He could also pick out the tiny figures of the warriors by the glint and glimmer of their weapons and the mail they wore under long surcoats. It was odd, he reflected, that they’d chosen to ride in armor. Were they expecting an enemy force, out here in the wilderness? Or was it some mark of manhood among them, to expose themselves to heat and exhaustion by riding encased in metal on a summer’s day?
“Rori?” he called out. “Are you asleep?”
“I’m not.” The dragon slithered to the rim of the outcrop and hung his head over the edge to reply. “Why?”
“The Horsekin are riding fully armed. Do you know why?”
“The slaves, of course.” Rori paused for a huge yawn. “When you depend upon slaves, you fear your slaves. I learned that in Bardek. Here they are, some hundreds of miles from home. If all those slaves rose up to murder them, they’d have a nasty fight of it.”
“So they keep their weapons close to their hands, not on a wagon or suchlike where the slaves could steal them.”
“Exactly. Any more questions?”
“None for the nonce, my thanks.”
“Good.” Rori slid his bulk back from the edge. “Wake me when the army saddles up again.”
Waking a sleeping dragon struck Salamander as dangerous enough for a proverb, but he could always, he decided, throw rocks from a distance.
Salamander sat down cross-legged and braced his back against the rock face behind him. He went into a light trance in order to stay fully conscious and alert while he formed the Alshandra image in his mind. He imagined her as a towering figure, her honey-blonde hair pulled back into a single braid, her face grim and glowering with disapproval. He gave her mail to wear and a bow and arrows to carry. Once she lived apart from his will, he slowed his breathing and sank down into a deeper trance.
On the etheric plane the Alshandra image took on dimension and life. She seemed to breathe; she moved this way and that in the billowing blue light. Her hands raised the bow then lowered it. The long years of ritual worship by her cult had formed and ensouled astral images, creating a reservoir of power to quicken such creations as this. When Salamander rose up in his body of light, a silver flame that wrapped him round like a cloak and hood, the image rose with him, then drifted off on its own. After a struggle, he managed to haul it back.
Below him, the army—to his etheric sight—had dissolved into a pulsing river of auras, mostly red shot with gold, while the servants moved through wrapped in darker browns and grays. He could pick out the priestesses by their silver auras, steady points of pure light glowing in the mass yet somehow set apart. All around the sunlight energized the etheric substance in sparks and ripples of silver. The astral tide of Fire was rising and merging with the tide of Aethyr.
Salamander spotted a long wave of Fire energy flowing downhill and launched his image upon it. As she floated toward her worshipers below, she raised her arms and nodded her head. A priestess saw her and shrieked, pointing at the image. In a swirl of silver auras all the holy women turned toward her and began to chant, their signal to the army that their goddess had appeared.
Salamander heard the warriors’ sudden howl of greeting—“Hai! Hai! Hai!”—as a distorted wave of etheric sound, echoing and moaning through the blue light. Long streamers of red and gold swirled upward from the auras of the worshipers below. As their chant and the army’s howls rose toward the image, she battened on the etheric energy that rose with it.
Now came the crux. Could he control the thing? He sent his mind out toward the image and felt as if he’d slammed into a stone wall. The priestesses, with their instinctive dweomer fed by years of worship, had surrounded their goddess with such an outpouring of emotional force that he had no chance whatsoever of reaching the image, not in any subtle way.
In a fit of ill temper Salamander sailed downhill after the false Alshandra. He invoked the Light that shines behind all gods and begged it to destroy the false image he had created. In answer, the tide of Fire brightened around him. He used his flame-clad arm to draw a massive pentagram made of the sparkling light and hurled it at the image.
“Begone! In the name of the Great Ones!”
At the pentagram’s touch, the Alshandra form burst in a shower of sparks as transparent as shards of broken ice. The streamers of red and gold fell back, raining down upon the auras that had originally released them. The priestesses shrieked and wailed, a horrible cry of agony to his etheric ears, while the men of the army milled around like ants when a farmer’s plow opens their nest and kills their queen.
