Deverry - A Time Of War Part 10

'Her name be Alshandra, and she's only a demon or suchlike, but some people do worship her, just as if she were a true G.o.d from the Death wo rid.'

Never before had a mere bard's servant got such a profound reaction with a tale as Jahdo did with that blurt. Rhodry went dead-white, then swore a long string of foul curses while Jill laughed, a nervous giggle and much too high.

'Alshandra a G.o.ddess!' she said at last. 'Oh by all the ice in all the h.e.l.ls!'

Rhodry made a sputtering sort of noise under his breath.

'I agree,' Jill said, grinning. 'Well now, this may bode ill, or it may bode worse, but I'll wager it proves interesting. My thanks, lad. That makes a great deal clear.'

'Answer me somewhat in return,' Meer said. 'I take it that you know about this Alshandra creature?'

'I do, and a G.o.ddess she's not and never will be. You're right a thousand times about that.'

'What is she then? A demon?'

'A meddling b.i.t.c.h,' Rhodry snarled. That's what she is.'

'Whist! Let me finish.' Jill waved a hand in his direction. 'She's not a demon, and neither human nor Horsekin, but a very strange sort of being indeed. Let's see, how can I explain this clearly?' She thought for a long moment. 'I'm not sure I can. She doesn't live in this world, so in that respect she's like a spirit of the sort people call demons, but she's vastly more intelligent. She can move about much more freely than a demon, as well, and when she's here in our world she can make herself a body of sorts. She can work magic, some truly spectacular magic, in fact, from what I've heard, enough so I can see how some people think her a G.o.d.'

'She sounds even more dangerous than I thought her, then.'

'Unfortunately, that's very true. What's even worse is she's quite mad.'

'Mad? May the G.o.ds preserve us!'

'I wouldn't mind their help, truly.' Jill smiled in a wry sort of way. 'Now here, did your brother worship this creature?'

Meer nodded, his mouth slack, then bent his head as if he were staring at the floor. His hands rubbed up and down his staff for the comfort of it.

'The infamy!' he snarled. 'That my own brother's dishonour and sin would lead me to trust strangers who are no doubt no better than he and perhaps a good bit worse! Are you truly a mazrak?'

'I have no idea,' Jill turned irritable. 'If you'd deign to tell me what one is, I might be able to answer.'

'A shapechanger, one who takes animal form.'

'Oh. As a matter of fact, I am that.'

She spoke in such an ordinary way that Jahdo shuddered, a long convulsion of terror. Meer growled under his breath and showed fangs.

'But which one are you? The falcon or the raven? My servant here told me of two.'

'What?' Jill hesitated. 'The falcon's the form I take. Are you sure you saw another dweomer shape, Jahdo, or were you just scared or suchlike? I wouldn't blame you, mind, There's no shame attached, none at all, to being frightened of such things.'

'I do know I did see it. It were a raven, and it were huge, and I did see it the morning Meer knew his brother was dying, It was flying close over the trees, so I could see how big it were.'

'Well, well, well, could you, then?' Jill glanced Rhodry's way. 'You didn't happen to see any birds that looked unnaturally large, did you? When you were riding to fetch Meer and Jahdo, I mean.'

Rhodry shook his head no. He'd gone white about the mouth.

"But all those weeks ago, when you and Yraen were riding to Cengarn, you saw a raven, didn't you?'

'So we did,' Rhodry said. 'It was just when we stumbled across that farm the raiders destroyed, the one where that poor woman was lying dead and her unborn babe with her. Ye G.o.ds! I made a jest about the wretched bird, teasing Carra, like, and saying it was a sorcerer, most like.'

'Were you really only jesting?'

Rhodry grinned, briefly.

'Not truly. Are you telling me I was right, and a dweomermaster it was?'

'I'm not telling you anything. But I begin to think it likely.'

'Ah, infamy and abomination!' Meer whispered at first, but slowly and steadily his voice grew louder, till it rumbled in bardic imprecation. 'O Thavrae, how could you, brother who is no longer no brother of mine! May your spirit walk restless through all the long ages of ages! May the G.o.ds turn you away from their doors! May their gardens be forbidden you! May you never drink of their drink, may you never taste of their food! That you could commit such sin, such perfidy! That you could break every law of every G.o.d! A brother's curse fall upon you! And in the end, if ever our mother should learn your evil, may her curse pierce your spirit as you writhe in the thirteen pairs of jaws of many-headed Ranadar, the Hound of h.e.l.l!'

