“I’ve got to get to Meer.”
His eyes refused to dry as he headed uphill, rubbing his face on his shirtsleeve. He passed clots of refugees, huddled in doorways, huddled in alleys, weeping and trembling, their children and their animals huddled round them. No one so much as asked him for news, and still the distant screaming went on and on. When he reached the dun, he glanced up to see a few men standing guard on the walls. The gates stood closed, but when he banged and howled, the gatekeeper pulled one just wide enough to let him slip in.
“Where have you been, lad?” the old man snapped. “Your master’s been calling for you.”
Jahdo ran across the ward and rushed into the great hall. The dun’s womenfolk stood or sat near the dragon hearth, huddled together just like the farmwives, noble lady and serving lasses alike. Her face as pale as death, Princess Carra sat slumped in a chair with her dog leaning against her knees, but there was no sign of Yraen. Meer stood right behind her, clutching his staff in both hands, as if he’d taken over the silver dagger’s guard duty.
“Meer, Meer, it’s Jahdo!” Jahdo ran to them, remembered to make a bob of a bow to the princess. “Your Highness.”
Carra raised one hand but said nothing, merely went on staring out at empty air. Lady Labanna seemed to be about to speak, then stayed silent. When Meer reached out a hairy hand, Jahdo caught it and guided it to his shoulder, then leaned against the bard. Here in the dun, the battle noise drifted up from the town muted like an evil wind, howling and whistling round the towers. The sound of the rams seemed only distant drums, beating to some alien song, keeping time with Jahdo’s heart. He could feel himself shaking under Meer’s strong grip, but the bard himself stood perfectly still. Every now and then, Lightning growled; no one spoke.
All at once, the distant howling changed, grew lighter, more human somehow, and silver horns called. The drumbeat stopped. Labanna ran like a lass to the door of the hall.
“Guards, guards!” she called out. “What news?”
Although no one inside could hear the answer, she relayed what scraps of action that the men could see from their high perch. The Horsekin seemed to be—no, they were falling back to their camps. Some of their siege towers were burning. There were a lot of dead Horsekin on the ground, or maybe they were but wounded. Either way, their fellows were leaving them there and pulling clear of the walls.
All at once, Carra got up. She tossed her head, and her hands were clenched hard into fists.
“I hate them,” she hissed. “I hate them all! I wish I could swing a sword, I wish I could stand on the walls and kill one myself. I’d like that, stabbing one and seeing blood!”
“Your Highness!” Ocradda grabbed her by the shoulders. “You’re distressing yourself.”
The other women flocked round her, and suddenly the silence broke. In a flood of chatter and nervous laughter, washing over Carra’s outburst like a bucket of water thrown onto a floor to carry some filth away, the servingwomen swept Carra up and hurried her upstairs. Labanna, however, returned to the hearth.
“I cannot say I blame her highness,” she remarked to no one in particular. “Ah, well, the gods will bring what they bring.”
“Just so, my lady.” Meer swung his head round in her direction. “And well said.”
“No doubt the men will stay on the walls for some while, but I think we may count ourselves safe for the time being.”
“So it would seem, and the princess’s brave words have given my heart strength. When the next attack comes, my lady, my place will be on the walls.”
“My good bard! I don’t mean to be insulting, mind, but I doubt if you could fight—”
“Of course not! But I can invoke the curse of a sworn bard, one acknowledged by gods and men alike, upon the impiety being committed here by these foul swine, these ravening beasts of the northlands, these demon-ridden scum. If a flicker of life remains in their ugly souls, perhaps my words will reach and move them to think better of their deeds.”
“Perhaps so. I thank you.”
As the sound of cheering grew louder, they fell silent, listening to the victory coming toward them from the walls.
“Well, they all know we’ve got dweomer on our side now,” Dallandra remarked. “May the knowledge spoil their night’s sleep!”
“It would have been splendid to see their faces, sure enough,” Jill said, grinning, “when those sparks went out. From now on, one or the other of us has to answer every alarum.”
“True spoken. How long before the next attack? Do you have any idea?”
