The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [172]
Silence cut the shout short, a strangely live silence that hovered on the verge of sound. She rode the silence as if it were a swell of lake water, carrying her across to Citadel, or rather, her vision did. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware of lying on cold snow and of Gart, kneeling beside her, but him she could not see, because her power of seeing had gone across the lake. What she did see was stone, draped by silver light like tattered cloth, clinging to the walls of a tunnel. On the ground, on a stone floor, lay a man, facedown, his arms and legs all akimbo. Nearby stood a woman with long dark hair, laughing as the light faded.
Niffa screamed, and with her scream her sight returned to the lake side and the golden flickering of the candle lantern. Gart was trying to help her sit up.
“Demet!” she whispered. “You’ve got to get to Demet. In the stone ruins.”
In the lantern light she could see him staring at her, puzzled at first. Suddenly he made some decision.
“Right you are,” Gart said. “Here, let me get you to your feet and off this frozen ground.”
With his help Niffa could stagger up and retrieve the lantern. Bellowing out names, Gart ran for the guardhouse down by the main gates. She saw other lanterns bloom as men hurried out and answered him. She hesitated, wondering where she should go to wait, but Gart called to her to follow.
“You do wait in here by the fire, lass. Me and Stone will be rowing over to fetch your man.”
The men left on guard ignored her. She sat down on a stool in the corner of the tiny wooden room and watched the fire burning on the stone hearth. Smoke swirled and flew upward, sucked toward the smokehole in the roof. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder if she could call upon her visions when she wanted them rather than waiting for them to come to her. Demet, she thought. Show me Demet, oh please, show him to me. The smoke and the flames remained naught but fire and smoke.
The wait went on and on. At a table the other guards diced for splinters of wood but said next to nothing. Were they alarmed, too, she wondered, or did they think her daft and their sergeant more so, to listen to the witch girl? Now and again someone got up to put a log on the fire, then sat back down without looking her way. In the glowing palaces of the coals she tried to see pictures, begged the pictures to come to her—nothing. Eventually she heard a voice from outside and leapt up, but it was Emla, letting herself in the door. She was muffled in a dark cloak that set off her pale face.
“Niffa!” she snapped. “And what be you up to, sitting here? Where’s Demet?”
The men all turned to look at her as she shook her head free of the cloak’s hood. Niffa tried to speak but found no words.
“What be so wrong?” Emla whispered. “Where be my son?”
“I know not, Mother.” Niffa stood up and held out her hand. “Do come sit and I’ll stand.”
Emla perched on the stool. At first she seemed to be framing some question, but the mood of the room caught her, and she stayed silent. More waiting, more smoke and flame that leapt upward without visions or hints—the men diced, speaking not at all now.
“Hola!” A shout in Stone’s dark voice. “Come out, come out!”
The men rose and grabbed cloaks, then rushed out the door. More slowly Niffa and Emla followed, carrying lanterns. Stone and Gart were hauling a coracle up onto the lake shore and straining on the rope as if they pulled a burden, not a little leather boat. Niffa screamed and went running, so fast the candle in her lantern lost its flame. She knew, then, knew with the coldness of a sliver of ice stuck into her heart even before she reached them. She grabbed the slimy-wet side of the coracle and leaned