Days of Air and Darkness

by Katharine Kerr

  Tren nodded, looking out over the Deverry army. Yesterday’s battle and the subsequent panic had lost the Horsekin a fair number of warriors, mostly trampled by their own mounts, but still the Deverry men were outnumbered. With the dragon on their side, numbers didn’t matter.

  “I asked you to walk with me aways for some reason,” Hir-li said. “You are favored by the priestess, are you not?”

  “I suppose you could call it that.”

  “All men here would call it that.”

  An odd hesitancy in the warleader’s voice caused Tren to swing round to face him. Hir-li was staring at the ground in a way that would have meant embarrassment in a human being.

  “One wonders if her holiness has honored you by revealing how she means to defeat the dragon,” Hir-li said. “Surely she must have a plan.”

  “She does, my lord. I thought she would have told you, or I would have mentioned it.”

  “Blessed be she for whom we fight and die, that she has inspired her priestess!” Hir-li looked up with a smile that showed fang. “And blessed be the sacred raven as well! Er, could you tell me, perhaps, what she told you?”

  “Of course, not that she told me everything. I do know that the man who rides upon the dragon is the same man who killed my brother. I understand, now, why the Goddess gave me that longbow.”

  “Indeed, indeed.” Hir-li grinned again. “Did her holiness happen to tell you when she would strike against the creature?”

  “Soon, I suppose, but she didn’t tell me much. Perhaps, my lord, you should summon her and ask her outright.”

  “It is not for me to summon a priestess, Lord Tren. It is for me, it is for all of us, to wait for her holy words.” The warleader stared down into the demoralized camp. “I only pray that we won’t have to wait long.”

  Simply because she knew Jill’s brusque manner, Dallandra took on the job of bearing bad news. She found Carra up in the women’s hall, sitting alone at the window and leaning onto the sill to crane her neck for a glimpse of the relieving army. Her thin underdress stretched tight over her swelling pregnancy. It’s a fine world I’ve lured Elessi into, Dallandra thought. I hope to all the gods she isn’t born in the middle of a siege. Carra glanced her way, then sat up properly, smiling.

  “Good morning, Dalla. Have you any news?”

  Dallandra hesitated, searching for phrases. Carra’s smile melted away.

  “What’s happened to Dar?”

  “Naught, naught. My apologies! I must look ghastly grim.”

  “You do, and I thought, well, maybe you’d scried out Dar, and …” Carra let her voice trail off.

  “I’ve bad news, sure enough, but not about your husband. It’s Yraen. He died scouting last night.”

  Carra made a painful sound, half a grunt, half a sob, and turned her face away.

  “I know I shouldn’t care,” she whispered. “He was only a silver dagger, and just my guard, and princesses aren’t supposed to care, but I do. Oh, Yraen!”

  She dropped her face to her hands and sobbed, while Dallandra patted her shoulder to comfort her.

  Evandar returned to the high hill overlooking the lands to find his armor and clothing gone. When he raised his hand, the astral stuff gathered and clung, and with the light he wove himself new, the leather trousers and long tunic of a man of the Westfolk, the chain mail and pot helm of a Deverry man. Once he was properly dressed again for war, he paced back and forth on the hill crest and considered where Alshandra might be.

  “Well,” he said aloud, “she’s not in my Lands, and she’s not in the Lands that lie a-borning. She never liked to fly high into the lands of golden light above us, though now and again she did fly low into the silver light beneath us. Into the silver light, therefore, shall I travel, but in this form, I think, not as the hawk, who has no hands.”

  He stepped off the hillside onto the air in the way an ordinary man might step off a stair onto the ground. As if a stairway stretched ahead of him, as well, he walked downward, thinking of Deverry with every step, until the light round him turned a strange silvery-blue. When he looked down, his own Lands had disappeared, and the rolling hills round Cengarn lay in their stead, these all a rusty-red from the auras of the grasses and trees. To Cengarn, he decided, he would go, in case Alshandra was lurking nearby in the hopes of troubling the unborn soul of their daughter, whose new body lay growing in Carra’s womb.

  Close to noon, the Deverry army saddled up. The carters harnessed up their teams and drove the carts out, loaded with everyone’s gear as well as the general supplies, to clear the field of battle. Just as the army mounted, word passed along that the cavalry in the enemy camp was mounting in answer, while their spearmen were forming shield walls at the gaps in the earthworks.