“Well, if this were an ordinary Deverry war, not for a very long time indeed. But who knows what the Horsekin think? They don’t have cities of their own, Meer tells me, so for all I know, they’ve never even run a siege before.”
Dallandra nodded, considering. They were sitting in Jill’s chamber with frightened Wildfolk clustered round them in gathering dusk. Outside, the last of the sunlight was gilding the western towers and sending long shadows over the ward, where a few servants hurried back and forth without the usual laughter and chat.
“I was expecting our raven to show herself,” Jill said. “I’m surprised she didn’t give you a fight of it over putting out those fires.”
“So am I. You didn’t see her, then? You were the one up on the roofs.”
“Not a feather’s worth of her. I wonder just what sort of dweomer she knows, I truly do. She can shape-change, she knows the dweomer of roads, but what of all the other lore? Is she a woman of the Horsekin? If so, their magicks are crude, or so Meer tells me.”
“Why are you so sure that it’s another woman we’re facing?”
“I met her once when I was flying in my hawk’s form and she was the raven. The falcon could somehow tell that this other bird was female.” Jill smiled briefly. “It’s odd how we mazrakir become the animal we’re mimicking—odd, and a dangerous thing.”
“That’s never happened to me.”
“This sort of dweomer suits your people better than mine. It can be dangerous for a human being to fly too often. You know, that gives me an idea. The raven I saw acted very much like a real bird. Do you think that might mean she’s human, the shape-changer, I mean?”
“It could. We really know next to nothing, don’t we?”
“Just so. If she was there at the battle, why didn’t she start those fires again, the ones you put out? Doesn’t she know how? Was she gone rounding up more warriors? Was she just holding her hand to make us wonder? We have no way of knowing.”
They exchanged a troubled glance.
“There were over eighty Cengarn men wounded and thirty killed outright,” Dallandra said at last. “The chirurgeon tells me that twenty of the wounded are sure to die. It seemed to me that a lot more Horsekin than that were killed. One of the guardsmen counted up a hundred, just on the east side.”
“No doubt. Our men have the position. It’s hard to fight climbing up a ladder. Interesting, isn’t it, that they chose the east gate for their attack?”
Dallandra looked puzzled.
“That used to be the weakest point in the defenses,” Jill said, “until Jorn and his men sealed it up with some sort of dweomer stone they know how to make. They did it after the traitor in the dun had been exposed and killed, you see.”
“Ah. So the Horsekin wouldn’t have known. I do see. Is there anything more we can do, or do we just have to wait for the next time?”
“Just wait, I’m afraid.” Jill tried to smile. “But I think we can sleep well enough after today. The walls are going to hold. That’s one thing we do know.”
“Unless Alshandra finds a way to bring her men over the walls from above.”
“If she does, we’ll be there to greet her.”
Dallandra nodded, thinking something through. Yet again Jill found herself wishing that Nevyn were there. Even if he’d only counseled them to wait, his very presence would have been a comfort—the one person in her own long life that she’d ever been able to t
rust completely, the one person who had always put her welfare above his own while at the same time demanding that she continually live up to everything she was capable of being. As she thought it over, she supposed that he’d been the one person that, in return, she’d ever truly loved. She felt her eyes fill with tears and wiped them away fast on the back of her hand.
“What’s wrong?” Dallandra said.
“Naught. I’m just weary, as well we all might be.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
“Tell me somewhat. I’ve been trying to find out the nature of the Guardians, what they’re made of, I mean.” Jill nodded toward the table, where several of her books lay. “You’ve told me that Alshandra has a soul of sorts. That means her various forms must be like our bodies, right?”
“Housing the soul? Just that, or so I’ve always assumed. They can feel etheric pain, for instance.”
“Indeed? Huh, I wonder then. Suppose we could destroy Alshandra’s astral form. Would it set her soul free to be reborn then? Reborn and gone, I mean, on to some new life, good and far away from us?”
