Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  “Every now and again, truly. My thanks. And I’ve got a lot of information for you, too, that we’ll need to sort out.”

  Jill was on the verge of asking her fellow dweomer-master just what she might be doing with that chair—she had a brief wondering if Dallandra was so distracted that she’d forgotten she was carrying the thing—but Dalia put it down in front of the window.

  “Stone and air and the antagonism between them,” Dalla remarked. “Gates are where you find them, you see.”

  She stepped upon the chair, stepped up onto the windowsill, stepped again, and disappeared. Jill rushed to the window, half expecting to see her sprawled on the cobbles beneath, but she was quite simply gone. Jill let out breath in a sharp sigh—she hadn’t really realized that she’d been holding it. For all her own great power, there were some magicks she found hard to get used to.

  When first Dallandra had learned the dweomer of the roads, she’d been forced to depend on the obvious sites of possible gates between worlds, such as the meeting of three streams or a thicket where hazel and rowan grew mingled together, but now after so much practice she could sense the fine edges where planes of energy met and rebounded from each other again, leaving a short-lived gap ‘twixt one world and another. She slipped through this particular gate just as it was closing and found herself on the hill overlooking the astral river.

  From behind her she heard singing and turned to see women walking back and forth in her formal garden. Wearing long dresses of fine cloth, red and white and gold, they strolled among the roses and clustered round the fountain, blond heads, dark heads, bent together as they talked. At times it seemed that perhaps a mere dozen souls walked among the green; at others, a huge throng swarmed there, just as a fire will flare up and flames multiply, only to fall back again when the draft that fanned it dies. As she hurried to join them, she heard them mention Elessario’s name.

  “You could join her, you know,” she called out.

  All attention they flocked round her, chattering and laughing, but the laughter vanished and the chatter turned to sighs when she repeated her oft-given message about the world of matter and Time — The woman she always called the night princess, who had modeled herself on the dark-skinned folk of Bardek, shook her head with a rustle of black curls.

  “Why did she go there? I don’t understand.”

  “To know life. What you have here is only a semblance of life, colored shadows thrown upon a wall.”

  They considered, looking at each other, looking at her, dark eyes, yellow eyes narrow and puzzled. With a shrug the night princess turned away.

  “Dancing,” she cried. “Let us go to the lilac arbor and have dancing!”

  Their laughter turned to cries and chatter as they themselves mutated into a flock of bright-colored birds, parrot and cockatoo, gold and red and pink with here and there a flash of turquoise feather, and one black macaw with pink-trimmed wings and golden beak. On a wave of calls and rushing wings they flew away, circling once overhead, then flying steadily off toward the west. Dallandra said something foul in Elvish. Would she ever get them to understand?

  Shaking her head she walked back over the hill to the astral river, which like quicksilver oozed through the dark green reeds and sparkled in the noontime sun. Nearby in the meadow the golden pavilion stood empty and silent. When she called Evandar’s name, only his page came running.

  “He’s still gone,” the boy said. “Riding the border still with the warriors. Do you want mead?”

  “None, my thanks. But fetch me some bread, will you?”

  The boy darted off again into the pavilion. Dallandra was just wondering whether to join him inside when she heard him scream. Without thinking she rushed for the pavilion entrance, but before she could reach it warriors sprang into being all round her, warriors in mail and helms of black, wolf faces leering, bear faces grinning, paws and claws reaching out to grab her. She flung up her hands to summon fire, but a familiar voice stopped her.

  “Hold!” the fox warrior called out. “Or I’ll kill this child.”

  He came strolling out of the pavilion carrying the page, trussed and sobbing, slung upside down over one mailed shoulder, the boy’s head dangerously close to the sharp wedge of bronze knife that the warrior held in one gauntlet. Dallandra let her arms drop.

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Hah! I knew it would work.” He was looking round at his men, if such you could call them. “She’s weak, this woman. She pities things.”

  They howled and pressed close round her. She could smell bear and wolf, too, grease and blood and musk, mingling with an all too human sweat. Fur poked through their mail in tufts.

