Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [126]
“What? Here, that’s too big an honor for a dishonored man like me.”
“By the hells, it’s not! Have any of the noble-born made me an offer to stick close to me in the fighting? You ride with me, and you eat with me, too.”
It was later that same night that Nevyn felt the dweomer-warning, a cold, clammy prickling down his back that brought him suddenly and completely awake. His first thought was that Corbyn might be riding to make a night strike on the camp, and he crossed his arms over his chest and went into a trance in order to do a little scouting. In the body of light he soared up high over the camp, dimly glowing from the indrawn auras of the sleeping men. Above him in the dark blue light of night on the etheric, the stars blazed, great silver orbs of pure energy. He could see far, but nothing moved in meadow or woodland except a few deer, off on the horizon.
If the danger wasn’t from Corbyn, it might well be from Loddlaen. Nevyn turned his attention to the etheric and saw, far above him, a tiny shape like an isolated tongue of fire. Nevyn knew that Loddlaen had been trained to assume an elven-style body of light—a huge silver flame as opposed to a human-shaped form. With a grim little smile, Nevyn darted up fast, but the flame shape fled, rushing away through eddying currents of the blue light. Nevyn might have caught him, but he saw a more curious prize. Shadowing Loddlaen at a long distance was one of the Wildfolk, a peculiarly bent nexus of dark lines and dim glow. Nevyn summoned the light and made a silver net, woven of the malleable etheric substance, then swooped after the creature.
In an exhalation of terror it fled from him, but Nevyn called upon his own Wildfolk, who swarmed round, jostling it, shoving it back, thrusting it finally out of the swarm where he could net it easily. Swelling, flashing, it struggled against the lines of force, but the net held, and he hauled it in like a fish. Now came the trick. With the struggling Wildfolk firmly in hand, Nevyn floated back to his body. He hovered above it, fought the pull of the flesh, stayed fully conscious as he slipped back in. The fight was painful; rather than merely lapsing back into normal consciousness, he felt the melding in every bone and vein as he took up residence in his body again. Yet in spite of the pain he kept the etheric net tight and brought, at last, the captured Wildfolk back with him.
Nevyn sat up and found a very peculiar prize indeed struggling in his hands. On the physical plane it was a gnome of sorts, but even more deformed and ugly than usual—twisted, shrunken shoulders, stubby legs, enormous hands, and a snarling warty face with tiny eyes and long fangs.
“Someone’s shaped you, hasn’t he? Someone’s worked some strange magick indeed upon you.”
Paralyzed with terror, the gnome went limp in his hands. Nevyn let his feeling flow out to it, a deep pity, a sympathy, in fact, a kind of love for this creature deformed against its will. When he released it, the gnome threw itself against his chest.
“You’re safe now. You’ll never have to go back to your master again. Was your master Loddlaen?”
The gnome looked up and shook its head in a no.
“Indeed? How very interesting! Come with me, little brother. I’m going to summon your king here, on this plane. I think it might be safer all round.”
With the gnome riding on his shoulder, Nevyn left the sleeping camp and went a good ways away, where he could sit down and work in private. In his mind he built up a flaming pentagram of blue light, then pushed the image out until it seemed to stand in front of him, a glowing star some six feet high. The gnome saw it, too, and stood transfixed as Nevyn slowly chanted the secret names of the King of the Element of Earth. The space inside the star changed into a silver swirl of pale light, light of the sort that never shone on land or sea, and in that light appeared a figure, vaguely elven, yet glowing so brightly that its form was hard to discern.
“One of my kind has tormented this little brother,” Nevyn said aloud. “Will you take