A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [168]
“You’re mine now, and we’ll be ever so happy.”
“Here, now! You take me back!”
“In a little while.” She stopped, smiling at him so winsomely that he would have been suspicious if only he hadn’t been frightened out of his wits. “Of course we’ll go back. In just a little tiny while.”
Since Maer doubted that she was capable of an outright He, he was reassured enough to look round him. Some quarter of a mile away stood what seemed to be a dun far more elaborate than the palace of Aberwyn, maybe twenty fine towers, all joined together in a pattern that he couldn’t decipher and rising out of mist.
“Let’s go see her, and then you can go home,” the sprite said. “Please? Just for a little while?”
Maer let her take his hand and lead him toward the many-towered dun as the twilight turned all blue and silver. As they walked on, he could see it ever more clearly; a square sort of building, unlike any he’d ever seen, supported the towers, and a square wall, turreted at the corners, surrounded it, made of many kinds of stone, pink sandstone, gray limestone, the occasional decorative touch of green marble. He could see the windows turning golden with candlelight and hear music playing of such a sweetness that he felt he could weep. But at the same time, the castle seemed to stop drawing nearer. Each step he took was like raising a foot made of lead; his legs turned numb, too, and he felt that he could barely breathe. The light began to fade in the windows ahead, although he was suddenly aware of another light, all golden and blinding, opening like a tunnel before him.
The last thing he heard before his etheric double broke up completely was the sprite, shrieking in agony.
Maer fell into trance just after noon, not long before the storm broke with all the fury of the first full tempest of winter. Lightning stroked down; thunder rumbled; his horse panicked and fled out across the grasslands. Unfortunately, since it was the horse he’d brought from Aberwyn, it couldn’t find its way home to the herds round the winter camp. (In time, it did wander into the herd of another alar, far to the west, but that was months later and an event of no importance at all.) All afternoon it rained as the storm proceeded slowly and majestically north, but Maer, entranced in the true and technical sense of the word, lay sprawled among the hazels. By sunset, the river was brimming in its banks, and still the rain poured down. Maer’s body, in a convulsion of cramped muscles that had nothing to do with mind, flopped over onto its back, then lay still. All evening clouds rolled in from the sea, rained, and moved on north. The river rose steadily, then round midnight spilled over and flooded, sending a first a thin sheet of water trickling through the grass and swirling round the knobby roots of the trees, then a pour, a spill of water traveling out and out and swelling as it ran. It covered Maer’s face some three hours before dawn and kept rising, but the rain stopped before the flood was deep enough to float his corpse more than a few feet away, where it fetched up against a tree and stuck.
Under normal circumstances, Calonderiel would have recruited the entire warband and gone to search for his guest when Maer didn’t return for the evening meal, but the floods were rising along the river that flowed by the camp, too. As soon as the swirling brown water started churning downstream, Aderyn and Halaberiel ordered the alar to begin packing. In an organized frenzy the People rushed round, stuffing tent bags, loading the travois, collaring dogs and children. By the time the water came within a few inches of the riverbanks, just at sunset, everyone’s portable goods had been hauled up to the canyon rim. Halaberiel and Aderyn walked along by the surging water