Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [154]
Sure enough, once the battle was well joined below, the raven mazrak appeared, flying round and round the dun. Every now and then, she flew directly over Dallandra and low, too, as if daring her to follow. Dallandra held her place and waited. She had no intention of donning her own bird form only to be lured away, leaving the dun open to magical attacks. The raven called out, a harsh cry of sheer frustration, then flew up high and darted off, disappearing into the glare of the sun.
“We’re not going to get off that easy,” Dallandra muttered to herself.
Although she kept glancing at the battle below, her real watch lay on the sky. She paced back and forth, wondering how the raven would mount her attack. Since her attempt to lure Dallandra away physically had failed, it was likely that she would retreat to some safe spot where she could go into a trance and approach the dun from the etheric. The seals would turn her back, of course—unless Alshandra appeared and wiped them away. Dallandra knew perfectly well that neither she nor Jill had the power to set a seal that the Guardian couldn’t destroy. She spent a few more minutes watching the battle until she could be sure that the Horsekin were in too much danger of their own to storm the city, then left the roof and hurried to her chamber.
Dallandra lay down on her bed, crossed her arms over her chest, and steadied her breathing. She closed her eyes, then transferred up to the etheric and her body of light, which she built in the elven manner as a tall silver flame, burning round the soul within, though still joined to her entranced body below with a silver cord. In this form, she could float through the ceiling of her chamber and travel out onto the etheric plane. She drifted onto the roof and realized that the golden dome had vanished, that the seals were shattered and gone.
Borne on a wave of fear, Dallandra rose up above the dun. All round her the battle raged in a towering fire of red auras and the misty clouds of life-force drifting from spilled blood. Overhead, she could just distinguish Alshandra as a small figure hovering next to an ordinary-looking body of light, a stylized human female molded of the blue light. Together they were drifting toward the dun. Setting the seals would do no more than delay them for a moment. In something like panic, Dallandra rose up high above the city. She’d never been trained to fight upon the etheric, could do no more than defend herself from attack, and she doubted whether her shields would hold against the Guardian’s power. Wildfolk rushed to flock round her in a glowing flux of crystalline forms, darting this way and that, expanding as they tried to protect her, contracting again in fear.
At that moment, Rhodry and the dragon burst through into the etheric plane, wrapped in Alshandra’s dweomer mist that allowed them to travel it physically. With a howl of triumph, the Guardian swept down, growing huge as she settled into position over the dun. Against Alshandra, Dallandra was powerless, but the human mazrak was another matter. She hovered nearby, her semblances of arms raised high above her head, ready to call down power from the astral and feed her make-believe goddess. With the Wildfolk rushing after, Dallandra charged her.
“You! Hold and stand in the name of the Light!”
The woman shrieked and fled. Dallandra followed, gained on her, sent the Wildfolk ahead to slow her down. They swarmed round her body of light like bees round a flower, darting this way and that, blinding her. Swearing and cursing, the woman batted at them with her incorporeal hands. Never once did she draw a sigil or a pentagram; never once did she chant a banishing. Dallandra could guess that she quite simply didn’t know the proper symbols