  “You come with me,” the leader said. “And you work no magic, or I’ll fray and tear every weaving of this lad’s body, and his spirit will spill and die.”

  The page wept the louder.

  “Hush, child, I won’t let them hurt you.”

  “Hah! She takes our bargain?’ The fox warrior pulled back dark lips in a fanged grin.

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Of you, naught. Of Evandar, everything. He’s weak, too, giving me the whistle when he didn’t have to. Losing a woman brings pain, he said, and so I got my idea. Ransom you are and ransom you’ll be, until he saves my dying country.”

  Dallandra spat on the ground.

  “You have the soul of a maggot, not a fox.”

  “She sees things, this woman! Maybe I’ll trick Evandar and keep her forever!”

  His soldiers growled and roared. A clawed hand cuffed her cheek and left her dizzy.

  “Scoop her up, bind her, carry her off! Well slip out the way we came in.”

  Ropes as rough and abrasive as straw circled her round, yet at the same time she felt as if she were falling, fainting, swooping nearer and nearer the ground yet never hitting against it. As her head cleared she saw round her huge flies and beetles, all shiny black bodies and green wings, with mandibles and mirrored red eyes—and realized that this insect horde was a normal size, but that she herself had shrunk to match them. Two massive black wasplike creatures with golden wings held her sling of ropes in their mandibles. With a buzz and drone of wings they flew, a horrible grating sound that combined with the pain in her head to drive her half-mad. She thrashed and kicked, but nothing she could do freed her from the web that dragged her along after them through the air.

  On and on they flew over a huge green confusion, a swelling of trees that filled the world and reached up brown claws as if to grab them as they sped past. By twisting round and straining her back to look up she could just see the white clothes of the page, who dangled ahead of her like a crumb of bread in the grasp of an enormous and glittering blue-black fly, but a crumb that kicked and fought on occasion. At least Evandar’s brother had had the sense to keep his hostage’s hostage alive. All at once the green below started to rush up to meet them, or so it seemed to her, rushed and swelled and spun round and round. She would have screamed but it seemed that her tongue and mouth had fused together, that her throat swelled, that her body bloated and puffed up till pain seemed to burst out through her skin.

  The ground smacked her hard. Light spun round her. The last sound she heard was the screaming of the page.

  For a long time it seemed to her that she lay dead. Al-though she could not move nor hear nor see, her mind did exist, a floating point of consciousness on a black sea — She waited calmly for the light to rise and float her onward while she thought over the fall. It must have disrupted her etheric double, she supposed, and killed her that way, being as she had no body at the time; She felt profoundly sorry for Evandar, much more than she was worried about herself. In time she would be reborn, and she planned on begging that her rebirth take place as soon as possible, so that she could re-turn to her work—if, of course, she could keep the memories of her work alive long enough to remember to beg.

  All at once she realized two things. First, she was thinking too coldly, too calml
y, to be actually dead. Second, she ached all over, a mere distant throb now that she’d noticed it, then a rather present throb, then an ache, and finally a burning like fire. Light like fire danced before her eyes; it seemed that she swam through fire, upward to a distant, cooler light. When she opened her eyes she found the vulpine face of Evandar’s brother leaning close to hers.

  “Good,” he grunted. “You live. Dead you’d have been of no use to me.”

  She tried to speak and mock him, but the pain over-whelmed her. Once more she sank away from consciousness, but this time her last thought was that at least she was still alive—for at least a while.

  Since Jill was of count used to the warped seams of Time between the physical world and Evandar’s country, she thought nothing of it when Dallandra failed to return straightaway. Over the next few nights she spent long hours scrying’, ranging as far from the dun as she dared, whether in the falcon form or the body of light, in the hopes of bringing the gwerbret some advance warning of an attack. Every morning she would join Cadmar at breakfast to make her report. Since Lord Gwinardd had taken his men and gone back to his own dun, the great hall echoed half-empty and strangely silent. On the far side of the hall, the warband would strain to hear what she might be saying to their lord. Rumors had spread, as they always do, and every man there knew that war was on the way. The only question was when.

