Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [103]
“Housing the soul? Just that, or so I’ve always assumed. They can feel etheric pain, for instance.”
“Indeed? Huh, I wonder then. Suppose we could destroy Alshandra’s astral form. Would it set her soul free to be reborn then? Reborn and gone, I mean, on to some new life, good and far away from us?”
“It should, certainly. But destroying her form’s not such an easy thing.” Dallandra tried for a wry smile and failed. “She’s not as vulnerable as one of us, out on the etheric. Break up our body of light, snap the silver cord—and there we are, dead as a stone in the road. But she doesn’t have a physical body, so she’d have to be absolutely torn to pieces for the same thing to happen.”
“I doubt if either of us have the strength to do such a thing. I doubt if we’d have enough strength together.”
“I doubt it, too—very, very much indeed. Not even Nevyn could have defeated her.”
“You think so?”
“I do. You know how much I respected your master, Jill, but she’s from some different order of being than we are—elves or men, it doesn’t matter. She’s stronger than us all.”
The Wildfolk eddied round them like white water round a rock, then disappeared. The two dweomermasters sat without speaking until night filled the room with darkness.
In the deep mid of the night, after she’d finished renewing the astral seals over dun and town, Jill scried for Prince Daralanteriel. She expected to see him and his men sleeping, but though she found him easily enough, he was wide awake, sitting by a fire in an elven camp with men and women both clustered round him. So! he’d caught up with one alar or another. The prince was talking, waving his hands, tossing his raven-dark hair, and his excitement was like a fire playing over his strikingly handsome face. The people round him nodded in agreement or turned to whisper to one another as his mood spread. As Jill watched, a tall man carrying a staff pushed his way through to the fireside—pale hair, violet eyes—Calonderiel! Jill felt herself grinning with relief. So, Dar had found the one man of all the Westfolk who had the power to call for all-out war. From the twist to Calonderiel’s mouth, from the way his hands clasped the staff as he listened to the young prince, Jill knew that the warleader would summon his people to ride to Cengarn’s aid.
But how soon? When she widened the scope of the vision, she could see only empty grasslands under a dull moon. They could be hundreds of miles away, and besides, it would take Calonderiel time to muster his bands of archers, who lived scattered all over the grasslands. Jill swore aloud, scattering a gaggle of Wildfolk. By the time the elven force arrived, the battle for Cengarn might well be over.
In Evandar’s country, a bare hour seemed to have passed since the army left the beacon tree behind. On this side of the border tree, the forest stretched dead—the trees, black hulks; the shrubs and bracken, spongy peat; the ivy bronzed, clinging to brittle branches. Even the Dark Host rode silent in this wood and kept a watch on every tangled thicket and shadowed dell. Menw kept glancing up at the sky, dark with tattered clouds.
“My lord!” he suddenly cried. “Look! At the edge of the forest!”
Evandar rose in his stirrups and followed the point of his lieutenant’s sword. Through the misshapen trees, he could just make out the form of an enormous hawk, its gray-dappled belly flashing as it swooped off. With a whoop, he urged his army forward, but by the time they burst out of the woods, the bird had disappeared. Not so much as a speck dwindling in the copper-colored sky marked her going.
“So,” Evandar said. “Alshandra’s spying on us in her bird form. I wonder where she may be?”
“No doubt back in the world of men,” Shaetano sneered. “Or off somewhere we don’t even know about. Do you truly think we can catch her? She learned the dweomer of the roads from you, brother dear, and now she