Salamander flew back to his body, still slumped against the rock face. He slid down the silver cord, hovered briefly, then let himself fall back into the flesh. He banished the body of light and woke, panting for breath, soaked in sweat and stiff in every muscle. He staggered to his feet and, leaning against the rock for support, peered downhill at the army.
The priestesses had huddled together, a flower of white robes amidst the dark clothing of their servants. All around them confusion swirled as the warriors rushed this way and that, falcatas in hand as they looked in vain for an enemy they could fight. Horses reared, and servants ran to pull them down again.
“That gladdens my heart to see,” Rori said from above him. “The yelling and screeching woke me, by the by. It looks like your attack struck home.”
“To some extent,” Salamander said. “Not as much as I’d hoped.”
“Well, I can’t let this opportunity go to waste.”
With a massive roar the dragon leaped from the rocks above and flew. After two booming strokes he swept his wings back and fell like a stone hurled from a sling, down and down until Salamander feared he’d dash himself to death on the ground below. At the last moment the dragon swept up again, as silver and bright as steel in the noontide sun. In his claws a Horsekin screamed and writhed—an officer, a rakzan, Salamander realized, because he wore a cloth of gold surcoat. A futile volley of arrows flew after the dragon.
Rori circled once, then deliberately dropped his prey. With one long scream, the rakzan fell toward the center of his army. Warriors and servants alike yelled in panic and ran back and forth to get clear as he plunged onto the ground. The frightened mob blocked Salamander’s view of the corpse, for which he felt nothing but gratitude.
Rori flew back and landed on the rocks directly above him. “I’m going to fly a little ways away to lead them off,” he called down. “I don’t want them coming up here and finding you. I’ll be nearby, though.”
Once again, the dragon took flight. He glided above the milling, shouting army but kept just out of arrow range. He flew off to the north only to turn abruptly west and disappear between two hills. None of the Horsekin followed him. Apparently Rori had misjudged his enemy’s courage, not that Salamander could blame them for their reluctance to chase a murderous wyrm.
Salamander sat down in the shade of the boulders and rummaged through his saddlebags until he found his leather water bottle. He could easily have drunk every drop in it, warm though it was, but he forced himself to save a third of the water for later. As he watched, the army far below regained control of itself. It took several hours, by his reckoning, but eventually the riders formed up in a marching order, the servants and slaves fell in behind, and with the priestesses leading the way, the army began to move, riding slowly and with some dignity toward the south.
Once the last of them had disappeared, and the cloud of dust they’d raised had settled, Rori returned to the outcrop. Salamander gathered up his gear and climbed back up to his brother’s scaly side.
“I was hoping they’d stay here,” Salamander said. “These rocks make a perfect watchtower.”
“There are other spots like it farther south,” Rori said. “We’ll follow them and see where they make their night’s camp.”
Not far off, as it turned out. Some six miles to the south the Horsekin halted their column under steep and rocky cliffs on the west side of the valley. As they spread out to pitch tents and hobbl
e horses, Rori and Salamander landed some hundreds of feet above them in the shelter of a scraggly growth of trees that reminded Salamander of the dark and twisted Cerrgonney pines. Some ways back from the cliff edge Salamander found a stream big enough to quench both their thirsts, though Rori had to push through and trample undergrowth to reach it.
“What now?” the dragon said when he’d drunk his fill. “Do you want to wait till morning for another strike?”
“I’m not sure.” Salamander debated briefly with his own natural caution. “I think I’ll make a feint at twilight. If that goes well, I’ll make my main strike on the morrow.”
“I’ll leave them be for now, then. I don’t want to spoil your thrust.”
The thrust Salamander had in mind was dangerous enough without a dragon interfering with his concentration. The only way he could control the image adequately, he decided, was to turn it into a body of light and ride inside it, as it were, out on the etheric plane. The operation would drain his own life force, but if the worshipers below responded as they’d done earlier, he would have their power to absorb and replenish it. Perhaps. He’d never heard of any dweomermaster attempting this particular working. If any had, they’d not lived to record the knowledge they’d gained.
