Spell of Fate | Page 7

open. They had entered a section of forest where the
path was both narrower and twistier than it really needed to be, and also
happened to be snaking through a series of chest- and then head-high
gullies. Reddening leaves covered the ground. It was, after all, fall, but
it was still early in the season, and these were a lot more leaves than
they'd seen anywhere else in the forest. It could be that this particular
area had had a recent windstorm, Max was thinking, perhaps coupled
with too little foot traffic to disturb the leaves since then. He'd seen the
obvious trace of a wheel-rut in various places they'd already passed on
the path, but Max knew he wasn't a good enough tracker to tell how
long ago the cart had gone through. Still, even with these plausible
natural explanations, was it possible that someone had deliberately
spread leaves out across the path?
Max looked around him at the forest on either side. Unfortunately, this
was one of the spots where the banks of the gully were above his head.
From the back of the horse, though, his vantage point would be
significantly better. He raised his hand to tell Jurtan to stop and stepped
up into the stirrup.
Following behind Max, Jurtan had been hearing an undulating,
traveling string motive in a succession of major keys that he supposed
was symbolic of forest murmurs or some such. For background
accompaniment it was fairly pleasant, as his internal music ran; it was
nicely tonal and more representational than conceptual. Jurtan was
much fonder of melody than the atonal screeching stuff, which tended
toward sour harmonics and sharp sudden squeals, but even now, with
his greater level of control, he didn't usually have a choice. Over the
last few minutes, though, a menacing deep bass theme had gradually
appeared behind the forest music, which itself had just modulated to
minor. Jurtan was looking around himself too, trying to figure out
which direction the menace might be coming from, and so he didn't

immediately see Max raising his hand and pausing his horse. As a
result, when the loud harsh voice of a steerhorn opened up with a
quivering blast from the edge of the gully just behind Jurtan's head,
spooking his horse and Jurtan both, Jurtan had no idea how close he
had drawn to Max and his horse. In the process of leaping out of its
skin, Jurtan's horse only knocked him spinning off to the right and into
the earthen bank, from whence he went sprawling toward the leaves,
but it hit Max full on just as its stride lengthened and it really started to
dig in.
Max separated from the stirrup and hurtled toward the ground just
ahead of the charging horse's front hooves. Jurtan, watching with
slow-motion clarity and stunned fascination on his own trajectory
toward the ground, could see that at the same moment as Max's chest
hit the path the horse was going to land on his back with its full
galloping momentum and punch Max's spine through his heart. Then,
an instant later, Jurtan was equally sure that Max had pulled off some
slick piece of sorcery and had teleported or dematerialized himself out
of the way, since he had hit the layer of leaves and disappeared. An
instant after that as the horse's forelegs began to disappear as well and
the horse lurched forward off balance, Jurtan realized that no magic had
to be invoked after all. Just ahead of them the leaves had concealed a
pit.
Max knew if there were spikes in the pit he was in trouble. He used the
thump the horse had given his back to wind himself forward, spinning
head-first down. Above him, Jurtan's horse, still on solid ground
beyond the edge of the pit, pushed off strongly with its hind legs, trying
to use its momentum to clear the pit's far rim, which was now visible
since the net that had held up the leaves was collapsing under Max's
weight. Unfortunately, the front of the horse was already twisting
downward after Max. The horse started to do a forward cartwheel and
hit the far lip of the pit halfway along its forelegs.
Jurtan rolled over once in the leaves just short of the pit and came to
rest facing upward, giving him a perfect view of another net with lead
weights woven into its sides descending from the top of the gully

straight toward him. Also centered in Jurtan's field of view was the
underside of Max's horse, which Jurtan had fetched up next to in his
roll. Max's horse was tossing its head and stamping its legs nervously,
but it hadn't decided to take off like Jurtan's. Accordingly, instead of
draping itself over Jurtan the thrown