'So be it,' Jill said, and her own voice boomed like a priest's. 'May the G.o.ds be his witness.'

The room seemed to ring for a long long moment. As he crouched beside Meer and watched the dweomer light swirling over the walls, Jahdo felt a peculiar intuition, that this moment marked a great change for more than the few individuals in this chamber, that some mighty thing, a destiny indeed, had begun to rouse itself from some age-long sleep, or that some vast night had begun to turn toward day - he could not find words, not even for himself, but he knew, he knew.

'You look solemn, lad,' Jill said. 'What ails you?'

He stared up at her, then rose, laying one hand on the back of Meer's chair.

'I just felt - I don't know -' The moment was pa.s.sing, the insight fading, even as he struggled to grab it and pin it down. 'That some great thing will happen, and I be glad Tin here to see it.'

Meer swung his head round and grunted.

'Have you gone daft?' he snapped.

'I have not. You were right, that's all, when you did tell me that great things were on the move. This be all real important, bain't it, Jill?'

'It is, truly, or so the omens tell me. Great things or evil things, or, most like, a fair bit of both.'

Although by then the evening was growing late, by the light of candle lanterns Gwerbret Cadmar lingered at the head of the table of honour with Lord Gwinardd sitting at his right hand. Nearby a bard waited, drowsing over his harp, in case his lord should ask him to sing. Across the great hall the riders' tables were mostly deserted, and a few servants sat yawning by the empty hearth. Jill hesitated in the doorway for some moments. She'd been hoping that she'd find his grace alone. Matyc at least was gone. Although she herself had nothing against Matyc, she trusted Rhodry's judgement in such matters. If he said he smelt festering meat, then doubtless something had died under the stairs. On the other hand, no one had ever said a word against young Gwinardd, and she refused to keep silent and send Meer and his boy back to the dungeon for the night.

When she approached the table, Cadmar greeted her with a smile and a wave, calling for a servant to bring up another chair so that she could sit nearby without displacing Gwinardd from his honoured position. The lord rose, bowing her way, then sitting down again rather than leaving. As usual, Gwinardd looked puzzled at the honour in which his grace held this common-born old woman, even though he knew that her herbcraft had saved the gwerbret's life the winter past. She wondered if he suspected her other skills as well.

'Well, Jill,' Cadmar said. 'Have you spoken with those prisoners yet?'

'I have, Your Grace, and it's about them, in fact, that I've come. Spies they're not, as you might expect with one of them blind. That Gel da'Thae is a bard and here on a tragic errand indeed. I'd like to treat them as guests - well, guarded guests, if you take my meaning - and put them in a chamber here in the broch. Is that possible?'

'And have I ever turned away a man who deserved my hospitality? But-'

'I'll explain, Your Grace,' Jill went on. 'When these raiders first showed up in your lands, I thought they were after the usual sort of booty. Do you remember the talk we had about that, what they wanted, I mean, after you tracked down and destroyed the raiding party?'

'I do, not that you told me much in the way of hard fact.' Cadmar allowed himself a smile. 'You were starting to get a different idea, you said, but you didn't tell me what you meant.'

'Well, my apologies, but my idea sounds far-fetched, you see, so much so that Tin still not sure of it. I do think, though, that Meer can tell me what I need to know, that he's got the missing piece of this puzzle, somewhere in his stock of bard lore. But if we don't treat him well and show him some trust, he's not going to trust me enough in return to tell me one word of what he might know.'

'That's quite true.' Cadmar snapped his fingers at a serving girl. 'Run fetch the chamberlain. Tell him that we have a guest to accommodate and him a travelling bard at that.'

The la.s.s curtsied and hurried away. Gwinardd was staring, as shocked by this ready acquiescence as young jahdo had been by her dweomer light.

'My thanks.' Jill rose, nodding his way in lieu of a bow, since she was wearing brigga and thus had no skirt to curtsey with. 'May I have your leave, Your Grace?'

'Of course. But where is this sudden guest, then?'

'With Rhodry and Yraen. Look. Here he conies now, across the hall. The lad will have to stay with him, of course, not be quartered with the other servants.'

'Of course. I'll have the chamberlain tend to it.'

'My thanks, Your Grace. I thought that if you received him here in the open hall, everyone would know he's your guest now, and the threats against him and his kind would stop.'