  “Shield walls, eh?” Erddyr said. “That doesn’t sound like the cavalry will be coming out to meet our challenge. More of a precaution, them arming.”

  “Just so, my lord,” Rhodry said. “Well, we’re harnessed and ready to go. We’ll see how long they can hide.”

  After a few words with Arzosah, Rhodry mounted, and they flew out to the south, circling to gain height and position off where the raven couldn’t see. By the time they circled back, so high that Cengarn seemed only the size of a village, the Deverry army had mounted and trotted out to take up its position on the southern flat, about a hundred yards away from and opposite the earthworks and spearmen guarding the Horsekin camp. Arzosah flew round to the north so that she could dive from the rear.

  “Now!” Rhodry yelled.

  With a roar of laughter, the dragon tucked her wings and plunged, plummeting down toward the camp and roaring over and over. Such was the rush of air around him that Rhodry could do little more than cling to her harness with both hands as he bent low over her neck, but he could hear the whinnying and yelling below. As she leveled off and began to climb, he could look down and see the Horsekin camp erupting in a swirl of panicked cavalry.

  “Again!” he yelled. “Try to drive them toward their own spearmen.”

  She rumbled in a long laugh and turned, dipping a wing and soaring into position while Rhodry clung for his life. As she leveled out, though, he caught a glimpse of a bird—the raven, he assumed—flying fast toward them from the west. Arzosah had seen her, too, judging from her sudden hiss.

  “Hurry!” he called out. “One more pass before she gets here!”

  Arzosah roared and dropped, down and down in a rush of wind that tore at Rhodry’s clothes and tried to grab him from her back. He clung to the straps, his hands stinging and aching from the effort. Just as he felt that he was bound to be torn off and sent falling, she leveled with a huge roar, answered from below by the screams of horses and riders alike. Rhodry risked sitting up and leaning to the side to look down. Horses were plunging through one of the gaps, trampling the spearmen as they surrendered to an orgy of herd fear no matter how hard their riders yelled and beat at them with quirts and the flat of blades. Rhodry started to laugh, then swore as something sped by his face.

  “Arrow!” he screamed. “They’ve got archers! Climb!”

  “Just one,” she yelled back. “I saw him. But I’m climbing.”

  With a few huge beats of her wings, she flew up well out of range of any bow on earth. As she turned, he got the barest glimpse of a man with a longbow, a tiny figure, smaller than a toy from his height, standing on the east ridge behind the tents with pennants. The rest of the camp, down in the lowlands, had broken into complete chaos, horses running and bucking, thrown riders scrambling up and running after them, infantry racing this way and that. The sound of yelling and neighing drifted up like the crash of waves on a distant shore. Beyond the earthworks, the Deverry army sprang to the attack as Horsekin charged out the gaps for want of anywhere else to go.

  “Once more,” Rhodry called. “We’ll have them on the run good and proper, then.”

  “This is grand sport, Dragonmaster!”

  Arzosah flew round to the north, turned once more,
and suddenly roared in rage, gliding on silent wings, cocking her head this way and that. Rhodry heard a sound, a high squalling note, a piping gone sour that he recognized all too well. He rose in his stirrups as best he could and looked frantically round, but whoever or whatever was playing upon the whistle had turned invisible. The sound seemed to be coming from a point in the empty air off to the west, and it was to the west that Arzosah turned, snapping her huge jaws, roaring again with a flap of wings to gain height.

  “Dive!” Rhodry yelled. “Make your dive! It can wait, whatever it is!”

  The piping screech hung loud in the air, as if a huge invisible bird cried out as it flew away, always west and away from the battle. Hissing in blind rage, Arzosah followed the five sour notes. Rhodry turned back and realized that he couldn’t even see the battlefield, it lay so far behind.

  “Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz!” He tossed back his head and intoned her name, called it out again, felt the name boiling out of him as if he spoke it with his entire body. “Ar Zo Sah Soth Ee Lore Ez O Haz!”

  She moaned and fluttered, losing height, then flapping in a frenzy of wings to steady herself.

  “The whistle, Master! They made it from my dead mate’s bones!”

