Alberich sobbed with relief as the cool air surged into his lungs—the stallion’s hooves hit the ground beyond the flames, and he gasped with pain as he was flung forward against the saddlebow.

Then the real pain began, the torture of half-scorched skin, and the broken bones of his capture, jarred into agony by the stallion’s headlong gallop into the night. The beast thundered toward the villagers, and they screamed and parted before it; soldiers and Voice alike were caught unaware, and not one of them raised a weapon in time to stop the flight.

:Stay on,: the stallion ordered grimly into his mind as the darkness was shattered by the red lightning of his own pain. :Stay on, stay with me; we have a long way to go before we’re safe. Stay with me…:

Safe where? he wanted to ask, but there was no way to ask around the pain. All he could do was to hang on, and hope he could do what the horse wanted.

Through the darkness, under a moonless sky, through cold that froze him as his burns made him feverish. Pain became a constant; he’d have screamed, but he hadn’t the strength, wept, but his eyes were too sore and dry. Yet Alberich was no stranger to pain; it could be endured, and he would endure it. It could be conquered; he would not allow it to conquer him.

Somewhere in the midst of the living nightmare, came the thought that if he lived through this, his own mother would never recognize him, he’d been burned so badly. He would forever wear a face seamed by scars.

An eternity later—dawn rising as red as the flames that had nearly killed him—the stallion had slowed to a walk. Dawn was on their right, which meant that the stallion was heading north, across the border, into the witch-kingdom of Valdemar. Which only made sense, since what he’d thought was a horse had turned out to be one of the blue-eyed witch-beasts…

None of it mattered. Now that the stallion had slowed to a walk, his pain had dulled, but he was exhausted and out of any energy to think or even feel with. What could the witches do to him, after all? Kill him? At the moment, that would be a kindness, and anyway, it was only what his own people wanted to do to him…

The stallion stopped, and he looked up, trying to see through the film that had come over his vision. At first he thought he was seeing double; two white witch-beasts and two white-clad riders blocked the road. But then he realized that there were two of them, hastily dismounting, reaching for him.

He let himself slide down into their hands, hearing nothing he could understand, only a babble of strange syllables.

Then, in his mind—

:Can you hear me?:

:I—what?: he replied, without thinking.