The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [159]
“Splendid! Now, when I’ve done performing my tricks, I’ll have Rori take me back to Cerr Cawnen, so I’ll see you there eventually, assuming that all goes well.”
“Let’s hope it does. You’ll need to husband your energy, you know. If your body of light suffers damage, I’ll be too far away to help you.”
“I’m entirely too mindful of that. By the by, has anyone told Rori that Laz has the dragon book?”
“Not yet. I’ll leave that up to you. Doubtless, you’ll have time on the journey.”
“Most likely.” Salamander paused to consider the pair of saddlebags he was taking on the journey. He’d stuffed them as full as possible, he decided. “When are you leaving for Cerr Cawnen?”
“On the morrow.”
“Then good luck to you on the roads. I suspect you may need it.”
Salamander had touched upon one of Dallandra’s fears, that the remnants of the dweomer roads might prove unstable. Evandar had created most of them, then reinforced their existence simply by passing over them. Wherever he traveled, force poured down from the higher reaches of the astral plane, allowing him to mold it into all sorts of forms, including solid-seeming dirt paths. Upon his death, most had dissolved, because no dweomermaster existed who was powerful enough to renew them. Astral force will mold itself into form easily, but keeping those forms stable over time is another matter entirely.
Yet, here and there, Dallandra had found some paths still open. She surmised that they had survived by virtue of a direct connection to the mother roads. Whether they existed naturally or had been formed by dweomermasters in some distant past was a question she couldn’t answer. No more did she know what might happen to her if a road should dissolve when she was walking upon it. Nothing good, she assumed.
Yet she felt that she had no choice but to travel on the remnants of the roads. Although she could transform and fly, her bird form was rather nondescript, a plain gray linnet who flew slowly and lacked stamina. She needed to get to Cerr Cawnen quickly rather than flapping her slow way along over several days.
Dallandra left the royal alar early in the morning, when the astral tide of Aethyr ran at full force. If necessary, she could draw upon its power to temporarily stabilize a path, or so she hoped. She had packed a pair of saddlebags with clothes and her ritual implements the night before. She took Dari to Sidro, then walked out into the grasslands. She found a rivulet trickling toward a larger stream and followed its course. At the joining of the waters, she opened her etheric sight and saw the shimmering lozenge in the air, just a few feet above the grassy bank, that signified a possible gate.
Dallandra walked straight toward the lozenge. It swelled at her approach as if in greeting. She took a deep breath, then stepped up and through into a shimmer of pale lavender mist that broke over her like a wave. As the mist cleared away, a cold bluish glare lit her way. She could see that she was standing on a flat outcrop of rock. Ahead stretched an image of another grassland with a gold-colored footpath winding through it.
In her mind, Dallandra formed images of Niffa and of Citadel. At first they were only brief flashes of memory, but one image stabilized into a clear, if lifeless, picture of Niffa standing near the ruined temple. As Dallandra walked toward it, the image moved away, leading her down the golden path. As it moved, it changed somewhat, adding a budding rosebush beside Niffa and behind her, a view of a kitchen garden. Dallandra walked steadily and fast, keeping her mind focused on the idea of Niffa on Citadel. The scenery around the path changed into a hillside. As Dallandra walked uphill, houses grew up like flowers, and stone walls appeared. Trees shot up to either side of her.
The image of Niffa