"I'm so sorry � what did you say?" Syela blushed brightly. She had been so lost in her thoughts that only at the edge of her senses she had noticed Garin talking to her. He was gazing at her again with that liquid look. Syela began to wonder if he was just a little bit dumb.
"I hope I can please you", Garin said. "I have been born to do as you wish."
He WAS dumb, Syela concluded.
While she was fumbling for the most inoffensive answer, she returned to absentmindedly stare at the sky. The drumroll of the thunder steadily grew louder, and the dark grey masses of clouds began to take on strange shapes...
"Ghosts riding through the sky!" a voice hissed close to Syela's ear. With a loud shriek the girl jumped up and caused Garin to lose his balance, sending him and the bench toppling over. "Milena!!" Syela shouted furiously. Sure enough, her friend was standing behind her, holding her sides from laughing hard. "Don't spook me like that!" Syela wasn't done with her tirade. Milena gave the puzzled Garin a hand and helped him to get up, confiding to him with a grin in Syela's direction:"She's afraid of ghosts, you know." � "I am NOT afraid of ghosts!" - "Terribly afraid." � I am NOT!" � "Jumps out of her skin if you mention them." � "Will you stop it!!" For a moment the two girls stopped their volleys of words and glared at each other, Milena with a mischievous glint in her eyes, Syela positively fuming. Garin used the short break by taking Syela by the arm. "Shall we take a walk. Alone." A quick, confusing thought tickled the back of Syela's mind. "He speaks so strangely... as if he were an apparatus." Unfortunately she didn't have time to pursue this thought.
For at that moment a spectral form broke from the threatening clouds, looking like a cloaked rider on a skeletal horse; thunder exploded with a crash, raindrops as big as cherries came down in endless sleets, dousing the bonfire. The villagers started screaming and running to and fro, and in the ensuing chaos only Milena and Garin witnessed the stocky-built caped ghost rider bearing down on Syela, grabbing her with a strong hand, pulling her up onto his fearsome steed and taking her away through the stormy skies.
"Garin!!" Baldar bellowed furiously. "You good-for-nothing... loser!!!" He was so angry that his speech failed him and he couldn't think of any harsher words. For a split second he felt the urge to pick up the Seeing Stone and send it flying against the wall of his study. But then he drew a deep breath, straightened himself and closed his eyes, trying to get back his composure. "No matter..." he whispered. "No matter." If an enraged Baldar was a frightening sight, this icy calm, coolly calculating Baldar was pure terror. "Maybe it won't be so bad, for now, to just wait - and watch things unfold."
Syela was clinging to the rider of the ghost horse for dear life. He was taking her on a breathtaking ride through the skies, darting this way and that. At first she had wondered if he didn't know where he was going, until she realised that his zig-zagging was to shake off any possible pursuers. 'But who could pursue us?' she thought bitterly. 'Does he think my folks know how to fly?!' Acid tears were burning behind her eyelids, and they weren't caused by the biting winds wheezing past them.
After what seemed ages for the frightened Syela, her abducter slowed down his ghastly steed. By now she had realized that the thunderclouds traveled with them, that he used them as a cover so as to appear nearly invisible. 'He DOES believe we're being followed...', Syela thought. The rider's voice shook her out of her reverie. "We're there, love!" he shouted over his shoulder in an amiable voice. "Let's descend!"
As if on cue, the ghostly horse broke through the massive black clouds enveloping them. Syela hurriedly closed her eyes against the unexpected brightness. Dawn was rising fast; the sun in all her glorious reds, oranges and yellows was majestically ascending over the horizon. The girl slowly opened her eyes again and risked a look around.
The landscape that was spreading out beneath her looked so beautiful that it seemed to have come right out of a romantic painting. A large lake was lying just below them, dazzling in the light of the sun that seemed to raise itself right out of its clear blue waters. To the north it was bordered by a range of high, snow-capped mountains. At the far end of the mountain range, where the highest, most ragged-looking peak seemed to scrape the skies, a gigantic waterfall was cascading into the lake, the frothing water producing myriads of little rainbows. Beyond the mountains and as far as Syela's eyes could see there was an expanse of dense forest, the dark green crowns of the trees slowly swaying in a light breeze, whispering secrets into the wind.
Syela still gaped open-mouthed when her abductor turned around and grinned at her. It was the first time she got a look at his face. Where she had suspected the vile visage of a low-down criminal, a cheerful, round face with dark-brown doe eyes and the brightest, most cordial smile she had ever seen greeted her. For a short moment he pressed one of her hands that was still clinging to his waist and said warmly:"Welcome home, Syela."
