The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [155]
Now the Horsekin had grown strong again. Little, however, had changed for the Rhiddaer since that day forty years earlier. Although the town was beautifully fortified, it could muster at the utmost nine hundred members of an ill trained and ill-armed militia in its defense. Rori knew that if the huge army below him could breach the walls, take even a single gate, they would slaughter every man in it and enslave the women and children. Once the town was theirs, getting them out of it again would likely be impossible with the force that Dar and Voran could muster.
By then, the summer twilight was gathering in the sky. Rori banked a wing and headed south, flying until the night darkness made it too difficult for him to follow the landmarks below. He settled among rocks in the hills to rest, but with the first silver gleam of dawn he launched himself into the air again and flew onward. As he traveled, he made a rough estimate of distances. An army the size of the Horsekin threat would move slowly over this hill country. The marshy land north of Cerr Cawnen would slow them down as well. It would take them some days—perhaps even a fortnight if dragons should continually disrupt their line of march—to reach their prey.
It took Rori, however, less than a day to fly wearily into the town. Up on the central island of Citadel stood the ruins of an ancient temple, half-hidden by trees on a slope just down from the public plaza. Rori circled the plaza once and roared out Niffa’s name as he did so, over and over until one of the terrified townspeople below finally understood him.
“I’ll be fetching her!” the man called up to him. “Please eat not our folk!”
“I’d never do such a thing,” Rori called back. “I’ll lair at the temple.”
The fellow ran off, and Rori landed to rest and wait.
“I be mourning Aethel as deeply as he,” Cotzi said, “but truly, Niffa, I do try to get myself up and about, like. Your brother, he be wallowing in grief, I think me.”
“I do agree at least in part,” Niffa said. “Well, let me go see if talk might help him.”
Cotzi smiled in thanks. She’d turned into a stout gray-haired matron, her face graved with deep lines, but still she reminded Niffa of Demet, Cotzi’s brother and her own long-dead husband. The family resemblance among the weavers had always run strong. Aethel did look like them, too, she thought. Ai! Our poor lad!
She found Jahdo upstairs in the long bedroom he shared with Cotzi. He was sitting at the window and looking out at Cerr Cawnen spread out below, a view tufted with clots of mist from the lake. When Niffa joined him, he looked up and managed a smile.
“What be all this?” Jahdo said. “Did my Cotzi send you here to cheer me?”
“She did just that,” Niffa said. “She does worry.”
“I be not mad with grief or suchlike. Truly, life on the caravan road be a dangerous thing. I nearly did die myself twice or thrice, as well you and Cotzi both do know.” He paused to lay a hand on his right knee, broken years before in a fight with bandits. “But what does irk and gall me, sister of mine, is that one so young should die and an old man like me still live.”
“That does happen often enough that it should come as no amazement.”
“True enough, but for some daft reason, never did I think it would come to me and mine.” He stood up and smiled again. “I’ll be going down now to ease Cotzi’s heart.”
“My thanks! That were best. And think on this. It may be that the gods did keep you safe for some reason we cannot know.”
Jahdo merely snorted at the idea, but Niffa knew, in the wordless way that omens often come to dweomermasters, that she’d spoken an inadvertent truth. They’d barely reached the ground floor of the house when a pounding on the front door proved the omen.
Jahdo flung open the door to reveal the blacksmith’s apprentice, his face dead-pale with alarm.
“Mistress Niffa,” he gasped out. “There be a dragon here in town. He did demand to speak with you.”
“What color be this wyrm?” Niffa said.
“All silvery, like, with bits of blue here and there. He does lair at the old temple.”
“Rori! He be a friend,