Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [142]
One cautious step at a time, she went over to the windows and threw open the shutters. No one was climbing up the smooth stone tower; far below, the dark ward lay empty. When she glanced up, she could see the stars, the great spread of the Snowy Road far above her—light, but cold, indifferent to her or to any human being’s plight. All at once she felt despair, a black sorrow in her heart, as if nothing mattered, not her honor, not her life, not even her love for Rhodry, nothing, since all that human life could be was a little fleck of light against the all-embracing dark, like one of those pinprick stars, indifferent and cruel. She leaned on the windowsill and felt the despair spreading, leaching away her energy and her will. Why fight? she thought. The night always wins; why fight it?
Far off on the horizon, beyond the sleeping city, the last quarter moon was rising, a pale glow against the black. Soon the moon too would slip into darkness and be gone. But she rises again, Jill thought, she rises full on her return. The moon was a promise in the sky, returning and growing into a great silver beacon, shedding her light on all, good men and evil alike, when her Darktime was done. “Only to fade yet once again.” The thought came in some other voice, not hers. Only then did she realize that she was fighting, battling an enemy she couldn’t see with weapons she’d never used.
The realization snapped the despair, sending it breaking the way a rope stretched too tight snaps. She spun round, her eyes searching the chamber. In the smoky light from the candles she saw a human form, a pale and flickering blue thing, almost a glowing shadow, certainly not a solid body. The hair prickled on her arms and neck when she recognized the slender shape of the man who’d poisoned himself.
“By the Goddess Herself,” Jill snarled, “the Light wins in the end!”
He flickered like a candle flame in a draft, then disappeared, but for all she knew, he’d return to torment her, perhaps in her dreams, where she would be helpless against him. In a little flurry of tears, she sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed her shaking hands between her knees. None of her much-praised sword craft would help in this battle. Only dweomer could fight dweomer. She saw then that denying her dweomer-power had left her helpless, that continuing to deny it meant that she would constantly be drawn into contact with strange things beyond her power to influence or control, simply because she had no knowledge or training, just as anybody can pick up a sword, but only a trained fighter can strike down an opponent. It was then that she remembered Nevyn, and that he was on his way.
Many a time she had seen the old man contact other dweomer-masters through a scrying fire. For all she knew, only a master could do such a thing, not some ignorant like her, but she rose and walked slowly over to the candles, massed in their sconce. At this, her first conscious attempt to use dweomer, she felt foolish, then embarrassed, and finally frightened, but she forced herself to stare into the flames and think of Nevyn. For a moment she was aware only of a blankness in her mind, then an odd sort of pressure, building against some unexplained thing, just as when a person temporarily forgets a name that he knows well and searches his mind in utter frustration at the lapse.
Her fear built, fear of using dweomer, fear of whoever was stalking her, built and built until all at once she remembered what she had somehow always known, that the fear was her key, that some strong feeling will break down the walls in the mind.
“Nevyn!” she cried out. “Help me!”
And there, dancing over the candle flames, she saw his face, a clear image, his bushy eyebrows raised in surprise, his eyes troubled.
“Thank every god you called to me,” his voice sounded in