The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [100]
‘You’re here.’ Loddlaen’s voice seemed to sound inside her mind. ‘This is my true home, Morri. This is the only world where I feel I belong.’
‘It’s so lovely!’ She thought the words back to him.
‘Then let’s have a look at it.’
He began to rise slowly into the air. A mere thought let her follow him as if she had wings. Behind her the silver cord joining her to her body paid slowly out of its own accord. She kept her sight fixed on his shimmering gold body of light as they rose higher and higher.
‘Look at the stars,’ he said.
She transferred her gaze up and saw above her enormous swirls of silver in the glowing blue night. Since she’d put her attention into following what she saw, the sight of them drew her upward. She felt herself streaking upward fast, faster, beyond her power to stop, as if she were falling upward as fast as a stone falls down when thrown from a high cliff.
‘Morri!’
The sound of his thought caught her like the jerk of a leash on a running hound. With a wrench of will she forced herself to look down, but she’d lost track of his position in the billows of silver light. She looked this way and that, and with every transfer of attention she moved, swooping up, down, swinging from side to side, utterly out of control. She could hear him calling to her, but he must have been flying after her, because no matter which way she looked, she never saw him.
‘Down!’ he screamed. ‘Come back down!’
Flailing with etheric arms Morwen managed to invert her body of light. She began falling, plunging, again fast, faster, far too fast. She saw her body looming in front of her, a vast mountain of flesh, draped with avalanches of clothing. She tried to turn and fly upward, but she felt the silver cord hauling her closer and closer, as if her body were a fisherman hauling a reluctant coracle onto shore.
‘Loddlaen!’ She tried to cry out with her thoughts, but the momentary distraction snatched away her only chance at safety. The silver cord snapped taut, then yanked her down, slamming her etheric double into her body. Pain like burning swept over her. She rebounded, momentarily free, with the silver cord trailing broken behind her. The pain turned to a gold mist, suffocating her, then into golden light. She was floating in light, drifting this way and that, head down and motionless as if the light were water. She saw someone floating towards her in the light, a vaguely human shape of silver, and he was followed by giant beings who had no bodies but golden flames.
Only then did she realize that she was dead.
Even though he was sitting on the far side of the camp, Nevyn heard Loddlaen’s panicked scream. He jumped to his feet just as Devaberiel raced over, panting, his face dead-white even in the reddish glow from the little fire.
‘It’s Morri,’ he gasped. ‘Loddlaen’s killed her.’
Nevyn swore and took off running through the camp. A small crowd had gathered on the edge of the meadow. As he pushed his way through he saw Aderyn and Loddlaen. Aderyn had grabbed Loddlaen by the shoulders and shoved his face up close to the terrified lad’s to berate him, speaking Elvish so fast that Nevyn couldn’t understand two words together. Morwen lay on the ground, her arms and legs akimbo, her head twisted to one side so violently that he knew her neck was broken. Jennantar crouched at her head, and Farendar knelt at her feet, on guard over her body. Nevyn snapped his fingers and summoned a ball of silver light. In the garish glare he could see that her face, her neck, her arms and hands were a mass of red and purple bruises.
‘I didn’t mean—’ Loddlaen spoke in Deverrian, but he was sobbing too hard to finish. He twisted free of his father’s hands and tried to bolt, but Devaberiel grabbed him and hauled him back. Nevyn strode over and looked him in the face.
‘What happened?’ Nevyn could hear his voice twist into a snarl. ‘What were you doing to her?’
Loddlaen began to