Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [156]
The only other man alive was Devalanteriel, and he was bleeding all down his side, and coughing up blood, too, as he stood weaving, trying to keep his feet. Dar threw an arm round him just as he died, crumpling forward onto the grass. The fire was roaring in a circle half round them.
“Dar!” Jennantar screamed. “Get out of there!”
Dar sheathed his sword and ran, splashing into the shallow river, stumbling across in water up to his armpits,letting it wash his friend’s blood away — It was so hard to breathe that he thought for a moment that he’d been wounded; then he realized that he was sobbing aloud. At the far bank Jennantar grabbed his arms and hauled him ashore. He too was weeping.
“Forgive me,” he kept saying, over and over, “I should have listened to you. Forgive me.”
“No time for that now.”
He knelt down by the wounded man—young Landaren—and found blood soaking his tunic. When he pulled the gory cloth back, the wound proved superficial, a sideways slash across ribs and skin.
“He’s been smacked across the head, too,” Jezryaladar said. “But I don’t think his skull’s broken. He’d have died if it was, when we were hauling him through the water.”
Dar nodded, drawing his dagger, and began cutting a reasonably clean strip of cloth from his own tunic to stanch the wound.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said while he worked. “I don’t know where they came from, but there’s bound to be more. Oh, by the Dark Sun herself I Carra!”
For a moment he could neither move nor speak, just from his sheer terror on her behalf. With a sob he caught his breath.
“I’ve got to get back to Cengarn.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
The voice sounded so hollow, so strange, so much inside his own mind that he shrieked, twisting round to look. A little ways away from their group and as far as possible from the river hovered a pale blue shape, mostly human, though strangely smooth and transparent. It was slight and frail, probably feminine, though the shape of its head indicated cropped hair. The others had seen it, too. Jennantar tried to speak but could only make a strangled sound.
“Jill!” Dar whispered. “Ye gods, are you dead then?”
“I’m not.” Her words echoed in his mind again, “I came in the dweomer body to warn you, and I see that I’m much too late, Dar, the enemy’s marching for Cengarn. Can you reach Calonderiel? Your horses have stopped bolting and are herding, well, some of them, anyway, just beyond the river to the south,”
“Well have to try, then, won’t we?”
When he glanced at Jezryaladar he realized that the others had heard nothing,
“It’s Jill,” he said. “I can hear her speaking,”
They merely stared, glazed and trembling,
“Jill, those Meradan, they’re afraid of fire. Can’t you use that against them?”
He could feel her amusement, rather than hear her laugh, though a bitter feeling it was.
“It wasn’t the fire. I saw the whole fight, and I only wish things were so simple. It’s you they’re afraid of, Dar, Once they could see you clearly, they thought you were the children of their gods, and that they’d just committed a horrifying sacrilege by killing sacred beings. But their leaders will disabuse them of the notion soon enough.”
“What? I don’t understand! No one can kill a god.”
“No time to explain, I’m exhausted, and I can’t keep this up. Get to Calonderiel, Bring as many elven warriors as you can, but don’t go rushing right into the sieging army. Send scouts.”
For a moment longer he could see her, speaking and gesturing, but he could not hear. She grew thin, transparent, wisping away like smoke in the fire, then gone,
“If Jill’s dead,” Jezryaladar whispered, “then everything’s lost,”
“She’s not and it isn’t! That was dweomer, you dolt, not her ghost.”
For a long moment none of them spoke. Across the stream the fire was dying down as it reached damp forest and green summer wood. Landaren groaned and stirred.
“Lie still!” Jennantar snapped. “Don’t even try to sit up.”
“We can’t move him far, can we?” Dar said. “Not right away. Listen. Jill said that there’s some of