Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [102]
“True spoken. How long before the next attack? Do you have any idea?”
“Well, if this were an ordinary Deverry war, not for a very long time indeed. But who knows what the Horsekin think? They don’t have cities of their own, Meer tells me, so for all I know, they’ve never even run a siege before.”
Dallandra nodded, considering. They were sitting in Jill’s chamber with frightened Wildfolk clustered round them in gathering dusk. Outside, the last of the sunlight was gilding the western towers and sending long shadows over the ward, where a few servants hurried back and forth without the usual laughter and chat.
“I was expecting our raven to show herself,” Jill said. “I’m surprised she didn’t give you a fight of it over putting out those fires.”
“So am I. You didn’t see her, then? You were the one up on the roofs.”
“Not a feather’s worth of her. I wonder just what sort of dweomer she knows, I truly do. She can shape-change, she knows the dweomer of roads, but what of all the other lore? Is she a woman of the Horsekin? If so, their magicks are crude, or so Meer tells me.”
“Why are you so sure that it’s another woman we’re facing?”
“I met her once when I was flying in my hawk’s form and she was the raven. The falcon could somehow tell that this other bird was female.” Jill smiled briefly. “It’s odd how we mazrakir become the animal we’re mimicking—odd, and a dangerous thing.”
“That’s never happened to me.”
“This sort of dweomer suits your people better than mine. It can be dangerous for a human being to fly too often. You know, that gives me an idea. The raven I saw acted very much like a real bird. Do you think that might mean she’s human, the shape-changer, I mean?”
“It could. We really know next to nothing, don’t we?”
“Just so. If she was there at the battle, why didn’t she start those fires again, the ones you put out? Doesn’t she know how? Was she gone rounding up more warriors? Was she just holding her hand to make us wonder? We have no way of knowing.”
They exchanged a troubled glance.
“There were over eighty Cengarn men wounded and thirty killed outright,” Dallandra said at last. “The chirurgeon tells me that twenty of the wounded are sure to die. It seemed to me that a lot more Horsekin than that were killed. One of the guardsmen counted up a hundred, just on the east side.”
“No doubt. Our men have the position. It’s hard to fight climbing up a ladder. Interesting, isn’t it, that they chose the east gate for their attack?”
Dallandra looked puzzled.
“That used to be the weakest point in the defenses,” Jill said, “until Jorn and his men sealed it up with some sort of dweomer stone they know how to make. They did it after the traitor in the dun had been exposed and killed, you see.”
“Ah. So the Horsekin wouldn’t have known. I do see. Is there anything more we can do, or do we just have to wait for the next time?”
“Just wait, I’m afraid.” Jill tried to smile. “But I think we can sleep well enough after today. The walls are going to hold. That’s one thing we do know.”
“Unless Alshandra finds a way to bring her men over the walls from above.”
“If she does, we’ll be there to greet her.”
Dallandra nodded, thinking something through. Yet again Jill found herself wishing that Nevyn were there. Even if he’d only counseled them to wait, his very presence would have been a comfort—the one person in her own long life that she’d ever been able to trust completely, the one person who had always put her welfare above his own while at the same time demanding that she continually live up to everything she was capable of being. As she thought it over, she supposed that he’d been the one person that, in return, she’d ever truly loved. She felt her eyes fill with tears and wiped them away fast on the back of her hand.
“What’s wrong?” Dallandra said.
“Naught. I’m just weary, as well we all might be.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
“Tell me somewhat. I’ve been trying to find out the nature of the Guardians, what they’re made of,