The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [156]
Then came the waiting, and since this was the world of dream, it could have been a few moments or several hours while the moon hung motionless in the sky. At length Dallandra heard someone rustling through the grass. When she looked, she saw Raena striding along in her dream-body. Her oily black hair hung down her back, but otherwise she was naked. At the wards she paused, smiling.
“Well met!” Dallandra sprang from cover as fast as a lark. “Thinking of mischief, were you?”
With a scream Raena turned to run, but Dallandra grabbed the rope and pulled. The loop tightened around Raena’s legs and toppled her, flailing and shrieking. Hauling on the rope to keep it taut, Dallandra trotted over to find her prize sitting up and struggling to free the loop from her ankles. With a practiced flick of her wrists, Dallandra sent another loop spiralling around her shoulders and yanked. The rope bit before Raena could free herself.
“My people are horse-herders,” Dalla said. “Struggle, and I’ll cover you with rope burns. They’ll hurt, too, even when you wake. I know a thing or two about witch bodies, you see.”
Raena glared up at her, her mouth a little open as she panted for breath.
“Leave Rhodry alone,” Dallandra went on. “You don’t truly understand what you’re doing, and you could hurt yourself if you keep this up.”
Raena slumped, letting her head fall forward.
“I don’t care if you want to listen or not,” Dallandra snapped. “You don’t have any proper training in dweomer. If you trust your would-be god, he’ll lead you into trouble and then leave you there.”
Raena was sitting oddly still. Dallandra suddenly realized what she must be doing and leapt forward to grab her—too late. With a shimmer of blue light and a burst of silver, she disappeared in a flurry of falling rope. For a brief moment a raven hopped in the grass; then with a shriek it hurled itself into the air and flew, flapping hard, back the way Raena had come. Dallandra considered transforming into her own bird-form, but the raven had a long start. Most likely Raena could wake herself up and escape the Gatelands entirely even if Dallandra did manage to catch up to her.
Before she left, Dallandra reset the wards, pouring energy into them until they burned with red and gold. For a moment she watched them, then walked to the dream-gate and let herself drop, gliding down into her body and a normal sleep.
It was no wonder that Evandar’s appearances startled the dun so badly, because he travelled by those secret routes, the mothers of all roads, that lead between the worlds. Since his country existed in no true world at all, the roads met within it. At that time, Evandar knew them better than any other being in the vast universe, but on this trip he found a surprise waiting for him. The entrance to his country lay on a small hill, and when he stepped onto it he saw a world gone strange.
Winter had settled in, the first winter this etheric land had ever known. When he’d been creating it, so many aeons ago that he could no longer remember exactly how long, Evandar had chosen to keep the season always spring, and a warm and sunny one at that. In those ancient days his country had