alternative was clearly necessary, and Rhoslyn had sought for and found an Unformed region where the mists of formative stuff were particularly thick and sensitive. There she had worked over many years, gathering, forming, strengthening, and transferring crude sentience until she had created two beasts, not horses, certainly not elvensteeds, but something she and her brother could ride. The not-horses were stronger and cleverer than the mortal animals and far more vicious, but they could be controlled. One important aspect of the elvensteeds that Rhoslyn had not yet been able to duplicate was their ability to travel Underhill or reach it from the mortal world, and vice versa, without a Gate.
The twins mounted, after cuffing the restive mounts. Pasgen led, since it was his private domain—or one of them; Rhoslyn was not sure how many he had—to which they were going. He rode past the elaborate Gate Vidal Dhu had built outside the palace courtyard, straight ahead until the manicured lawn began to disappear into a tangle of trees and bushes. Only, when they came really close it was apparent that these were not well-defined constructs but blurred and ill-formed figments.
"He called us lazy," Pasgen muttered. "I wouldn't leave a dog-kennel in this half-done condition."
"It makes it easier to know where we are," Rhoslyn said, applying a sharp mental prod to the not-horse, which started to shy at the approach to the edge of reality.
Pasgen snorted and Rhoslyn recognized the strange mixture of awe and contempt: awe for the enormous power that could create the semblance of a large forest, probably with one careless gesture; contempt for the sloppy indifference that would then leave the work half done. Rhoslyn wondered as they passed through the ill-defined border and out into nothingness,