The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [118]
“I doubt if you should. Here, are you having those odd broken visions again?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Here, let me see.” He looked around and realized that the trees, the grass, even the cold gray rocks tumbled along the stream bank were refusing to hold steady. They pulsed around the edges, they seemed to glow from within—he shook his head hard. “Yes, the world is beating like a heart.”
“I was afraid of that. I can feel the strains in your mind. One more difficult working, and your old madness could return.”
“But madness begins to sound better than being eaten alive by gnats, flies, wild wolves, bears—”
“Ebañy, stop it! You’re one of the People. You know how to survive in wild places. Besides, you won’t have to walk the whole way south. I’m coming to fetch you.”
Salamander felt a sudden burst of hope which, since he was exhausted, broke the vision beyond his power to call it back. He waded out to the shallows to drink the clean water there, then plastered his upper body with mud to keep off biting flies. By the time he finished, the pulsing world seemed to rotate around him; he barely had the strength to crawl back under the willow’s lacy overhang before he fell asleep.
“Canyoureally reach Ebañy this way?”Valandario said. “When Evandar crossed the River of Life, didn’t all the hidden roads close?”
“Some of the mother roads, yes,” Dallandra said. “Those are the ones that led between different worlds. But the short paths, the ones between places inside our world, they still work. I think they existed long before Evandar came here. They’re harder to find now, though.”
“They must have drawn their life from the mother roads.”
“They did, or, come to think of it, they must still do so. There has to be at least one mother road that’s still open. Otherwise all the daughter roads would be gone.”
“They might well disappear, someday. I just hope you can get back again.”
“So do I.” Dalla paused for a sharp laugh. “But I think the roads will last long enough for that. Ebañy’s not all that far away. Five or six days’ ride, I’d say.”
“The fort’s that close? By the Black Sun herself! Those Horsekin—bold as stoats and twice as stinky!”
“Well, Ebañy flew a good ways south before he came to earth. But if we’re not back in two days, send Cal and his men north after us.”
Dallandra borrowed a shirt for Salamander from his father, then put it and some food into a sack. She took Valandario along when she left the camp and headed for a nearby stream that ran through the tall grass out by the horse herd. Dallandra was looking for the subtle signs that mark the beginning of an etheric road. Since the combined auras of the horses and the men guarding them blurred the boundaries of the planes, she led Valandario along for a good mile before she finally found what she was looking for. The stream formed a pool at the bottom of a slight drop, and a tangle of hazel withes had sprung up around it. She could see the glimmer of etheric force marking a boundary.
“There!” Dallandra pointed. “On this side just before you reach the hazels. See it?”
“No,” Valandario said, then sighed. “I just don’t have your gifts.”
“Well, I can’t scry the future like you can.”
“True. Now, be careful. I’ll be watching for you both.”
Dallandra stepped into the quivering lozenge of etheric force. For a brief moment elemental energy, an etheric outpouring from the running stream beyond, threatened to trap her. She felt it grab her with invisible hands, but in a quick slither she broke free and found herself standing on a low outcrop of rock, a peculiar rock as much blue as gray, that shimmered under her feet. She had found a road.
For a moment she paused to make a detailed image of Salamander in her mind. Since he had dweomer himself, the image came easily, showing him mud-encrusted and asleep under a willow tree. He seemed to be lying