  “Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz! Turn back! I command you on this ring and your true name!”

  She moaned again in a grief that tore his heart, then dipped one wing and turned, flying slowly as the whistle sounded again and again, louder, frantic, imploring.

  “Vengeance!” the dragon screamed. “They killed him, then profaned him!”

  “Back to the battle! You can get revenge there!”

  She hesitated, fluttering her wings to hold her place.

  “Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz!”

  With a roar, she flew, leaping forward, it seemed, as her enormous wings thwacked against the air. The whistle played in vain, repeating its ugly call, growing fainter and fainter until they left the sound behind at last and swept down over the battlefield. She roared, and the Horsekin cavalry broke once more, their mounts rearing then plunging free of their riders’ control to race away from the huge beast chasing them. In her rage, Arzosah flew low, snapping at the enemy horses, growling and swinging her head back and forth. In a futile jab, the spearmen tried to hurl their spears—far too long for such an attack—and bring her down.

  “The archer!” Rhodry yelled. “Climb!”

  With one last roar, she did, angling her wings and flying hard. An arrow sped past below them, then another, falling back harmlessly as they swept over the east ridge.

  “Another dive?” she called back.

  “One more, truly.”

  Since she’d overshot the encampment and the battle both, she circled in a lazy turn, resting in a glide for a moment, then flapped and flew. All at once, she screamed, and Rhodry looked up to swear and yell.

  “Turn!”

  She was trying, dipping and flapping in a panic as bad as the one she’d caused below, but the white mist billowed up all round them and closed over them like a hand grasping a jewel. Whimpering and trembling, Arzosah slowed her flight, gliding more than flapping, while Rhodry could only swear helplessly. He fumbled at his belt and pulled the bronze knife, glowing golden and sending long darts and glints of light from its point every time he moved his hand. Ahead, the day had turned silvery blue as the fog thinned out. With one last flap, Arzosah burst free and turned, circling over what seemed to be Cengarn but in a world gone mad.

  Under the blue light, all the world glowed but the town itself, its houses dead black lumps behind a rise of dead black stone. All round the walls, though, ovoids of bright-colored light ran and scurried, while the battle raged as a war of lights, red and yellow and white, but mostly red, shot here and there with a living black, pulsing and surging all over the field. The circling hills glowed dull red and brown under the silvery, blue-shot sky where the sun hung as an enormous hole of light. Arzosah moaned and circled, gliding on currents of air made visible as long crystalline threads.

  “Oh, ye gods,” Rhodry whispered. “I think me we’re in for it good and proper.”

  Floating over the town, just above the dun, in fact, hung Alshandra, with her golden hair streaming loose over her shoulders. She towered huge, fully as tall as the dragon was long, and she was carrying a bow. She smiled as she reached to her quiver and drew an arrow, smiled as she turned, keeping Rhodry and the dragon always in her sight.

  “Evandar!” Rhodry didn’t even know why he was calling. “Evandar!”

  Alshandra laughed with a toss of her head and nocked the arrow to her bow, raised it slowly as she turned.

  “Dodge!” Rhodry yelled.

  Arzosah flapped and leapt up in an eddy of crystals, shimmering behind her in the bluish air. The enormous arrow sped a few bare feet below them. Alshandra howled in rage and drew another as the dragon’s wings beat slower again.

  “I’m tired,” Arzosah moaned. “So tired, Dragonmaster.”

  “You’ll be dead if you don’t start flying. Get away from the town! Head south!”

  With a shriek, Arzosah dipped low beneath another arrow’s path, then took off, flying steadily, if slowly, toward the south. Howling in rage, Alshandra followed, running through the empty air. When Rhodry glanced back, he saw that she’d dropped the bow. An enormous great-ax gleamed in her hands, and she was gaining on them.

  “Evandar!” In a last desperation Rhodry called again. “Evandar!”

  On a wave of laughter, a berserk chortling to match Rhodry’s own, Evandar burst into the blue light, swooping and plunging through the air with a broadsword in one hand and an oval shield in the other. Rhodry heard Alshandra scream in rage and terror as the vast figure of the Guardian swept past them. Ahead, shimmering in the blue light, hung another mist gate. Without waiting for an order, Arzosah flapped hard and flew straight for it. Just as they passed through, Rhodry glanced back to see Alshandra fleeing the battle. She shot straight upward like a diver returning to the surface of a lake and disappeared through a crack in the silver sky.

