of bed linen against her skin. She lay on her back propped up with many pillows; at least this meant that the arrow had been removed. Earlier she had been lying face downwards, forced into consciousness by pain.
    â€œDrink, princess,” said a man’s voice.
    She sipped a warm brackish draught from a metal cup held to her lips. The man was holding a candle because the place they were in was cavernous and dark. Yet she knew it was still day, in fact not much time had passed. She looked up to the beams overhead and knew that she was in the Meeting Hall of Musna Village.
    â€œYour right hand,” said the voice. “Move your right hand.”
    She obeyed, focussing on him at last.
    â€œNow the left. Move the fingers of your left hand.”
    It felt like a dead thing, a block of wood strapped across her chest. She concentrated and the fingers moved. There was a numbness in her shoulder that masked a deep