Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [152]
“He’ll grant decent terms,” Corbyn said, his voice too loud with a false cheer. “But we’ve got to get the men on their way tonight. I’ll wager Rhodry invests us tomorrow.”
Both men looked expectantly at Loddlaen.
“Of course,” Loddlaen snapped. “You don’t need dweomer to tell you the obvious.”
Both lords nodded sheepishly. Corbyn fanged his pork and sawed off another mouth-filling bite.
“We need to know exactly where Rhodry is,” Nowec said. “Can’t have the messengers blundering right into them.”
Corbyn nodded his agreement, then belched. Loddlaen could stand them no longer.
“I’ll attend to it straightaway.”
As he hurried up to his chamber, he was sweating with fear. He was too afraid of Aderyn to scry on the etheric plane, and that meant he would have to fly. Trying to shape-change when exhausted was dangerous. Upon entering his chamber, he lit the candle lantern with a snap of his fingers. Seeing the flame spring to his call soothed him. He still had power, more power than those round-eared dogs even knew, him, Loddlaen the Mighty! He stripped off his clothes and threw them onto the bed. Not even the mightiest masters of the dweomer could transform dead matter like cloth.
Loddlaen laid his hands far apart on the windowsill and stared up at the starry sky until he was perfectly calm. Slowly he felt power gather, carefully he invoked more, until it flowed through his mind like a mighty river. In his mind, he formulated the image of the red hawk, many times life size, proud and cruel, then sent the picture forward until it perched on the windowsill between his hands. At this point the hawk image existed only in Loddlaen’s imagination, and it was only in imagination that he transferred his consciousness over to the bird. He had spent years on tedious mental exercises that allowed him to imagine that he stood on the windowsill and saw the view below with the hawk’s eyes. Keeping his consciousness firmly focused in the hawk, he chanted the power word, a simple hypnotic device, that opened the door to the etheric for him. When he saw the view through the cold blue light, he knew that he’d transferred his consciousness up a level.
At this point, things had gone beyond simple imagination. When he glanced back, he saw his body slumped on the floor and joined to the hawk with a silver cord. He could have scried on the etheric with the hawk as a body of light, but he had a more dangerous plan. In his mind he chanted a second set of words, one that only the Elcyion Lacar knew, and saw the lips of his body twitch in rhythm. When he flexed the hawk’s wings, the arms below him raised. Now came the true difficulty. The etheric double of every person is like a matrix that holds and forms flesh; if the double is strong enough, the flesh will follow its lead. Loddlaen chanted, struggled, bent all his will into the imagining that is more than imagination until at last, with one final wail of chant, the etheric drew the physical into its new mold.
Loddlaen the man was gone from the chamber. Only the hawk stood on the windowsill and stretched proud wings. With a harsh cry of triumph, Loddlaen sprang into the night and flew out over the dun. He loved flying, the perfect freedom of drifting on the wind, the view from on high, where every fort and house seemed just a tiny toy, scattered by a child’s careless hand. Even in the hawk form, Loddlaen retained the etheric sight that was so important a part of the transformation. The countryside below glowed in the bluey night with the reddish auras of the living vegetation. Here and there were daubs of yellow glow where horses or cows huddled together. Following the cold black strip of road, Loddlaen flew south until he saw the gleaming mass of auras that had to be the men and horses of Rhodry’s army.
Loddlaen flew upward to gain height, then circled in a long sweep about the camp. His mind was alert, feeling out the etheric plane for the traces of Aderyn’s dweomer working. When he found none, he assumed that the old man was asleep or busy wasting his time by tending wounds. Then