The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [125]
His body of light, an enveloping silver flame, appeared at his call. He transferred his consciousness over to it and let himself drift upward in the silvery-blue etheric light. All around the temple compound the mist-streaked light quivered and shimmered with the growing force of the spring. The new grass, the leafing trees, the clover and wildflowers: all glistened red with their surging vegetable auras. Seeing clearly through so much bristling life proved difficult, but from his high vantage point he could discern a distant plume of dust—dead black against the blue etheric glow—coming down the road from the north.
Salamander glanced behind him and made sure that the silver cord that fastened his body of light to his physical body appeared thick and strong, pulsing with each slow beat of his heart. He thought himself toward the plume of dust and drifted away from the temple.
When he passed over a field of sprouting winter wheat, the reddish-brown auras of the burgeoning plant life swirled and seemed to bubble. Ahead lay a red mass of another sort, the color of blood, surging and leaping above Alshandra’s army. From the etheric, he could plainly see individuals through the bloodshot glow of their auras—a man who seemed to be a commander, riding at their head, the ranks of soldiers, falcatas in hand, and the heavy horses, their horizontal equine auras shot through with the greenish-gray of fear.
Behind them rode someone so surprising that Salamander instinctively flew up higher to avoid her gaze—a priestess, her aura a pure pale blue, riding a white mule led by a child on a pony. She had her head tipped back and her arms raised high. Working dweomer? he thought. Couldn’t be! Still, she was staring so intently upward that at first he assumed she was seeing his body of light. Then he thought to look behind him.
Towering above him in the light-shot etheric sky floated the image of Alshandra that he’d created to ease Rocca’s death. He recognized it by the details—the elven longbow he’d given her, the braiding of the long blonde hair, the sigil upon her quiver. Salamander realized that while he’d sent the image toward the white river to lead Rocca there, he’d never seen it actually cross, which would have destroyed it. Down below, the priestess smiled and stretched her arms out farther. Her mouth moved as she began to chant. The army riding before her roared in answer, their howl strangely distorted and echoing in his etheric consciousness but still recognizable:
“Hai! Hai! Hai!”
Oh, you really botched it, Ebañy, old lad! Whether or not the warriors could see the Alshandra image, their priestess could, and they believed what she told them. The image floated to a position high enough above the marching ranks of cavalry to remain stable despite the magnetic effluent of their massed steel weaponry. Yet it stayed close enough to feed off their auras. Salamander saw slender tendrils of raw energy rising like lines of smoke to wrap themselves around the image’s booted feet. Alshandra’s simulacrum fattened, strengthened, until to his etheric consciousness it looked solid, clear in every detail. The priestess chanted again, and once again came the cry, “Hai! Hai! Hai!”
Salamander turned his attention back in the direction of the temple and saw the confused mass of auras in front that marked the presence of the Deverry army. Calculating the precise distance between the two forces lay beyond his state of consciousness, but a good stretch of ground remained between them. He waited, hovering above in the road, as the Horsekin rode closer and closer, and the priestess chanted, waving her arms, invoking the image that she believed to be divine. At last the Horsekin force rounded a bend in the road and saw the waiting warbands. Different kinds of cries rose—shock, sudden fear, confusion. Salamander realized that they’d been expecting to find a much smaller warband ranged against them.
Let’s make it worse! Salamander called upon the Light and saw raw power