  After her meal Jill would walk to the dwarven inn to tend Rhodry’s wound and ask him about his dreams. Never again did he see the eyes, watching him, but she assumed that the enemy, who or whatever it might have been, was continuing to scry, merely more deftly. She was faced with an evil choice. She could easily have put astral seals over Rhodry—over the entire town and dun, for that matter— that would have prevented any dweomerworker, no matter how skilled, from scrying out a single detail. If she did so, though, she might as well have hung out huge banners announcing the presence of a master sorcerer. Since she had no reason to assume that their enemies knew either who she was or that she was in the dun, she preferred to keep them wondering about Cengarn’s strength.

  After her visit she would return to her chamber and sleep for a few hours, waking before sunset to eat a meager meal before resuming her night watch. On the fourth afternoon of this routine, Jahdo came to her chamber just as she was finishing a chunk of bread and cheese. One sharp glance at the boy told her that something was badly wrong. She ushered him in, then called upon the Wildfolk of Aethyr, who materialized in a flicker of silver light.

  “Are you ill, lad?”

  “I’m not, my lady. I did hear that Rhodry would be leaving Cengarn with his small friends and that none did know when he would return.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From Yraen. He did tell me not to tell others, and I have not, only you, being as I were sure you knew this well already.”

  “Just so. Well, now, are you going to miss Rhodry? Is that the trouble?”

  “I do want to go along with him.”

  Yet his voice had such a false ring that Jill gave him a sharp looking over. She found agony in his eyes.

  “Jahdo, are you sure you don’t feel ill? Fevers give us strange thoughts at time.”

  “I be well, truly.” He began to tremble. “I just did want to ask if I could go with Rhodry and the dwarves.”

  She knelt on one knee so that she could look him in the face.

  “You really want to leave Cengarn?”

  The trembling turned to a shake like palsy. He made a guttural noise deep in his throat, swallowed hard, and finally spoke.

  “I want to go away.”

  “I don’t believe you. Is it really true that you want to go away?”

  “It is.” But his head shook in a convulsive no.

  Jill whistled softly under her breath.

  “You don’t want to say those words you’ve been saying, do you?”

  “I don’t.” He forced the words out. “It’s needful.”

  “Indeed? Interesting. Now, just stand there quietlike for a moment. Don’t move and don’t speak.”

  Jill opened up her dweomer sight to take a look at the boy’s aura. As is the case with most children, his formed a lopsided, ever-changing cloud of energy, at moments shriveled, at others billowing out to one side or the other. Yet spiraling round the aura ran a dark smear or line, ineptly drawn, but no doubt effective. Jill grunted in distaste, then sent a line of light from her own aura and wiped the dark away. She shut down the dweomer sight to find Jahdo watching her, his head cocked to one side like a puzzled dog.

  “Now tell me, lad, do you want to go with Rhodry and the dwarves?”

  “I don’t! Oh, please, mayn’t I stay?”

  “Of course. And as soon as ever we can, we’ll take you home.”

  He broke into a grin, started to skip a few steps, then stopped, letting the grin fade as he stared off in thought.

  “Jahdo?” Jill kept her voice very soft. “Someone told you to ride with Rhodry. Who was it?”

  “No one did tell me. I did but know that it was needful for me to keep going onward.”

  “Indeed? ‘Onward,’ is it? Try answering this. Who told you to go with Meer?”

  “I—I don’t remember.”

  “But someone told you.”

  “Not exactly. I just did know it was needful. I couldn’t say I didn’t want to go when Meer asked.”

  “And Yraen asked if you wanted to go with Rhodry?”

  “He did, but it were a jest, like. I did see in his eyes that it were a jest, and yet I couldn’t say no. It was needful for me to travel onward.”

