Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [114]
“This is useless! We could be lost here forever. Even if they are here, we’ll never find them.”
“Indeed?” Evandar said. “Look there.”
Out across the sea of fog, an island lay in view, rising dark gray and craggy. Round it thunderheads piled and darkened, while lightning flashed like scythe blades. Evandar raised his horn and blew, collecting his drifting army.
“To the isle! To the isle!”
With a whoop, he kicked his horse to a gallop and plunged off the road into the sea—or upon it, because the horses traveled on its surface like a road. Clattering and shouting, the army swept across the gray—then suddenly slowed to a walk that grew slower yet, as their horses suddenly staggered. Under them, the cloud-road billowed and swelled as if it were a linen sheet, shaken out by a servant over a bed. For a moment they hung suspended in midair, trapped by the moving ground.
Evandar raised one hand and sang an incantation in the name of the Lords of Air. All at once, a marble bridge appeared under the horses’ hooves. With a clatter more deafening than thunder, the army galloped again, charging toward the isle.
“They’re here, sure enough!” Evandar yelled over the din.
Shaetano bit his lip as if to suppress a curse. Menw grinned and drew his sword with a flourish. At the signal, the rest of the army did the same with a flash like lightning as their horses clattered off the bridge and onto the dark gray sand of the island’s beach. When Evandar glanced up, he saw, drifting far overhead, the tiny shape of a bird.
“Look there, brother,” Evandar said. “Think that’s Alshandra?”
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t, eh? No matter.”
Ahead, a silver billow of hill rose, its flanks streaming pale mist. Perched at the summit a castle loomed, not the conjoined brochs of Deverry, round and towering inside a proper dun, but a strange edifice, built square, with sharp corners to its walls, and the only towers were peculiar skinny ones, perched on top of the big square palace inside or clinging to the edges of its pointed roofs.
“Pitiful,” Evandar sighed. “Absolutely pitiful.”
He waved his hand once in the air and summoned a gale. Slamming into the walls, pounding at the towers, it blew the castle into shreds and whirled the chunks away. Shrieking and screaming, tumbling out of the broken walls like dice shaken from a bag, Alshandra’s rebels plunged in an untidy mob. Thunder boomed and echoed as they rolled down the hill and plunged off the island, screaming as they fell into and through the foggy sea, down and down.
“After them!”
The falling rebels swirled down with the horsemen riding hard after, just as the wind will drop its tower of leaves in a long spiral onto the ground. Out on the battle plain, the rebels fell to earth, scrambling up and shrieking in a plume of copper dust. Their bronze armor and bronze swords glittered under the reddish light as they gathered into a milling mob, each fighting to squeeze into the center and safety.
“Surrender!” Evandar called out.
For an answer, they gabbled and swore. The horsemen charged. Here and there, some braver creature with an ax or sword made a stand; most fled, shamelessly throwing their weapons away as they scattered. Shields and breastplates, knives and helms, all littered the battle plain and gleamed, the pale gold of dead leaves.
Although Evandar screamed orders to let them go and reform, there was no holding back the men of the Host. Bright or Dark, elven image or beast, they raced off after the rebels—except for