“It should, certainly. But destroying her form’s not such an easy thing.” Dallandra tried for a wry smile and failed. “She’s not as vulnerable as one of us, out on the etheric. Break up our body of light, snap the silver cord—and there we are, dead as a stone in the road. But she doesn’t have a physical body, so she’d have to be absolutely torn to pieces for the same thing to happen.”
“I doubt if either of us have the strength to do such a thing. I doubt if we’d have enough strength together.”
“I doubt it, too—very, very much indeed. Not even Nevyn could have defeated her.”
“You think so?”
“I do. You know how much I respected your master, Jill, but she’s from some different order of being than we are—elves or men, it doesn’t matter. She’s stronger than us all.”
The Wildfolk eddied round them like white water round a rock, then disappeared. The two dweomermasters sat without speaking until night filled the room with darkness.
In the deep mid of the night, after she’d finished renewing the astral seals over dun and town, Jill scried for Prince Daralanteriel. She expected to see him and his men sleeping, but though she found him easily enough, he was wide awake, sitting by a fire in an elven camp with men and women both clustered round him. So! he’d caught up with one alar or another. The prince was talking, waving his hands, tossing his raven-dark hair, and his excitement was like a fire playing over his strikingly handsome face. The people round him nodded in agreement or turned to whisper to one another as his mood spread. As Jill watched, a tall man carrying a staff pushed his way through to the fireside—pale hair, violet eyes—Calonderiel! Jill felt herself grinning with relief. So, Dar had found the one man of all the Westfolk who had the power to call for all-out war. From the twist to Calonderiel’s mouth, from the way his hands clasped the staff as he listened to the young prince, Jill knew that the warleader would summon his people to ride to Cengarn’s aid.
But how soon? When she widened the scope of the vision, she could see only empty grasslands under a dull moon. They could be hundreds of miles away, and besides, it would take Calonderiel time to muster his bands of archers, who lived scattered all over the grasslands. Jill swore aloud, scattering a gaggle of Wildfolk. By the time the elven force arrived, the battle for Cengarn might well be over.
In Evandar’s country, a bare hour seemed to have passed since the army left the beacon tree behind. On this side of the border tree, the forest stretched dead—the trees, black hulks; the shrubs and bracken, spongy peat; the ivy bronzed, clinging to brittle branches. Even the Dark Host rode silent in this wood and kept a watch on every tangled thicket and shadowed dell. Menw kept glancing up at the sky, dark with tattered clouds.
“My lord!” he suddenly cried. “Look! At the edge of the forest!”
Evandar rose in his stirrups and followed the point of his lieutenant’s sword. Through the misshapen trees, he could just make out the form of an enormous hawk, its gray-dappled belly flashing as it swooped off. With a whoop, he urged his army forward, but by the time they burst out of the woods, the bird had disappeared. Not so much as a speck dwindling in the copper-colored sky marked her going.
“So,” Evandar said. “Alshandra’s spying on us in her bird form. I wonder where she may be?”
“No doubt back in the world of men,” Shaetano sneered. “Or off somewhere we don’t even know about. Do you truly think we can catch her? She learned the dweomer of the roads from you, brother dear, and now she’s got many a world she can travel through.”
“So she does, but Elessario only lives in one of them. We have a lure for our hawk, to keep her close.”
Evandar raised one arm and yelled for a halt. Off to their left, the river had sunk and dwindled to a white-water stream, cutting a canyon some twenty feet below the road. Off to their right, the sun hung swollen, as if it swam through the smoke of some enormous fire. Ahead lay plains, as flat and seeming-infinite as those in the Westlands, stretching on and on to a horizon where more clouds—or was it smoke?—billowed like a frozen wave, all copper-red from the bloated sun.
“Ah, the battle plain,” Evandar remarked. “Where once we met, you and I, to discuss this thing or that.”
Shaetano drew back his lips in what might have been a grin.
“I don’t see Alshandra’s rebels anywhere about,” Evandar went on. “If it weren’t for the iron, I’d wonder if she took them down to join the Horsekin army. That would be a pretty sight at Cengarn’s walls, her pack of monsters all mingling with the ugliest flesh and blood I’ve ever seen.”