  Jill growled under her breath. Whoever had ensorcelled the child was a clever little scoundrel. Since he’d never given Jahdo a direct order, the boy wouldn’t remember him directly, either, unless Jill could think of perfectly apt questions. Until she knew more, those lay beyond her. It was at least obvious that this amateur sorcerer lived in Cerr Cawnen, where Jahdo had started his journey. She would simply have to wait and deal with him there, providing, of course, she did manage to get the boy home again someday.

  That night Jill risked traveling in the etheric a little farther than usual. Normally she went north and west, searching in the general direction in which an attack was likely to come, but this time she headed straight west, wondering if perhaps the enemy was outfoxing her by marching from an unexpected direction. Again, she found nothing, returning exhausted at dawn to her body and the dun. Before she went down to the great hall she rested, wondering if perhaps Alshandra had given up her mad plan of releasing her daughter’s soul by killing her growing physical body. It seemed unlikely that a spirit so single-minded, so lacking in the breadth of experience and the compassion that incarnation brings, would abandon her obsession so easily. Certainly Dallandra had always considered her implacable.

  Dallandra. All of a sudden Jill was wide awake, realizing just how long it had been since Dalla had gone off, promising to come right back. Yet even though she worried, she could explain her fears away. With Time’s flow so uneven between the worlds, Dalla might very well have been experiencing but a few moments passing. Jill had no way of finding her. Evandar’s country was so foreign to her nature as well as so distant on the astral that Jill could never scry into it. She put the matter out of her mind, for that while at least, and went on down to breakfast with Cadmar and, of course, his lady as well as Carra and her prince.

  Dar had apparently been doing some thinking of his own about their situation. He waited until the serving lass had set down the bread and porridge and was gone before speaking, then leaned forward to address both Jill and the gwerbret.

  “Your Grace, good sorcerer, if Cengarn’s going to be sieged, what we need is archers, and my people can easily raise five hundred of them, all armed with good yew bows. All I have to do is send out some of my men to find Calonderiel, Banadar of the Eastern Border. Well, it’s east to us, anyway. It would be your western border, of course.”

  “Now that’s a splendi
d thought,” Cadmar said. “How long will it take to find him, though? I know that you people wander with your herds all summer long.”

  “That’s true, Your Grace, but in the fall we all move south, and there’s one particular winter camp where Calonderiel always goes, and he always heads down that way early, so people will know where to find him if they have some dispute or suchlike for him to settle. It’ll take some weeks, truly, but the task’s not impossible. And then, once they find him, the company will have to ride here. It’d be two full turnings of the moon, all in all, before they could arrive.”

  Cadmar glanced at Jill. She could see he was worried, caught between courtesy and grim realities.

  “Well, Dar, the problem’s going to be feeding them,” Jill spoke to spare the gwerbret’s sense of gratitude. “That’s why his grace sent Gwinardd back to his own lands, and why he hasn’t called in all his other alliances yet. Arcodd’s not a very rich place, you know. The hay for all those horses alone would be hard to come by, to say naught of the room to stable them.”

  “Oh, of course.” Dar did understand, fortunately, rather than being insulted. “I’d forgotten that. Well, Your Grace, what shall we do, then? Wait till we know the army’s on its way, and then send out the messengers?”

  “That would be best, Your Highness.” Cadmar sounded relieved. “We could stand a siege better than we could provision so many men for month after month. I’m sure Jill will be able to give us a few days’ warning, eh?”

  “I hope so, Your Grace,” Jill said. “I’m trying my best to scout them out.”

  “Let’s just hope that they hold off till the first harvest’s in, and the dun fully provisioned,” Cadmar went on. “It’s likely. They’ll want to see their own winter wheat brought in, no doubt. The bards like to sing about armies living off the country and all that, but hah! it’s a risky business. Never know what you’ll find, or how much, and foraging takes forever, when you need to make a fast march. Besides”— and here he paused for a grin—“if they’re coming from the north and west, it’s cursed few farms they’ll find along their line of march, and some wretchedly sparse provisioning. The only supplies out that way are the fat on the bears,”