Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [74]
He refused to believe such a preposterous thing, absolutely refused. The wind picked up, stroking his hair as if to reassure him that the world was still solid and real despite whatever fancies he might be having. Yet deep in his heart, a feeling—or perhaps it was an insight—nagged and gnawed, that perhaps, just maybe, perhaps all the death-dealing that he’d done in his long warrior’s life was the most ridiculous thing in the world, because nothing had ever been or ever would be settled or finished, once and for all, by blood and the sword.
“No! It can’t be true.”
And if it were true? All his life one thing had defined Rhodry—death and his ability to deal it. He saw it very clearly, that night, how his honor, his rank, his very manhood had always rested on his talent for war. Yet if death meant nothing, if war settled nothing, if old hatreds lived and old feuds haunted like ghosts no matter how much blood was poured out to propitiate them—well, then! what was he, who was he?
He leapt to his feet and walked, pacing round and round, staring at the stars that glittered high above him, cold and utterly indifferent to the fate of men and elves alike. He would talk about it with Jill, he decided, once the siege of Cengarn was lifted, and he could reach her. He would ask her outright this time; he would take up her wretched hints and her challenge. He’d never been a coward before. Cursed if he’d be a coward about this!
Once he made the decision, he could put his mind at rest, could kneel down and spread out his bedroll as if this were a night like any other. He put all his trust in Jill and what she would tell him, just as a sick child puts all his trust in his mother to heal him; and trusting in her, he could sleep.
It was just at dawn, and a long way west from Cengarn and south as well, so far away, in fact, that it would have taken men and horses half a year to march there, that Evandar materialized on the shore of the Southern Sea, at a cove where a river ran down from the north to form the harbor of Rinbaladelan, City of the Moon. Most of the river still flowed in the stone conduits that the elven folk had built to contain it, but here and there Time had broken the levees and allowed the water to spread. On top of the stone banks, shrubs grew in windblown soil; flowering vines draped old stairways and ramps; here and there, trees put down roots that would in time crack apart the masonry. Soon, Evandar supposed, the original swamp would reclaim the estuary and spoil the perfect crescent of the harbor.
He walked along the white sand at the tide line until he reached a mound of sand-covered stone, some twenty feet high, where once a lighthouse had stood. A slippery climb up broken stairs brought him to the top and a good view of the ruined city. Behind him the blue sea broke over water-worn stone, the drowned bones of jetties and seawalls; ahead, forest in green waves lay over mounds and gullies that had once been buildings and streets. On the highest hill, like a fist, the ruins of the observatory poked through the trees, still dominating the city in death as it had done so in life. From where he stood, Evandar could just pick out a few stone structures, each well over a hundred feet tall—a crumbling stairway clasped by underbrush; a peculiar curving track, like an upside-down arch, that had once guided light from important stars to the eyes of learned men; slender pillars that still marked the rising and setting of equinoctial suns—though their positions were a bit off after this lapse of time. Each pillar stood crowned, these days, by the untidy nests of herons and storks, while lesser birds dwelt in the star tracks.
It was from the observatory hill that the founders of Rinbaladelan had first laid out the city plan, an elaborate scheme of circles and ellipses, drawn from the movements of the so-called “wandering stars.” Since the city had fallen some eleven centuries earlier, tree roots and winter storms had effaced the pattern, just as