The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [179]
In the morning the rising sun woke Salamander. He had to struggle to sit up; his sore muscles had turned so stiff in the night that he could barely get to his knees. When he looked down at his arms and hands, he realized they’d turned a mottled red and purple. The bruises had come out in the night, transferred slowly from his etheric double, unlike the normal, immediate bruises caused by physical blows. That his face had suffered damage so quickly showed him just how much danger he’d been in. He shuddered retroactively and reminded himself that he’d survived.
Eventually, he got to his feet. When he looked up at the cave, he saw no sign of the dragons. He took an experimental step toward the spring and found that he ached in every joint, but the more he moved, the more he was capable of moving. By the time he’d made soda bread and eaten it with cold stewed venison, he felt restored enough to scry.
In the upwelling spring, by the powers of Water, Salamander summoned images of the Horsekin army, or, as it turned out, of the two armies. The priestesses had gathered several hundred fighting men around them, as well as a good many servants and slaves. As Salamander watched, this gathering of the devout mounted up. With the chief priestess on her white mule at their head, they started off—north. They were leaving the main body and marching off the way they’d come, heading home.
Grinning like a fiend, Salamander turned his attention to the main body, which was also preparing to move out. Most of the fighting force remained under the control of the rakzanir, though they were leaving some twenty men behind them, dead on the long spears, the price of restoring order. In a reasonable show of discipline, the army began to ride southward, still intent on reaching Cerr Cawnen, or so Salamander could assume.
Salamander broke the vision, then used the spring as a focus to contact Dallandra. Her image floated upon the water and smiled at him.
“I’m glad to hear from you,” she said. “I’ve been worried, and—wait!” The smile disappeared. “Ye gods, what happened to your face?”
“I was forced to rejoin my physical body a bit hastily,” Salamander said. “But I reached it, and it’s still here intact, more or less.”
Dallandra’s image rolled her eyes, but she listened intently as he described his work with the Alshandra image.
“So I’ve managed to throw some confusion into their ranks,” Salamander finished up. “The army must be well and truly demoralized to have their priestesses hare off without them.”
“I should think so.” Dallandra smiled again. “Good. You’ve certainly managed to slow them down.”
“Have you scried for Dar and his escort recently?”
“I have. They’re nearly here, but, of course, we’ll need time to get the refugees well clear of the city. Most of the folk have been packing up their goods, but there are always people who refuse to believe bad news and, because of that, put off doing anything about it.”
“The name of that kind of person might be ‘Horsekin slave’ if they’re not careful.”
“That, alas, is true spoken. What are you going to do now?”
“Stay here in the tower in Dragon Meadow, or so I’ve been calling it in my thoughts. Rori and Medea will cause the Meradan a bit more trouble while I rest. Rori will bring me back to Cerr Cawnen once Arzosah returns to the lair.”
“I’m glad you’re going to rest. What you did can’t have been easy.”
“No, it wasn’t, much as I hate to admit it. And now, O Mistress of Mighty Magics, it behooves me to break this link. The astral tides are changing, and it’s hard to see your face.”
“Indeed. Contact me again later, if you can.”
Salamander refilled his water bottle and went back to his gear, lying scattered on the ground by the dead fire. He knelt to tidy it up, then paused, looking up at the tower looming