Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [108]
Over the next few days, Cengarn began to prepare for war. The gwerbret took to spending much of the day riding his lands, with his servitors in attendance, going from farm to farm, sizing up the harvest and having a word here and there with various yeoman farmers who could be counted on to join the muster. Messages went back and forth between his various vassals, too, discussing plans. The townsmen began making preparations of their own, gathering in what supplies they could, meeting together to discuss mutual support and to choose the men and wagons they owed the gwerbret in times of war. Yet in all the flurry of hard work and messages, no one ever heard from Lord Tren, not the gwerbret himself, not his loyal vassals. Whenever Cadmar sent him a messenger, the man was always well treated, told that an answer would follow, and sent away empty-handed. No answer ever did come.
During these days Jill spent more time at her scrying than ever, yet never did she find one sign of military action along the gwerbret’s borders. More and more, too, she worried about Dallandra. It had been close to a fortnight since she’d seen her, but of course, as she reminded herself, that lapse of time could have been a mere afternoon up in Evandar’s country. As she often did, she sent her gray gnome, who was beginning to form a seed of true mind, to find Dallandra. Although the gnome couldn’t give her a concrete message, often his arrival was enough to remind Dalla that Jill wanted to see her. Yet every time, the gnome came back without her. When Jill tried asking him simple questions, he would shrug and wander round her chamber, peering into things, shrugging again. She could figure out that he meant he simply hadn’t found Dalla anywhere he’d looked.
Finally Jill decided to try contacting with Evandar or his people herself. When Prince Daralanteriel took his men out hunting, she rode with them until she found a place where two streams joined and a farmer’s fence ran to meet them. It was just this sort of contrast on the one hand and a mingling of disparate natures on the other that seemed to harbor those mysterious gates Dallandra had discussed with her.
Jill waited until the prince and his men were out of earshot, then dismounted, tied her horse to a fencepost, and walked over the three-way join. She could indeed feel a slight difference in the place, a certain stirring of the energy of the earth, a tension in the air, a scurrying in the water. No doubt if she’d been carrying a torch, it would have burned the brighter on this spot. She glanced round—no one in sight but a white cow, drinking at the stream.
“Evandar!” Jill called out. “Dalla! Can you hear me?”
Nothing, not a sound, not a change of energy, not a ripple in the etheric forces to count as an answer. She sat down, leaning against a post, and allowed herself to slip into a light trance so that she was half-aware of the etheric, half of the physical. She could see in the blue light a sort of shimmering plate or shape, but she had not the slightest idea of what to do with it. With a shake of her head she brought herself back and abandoned the attempt.
When she caught up with them, not one man of the Westfolk asked her what she’d been doing. They had had too much experience with dweomer to question a Wise One. As the warband let their horses walk slowly back to the dun, Jill rode beside Dar. The hunting had been good; they were bringing three deer back with them.
“I’ve heard these sieges can last for months,” Dar remarked.
“That’s true. Do you think you and your men can endure it? Being shut up, I mean.”
“If it’s not safe to take Carra away, I’ll have no choice. I can endure what I need to. We all can.”
“Good, because she won’t be safe out on the grass. I’ve thought of calling to other Wise Ones—you know that we have ways of doing sq—but frankly, Dar, I’ve been afraid to. It’s possible to be overheard, when