Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [131]
Was the danger over? Kieri held up his hand to still the excited clamor of voices around him. It still felt … wrong. Whatever had drawn the daskdraudigs was still there.
The two rangers, arrows ready, clearly thought the same thing, though the monster was motionless now. Paks had said rockserpents died, became once more inert stone, safe. Was there another one? Or some other menace?
He looked at the forest behind them. The forest taig held nothing of evil; it was alert, wary, but not hostile. Whatever evil he felt was centered there, in the ruins of Aliam’s house. That made sense, with Achrya’s visit, if the Webmistress set the lure that brought the daskdraudigs. But why did he feel evil still near if the daskdraudigs had died?
Aliam’s people set up a camp and had food cooking before full dark. Halveric troops laid out a perimeter, set sentries. The two rangers near the house came one by one for supper but then went back near the walls to keep watch on the daskdraudigs, they said.
Shortly before dark, four more rangers arrived with Estilla.
“She rides like a ranger,” one said. Estilla grinned, but it was clear she was exhausted; her mother took her away for food and sleep. Kieri hoped it would be sleep. These rangers had brought many more daskin arrows from their camp and shared them out with the two who’d arrived earlier. Kieri gave them no orders, as they seemed to know what to do, and he finally lay down in his tent with the King’s Squires outside.
He woke before dawn, in the death-hour, his skin drawn up into prickles. His sword’s jewel pulsed with light in a way he’d never seen; he drew it and had just reached the tent’s door when sentries raised the alarm, and a blast of dark malice slammed into his mind.
Not the daskdraudigs with its slow leaching of joy and will to live but something greater. Kieri called on the taig, waking it as he’d been taught this past season, and saw—as if he had the night-vision of a full elf—the field itself heaving, rippling like a shaken rug. Nothing more was visible, but the malice bore down on him, on them all. Children were awake now, the youngest screaming in terror, the older asking questions—adults trying to soothe them, voices shaky with fear.
Kieri struggled with his own battle-trained response, the anger that had carried him through so many times of fear. He’d been taught that anger wounded the taig, drove it away. If you rouse the taig, you must do it with joy and love, Orlith had said. Now he pushed anger aside and spoke to the taig of the love he had for Aliam and Estil and all they cared for.
Out of the ground, from the trees behind their camp, a silvery light rose. Where it rose, the field lay still. Kieri felt the hairs rise on his arms, his scalp, his whole body. Around him, frightened cries softened into silence. He wanted to know what that light was, but he knew he must hold the taig, strengthen it, pour his love for the land and its people into it, and let the taig itself be what it was meant to be, an unfrayed fabric of life.
Nearby, someone began a chant his elven tutor had taught him, both prayer and song to the taig. He joined in, only just aware that he was singing louder, and in the elven tongue, as the light strengthened. Across the field fire blossomed in the ruins of the stables, followed by a hideous noise as something exploded and stones rose in the air, falling just short of the silver light.
Another voice, and another, joined his. The light