Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [92]
Moving slowly herself, Jill got up and turned to follow her as the Guardian—or so the elves called Alshandra’s and Evandar’s race—made her survey of Cengarn’s magical defenses. She was unsure if Alshandra even saw her until the Guardian stared in her direction and sneered with a curl of her lip before turning away and resuming her slow drift round.
Well and good, then, Jill thought. This gives me a moment to arm myself.
Slowly, casually, glancing round as if she were interested in naught more than the weather, Jill walked over to one of the bundles of arrows, all tipped with good steel points, and slowly crouched down to pick one up. The thong round the oiled hides had soaked up oil. Swearing under her breath, Jill drew her silver dagger and slashed the thong, but the flash of magical metal caught Alshandra’s attention. With a howl of rage, the Guardian swung round and rushed over the top of the dome, sliding down to stand facing Jill and just a bit above her. Jill thrust the bundle of arrows up, holding it like a two-handed torch, right through the dome—which, of course, remained unharmed.
With another shriek, this one of pain, Alshandra flung herself backward, but she stopped her inelegant tumble to hover some twenty feet away. The touch of iron, and its magnetism, only worked against her kind at close quarters. For a long moment, they faced off, Jill on her side of the dome, Alshandra on hers. Alshandra sneered, tossing her head again, then turned and drifted off through the sky. The mist began to form round her, a few wisps at first, then a streak here, a puff there, until the egg-shaped cloud hung huge in the sky. For a few beats of a heart, it drifted, then began to sink earthward and eastward, heading for the red-bannered tents upon the ridge. As it moved, it changed, growing solid and steady, gleaming with the silver touch of real water drops as it swelled and billowed into fog.
Jill dropped her sight to the physical plane. Sure enough, the mist now hung visible, and every man on town walls and out among the Horsekin camp to the east had seen it, too. In Cengarn, the alarum went up—men yelled, temple bells clanged, silver horns blared. Armed men poured out of the dun below Jill’s perch and rushed for the walls. The Horsekin began to cheer, or at least, to make a sound that seemed to be their version of cheering. Halfway between a wail and bark, the sound could perhaps be best written as “Hai! Hai!” over and over. More and more took up the cry; some drew daggers and raised them in salute. Down in the besieging army, a vast swell of movement began, as the Kin began turning and surging toward the mist in a roar of their barking cheer.
Out of the mist and some forty feet above the ground, Alshandra appeared, hovering in the air, her arms flung high in benediction. The Kin within sight of her began to scream and stamp their feet; the Kin round the other side of the town began to moan, as if they knew what vision was being denied them, but their discipline held, and they kept to their posts. Alshandra called out three words in their language, then disappeared as suddenly as she’d come. The Kin began to moan and sway, holding their hands up high in imitation of her gesture.
Yet, nearly forgotten, the mist continued to billow and swell up on the east ridge. It drifted this way and that, touching the tents, then pulling back, until at last it came to rest on a long and level spit of land. Jill could only swear helplessly as out of that mist poured warriors, men of the Horsekin all, rank after rank of them upon their enormous horses, the riders glittering with mail