A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [67]
Among the Host, Evandar’s people, Dallandra searched on a sunny day through a meadow, bright with flowers of red and gold. In their bright clothes and golden jewelry, the Host too bloomed like flowers amid the tall green grass, ‘and as always, their exact numbers eluded her. Even in the sunlight of a summer noon, shadow wrapped them round, blurring the boundaries that define a person for us in our world. Out of the corner of her eye she would see a pair of young girls, sitting gossiping on the grass, turn to look and find a bevy giggling together, then rising to run away like a flock of birds taking flight. Or it would seem that under the shade of an enormous tree a band of minstrels played, their conjoint music so sweet that it pierced her heart, yet she would find but one man with a single lute. Like flames in a fire or ripples in a stream, they became distinct and separate only to fall back again and meld.
Some of the Host, though, remained discrete, with minds and personalities of their own. Evandar himself, of course, and his daughter, Elessario, were the two she knew best, but there were others, men and women both, who wore names and faces like a mark of honor. In the dancing sunlight they waved in greeting or called out some pleasant remark as she made her way across.
“Have you seen Elessario?” she would ask, but always the answer was no.
By the meadow’s edge a river flowed, and at that moment it flowed broad and smooth. At other times she had seen it narrow and churning with white water or come upon it to find a swamp and nothing more, but at the moment the broad water sparkled in the sun, and green rushes stood at the bank like sword blades stuck into a treaty ground. Out among them on one leg stood a white heron.
“Elessario!”
The heron turned its head to consider her with one yellow eye, then rippled like the water and became a young woman with impossibly yellow hair, wading naked to the bank. Dallandra offered a hand and helped her clamber out. Elessario picked up a tunic from the grassy bank and pulled it over her head. Although at first glance she seemed beautiful, with human ears but elven eyes, at second glance one noticed that the eyes were as yellow as her hair, cat-slit with emerald-green, and that her smile revealed sharp-pointed teeth.
“Did you need me for something, Dalla?”
“I did. Come see something with me.”
Hand in hand like mother and child they wandered downriver, looking for Bardek. Here in the world of the Guardians, as the elves named Evandar’s people, images could become real rather easily, that is, for those with minds trained to build them. First Dallandra created an image of Jill in her mind, as clear and as detailed as possible; then she moved this image out through her eyes onto the landscape—a mental trick, that, and not true dweomer, strange though it sounds to those who don’t know how to do it. These mental images were lifeless things, even in this world, and broke up fast like a picture imagined in a cloud or a fire. Every now and then, though, one image would linger for a while longer or seem brighter and more solid. With a fascinated Elessario trailing after, Dallandra would walk to that spot and cast another round of images. Every time, one of the new crop would become solid and endure long enough to point out the next step of their journey.
As they followed these clues, the landscape changed round them. The river narrowed, ran shallow; the lush grass withered till brown and dry. They passed big boulders, pushing up through thin earth, and eventually found a graveled road, leading forward into mist. All at once, twilight turned the world an opalescent gray, shot with lavender.
“Here we are,” Dallandra said. “Come look at a city of men.”
In the mist they seemed to float, like birds hovering on the wind, then spiraled down and down in ever-twisting arcs till at last the mist vanished in a starry sky. Below lay a white city, shimmering in the heat of a Bardek evening. Here and there in the dark streets a gold point of light bobbed along, a