Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [172]
“The bitch!” Rhodry snarled. “She may have flown, lads.”
Still, neither bird had been a raven. He ran over to the entrance gaping between huge stones and peered in. When he saw the firm ground just below, he scrambled inside, half-stepping, half-sliding. Rhodry had always been able to see uncommonly well in the dark, and in a few heartbeats his eyes could pick out the shape of the structure around him. He trotted down the tunnel and heard, off to one side, the sound of a woman weeping. A broken doorway loomed. He stepped in and saw Raena, huddled against the wall in a pool of silver light. She clasped her injured wrist against her chest.
“So,” Rhodry said. “The raven can't fly? What a pity.”
Raena grabbed something from the floor and hurled, but he ducked and let the clumsy stone miss. Swearing under her breath she scrambled to her feet. Rhodry could hear men running down the tunnel and so, apparently, could she, because she made no try at escape.
“Kiel!” Rhodry called out. “Come here! We've got her penned!”
With a last dignity she straightened up, shaking back her long dark hair, and stood as proudly as a queen while the militiamen rushed in. For a moment they simply stared at her while she scowled with a narrow-eyed hatred that seemed as palpable as the silver light glowing on the stone.
“Take her back to Admi,” Rhodry said. “Her Wyrd lies in the hands of your laws.”
Up on the etheric Evandar had been waiting near Raena's hiding place, wedged between two black slabs that in the physical world manifested as stones. As he listened to Raena praying, sobbing, calling out for Lord Havoc to rescue her, he felt a brief pang of sympathy for the woman, but to him she meant bait and no more. Sure enough, in a cloud of silver light Shaetano appeared in his rough man-shape, but his long face plumed with russet hair, and his ears stood up sharp and vulpine.
“I have come,” he intoned. “I—”
His words broke off into a scream as Evandar leapt the gap between the planes and materialized. Before he could speak, Shaetano took off running down the tunnel. Evandar raced after him. As he ran, Shaetano's form began to melt and blur; at the entrance a black-and-white shrike screeched and leapt into the air. Evandar followed in the shape of the red hawk, flapping hard to gain height. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rhodry racing down the path toward them, but his brother was prey, and the only thing that mattered to him now. His huge wings slashed the air and drew him ever nearer to the shrike laboring below.
They flew free of Cerr Cawnen's walls and out over the fields. Evandar was gaining steadily when Shaetano dove for the earth to land in the shelter of the pale spring grass. Evandar overshot him, cursed, swung back in a wide circle and plummeted earthward. He could see a fox, dashing for the stone wall at the edge of a cow pasture. As he landed he transformed again, this time into the black hound. Barking, he raced forward, gaining on the fox, but just as it seemed he would catch him, Shaetano leapt into the air and disappeared.
Evandar hurled himself through the gate twixt worlds and found himself in elven form, running across the battle plain. In the hideous copper-colored light dust roiled. Lightning flashed at the horizon, turning the perpetual smoke a pale bluish-silver as ugly as the skin of a corpse. Just ahead of him Shaetano stood waiting in human form and wearing his black armor. He held his sword across his body as he crouched, ready for a fight. Evandar could see the glitter of dark eyes under the low brow of his black helm.
“Get your weapons, brother!” Shaetano called out. “You need them.”
“So I do.”
Evandar flung both arms into the air and called down Light. Like a bluish spear of lightning it came to him, but he grabbed it and twisted, weaving it back and forth into a huge net of rope. With a yelp Shaetano stepped back, but too