“My lord?” Menw said. “If it was the nighthawk who came to spy, couldn’t they all be hiding in the clouds?”
“Counsel like that earned you your name, sure enough.” Evandar raised his silver horn. “Let us go see.”
When he blew five notes, the army charged forward onto the battle plain, but as their horses galloped, they climbed, racing higher and higher into the sky, not flying, exactly, rather blown by some huge wind like a river of dead leaves whirled into the air ahead of an autumn storm, or perhaps the army had become the crack of a huge and glittering whip, snaking through the air. Up and up they rode, swirling round on a huge spiral through the coppery smoke until all at once they burst into clear air and silver light.
When Evandar called the halt, it seemed their horses stood on a solid surface, but round their feet and legs billowed mist. Ahead of and all round the army towered huge pillars of cloud, as if they stood in a forest of white brochs. Here and there among them, sunlight fell in golden shafts, while above shone broken tiles of blue sky. The pillars and brochs were drifting, though, some moving one way, some another, merging only to break apart again as they sailed through the air. Shaetano turned in his saddle and stared.
“They could be anywhere,” he whispered. “We could hunt here forever.”
“Indeed, brother? Then we’d best get on our way.”
Lord Tren’s warband had been assigned a campground on the flat not far from the east ridge—a place of honor, or so Tren had been told, but he suspected it of being merely a place where they could be watched. During the abortive assault on the city, Rakzan Hir-li had kept the Deverry men back, too, out of the fighting, as if perhaps he wondered if they’d try to desert right over the town walls. The day after the attack, Tren, along with the other captains, met to discuss the day’s fighting. Although everyone treated him cordially, so few of the Horsekin spoke his language that he had no true idea of what they might be thinking of him. When the council ended, just as night was falling, he fled their company to join his warband in its camp.
Some of these men had ridden for him and been housed in his small dun, but the majority had once been his brother’s men, come over to him after Matyc’s death. They sat huddled round their cooking fires, saying nothing to one another, though a few men sat by themselves, staring out at nothing. His capt
ain, Ddary, a stolid man with close-cropped brown hair, joined him as he walked through the tents. Although Tren tried to speak with the men, most merely listened, mouths set and tight, staring at the ground as if they were waiting for him to be finished and gone.
“You can’t blame them, my lord,” Ddary whispered. “We all saw what happened to Cadry, tied up like that and stabbed. They let him bleed to death like a beast.”
His voice ached with reproach. Tren glanced round, wondering how many of his men had been subverted for spies. The Horsekin made it a policy to sponsor friendly ears in every squad.
“He spoke against her holy war,” Tren snapped. “Do you deny that he got what he deserved? Would you say such a thing aloud?”
Ddary might have been slow, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Never, my lord. The Keepers did what they had to do, sure enough. Blessed be she, who watches over us all.”
When Tren glanced his way, their eyes met in something much like agony. Tren looked up at the sky, darkening to a velvet gray. Off to the east, a few stars were coming out.
“I’d best get back to the other captains. They’re waiting for the high priestess to return.”
Ddary’s hands twitched, as if he were forcibly keeping himself from making the warding signs against witchcraft.
“I see, my lord. Where is she, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“I’ve no idea. She keeps her own counsel.”
But there’s not a man of us who wouldn’t like to know where she’s got to, Tren thought. We could have used the bitch’s help this afternoon. Sorcery! It makes a man’s blood run cold. He spat on the ground, whether the Goddess was watching or not.
Up at Lin Serr, Rhodry was coming to much the same conclusion. That night, he stood at the window of his tower room and watched the stars while he thought of Angmar, remembering the brief months they’d shared, praying to every god that she was well, wherever the island’s mysterious dweomer had taken her. He wondered about Enj, too, keeping his watch up in the mountains. At that moment, with his hiraedd lying upon him, he doubted if either of them would ever see Haen Marn again. At length he lay down and slept, but he dreamt of Angmar, and the view from their bedroom window of the lake, so vividly that when he woke, he nearly wept to find himself not there.