The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [195]
Salamander staggered to his feet just as Dallandra came running.
“Did you see?” she called out in Elvish.
“Yes, and it’s horrible.”
“Very, but hurry! We’re moving the camp out. I have no idea of how far or fast the molten rock will run.”
In the gray light of first dawn the refugees rushed to gather goods, livestock, and children. Salamander mounted the horse that an archer brought him, then scried again. He could see nothing of the town under a huge blanket of steam. The water meadows were boiling around Cerr Cawnen’s grave. From the center of this cloud, ash rose in a tower like an enormous fist thrust into the sky.
When Salamander expanded the vision, he saw terrified horses, dusted with ash and cinders, still running south, and a few men as well, staggering through air that seemed as thick as porridge. He broke the vision to find Calonderiel and his archers forming up around him.
“Some of the horses escaped,” Salamander called out.
“We’ll worry about that later, you drooling idiot!” the banadar called back. “Ride!”
The warband set off at a fast walk with the prince at its head and the banadar at the rear, herding the refugees along as quickly as they could possibly move. Every now and then the earth trembled, but more and more gently, as if the shocks were dying away in slow waves. At intervals Salamander scried; he could assume that Dallandra and Grallezar were doing the same. Steam mostly obscured the smoking crater that once had been a town and an army, but occasionally Salamander could see enough of the fringes of the disaster to realize that the lava had stopped spreading some five or six miles from the eruption. He reminded himself that he’d witnessed no natural event, but one caused and thus to some extent controlled by dweomer.
Yet the tower of ash, gray flecked with black, continued to rise into the sky, like the smoke from a funeral pyre for the Horsekin army. All that morning he could see it, rising on the horizon, until a south wind sprang up and began to push it to the north, spreading it out into a vast fan, letting it fall like deadly snow upon the farmland and the grass.
Dallandra was riding near the middle of the column of refugees when she saw Rori and Arzosah arrive. The two elder dragons joined their young, then sorted the clutch into a formation like that of flying geese, with Rori at the head. They glided as much as flew, swinging first to one side, then the other as they kept pace with the slower refugees below.
Dallandra had seen so many horrible deaths during the eruption that she hated the thought of scrying out the destruction again. Grallezar, however, had more steel in her soul. At times, she tossed her reins to Dallandra and let her lead her black gelding along while she herself scried. She came out of one vision trance with a grimly satisfied smile upon her face.
“It be safe to let the folk stop and rest,” Grallezar said. “The earth’s blood flows not our way.”
“Well and good, then.” Dallandra tossed Grallezar’s reins back to her. “I’ll go tell the prince.”
Dallandra turned her horse out of line and rode at the trot up to the head, where Prince Dar rode beside Calonderiel. She guided her horse in between theirs.
“We can stop now,” she said. “The molten rock’s not spreading our way.”
“Good,” Dar said. “Everyone’s weary, especially the horses.” He glanced up at the dragons wheeling in the sky. “I want to send one of the wyrms off with messages. We need to let Gerran and Cadryc know what’s happened.”
“Just so,” Calonderiel said. “And I suppose we should send a letter to that spoiled