Just at sunset, when the astral tide of Water was just beginning to run in, Salamander created his image again, though this time he equipped her with a Horsekin-style falcata instead of a bow and arrow. When he slipped into the deeper trance, he banished his usual body of light. He held the Alshandra image steady in front of him, then imagined looking out of its eyes, imagined moving its arms as if they were his own arms. Suddenly, he heard a rushy click like a metal sword striking a wicker shield. He was no longer imagining but looking out of the image’s eyes. When he glanced back, he saw the silver cord running from Alshandra’s solar plexus to that of his physical body, which lay inert well back from the cliff edge where he’d left it.
Salamander held the falcata vertically in front of the image. He sailed free of the cliff edge and began to drift downward, but he kept glancing back to ensure that the silver cord played out smoothly, and that it glowed thick and strong behind him. Down below, the priestesses had gathered some hundreds of yards from the main body of the army. No doubt their servants pitched the holy camp well away from the noise and pollution of the fighting men. He drifted toward them, and as he did he heard the first chant of recognition.
In a cloud of silver auras the priestesses ran free of the tents and campfires to huddle together out in the open meadowland, well away from the river and its treacherous water veil. He could just discern them lifting up their arms toward the image as they chanted a welcome. Salamander arranged a scowl, as fierce and disapproving as he could make it, on his face and thus the image’s face. He turned toward the north and raised his falcata to point in that direction. The chanting changed, the voices shaking on the notes.
He kept the saber pointing north while he made the image stamp its feet and wave its arms in an astral temper tantrum. Below him the chanting stopped. Voices cried out in fear and called out questions to the goddess, questions that he had no way of answering except to point back the way the army had come.
Behind him the silver cord had stretched out dangerously thin. Salamander turned the image around and sailed back to the cliff, following the cord to his body. For a moment he hovered inside the image while the priestesses below cried out once again. He understood just enough of the Gel da’Thae tongue to know that they were begging Alshandra to return and speak to them. Instead, he slid down the cord to his body and transferred his consciousness back to his physical being. Before he broke the trance, he banished the Alshandra image.
Salamander sat up, exhausted and sweating despite the cool evening wind. Rori crouched nearby like a cat with all four legs tucked under him and his tail wrapped neatly around his haunches. His silver scales glimmered in the gathering twilight.
“Ye gods,” the dragon said. “I could just make out that Alshandra-thing floating around. I take it that you created it.”
“I did, yes.” Salamander paused to grab his water bottle and drink. With a stream so close by, he allowed himself to finish off the contents before he spoke again. “You know how children play with their dolls and little toy warriors? They hold them up and dance them around and speak for them? That’s what I’m doing with this false Alshandra, though, alas, I cannot make her speak. It would make my task a fair bit easier if only I could.”
“What would you have her say?”
“Go back, go back, you impious creatures! I forbid you to take Cerr Cawnen!”
The dragon rumbled with laughter. “Too bad life is never so simple and kind.”
“Just so.” Salamander stretched his aching arms and shoulders. “But I’ll wager I’ve given them something to chew over among themselves. At best, mayhap the fighting men will turn superstitious and lose their morale.”
“They’re superstitious already, believing what they do. As for their morale, you’ve made it sink, I wager.”
“Splendid! On the morrow I’ll make another appearance, but I’m going to wait till they’re on the move.”
At intervals throughout the day, Dallandra had been scrying for Salamander, though she’d not attempted to contact him mind to mind, an operation that would siphon off some of his magical energies when he needed every pulse of them he could muster. She’d seen, therefore, both of his workings with the Alshandra image. Unfortunately, she’d received only a confused impression of the army’s reactions, as she’d never seen any of the Horsekin or their priestesses in the flesh. She could only hope that the sight of their angry goddess had terrified them—those that could see her at all.
