Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [60]
“I honestly don’t know what to think. The best thing for them would be to choose life and birth, just as your people should, but would it cost you so much to save their lands for them?”
“But I don’t understand. Why should I do a thing for them that I don’t want to do?”
The question was perfectly calm, perfectly civil, not petulant nor angry in the least. Its very placidity made her remember how alien he was, no matter how much an elf he looked.
“It would be a compassionate thing, a right thing, a— well, a loving thing to do.”
Evandar laughed.
“But they’re ugly.”
“That’s true.” Dallandra was choosing each word carefully. “But they suffer, they have feelings even as you do.”
“Them? My brother’s little monsters? His ugly wretched brutes?”
Something came clear in Dallandra’s mind.
“You made a country for your brother, but he had to fashion the bodies for his folk.”
“Just so, and a botched job he did of it. Looking here, looking there, at the beasts as much as at the elves and men, taking a piece here, a piece there. Ych! Well, it’s his concern now and none of my own.”
“But you made him his country. Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about him anymore, nor about the Lands, either.”
“But I need to know more.”
“I shan’t tell you.”
Evandar turned and began striding back uphill. Cursing his stubbornness under her breath, Dallandra followed, catching up with him at the top.
“Will you listen to me, please?” she snapped. “We’ve got to talk. I’ve learned some rather ghastly things.”
“Elessario!” A flicker of real alarm crossed his face. “Is she safe?”
“She is, but for how long I can’t say. You know that Alshandra’s sworn to bring her back to this world, by murdering the child’s new mother if all else fails. Well, she’s raising an army to help her.”
“Indeed? Then we’ll deal with her once the army’s raised.” He hesitated, but only briefly. “Don’t trouble me with all this now, not when there’s been a spy skulking round my lands.”
“He didn’t look like a spy to me. He looked terrified.”
Evandar turned away without bothering to answer. He snapped his fingers, and out of nowhere a silver horn appeared. When he blew three deep notes, like flames leaping out of the ground soldiers of the Host came charging up the hill. They gathered round him—how many, she couldn’t tell—in a glitter of copper-colored mail and helmets, each man armed with a long bronze-tipped spear. His page hurried forward, leading two golden horses with silvery manes and tails,
“Evandar!” Dallandra snapped. “This news I’ve got—”
“Will have to wait. Ride with me, my love. It’s not safe for you to linger here alone.”
As Dallandra mounted, she saw that the foot soldiers had turned into cavalry, as suddenly as changes always came about in this country. In the clatter and jingle of silver-studded tack they followed Evandar as he led the way out with a whoop and a wave of his arm. Dallandra urged her horse up next to his as the road beneath flattened out along the river.
“We ride to the battle plain,” Evandar called out.
Behind him the Host roared their approval, and silver horns blew.
As they trotted across the billowing plains, the ground steadied beneath them, and the grass turned green, swishing high around their horses’ legs until they were forced to slow to a walk. On the horizon the distant cities settled down and turned solid, too, and gleamed here and there with lights in their windows or glints atop their walls as the day faded into a greenish twilight. A moon hung pink and bloated just above the horizon, never rising, never setting.
In that ghastly light they entered the forest, half dead, half living, and picked a slow way down a trail so narrow that they were forced to ride single file. Deep among ancient trees things moved and scurried, just at the limits of Dalla’s vision, until she felt like screaming. Intellectually she knew that they were merely Wildfolk, but the intellect had little place in Evandar’s country. Every twig that caught her hair or brushed her shoulder made her heart race. When she saw the beacon