Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) by Jordan MacLean

me,”
shouted Dith over the clatter of the horse’s hooves, as if the horse would
understand him better if he spoke aloud, “so…what am I to call you?”  He
fancied he felt surprise followed by a mental shrug from the animal as it moved
faster and faster over the rocks and fallen branches.  It had always simply
been horse/conveyance/beast-of-burden, never a being with a proper name, and
one day, as it had been told angrily on more than one occasion, it would be
food for dogs.
    Stale feed in a bin, a whip across his flank, a tank of
dirty water to drink…from the images and feelings Dith gathered from the horse,
Hallin had treated this creature very harshly and with little more than
contempt, as if horses that would carry a mage could be found at every
crossroads.  Amazing.  Hallin had clearly had no idea of the treasure he had in
this animal.  Here was a horse who could one day be the equal of Zinion or even
Alandro with the proper care and training.  His own horse.  His––
    “Glasada,” Dith said suddenly, his voice surging with each
galloping step.  He remembered the last time he had seen a glasada danced, almost exactly a year ago during the last Feast of Bilkar.  It was
beautiful, fast and complex, evocative of the steps of one walking gingerly
across an ice floe and testing each step.  Dith was no dancer and could not
hope to keep up with the dance, but Gikka––his beautiful Gikka––danced it
expertly, putting even the barefoot Bilkarian monks to shame.  The name was
perfect.  “What do you think?”
    As if to show how well the name suited him, the horse moved
confidently down the steep descents and over the snow covered deadfall without a
misstep.
    “Very well, Glasada it is.”
    Eventually, Dith stopped panicking at every turn and let
himself trust this new companion––trust Glasada––to find his way, needing only
to tell him their destination was Pyran.  Oh, not merely the name of the city
since he could not expect the horse to know where Pyran was, but the vague
direction and route they would take.  What would have taken him the better part
of a month afoot should take them no more than a tenday together, if that.
    “Brilliant, boy.  Absolutely brilliant.  A horse.  I’d
never have imagined…”
    He could not ignore it any longer.  The voice in his mind
was louder now, clearer, and most definitely not his own––a separate presence
inside his mind.  Surely this could not be the horse speaking to him…
    “Much better than how I should have gone about it
myself.”
    Dith shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears and
felt the drip of blood welling in his nose, just as he had in the depths of the
Keep.
    “It’s all well and good to go porting here and porting
there, but those in Pyran are a little touchy about such flagrant displays
since I…well, since the landbridge fell.  No sense of humor, Hadrians, none. 
So bravo, my boy, bravo.”
    The landbridge?  So his suspicion was true, then.  The voice…
    Less than a day had passed since he had left Galorin’s Keep,
less than a day since the great obsidian chamber had closed itself behind him
and sunken back into the depths of the mountain, but already the whole
experience was taking on a dreamlike and distant quality, as if it had happened
to someone else or perhaps was all nothing but his own fancy. 
    He replayed the memory in his mind, refreshing it,
reinforcing it.  It was real.  He knew it was.  He would not forget.
    He’d stepped down the obsidian stairs to find exactly what
he’d expected, shelves full of sheaves and scrolls which contained millennia of
logs of experimentation, historical accounts, and dissertations concerning
certain aspects of the Art, all written in different languages, different hands… 
He’d read a few of the most recent ones and fought down a sense of
disappointment.  Certainty trees with their thready branches into possibility
and near-possibility, strands of power,