A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [187]
Jill returned to her body and sat up, stretching and yawning a little, to find Rhodry wide awake and staring at her.
“What did you do to her?” he snapped.
“I was trying to help her, you dolt.”
He did have the grace to look shamed.
All that day Rhodry was painfully restless. He paced back and forth across the tent, then started round and round, until Jill felt half dizzy from trying to watch him. When she suggested that they fetch Calonderiel and go riding, he didn’t even answer.
“Are you going to start chewing your manger next?” Jill snarled.
“What?”
“You’re acting just like a stud being kept from a mare in heat. It’s not very pretty to watch you rut.”
He stopped pacing and swirled around to face her.
“Aderyn’s kinder than I am,” she went on. “He sees you as the poor innocent victim. I know you better than that. I’ll wager this phantom lover of yours didn’t have to drag you into her bed. I’ll wager she didn’t even have to ask twice.”
Blushing scarlet, Rhodry took a furious step toward her.
“Just try,” Jill said, grinning. “I haven’t forgotten how to fight, and I’ll wager I can throw you all over this tent.”
He spun around, hesitated, then flung himself face down onto his blankets. She watched his shoulders shaking for a couple of minutes before she realized that he was weeping. She knelt down and began rubbing the back of his neck, letting a little of her own magnetism flow out to soothe him. In a few moments he stopped crying and rolled over.
“Rhodry, please, I don’t want to see you die. Do what Aderyn and I say. Please?”
He sat up, wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeve.
“My thanks,” he whispered. “I just feel torn in pieces, and I don’t know how to—”
The shriek sounded like a panther’s howl, blind-wild and feline, filling the tent and sweeping round. The slap came out of the shriek, a vicious blow across Jill’s face with the stinging rake of claws. All of Jill’s long years of dweomer training seemed to vanish. Without thinking she was on her feet and hitting back, automatically grabbing for an arm that wasn’t truly there, reaching for an enemy she couldn’t see. Her fingers closed on something more solid than air but not quite real; another slap caught her across the mouth; then she heard Aderyn yelling. Her enemy vanished.
“And don’t I feel like a fool!” Jill burst out. “Here I had my chance to put the sign of the kings upon her, and I lost my head completely.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Aderyn said. “Instinct and all that. Gavantar felt her presence and woke me, but by the time I got here it was too late.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Jill glanced around to see Gavantar standing just inside the tent flap. “Gav, stay here. Aderyn, let’s go talk where we can’t be overheard. I’m sorry, Rhoddo, but I can’t really trust you.”
Since they could count on the spirit being too frightened to come back immediately, they walked a little way from the camp. Even though the grasslands were silent and sweaty in the heat of a windless summer day, being out of the tent and away from Rhodry’s obsession felt as good as a plunge into a cool river.
“She’s as desperate as a wolf in winter if she’d risk breaching the seals,” Aderyn remarked. “It must have taken every bit of courage and power she has. I can’t believe she misses him as badly as all that.”
“It’s somewhat else entirely. She’s jealous of me, and I think me we can use that to our advantage. Look, the Lords of the Wildlands should be willing to help in this.”
“I’ve already made contact with them. It’s just that she keeps leading them a merry little dance, dashing away every time they