The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [121]
“I’ll start saddling the horses,” Salamander said.
“I’ll help.”
“Don’t. Get some rest, will you?”
Obediently she followed Rhodry into camp. When she sat down on the ground by her saddlebags, he stopped work and looked at her for a moment, merely looked with a hard assessment in his eyes.
“I’m all right now, truly I am. Just a bit tired.”
“How long were you out there with my brother?”
“What? Not very.”
“Good.” Abruptly he looked away. “Well, you need your rest, you know.”
“I do know.” She stifled a yawn barely in time. “We’ll reach Pastedion today. By the Goddess herself, I want a hot bath and a soft bed.”
“I hope we reach it, anyway.” It was Gwin, strolling over. “If the Hawks know where we are, and after last night it looks like they do, they’re not going to wish us godspeed on our journey and leave it at that.”
“Is there a guild in Pastedion?” Rhodry said.
“Not that I know of, but then, I wouldn’t, would I?” Gwin smiled, a brief twitch of his mouth. “They never tell a journeyman one thing more than he needs to know.”
Jill shut her eyes and considered the problem. She could feel Wildfolk clustering round her, feel the rushy exhalation of their energy and a cool wind of some kind, blowing over her, blowing round her picking her up suddenly to fly up high in a cloud of overjoyed Wildfolk, beautiful and crystalline forms, glinting with light and color here on their proper plane. Her own gray gnome came to her as a quivering nexus of olive and citrine crystalline lines, shot through with russet sparks, that swelled and retracted again as they flew together high above the rusty-red earth. In the silver fountain of force pouring up from the circular lake, blue and silver beings danced and soared in greeting, and the sylphs, pure light and shimmering and little else, darted here and there round them like an honor guard.
Far below them she saw what seemed to be a pile of charcoal hunks or ingots of black iron, piled this way and that at the edge of the water. Among them crawled tiny points of light, vaguely egg-shaped, in many different colors. She swooped down lower, saw the pattern of straight streets and square corners laid among them, and realized that she was seeing Pastedion and its houses of dead wood and stone. In a burst of revulsion she swept upward again, the gnome close behind her, and headed back over the valley. Down below the ar-chons’ road ran straight, a gash of ugly black through the reddish aura of the grass, throbbing with new life from the winter rains. Never in her life had she felt so free, so happy, as she swooped and fluttered through the dawn-swept sky.
All at once the Wildfolk disappeared, winking out with an exhalation of warning. Coming straight toward her was a silver flame, swelling and towering as it burned in the blue light. Out of sheer instinct she dropped straight down, heading for the safety of the earth; then Salamander’s mind reached hers.
“You misbegotten thick-headed jenny-mule! What are you doing out here? Don’t you realize how vulnerable you are? Get back! Get back now!”
She felt a tug at her midriff and looked to see the silver cord, tightening, shrinking, pulling her back to her body. The moment she remembered that she had a body, she felt its pull like an irresistible lust, grabbing her, yanking her from the sky, down and down and with a sound like the slap of a hand on wood she was awake, lying on the ground and aching all over with what seemed to be a thousand bruises. When she tried to sit up, she groaned aloud. Salamander was kneeling beside her, and over his shoulder she could see Rhodry’s fear-struck face.
“Apologies,” she mumbled. “I never used to make a habit of fainting like a court lady. It must be the bad company I’m keeping.”
“No doubt it is,” Salamander said with a long sigh of relief. “And you have my apologies, because you’re going to be as sore as a demon with emrods for a while. I had to drive you back into your body and fast.”
She went cold, sat up slowly, studying him all the while in