Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [161]
The delighted crowd applauded, even though they doubtless had no idea of the enormous scope of the gift he was offering. Jill was so pleased that she found it hard to speak. Here was a weapon she’d never hoped to earn: Meer’s aid.
“My thanks, good bard. Tonight, if it pleases you, we shall dine together in my chamber.”
“It pleases me indeed, mazrak.” Meer hesitated. “Wait. Such address is not correct. It pleases me—Jill.”
With one last bow the enormous bard gestured to Jahdo and strode off, swinging his head from side to side with a rustle of his braided mane, tapping his way with his long staff through the crowd, which parted to let him pass. No doubt he needed to be alone with his grief, that a tribe of his own kind, even if it weren’t his own tribe, would betray their gods and all that such stood for.
“We shall have mead,” Cadmar called out. “I need to wash the taste of these impious demands out of my mouth. Let the swine wait for their answer.”
The crowd roared again. As the serving lasses and pages scurried off, Jill glanced round, but there was no sign of Carra. Yraen, however, was standing by the foot of the spiral staircase. He seemed carved of granite, he’d gone so gray and still. When Jill hurried over, he bowed to her, but he said not a word.
“Where’s Cam?” Jill snapped.
“In the women’s hall, where I can’t go.” His voice shook badly.
“Well, there’s Lady Ocradda, over there by the window with the bards. Get her to take you up. Carra’s going to hear the news sooner or later, and I’d rather she heard from you and Occa, not from her maid’s gossip or suchlike.”
Yraen nodded and trotted off to follow orders.
Jill had a peculiar sort of battlement to build round the dun and the town. Even though it was broad daylight, and the ward and the walls were filled with people, she decided that she had no time to waste in waiting for darkness, and that the dun had seen enough dweomer by now to put up with her standing on the tops of towers and doing odd things. She puffed up the spiral staircase to the roof of the main broch, where she’d taught Rhodry how to intone a magical formula, and found tidy little pyramids of round stones, stacked at the edge at regular intervals, ready for some desperate defense of the dun. Jill walked into the center of this circle and stood for a moment, catching her breath.
When she was ready, she focused her mind on the blue light of the etheric. Slowly it seemed that the bright sunlight round her faded and a different light rose, dim and silvery, though through it she could clearly see the physical world around her. In this bluish flux she raised her arms high and called upon the power of the Holy Light that stands behind all the shadowy figures and personified forces that men call gods. Its visible symbol came to her in a glowing spear that pierced her from head to foot. For a moment she stood motionless, paying it homage, then stretched her arms out shoulder-high, bringing the light with them to form a shaft across her chest. As she stood within the cross, the light swelled, strengthening her, then slowly faded of its own will. When it was gone, she lowered her arms, then visualized a sword of glowing light in her right hand. Once the image lived apart from her will, she circled the roof, walking deosil, and used the sword to draw a huge ring of golden light in the sky.
As the ring settled to earth, it sheeted out, forming a burning wall round the entire town of Cengarn. Three times round she went, until the wall lived on the etheric of its own will. At each ordinal point, she put a seal in the shape of a five-pointed star made of blue fire. Once the sigils of the kings of the elements blazed at the four directions, she spread the light until it was not a ring but an enormous sphere of gold, roofing over the dun and the town both and extending down under them as well. Two last seals at zenith and nadir, and Cengarn hung in the many-layered worlds like a