Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [130]
“And what did you pick up, brother?” Evandar held out his hand. “It looks like a silver horn to me. How careless these people are, to scatter their roads with treasures.”
Shaetano drew his lips back from his fangs, but he handed over the horn.
They could see now that the hill stood all crusted with red coral. Purple and yellow anemones bloomed among the branches; tiny fish darted back and forth in front of a silver door, set into the side of the mound, and not more than three feet tall.
“We’ll never get through that,” Shaetano snarled. “While we’re wasting our time down here, Alshandra could be working harm to your precious Elessario, you know. I say we’d best go look for her somewhere near the child.”
“Do you, brother?”
Evandar stooped down to peer at the door, engraved with strange symbols and letters. On it hung a silver ring. He was just reaching for it when he heard a deep-pitched musical note throb through the water. He straightened up and spun round to find Shaetano tossing away a curled conch, striped purple and blue—or rather, he was attempting to throw it. In the water, it drifted down slowly, accusing him.
“My apologies,” Shaetano stammered. “It was just a shell. I didn’t think it would make a noise.”
“Indeed, brother?”
When Evandar turned back to the door, he found it gone. Coral and kelp crusted the flank of the hill as if naught else had ever been.
“Well, brother,” Evandar said, “you’re right enough. We’ll never get in there now. Let’s go back and fetch our horses.”
A subdued army rode up the turquoise road. All round them, the sea turned silver as they burst through the surf and urged their horses out onto the sand. Overhead, a gull wheeled, crying out in mourning before she flew away, heading inland only to disappear in a glint of sun.
“Hah!” Shaetano barked. “She fooled you again, brother of mine.”
“Not her, but you,” Evandar said. “When you blew upon the conch.”
With a snarl, Shaetano wrenched his horse’s head round and jogged off toward hard ground. Among dunes where sea grass grew coarse and olive green, Evandar gathered what remained of the conjoint host. Just like an arch of foam will spring out from the breaking waves only to merge back when the water hits the lands, so had more of their collective lives joined together. When he glanced found, he could count some two hundred left all in all, men both of the Dark Host and the Bright. Evandar rose in the stirrups and called out.
“Very well. Soon you’ll be free to return to the pavilion for feasting and song. But come ride with me a little while more, and I’ll show you a marvel.”
At a slow walk they set off, straggling in an untidy line across the dunes. Ahead hung a veil of opalescent mist, swirling round but strangely confined, as if caught twixt two invisible pillars. As they rode through, the air turned cool and rich, smelling of dirt and wet grass. They came clear of the mist into the rolling meadows of western Eldidd, just at a bright cool dawn, and paused their horses.
In the misty sunrise, the flower-dappled grass stretched out to a semicircle of trees round a little pond, where a few water birds glided, calling to one another. Beyond rose the emerald hills, brindled with the darker green of trees in their folds and coombs. Peace lay palpably over the scene, the sort of peace made more poignant by being so brief, a moment of music in the endless clash of life with life. Even Shaetano fell silent as if to listen.
“It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?” Evandar said. “And it’s your birthright. Did I not promise you new bodies, all harmonious and of a piece? You shall have them here, in this green country.”
For a moment, the silence hung like the mist among the distant trees. All at once a man cheered, then another, voices ringing out through the dawn. With a laugh, Evandar flung up a hand to quiet them down again.
“When the time comes, we will ride here together. For now, home!”
In a wave of shouts and cheers, they turned their horses