Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [8]
For a moment, as it hovered, beating its wings to keep its place, the giant bird stared straight at him. Behind the round, gold eyes, Rhodry could see the human soul of the shape-changer—he was sure of it, irrational though it was—and feel the malice therein. All at once, he recognized her. The memory rose in his mind like a piece of flotsam, long drowned, that a storm wave catches and brings up into the sun for one brief moment, only to let it sink again. But he remembered remembering and knew that somehow, against all reason, he recognized this tormented soul and knew it to be female.
The raven shrieked and dodged. Arzosah flicked her head to one side and snapped, the huge jaws closing with a clack like a wagon gate, but the raven let herself fall away, fluttering helplessly as she spiraled down. With a roar, Arzosah dropped after. The raven twisted in midair and vanished. A lone feather twirled down to the grasslands below. Arzosah flapped once, turned, and settled on the ground nearby.
“Where did she go?” Rhodry slammed a frustrated fist into his palm. “We almost had her.”
“Off to Evandar’s country, most like. This creature has dweomer, Master, power such as I’ve never smelt before.”
When the dragon stretched out her neck, Rhodry slid down to the ground, then paused.
“How can you smell dweomer?”
“It’s like the air after a storm when lightning’s struck, all clean and tingling, but a danger smell, too.”
“Huh. Interesting. I think I smelt it myself, there for a moment.”
“That’s your elven blood. All of the People know magic in their hearts.”
Rhodry retrieved the black feather, like a real feather in every respect save one, that it stretched a good three feet long. His memory taunted him. How could he recognize such a powerful creature without putting a name or time to their meeting? With a shake of his head, he ran the feather through his fingers, felt it turn cold, seem to run like water, tingle in his hands. He yelped and dropped it. On the grass lay a long strand of a woman’s raven-black hair, glistening with blue highlights in the sunlight.
“Ah,” Arzosah said. “She’s turned herself back, wherever she is.”
Rhodry mouthed an oath.
“Do you want to hear a strange thing, Master?”
“By all means. It seems to be the day for them.”
Arzosah rumbled in her version of laughter.
“So it is, so it is. But when she dropped into our world and looked at you, I could have sworn she recognized you.”
Borne on its inner wave, the memory rose again, and this time, the image of a face came with it. Impossible! he thought. It could never be her, never! And yet in a wordless way, he knew perfectly well that it was, that he had met again an enemy from many years past, when he and Jill were young. It had happened, in fact, during their very first year of riding the long road together. And a strange affair that was, he thought, as soaked with evil magic as a battlefield is with blood, strange then and stranger to look back on now, when I know a thing or two more than I did then.
PAST
Gwaentaer and Deverry
Spring, 1063
CONJUNCTIO
This figure brings good out of prior good, and evil out of prior evil Yet by a most cunning paradox, when it does fall into the Land of Steel, which governs marriages, it produces evil even unto the point of death.
—The Omenbook of Gwarn,
Loremaster
1
THE TAVERN CATERED, IT seemed, to shabby young men, laughing and talking among themselves—craftsmen’s apprentices from the look of them. Jill propped one foot up on a bench and settled her back against the curved stone wall. Since she and her man both carried the silver dagger, the mark of a notoriously poor band of wandering mercenaries, the other customers seemed willing to ignore them, but she preferred to take no chances. Besides, even though she wore men’s clothing and had her blond hair cropped off like a lad’s, she was very beautiful