Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [106]
That very morning Daralanteriel sent his pair of messengers off with letters and tokens for Calonderiel. From her tower room Jill watched them ride out, leading a packhorse, carrying their short, curved hunting bows strung at the ready and slung over their shoulders. She would scry for them, too, off and on over the next few days, until she could be sure that they were safely out in the grasslands and on their way south unharmed.
More and more she believed that some enemy was scouting the dun just as she was scouting the surrounding countryside. Although she doubted very much if another shape-changer lurked physically round Cengarn, such a sorcerer might well have been scrying by more conventional means or prowling out on the etheric plane. Every now and then, when she was traveling in the body of light, she would peer round her through the billowing blue waves of etheric energy and see hints that someone else had passed the same way. Occasionally as well she would run across the Wildfolk, who in their true home were beautiful creatures, all geometric shapes and lines of colored light. At times they would flock round her in an exhalation of rage, perhaps caused by an interloper in their world, at others of terror, as if that interloper had frightened them.
Besides, she and Rhodry both still had the sporadic feeling that they were being watched. Of course, many people who have no dweomer of their own suspect it everywhere and in the most normal of occurrences, a thing true in Jill’s time just as nowadays. Not only was Rhodry half-elven, however, with that race’s natural sensitivity to magic, but dweomer, for evil as well as good, had touched his life many times in the past. When he said that he felt it now, she believed him.
“But you know what’s strange about this, Jill?” he remarked one morning: “I don’t feel any malice when this mind or whatever you’d call it turns my way.”
“You don’t? Interesting! I’ve felt malice in good measure, myself, and so have the Wildfolk. Somebody’s terrified them.”
“Stranger and stranger.”
“Well, I’ll make a guess that we’re dealing with two different dweomerfolk, but that’s only a guess.” She hesitated, then decided that there truly was naught more to say until she had more evidence. “What I do know is that this wound of yours is healed up nicely. I think me it’s time for you and the dwarves to get on your way.”
“Are you sure I wouldn’t better serve the gwerbret by staying here? If there’s war coming—”
“Soldiers the gwerbret has. You’re the only man on this earth who can find that dragon and unravel Evandar’s tedious little riddle.”
“And you think it’s truly important that the dragon get itself found?”
“I do. I can’t tell you why, but I do.”
“No hope for it, then,” He flashed her one of his lunatic grins. “I shall do my lady’s bidding and walk strange roads, climb high mountains, freeze in the snows, and deal with dwarven madmen, and all of this shall I do with cheerful heart and—”
“Will you hold your tongue? This is no time for daft jests.”
“On the contrary, my lady.” Rhodry bowed low to her. “What better time for a daft jest than when the times themselves are mad?”
She started to snap at him, then decided he was right enough.
“Let’s go out to the common room. I want to talk to Otho about provisioning this expedition. By the by, did he ever hand over the coin he owed you?”
“Of course not. It’s all gone to the innkeep for my bed and board.”
“The gall! I’ll speak to him about that.”
“No need. We’re doubtless all about to die, anyway, gulped down for a tidbit by this wyrm, so what does a handful of coppers matter, anyway? Of course, it might give the beast indigestion, if it ate my pockets with me, and so we’d have a revenge of sorts.”
“I wish you wouldn’t jest like that.”
He hesitated, then turned away with a shrug.
“As my lady commands, then.”
“And the paying of that coin’s important, Rhoddo. He should pay and maintain you as well.”
“At the moment I can’t much worry about a handful of coin.”
“Nah nah nah,