A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [59]
“How’s the Wise One?”
“Very tired. Bril, there’s been trouble. The men are on their way home as fast as they can ride.”
The talk and the singing died abruptly. Dallandra felt more helpless than before.
“That’s all I know. Aderyn couldn’t spare a moment to tell us more.”
“And just how do we know we can trust this Round-ear sorcerer?” Talbrennon snapped.
“Because Nananna said we could, you moldy horse apple!” Dallandra was shocked by the rage in her own voice. “Ye gods, don’t we have enough trouble on hand without you looking for more?”
In the deepening silence the crackling of the fire sounded like the rage of a forest in full flame. Dallandra handed the bowl back to her friend, then turned and ran out of the camp. She had to be alone.
Earlier that evening, their alar, in the company of several others they’d met, had camped about eighty miles south of the Lake of the Leaping Trout. Although they were out on the high plateau of the grasslands, the edge of the primeval forest lay only a few miles away, down in the lowlands that also held the farms of the Round-ear lords. With a flock of Wildfolk darting around her, Dallandra wandered downhill, heading to the forest for comfort as even the most civilized elves are prone to do in troubled times. Once she was well among the scrubby new growth, mostly beeches and bracken, at the forest edge, she sat down on a fallen log and opened her mind to thoughts of Aderyn. She could pick up his existence dimly—very dimly—as a feeling of dread for the future and a very much present pain in his hand; once she received a brief visual impression of him clinging to the saddle as the warband rode hard through the dark. That was all, and as much as she hated to admit that she could care about a Round-ear, she felt sick with worry.
All at once she realized that she wasn’t alone. The night was far too quiet: no owls called, no animals were abroad and moving in the undergrowth. She was miles from camp without even a knife. As she stood up, the Wildfolk vanished in a skittering of fear. Dallandra took a deep breath and tried to ignore her pounding heart; if the Round-ears were prowling around, the only weapon she had was her magic. Although she thought of running, movement and noise would give her away. Off to the south she saw a bobbing sphere of light, heading her way; twigs cracked; shrubs whispered against passing bodies. A hunting horn blew, clear and melancholy. Suddenly the light split, multiplied into a line of lights dancing along like a parade of torches, and singing drifted through the chilly air as the procession came closer, circled round, ever nearer, the singing louder—definitely Elvish, but wild, somehow, and hard to follow—the lights blinding as they ringed her round and flared up.
Out of the circling light stepped a woman. She was tall, even for one of the People, and slender, with her silver-pale hair cascading wild down to her waist. Her yellow eyes were huge and slit with emerald pupils. At first Dallandra thought that she was wearing a dress made of beaten gold, but it must have been some trick of the light, because suddenly it seemed that she was wearing only a knee-length tunic of some coarse linen. Her hair seemed darker, too, almost blond. In her hands she carried a slacked bow, and at her hip was a quiver of arrows.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I … I … I’ve heard tales of the Blessed Court. The ghosts of the seven kings and the faithful who died with them.”
The woman laughed, a peal of scorn. She was wearing a golden diadem round her forehead, jewels winked at her throat, and her dress gleamed again with gold. The bow was gone.
“Tales and nothing more, girl, tales and nothing more. We are the Blessed Court, sure enough, but we were here long before your kings and their stinking iron and their ghastly