Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [59]
It was Rhodry’s turn for the surprise.
“Oh, indeed?” he said. “You run along and tend to your master, lad. I’m going to find Jill and tell her about this. I think me shell find it interesting.”
To Dallandra, the long night and morning that Jill had spent returning to Cengarn and questioning Meer and Jahdo passed as a bare couple of heartbeats, the brief interval of Time in which she flew over the water veil from the dark of a Deverry night to the gold of day in Evandar’s country. Simply making that transition stripped away her bird form, and in the semblance of her real body, and in illusions of elven clothing, she found herself standing on a hilltop overlooking the silver river. All round her the grass stretched green, but stunted, browning in the shade of sickly trees. When she turned and looked in the other direction, she saw a mound of tangled weeds and muddy bricks, all that was left of a once-lovely garden.
On impulse she walked down for a closer look. When she’d first come to Evandar’s country, well over two hundred fifty years past as men and elves reckon Time, he’d created this garden to please her. She remembered it as precisely geometric, a huge square marked off by brick walls and hedges and divided corner to corner by graveled walks that led to a central fountain. In each division red roses bloomed, surrounded by various other flowers she couldn’t name, purple and blue and gold. Now the walls had fallen, the hedges gone wild or died back altogether, the walks lay hidden by burdock and dandelions, the roses fought with the weeds for sun. The few blooms she saw were no longer the doubled flowers of the cultivated rose but the simple five-petaled wild variety. In the middle, the marble basin of the fountain had shattered. Mossy chunks lay round the cracked shaft.
Out of sheer grief for something once lovely Dallandra started to walk in through the remains of a gate. In the snarl of weeds near the fountain, something moved with a scurrying little sound. She went frozen, one foot over the threshold, the other not, and waited till the sound came again. This time she saw someone peering at her for a brief moment before it drew back into the foliage—elven eyes in a pale gray face, snouted like a hog, though with a human mouth. One of the Wildfolk? But for all their pranks and malice those elemental spirits, sprite and gnome, undine and salamander, were harmless at root, especially to a dweomer-master like her. Here she felt danger, a sharp hard stab of dweomer warning stinging her heart. Carefully, slowly, she stepped back out of the precinct; carefully, slowly, she moved back a few steps, never turning round, keeping a close watch on the ruined garden.
“Dalla!” It was Evandar’s voice from the hilltop. “What are you doing down there?”
“Come join me.”
Although she could hear him hurrying down to join her she never turned nor looked away from the garden.
“What’s all this?” he was saying. “Oh, your garden’s fallen into rack and ruin. Shall I build it up for you, my love?”
“Whist! Just be silent for a moment and watch. I thought I saw a member of your brother’s court lurking round in there.”
Out in the weeds something moved, stirred, then rose, standing up with a scatter of torn foliage—the owner of the snouted face, roughly human in form though stooped and twisted, wearing a tattered pair of brigga and naught else. At the sight of Evandar it whimpered, holding out clawed and clubby paws.
“Help us! Without you we have nowhere to live.”
“You have everywhere to live,” Evandar said. “All the world between the stars belongs to you.”
The creature whimpered, shaking its head in a stub-born no.
“We want a real home, the home we know, the grass and the rivers of the Lands.”
“Build your own, then. Or better yet, get that lord you serve to build them for you.”
With one last cry, like a despairing baby falling into tear-stained sleep, the creature scuttled off. His arms crossed over his chest, Evandar watched it skittering over the billowing meadows till it disappeared.
“I suppose you think I