A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [29]
“No need, child. I can wait till we reach the stream.”
“If you’re sure—”
“Now don’t fuss over me! I may be old, but I still have the wit to tell you if I need to rest.”
Riding straight in the saddle for all her five hundred years, Nananna slapped her horse with the reins and pulled a little ahead. With her second sight, Dallandra could see the energy pouring around her, great silver streams and pulses in her aura, almost too much power for her frail body to bear. Soon Nananna would have to die. Every day Dallandra’s heart ached at the thought of losing her mistress in the craft of magic, but there was no denying the truth.
Their companions followed automatically as they rode on. Earlier that morning, their alar had hurried ahead with the flocks and herds and left them a small escort of others who needed to move slowly. Enabrilia came first, leading the packhorse that dragged the heavy wooden travois with the tents. Her husband, Wylenteriel, their baby in a leather pack on his back, rode some distance behind and kept the brood mares with their young colts moving at a slow but steady pace. His brother, Talbrennon, rode point off to one side. In the middle of the afternoon Nananna finally admitted that she was tired, and they made camp near a scattering of willow trees. Normally, since they were only stopping for one night, they wouldn’t have bothered to unpack the tents, but Dallandra wanted to raise one for Nananna.
“No need,” Nananna said.
“Now here, Wise One,” Wylenteriel said. “Me and Tal can have it up in no time at all.”
“Oh, children, children, it’s not time for me to leave you yet, and when it’s time, you can fuss all you like, but it won’t give me one extra hour.”
“I know that’s true,” Dallandra said. “But—”
“No buts, child. If you know it, act on it.”
Wylenteriel, however, insisted on a compromise: he and Tal set up a small lean-to to keep the night damp off and unpacked cushions from the travois to lay on the canvas ground cloth. Dallandra helped Nananna settle herself, then knelt and pulled off the old woman’s boots. Nananna watched with a faint smile, her thin, gnarled hands resting on her frail knees.
“I’ll admit I could use a bit of a nap before dinner.”
Dallandra covered her with a light blanket, then went to help set up the camp. The men were already watering the horses at the stream; Enabrilia was sitting on the ground by a pile of dumped gear and nursing Farendar, who whimpered and fussed at her breast. He was only a year old, still practically a newborn by elven standards. Dallandra wandered downstream, driven by a sudden stab of omens. Even in the bright sunlight she felt cold, knowing that warnings were trying to reach her like slivers of ice piercing the edge of her mind, an image of winter, when something would tear her life in half and change her irrevocably. Nananna’s death, probably. With a shudder she ran back to the safe company of friends.
That night, while the others sat around a small campfire, Dallandra went to the lean-to. Nananna made a large ball of golden light and hung it on the ridgepole, then rummaged through her saddlebags for the small silver casket that guarded her scrying stones. There were five of these jewels, each set in a small silver disk graved with symbols: ruby for fire, topaz for air, sapphire for water, emerald for earth, and finally, the largest of them all, an amethyst for aethyr. Nananna laid the disks on a cushion and frowned at them for a moment.
“I had a dream while I was napping, and I need to see a bit more. Hum, the amethyst will do.”
Carefully Nananna wrapped the other jewels up in bits of fine silk cloth, then laid the amethyst disk in the palm of her right hand. Dallandra knelt beside her and looked into the stone, where a small beam of light gleamed in the dead center, then swelled to a smoky void—or so it seemed to Dallandra. Nananna, however, watched intently, nodding her head every now and then at some detail. Finally she spoke the ritual word that cleared the stone of vision.
“Now that’s interesting,” Nananna