Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [158]
Evandar stared at him for a long moment.
“Not what you thought, was it?” Rhodry said.
“No!” Evandar slumped and folded over his own lap until his head nearly touched the floor cloth. “It can't be.”
“It can and it is. I saw it all in the pictures on Lin Serr's doors. Go look yourself if you don't believe me.”
For a long while Evandar sat still and silent.
“Oh come now!” Rhodry snapped. “What's so wrong?”
“You don't understand.” Evandar was whispering. “I brought your ancestors here. The people of Bel. I did it for a friend, my only friend, then, Cadwallinos the Druid. He begged me to save his people when the Rhwmanes moved in for the kill. I led them across the sea and through the mists on the mothers of all roads. I promised them a kingdom of their own. I found them the harbor. Here. Where they—ye gods, forgive me!” Evandar sat up at last. Tears ran down his face.
It was Rhodry's turn for the shock. For a long while they merely sat and stared at each other. From outside they could hear murmurs of conversation, as the men of the People walked back and forth, talking among themselves. At last Evandar wiped his face on his illusion of sleeve, though the wet-looking tears never dampened it.
“Ah well,” Evandar said. “You've spoken true, Rori. If a man lights a fire on a floor, the wood's not to blame for burning.”
“You'll let the Gel da'Thae be?”
“I will. You have my word on that.” All at once he smiled, his usual sunny daft self again. “But what about the Horsekin? It would gladden my heart to crisp a few of those.”
“Nah nah nah! None!”
“Oh very well! Though I must say, you can certainly be cold-hearted when you want to be.”
“It's a thing I've learned with age. I recommend it to you.”
Evandar scowled at him, then disappeared in a puff of pale light like dust. Shaking his head, Rhodry got up and went outside to look for Dallandra.
The strange battle in the sky had left Dallandra mobbed by people who all talked at once. Prince Daralanteriel and his men, Zatcheka and hers, even some of the townsfolk—they all crowded around her, shoving one another and demanding explanations. She could barely pick a single voice out of the uproar.
“Hold your tongues!” Dallandra shouted at last. “And get back! I'm not going to explain anything in the middle of a howling mob.”
“Do what she says!” Daralanteriel snapped. “And hurry! I want to know what this all meant, myself.”
The crowd grumbled, but they did step back and let her get free of them.
“That's better,” Dallandra said. “Now, then. The first thing you've all got to understand is that very little of what you saw was real. The spirits who worked those marvels are masters of the etheric plane. They exist only as spirits, but they can assume many a strange form, and to our eyes they seem to be as solid as ever they can be. But they're not. They belong to another part of the universe and can only visit ours for short spaces of time.”
When she paused for a moment, Dallandra realized that most of those listening had the dazed look of persons struggling to extract sense from a foreign language. Niffa was all rapt attention, and Zatcheka nodded as if in agreement, but the others, Westfolk, townsfolk, and Gel da'Thae alike—she realized that she was wasting her breath.
“These spirits aren't gods, but they do have powerful magicks,” Dalla went on. “And they can cast glamours. That is, their magic can make them look like another person. But Evandar's magicks are the strongest of all, and so he destroyed their spells. Think of it as a battle, and he won.”
In the fading afternoon light a number of the men smiled or nodded to one another. This they could understand.
“But we've not won the war,” Dallandra said. “I want everyone to be on their guard.