  With a vast convulsion of light that left him dizzy, Rhodry and the dragon burst out into sunlight, normal blessed sunlight and clean air. Below them lay the fallow fields just south of Cengarn, all green and silent in the golden light of a late afternoon. Rhodry wept in a quick burst of tears, quickly over.

  “Turn back,” he called out. “You can land behind the battle and rest, and I’ll find a horse and ride into the fight.”

  But by the time they returned, the battle was over. The Horsekin had retreated back into their protected camp, but the balance of numbers, once in their favor, had been very much tipped to the Deverry side.

  When he heard Rhodry’s call, a wave of thought billowing through the etheric plane, Evandar was already close to Cengarn. In a burst of images, he sped forward, following the anguish in the calls, until he saw the city, black against the living auras of the men and horses round it, those bright-colored lights that had puzzled Rhodry earlier. He also saw Alshandra gaining on her prey as the exhausted dragon flapped desperately toward the south. With a howl of laughter, Evandar dropped down to hover between her and the dragon. At last, he thought. At last, I have her!

  Shrieking, Alshandra leapt up, bursting through the semblance of sky that marked the boundary between the planes. For a brief moment, Evandar stood stunned, his useless sword in his hand; then he dropped the weapons and leapt after. He broke through the silver and found himself back in the Lands, hovering in midair in the pale sunlight. Slowly, he turned in a circle, saw at last the tiny form of the nighthawk, flying off toward the horizon. He started to transform, then hesitated, still in his elven shape. He’d been assuming, he realized, that she would stand and fight once he caught up with her. Apparently, she was going to keep running from him instead.

  “You’re never going to catch her,” he said aloud. “If you fly after her up here, she’ll drop back down to the blue light. If you chase her there, she’ll pop up somewhere else, always working
harm wherever she goes. This is a pretty little nastiness, I must say.”

  Evandar settled back to the green hillcrest. He knew that he needed to think and find some scheme, but there was the question of Time. It was moving, he supposed, back in the world of men. Dallandra always talked about Time moving, anyway, either fast or slow, dragging or flying, depending upon what she might be doing at the moment. Although he was never quite sure what she meant by such talk, he did know that events had a way of getting done with and situations had a way of changing, down in that world, whether you wanted them to or not. He had best move fast. If he could. Thinking of Dallandra made him worry, too. Where had she been during that battle? He decided that he’d best go and see.

  When Alshandra’s dweomer had transported Rhodry and Arzosah onto the etheric plane, Dallandra had seen it happen, but she’d been in no position to come to his aid. At the battle’s start, Jill had rushed to the women’s hall to stand guard over Carra, leaving Dallandra to take her turn watching over the town. Dallandra hurried up to the roof of the main broch and looked out, making sure that the Horsekin weren’t attacking the walls—no one had been able to tell what the thrust of this battle was, in the first confusion of battle noise and sounding horns. When she saw the dragon dive and realized that the fight lay between the two armies, she stayed up on the roof rather than rushing off to the gates. As a precaution, she renewed the astral seals that lay over the town.

  Sure enough, once the battle was well joined below, the raven mazrak appeared, flying round and round the dun. Every now and then, she flew directly over Dallandra and low, too, as if daring her to follow. Dallandra held her place and waited. She had no intention of donning her own bird form only to be lured away, leaving the dun open to magical attacks. The raven called out, a harsh cry of sheer frustration, then flew up high and darted off, disappearing into the glare of the sun.

  “We’re not going to get off that easy,” Dallandra muttered to herself.

  Although she kept glancing at the battle below, her real watch lay on the sky. She paced back and forth, wondering how the raven would mount her attack. Since her attempt to lure Dallandra away physically had failed, it was likely that she would retreat to some safe spot where she could go into a trance and approach the dun from the etheric. The seals would turn her back, of course—unless Alshandra appeared and wiped them away. Dallandra knew perfectly well that neither she nor Jill had the power to set a seal that the Guardian couldn’t destroy. She spent a few more minutes watching the battle until she could be sure that the Horsekin were in too much danger of their own to storm the city, then left the roof and hurried to her chamber.