The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [69]
Salamander was dimly aware that Neb and Branna were discussing him, thanks to his strong ties to both of them from former lives. That night he’d camped beside the road some fifteen miles north of Cengarn. He sat watching the sunset while he ate the cooked meat and bread he’d bought in town, then gathered some deadfall wood from the forest fringe to build a fire. He’d been uneasy all day, he realized, though he couldn’t tell why, and he wanted the light.
While he watched the flames catch his kindling and spread to the bits and pieces of branch, he opened the Sight and let the flames guide the fragments of visions that came to him. He saw Rori, soaring high in the sky, dipping and swooping down as he apparently hunted for game. He sensed Dallandra and Valandario rather than saw them. The two dweomermasters were hovering on the edge of the astral plane, working some sort of guarding ritual. When he turned his mind to Neb and Branna, Salamander found them easily. Neb was talking with his brother in the great hall while Branna sat with her aunt up in their women’s retreat. No danger there, he thought. But there’s some behind me.
Salamander rose and turned in one smooth motion. A woman in a tattered blue dress was standing at the edge of his camp, just beyond the circle of firelight. Or not quite a woman—when she moved forward, he could see that her hair was as blue as the dress and her skin, dead-white. She was floating a few inches off the ground while she considered him with eyes that were luminous pools of shadow.
“Uh, good evening,” Salamander said in Elvish. “Should you really be here? In the physical world, I mean.”
“Where’s Jill?” Her voice sounded like a reed flute, thin, not truly alive.
“I’m sorry, but she’s dead. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, yes! Where’s the new Jill?”
“Why do you want to know?”
The woman-spirit frowned, then called out, a high piercing wail like that of a banshee. As the cry faded, she disappeared. Salamander shuddered in a sudden cold sweat. Although he wanted to talk immediately with Dallandra about his visitor, she never answered his attempt to contact her. He could sense that she was still deeply immersed in her dweomerwork. He scrounged more firewood, then spent an uncomfortable couple of hours until at last he reached her.
“A most peculiar thing happened just now,” Salamander said. “I just had a visitor from another plane of existence.”
“Oh, did you?” Dallandra said. “Which one?”
“I’ve no idea, if you mean which plane. I certainly never summoned her or anything else, for that matter. She just walked into my camp.”
“What was she like?”
“She looked like a woman at first glance, but then I realized she was floating a few inches off the ground. She had blue hair and dead-white skin.”
“Was she wearing a torn dress, a blue one?”
“She most certainly was! But it was hard to tell if the dress shape lay over her body or was part of her body.”
“I think I know what she might be. Did she speak to you?”
“Yes. She wanted to know where the ‘new Jill’ was, but I didn’t tell her. There was something sinister or mayhap menacing about her. Perhaps I should call it—”
“Never mind! I take it she frightened you.”
“I was not frightened.”
“Imph. Anyway, if she’s who I think she is, she can appear when she chooses, without being summoned. Stay on guard. She can be dangerous.”
“You’ve met her before, I take it.”
“Yes. I once helped the Lords of the Wildlands drive her into a trap. Do you remember when your brother first came to the Westlands? You went off to search for Devaberiel while he stayed with Aderyn.”
“Ah. I think I know