“I wonder if I should have let him try this working,” Dallandra said. “It’s immensely complicated.”
“If there be anyone who might succeed in this,” Niffa said, “Ebañy, he be the one.”
“Let’s hope so! It’s a pity that he can’t bring the image through to the physical, where everyone in that wretched army could see it, but he’d have to have the power of one of the Guardians for that.”
“Or one of the gods, if such there be.”
The gods were very much on Niffa and Dallandra’s minds that evening. During the day, as they’d wandered around Cerr Cawnen, listening to the townsfolks’ opinions on the proposed evacuation, they’d heard a number of worries about deserting Cerr Cawnen’s old gods, those who lived under the lake, or up on Citadel, or in the water meadows that surrounded the town. Many citizens had a god they particularly favored, it seemed, whether it lived in the clouds or in a particular ancient tree clinging to the rocky island.
“Your people believe in an amazing number of gods,” Dallandra said to Niffa.
“Those that do believe at all.” Niffa frowned, thinking something through. “Most, they do know that what some call gods be truly spirits and little more. This all does trouble my heart, Dalla. Not till today did we hear people fearing to offend those spirits and godlings. I wonder if Artha be behind this, stirring up the fear with strong words.”
After the evening meal they took candle lanterns and walked across the plaza to Artha’s domain. As they were making their way down the wooden steps to the shrine, they met Cleddrik, coming up with a lantern of his own. He raised it high, peered at Dallandra, and flinched so sharply that he nearly missed the step below him and tumbled down. Just in time he caught himself, recovered his balance, and mumbled a “Good eve to you.”
Vandar’s spawn. The Alshandrite name for the Westfolk rose in Dallandra’s mind. Is that what he thinks I am?
“And a good eve to you,” Niffa said. “Come you to lay an offering to the gods?”
“I so did, truly,” Cleddrik said. “Ye gods, I be so tired tonight, missing that step as I did! Do forgive me, but I must return to my villagers.”
Dallandra and Niffa stood to one side and let him climb up past them. They continued down to find Artha standing outside her cottag
e door. She crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at them.
“What be so wrong?” Niffa said.
“I did spend much time today,” Artha said, “thinking upon what you did tell me concerning the Horsekin. I do think me that if we did take the holy altar with us, in a wagon or suchlike, the gods might well travel south along with their folk.”
Niffa grinned at her. “I do wager we can find a wagon, indeed. The farmers from Penli, they did bring their plow horses, and they can pull a fair heavy load.”
“If their masters do let them. That fellow from Penli, Clod Rik or whatever his name may be, I like him not. He were here just now, nattering about the gods, begging me to tell the folk to stay behind safe walls.” Artha suddenly smiled. “I do think me that it were his nags and whines that did change my mind to your way of thinking.”
The three of them shared a laugh. Dallandra wondered suddenly if Cleddrik were lurking above on the plaza to eavesdrop, and if so, if he could hear them. She turned and glanced back but saw no one on the wooden steps or at the plaza edge.
“Well and good, then,” Niffa said. “Let us talk more upon the morrow morn. The blacksmith, he does have two wagons, and no doubt will gladly offer one to you and the gods.”
Neither Dallandra nor Niffa spoke until they’d gained the plaza and walked halfway across it, well out of the spirit talker’s earshot. Dallandra kept watch for Cleddrik or, more likely, the glimmer of his lantern as he hurried off, but she saw neither. At the public well, they paused in their pool of lantern light and looked around them—no one in sight on the wide cobbled expanse.
“I like this not,” Niffa said. “This Cleddrik—I ken not his heart or mind.”
“No more can I,” Dallandra said. “He’s so terrified that his fear’s like a coat of mail. I can’t penetrate it. He could be a traitor of some sort, or he could just be a panicked creature who hardly knows what he’s doing or saying, like a rabbit in its hole when the weasel crawls in.”