A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [68]
“Not now, I’m afraid. It is lovely, isn’t it?”
“Shall I see marvels like this once I’ve been born, Dalla?”
“Well, yes.” Dallandra hesitated, caught between truth and sadness. “But you know, they probably won’t seem so marvelous. You’ll take them for granted, then, like we all do.”
One last image of Jill pointed their way to a caravanserai out on the edge of town. Among a scatter of palm trees horses and mules drowsed at tether, and human beings wandered back and forth. Fires bloomed here and there, but far off to one side a silver-blue pillar of water force, glowing like a beacon to guide them down, rose from a fountain. Beside it, sitting with her feet tucked under her on a little bench, was Jill. To Dallandra it seemed that they walked up to her in the usual manner, but judging from the way Jill yelped in surprise, she must have seen them appear all at once.
“Jill, I’ve brought Elessario. She’s the one who’ll lead her people into our world.”
“You’re very brave, then, Elessario.” Jill got up to greet them. “I salute you.”
The child stared back, all solemn eyes and sudden shyness.
“Does she truly understand what all this means, Dalla?” Jill went on.
“I hope so.”
“You’d best make sure of it. To put this burden on someone without them truly knowing what they’re doing is—”
“But, Jill, if they don’t come through, her people will die. Fade away. Vanish. And until one makes the journey, none will.”
“But still, she needs to know what—”
“I’ll do my best to tell her. To make her understand.”
“Good.”
For a moment they considered each other. Although Dallandra could only wonder what she might look like to Jill, to her the human dweomerwoman seemed made of colored glass, glowing and shimmering as they peered at each other across a gulf of worlds. Such niceties as facial expressions and nuances of voice simply refused to come clear, yet Dallandra could feel Jill’s urgency as a barb in an old wound of guilt. As she turned inward to her own thoughts, she began to lose the vision entirely: Jill’s image flattened, then dwindled as if it were rapidly flying away.
“Jill!” she called out. “The islands! Evandar will look for them!”
She had no way of knowing if Jill had heard her. All round them in a rushy vortex the worlds spun by, green and gold, white and red, faces and parts of faces, words and names flung into a purple wind, strange beings and glimpses of landscapes, round and round, faster and faster, yet flowing always upward. She clutched Elessario’s hand tight in both of hers and swept her along as they tumbled, spun, flew higher, ever higher through a rush of voices and images, until at last, with a crack like the strike of a sword on a wooden shield, they fell into the grass of the river meadow, where the Host was dancing in the summer sun. Elessario rolled over onto her back and began to laugh.
“Oh, that was exciting! It was truly a splendid sort of game! Will being born be like that, Dalla?”
“Yes, but backward. That is, you’ll go down and down instead of up.”
“And where will I come out, then?” Elessario sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“To a place where it’s all warm and dark and safe, where you’ll sleep for a long time.” Dallandra had told her this story a hundred times before, but the girl loved hearing it. “Then you’ll find yourself in a bright place, and someone will hold you, and you’ll really, really know what love is. But it won’t all be easy, Elli my sweet. It truly won’t.”
“You told me about the hard bits. Pain and blood and slime.” She frowned, looking across the flowered fields. “I don’t want to hear about them again now, please.”
Dalla felt her heart