Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [181]
“Not if it means the death of everyone I fought to save.” Rhodry turned to look his way. “If I'd die to save them, wouldn't I live?”
“What I can offer you is life, of a sort.”
“I think I understand you. And it'd be a death of a sort as well, wouldn't it now?”
“And a darkness come upon you, as the time demands.”
“But could you do that? You're the master of changes, I know, but can you bring about such a change as that?”
Only then did Dallandra understand.
“No!” she snapped. “You can't! Evandar, you just can't. It's impious. It would take him away forever from his own kind. Every race has a life that flows like a river in Time. You've got to ride your own river, not someone else's. Think of the consequences. I can't, you can't, no one can or could predict what such a thing would do.”
“A riddle, then, and haven't I always been the master of riddles as well?” Evandar was grinning like a mad thing; indeed at that moment she realized that he'd been mad for years, for all the long years that she'd known him. “Safety for the city, my love. It would buy safety for Cerr Cawnen, and life for all that dwell within, and I do in my heart think it would buy hope for me as well.”
“Evandar, you can't! The price—”
“I'll risk the price.”
“Easy for you to say, safe here on the astral, free and far from the consequence.”
“No longer, my love. A riddle, a riddle for my soul, and I offer it freely. Chains for a riddle, chains for a price. I'll take up the chains and buy his freedom with my slavery.”
“What are you saying?”
“I told you. It's a riddle.”
When he laughed, she grabbed at his shoulders to give him a good shaking, but he caught her wrists and held her a little away.
“Go down, my love, go back to your own country and then return in your body of light. I don't trust my dweomer to keep you safe in this form.”
Before she could protest, he pushed her, tossed her, sent her sailing through the currents of mist. Beyond her power to stop herself she fell, flew, spinning as she soared, down and down, always down, to wake, sick and dizzy, with a ringing in her ears like the sound of iron striking bronze. She was kneeling on the cold stone of Cerr Cawnen's plaza in the deepening twilight.
“Dalla, Dalla!” Someone came running toward her— Niffa, with Jahdo right behind. “Where be they? We did see you all disappear. Where be Rhodry?”
“No time to explain! Guard my body. Let no one near me, no one!”
“Well and good, then.”
Jahdo pulled his own silver dagger that once had belonged to Jill. With Niffa guarding her head and Jahdo kneeling by her feet, Dallandra lay on her back and crossed her arms over her chest. She shut her eyes, shut out the outside world, breathed deep, then summoned her body of light. When she transferred her consciousness over to the flame-shape, the etheric plane sprang into being around her, and the physical earth seemed to drop away.
In the silver-blue glow she could see lives teeming, swarming, flashing, and pouring round her, a horde of elemental spirits like the foam and swirl of rapids on a deep river. Never had she seen so many all at once. In the midst of this outpouring of masks and voices she flew, calling Evandar's name like an invocation, until she saw him at last, a frozen flame of gold, a spear against the blue. Before him stood the dragon, more or less in her true form, though made of some golden stuff that billowed or shrank like clouds. Under the shape of a huge wing Rhodry stood, the silver dagger still in his hand. To either side, dull grey, pitiful, stretched the dead meadows by the shrunken river.
“Rhodry!” Dallandra called out. “Don't! Don't do this.”
For an answer he tossed back his head and howled, a berserk peal of laughter.
“Dalla, my Lady Death spurned me too long and once too often. She'll have to wait, though she'll have me in the end, for I've found another hire.”
“What do you mean—”
“I've always been the king's man, heart and soul. I shall stand guard for him on the border.”
“And do you love the king enough to throw your human