Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [159]
From a bare few yards away, Jill hurled the last spear directly at her face. Howling and tearing with both hands, Alshandra hovered for a moment, pulling the dissolving form out of her etheric substance, then thrust herself forward so fast that Jill’s dodge came too late—just as she’d always known it would. In a kind of mock pain, she felt huge hands close round her almost throat.
“You puny little shrew!” The Guardian’s thoughts hissed like water dancing on hot iron. “Who’s more clever now?”
Jill grabbed Alshandra’s wrists with her hands and writhed, twisting, summoning the last of her strength.
“Who indeed?”
She wrenched them both into the streaming water veil. Shrieking, Alshandra dropped her and tried to flee, but too late. The roil of elemental force tore at her form, wrenched great handfuls of her hair from her head, stripped the etheric substance out of her spirit’s mold, and swirled it away. She bobbed and screamed, growing tattered first, then faint, but still the relentless etheric stream broke over and drowned her, shrank her to the flopping image of a tiny child, ill-formed and barely human. One last huge scream rang out across two worlds; then the river swept her away. Reborn she doubtless would be, but never would she come to life again as Alshandra the Guardian.
All at once, Jill felt herself bobbing up into the sky as huge patches of her own etheric double tore free and fell away. She looked down and saw the silver cord dangling, broken.
“It is over,” she called out. “It is finished.”
With the last of her living consciousness, she could hear three great knocks boom in answer, three thunderclaps rolling through the sky. In the streaming silver mist, a golden light began to shine, and it was a light that shone as sound, too, deafening her to the thunder, deafening her to the river’s rush and the cheers and the howls far below in the land of the living. The light swept over her like a river and lifted her high and clear out of the water veil. All round her the light turned as hard as jewels, until it seemed she stood in a hall of light. When she looked at herself, she found she still had her memory of a body. Though it was a flickering thing, and pale, it seemed to her that, for this brief moment, she was young again. As well, she seemed to perceive through eyes and ears like a living woman would have.
In front of her, his hands stretched out to greet her, stood Nevyn, but as he’d looked in his youth, with his thick shock of untidy dark hair and joyous blue eyes.
“You waited?” Jill whispered. “You waited for me all these years?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” He was smiling. “Did you truly think I wouldn’t?”
Her hands grasped his. As he drew her close, the Light rose to wrap them round.
Carra had seen Alshandra appear, dropping out of a night sky like a hawk stooping to the kill. Too frightened to scream, she turned stone-still, as paralyzed as the rabbit that might have been the hawk’s prey. All round the dun and town shouting went up, the hai! hai! hai! of the Horsekin, the howling curses of the relieving army. Dallandra stepped smoothly in between Carra and the plunging Guardian, then began to chant in Elvish, weaving her hands back and forth in peculiar patterns. For a moment, Alshandra hovered just above the roof, her feet close to touching the slates. The shouting rose like a sea, washing Dallandra’s chants away.
All at once, Alshandra screamed and threw her head back in agony. She flung herself into the air, snatching at something that Carra couldn’t see, swatting out with her huge hands. She darted away south and east, flying through the air, weaving and dipping as if she were trying to catch some invisible insect. Carra leapt to her feet and turned to watch.
“Stay right here.” Dallandra