Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [140]
“Your luck’s not that good, to get rid of me so easily.”
They shared a grin; then Rhodry turned to the noble-born, hurrying up to stand safely behind Lord Erddyr.
“My lords, Your Grace. We’ve brought you archers, Evandar and me, by dweomer as much as treaty bond.”
Gwerbret Drwmyc stepped forward. “My good sir, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” He bowed in Evandar’s direction. “Is there aught we can do for you in return?”
“Just carry on. Defeat the Horsekin, rescue the princess, save Cengarn. All that will please me more than I can ever say.”
“Well, we’ll do our best.”
All at once, Evandar winced, tossed his head, bit his lip, and started to turn away, only to stumble. Rhodry grabbed his arm and steadied him.
“The iron. I’ve got to get away. Fare thee well, Rori.”
Evandar took one step forward and disappeared with a flash of silver light. The noble-born stared open-mouthed for a long time, while Yraen shook his head and swore.
“Very well, Silver Dagger.” The gwerbret turned to Rhodry. “You’re going to explain all this, and you’re going to do it now.”
Evandar could remember a time when he had worn no form at all, but he couldn’t, as he thought about it, remember how it had felt to be formless. He did know that life had seemed far more precarious then than it did now, that with no pattern to contain his consciousness, he might have ceased to exist at any moment. On the other hand, it also seemed to him that he’d been able to see farther in those days, farther and in all directions at once as he and his kind moved among the stars or upon the higher planes. Now he had eyes, or images of eyes, to channel his seeing, just as Alshandra had a discrete body, or the image of a body, that she could hide behind and within other images. He would have found her at once, back in the time when neither of them wore forms. Now he would have to hunt.
He stood upon a hilltop in his familiar country, the Lands, as they were known, and looked down at the green meadows, divided in one direction by the boundary forest and in the other, crosswise, direction by the silver river. He had created the entire landscape, so large that even from his height he couldn’t see the edges of it. It stretched on into mist and a horizon where, or so he suspected, other lands had sprung up following the pattern of his own, wild lands with no lord to rule them. What if Alshandra had taken shelter there and made those lands her own?
Evandar took off his semblance of Deverry armor and heaped it on the hillside, then stripped off his semblance of clothes, too. As soon as he turned his attention away from them, they dissolved in a shimmer of mist. Naked, he crouched down and stretched out his arms. No tedious process of imaging for him—in an instant, he became a red hawk, crouched upon the ground. He shook his wings, bunched, leapt into the air, and flew. With a screech, the hawk circled the hillside once, then set out, flying fast and hard, for the horizon and whatever might lie under the distant mists.
On the day after Rhodry and the dragon joined them, the army finally reached Cengarn. Some five miles south of the city, Gwerbret Drwmyc halted his army on the north-running road for the noon meal. While the men tended their horses, his grace and his vassals met in council, pacing back and forth in a cow pasture.
“They look worried,” Yraen remarked.
“They should be,” Rhodry said. “It’s not such an easy thing, relieving a siege this size. We can’t just ride in and push them off in a single day.”
“Well, true. It’s going to be a nasty little scrap.”
“By now I’m sure they know we’re coming.”
“We kept a good watch out for scouts.”
“Can you swing a sword and knock a raven from the sky?” Rhodry was grinning. “She’s the only scout who matters.”
Involuntarily, Yraen glanced up. Nothing moved against the blue, but for all he knew, the raven had flown over and left them long before.
Rather than risk a fight with tired horses, the lords decided to camp where they stood that afternoon. They did send