Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [145]
With a snap of her wrist she tossed the ball of light to the floor, where it stuck, glowing like a tiny lantern. She sat down cross-legged in front of it, and Verrarc joined her, cursing a little at the hardness of the stone.
“Huh, you be soft, my love,” Raena said. “Those who worship Alshandra needs must have souls of steel.”
She rose to her knees, then flung her arms above her head and began to chant in a rhythm he'd never heard her use before, slowly at first, then faster. Such melody as there was rose and fell. As she swayed back and forth, sweat broke out on her forehead, then ran down her face. Back and forth, on and on—sweat stuck her dress to her back, and she began to gasp for breath. In the witchlight her face turned as pale and cold-looking as a fish's belly.
“Hold, Rae!” Verrarc laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “There be a need on you to stop lest you kill yourself.”
With one last sob she let her arms fall to her sides. For a long moment she knelt, her head bowed, her face so wet that he wondered if it were sweat or tears that ran there.
“There be shame so heavy upon me,” Raena whispered. “I did fail her. Now she turns her face away from me.”
“Be you sure of that? Or could the truth lie in what Jahdo did tell the town, that your Alshandra were but a spirit like Lord Havoc?”
“Never!” She raised her head with a toss of her long hair. “That lying little snake! Truly, you should have slain him, that day in the water meadows.”
“Oh here, as if I'd cause Dera and her kin one moment's pain!”
“True spoken. Forgive me, my love, I be so desolate I know not what I say.” Raena sat down, crossing her legs, on the floor and wiped both hands across her face. “What did he tell you?”
“That there were a battle in the sky twixt her and a mighty mistress of the witchroad. When Alshandra died, he saw her body break apart, and all the Horsekin did scream and howl in despair, for they did believe her dead.”
“And for their sin they did perish, all of them that doubted her. Those who believed came safely through her country to their homes again, just as I did return to the man I love second only to her.” She reached out a soft hand and caressed his cheek. “Ah, Verro! Someday I hope and pray that you will see her as I have seen her, in her glory.”
“It would be a grand thing.”
His voice must have lacked conviction, because she winced and turned her face away. While he sat, trying to think of some comforting words, at the window something rustled. A shutter knocked on stone, then fell silent. Verrarc was on his feet without thinking and running to the window.
“Douse that light!” he hissed.
As soon as the light disappeared Verrarc flung open the shutters. No one was there, and indeed, he felt a sudden fool when he realized that the window opened out on empty air. He stuck his head out and looked straight down to the stone plaza, a hard drop of some two stories below. He closed the shutters again.
“No one here,” he said. “And no one could be here lest they could fly.”
“Don't mock that idea, my love.” She muttered something else that he couldn't quite understand.
In the darkness he could not see Raena's face. It took him several moments before he realized that she wasn't forming words; she was laughing, a choked sort of laughter, brimming with panic.
In the physical world Raena's dweomer light, an extrusion of etheric force, shone brightly, but on the higher planes it appeared as a darkness, marking the spot on the etheric plane from which she'd sucked substance. In hawk form Evandar had been as usual hunting for his brother, first back in the ruins of his Lands, then ranging farther afield, until at last he circled low over Cerr Cawnen, though still in the etheric rather than the physical world. In the shimmering blue light the stone buildings stood black and dead, while the lake seethed with silver energy, reaching dangerous tendrils up high. As he passed over the plaza, a lake of blackness, he could see the dull reddish glow of the trees near the ruined temple, and Arzosah's aura— a huge plumed thing of gold and