Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [118]
Dallandra smiled to herself. It was better to let them think that she was the one working a familiar dweomer, but of course, she understood next to nothing about Evandar's gates between worlds.
At length the mist began to thin in patches, as if invisible fingers were teasing it out the way a woman teases out wool for the carding comb. The sun beyond brightened as the mist finally faded away. In a cool sunlight they found themselves on the bank of a dead river where brown reeds stood crisp and lead-grey water oozed over filthy sands. The bank itself, covered with short dead grass, made a hard road under the horses' hooves. Dallandra turned in the saddle to look at Evandar, whose eyes had gone bleak.
“Oh by the holy stars!” Dallandra whispered. “What's happened, my love?”
“When my people left to cross the white river, they took the life of the Lands with them.” Evandar kept his voice flat and steady, but she knew how much losing his creation must have cost him. “I built this world for them, after all.”
Dallandra rose in her stirrups and looked round. Her formal garden had disappeared, although a few cracked bricks among dead weeds marked the spot where it had stood. The cloth-of-gold pavilion had disappeared without leaving even that much of a trace behind. She sat back with a shake of her head and leaned forward to pat her nervous horse's neck.
“It's a ghastly change, in't?” Evandar said.
“It is, and I'm so sorry. I know you loved this place.”
Evandar shrugged, then turned to call to Daralanteriel.
“We're all here? Good! Let's move on.”
With a wave of his arm the prince signalled to his caravan, and they set off, following the dead river through desolation. After perhaps a mile's worth of riding, the view around them began to change, burgeoning green and wild, with long meadows sprinkled with white daisies and yellow buttercups. Farther away grew trees in shaggy copses. Here and there Dallandra saw rabbits out in the tall grass. When they passed a stand of trees, squirrels chattered.
“This isn't your doing,” Dallandra said. “Where did it come from?”
“I don't know,” Evandar said. “I suspect it's the work of an old man who lives out in the further reaches.”
“What? Who?”
“Ah, I see I've forgotten to tell you. When I was searching for the hag Alshandra, back last summer, I flew beyond my lands and into a dead place, all barren rock and sand, where ugly creatures lived, mostly under the rocks. You could see their little red eyes, glaring at you. But in the midst of this grim spot I found an old man, sitting and peeling an apple, and every slice he cut turned into the stuff of life, somehow, like the heat of a fire pouring into the dead place. Whenever I visited there, it seemed more alive and larger, and so I think that in the end his work succeeded, even as mine was dying.”
“How very odd!”
“And here I was hoping you could tell me what it all meant.”
Dallandra merely shook her head. Something of his tale had triggered a memory—no, more a ghost of a memory, deep in her mind. She had heard that place of rock and death described once, some very long time ago, but try as she might, she could not recall when or how.
They were approaching the wild forest that had formerly divided Evandar's lands from those he'd made for his brother and his brother's people. The forest, at least, still flourished, as wild and tangled as she remembered it, but then, it owed its life to older, stranger magicks than Evandar's. As they followed a road into the twisted, moss-covered trees, the sunlight faded, and a huge greenish-silver moon rose off to their left, hanging in the sky just above the treetops. When she turned in the saddle to glance back, she saw that the elven archers had spread out to surround Carra, Dar, and his precious burden. Jahdo seemed to be having no trouble urging his mule and packhorse to trot along quickly. But in the sky—
“We've lost Rhodry!” Dallandra said abruptly.
“Curse that wretched snake of a dragon!” Evandar looked up, searching the narrow stripe of view between