'No doubt, Jill. They had better.'

When the gwerbret and his va.s.sal turned to look at Meer, Jill slipped away. Although no dweomerworker can make herself truly invisible, despite what the old tales may say, Jill could gather her aura so tightly about her and move so silently and smoothly that she could pa.s.s unnoticed unless someone happened to be looking straight at her. Wrapped in these shadows she hurried up the staircase to her chamber. Judging from what she'd heard about this mysterious raven, she had to keep a close watch on Cengarn and the countryside round about, and for that she needed to fly.

For all that Meer hated and feared mazrakir, the process by which a dweomerworker takes on animal form is really only an extension of the perfectly ordinary procedure of constructing a body of light, in which the magician makes a thought-form in human or clven shape as a vehicle for his or her consciousness out on the etheric plane. Although at first he has to imagine this form minutely every time he wishes to use it, eventually a fully-realized body, identical to the last one, will appear whenever the dweomermaster summons it, out of no greater dweomer than 'practice makes perfect'. This happens in exactly the same way as a normal memory image, such as the memory-house a merchant uses to store information about his customers, becomes standardized after a long working with it. A shapechanger starts with the same process, subst.i.tuting an animal form for the human, although, of course, the mazrak does take things a fair bit farther.

That evening Jill followed her usual practice. First she took off all her clothes, because not even the mightiest dwcomermaster can transform dead matter like cloth, and opened the wooden shutters at the window. She laid her hands far apart on the windowsill and stared up at the starry sky, letting her breathing slow and her mind clear as the cool night air swept over her, She felt power gather, invoked more, until it flowed through her mind like water. In her mind, as well, she formulated the image of a grey falcon, but many times life size, and by a mental trick sent this picture out through her eyes until she saw it perching on the windowsill. Now, at this point the falcon image existed only in Jill's imagination, though an imagination that had been highly trained and disciplined by years of mental work, and it was only in imagination that she transferred her consciousness over to the bird until she seemed to perch on the sill herself and look down at the ward below through the bird's eyes.

Now came the first tricky step. Keeping her concentration firmly centred in the falcon, she transferred her consciousness up a level to the etheric plane. A rushy sound washed over her; she felt as if she were falling; then she heard a sharp click, like a sword striking the metal edge of a shield. When she looked round, she saw the chamber and the sky bathed in silvery blue light. Behind her on the floor her physical body lay slumped in trance, joined to the hawk-form by the silver cord. At this point she could have used the falcon as an ordinary body of light to scry on the etheric or lower reaches of the astral. Instead she took that last step. The etheric double of a person is a matrix that forms and holds flesh. If the double and the trained will are strong enough, flesh will follow its lead. Jill began to chant and intone strange words of power that only a few masters know, until, with one last convulsion of will, the etherie falcon drew the physical into its mould.

Jill the woman was gone from the chamber. Only the falcon stood on the windowsill, stretching its wings and ruffling its feathers in a last shudder against the cold.

With a soft cry she leapt and flew, flapping steadily till she cleared the dun, then gliding on the currents upr ever up, circling round the hills of Cengarn. Although the falcon form existed on the physical, Jill's consciousness remained on the etheric plane, so that she saw the trees and fields glowing a dull brownish red from their vegetable auras, spotted here and there with the yellow ovoid auras of cows or horses huddled together. The dun, the walls, the town itself- all wore the dull black of stone and dead wood.

Here and there a brightly coloured aura of a human being moved down a street or strolled across the dun ward and once, down in town, she saw the metallic aura, copper streaked with steel grey, of a dwarf trotting purposefully along. Out in the valley to the west of the town the fast-running stream sent up its exhalation of elemental force, like a towering silver veil shifting and hovering above the physical water.

Everything seemed peaceful, everything seemed safe, even when she circled out some miles. She saw no enemy soldiers, no ravens, no dweomerworkers, nothing or no one out of place. She decided that this other shapechanger, if indeed there were one, had to be flying for home and safety as fast as his or her wings could beat, wherever that home might be. Without the band of raiders for support, to carry its food and human clothing, the raven would be helpless in a wilderness. And where was that home? That, she hoped, Meer could tell her, or at the least give her the information she needed to discover it on her own.

With a flip of a wing she turned, riding the night wind, heading back for the dun.

And yet, just as she had the town in sight, she saw something -someone - circling high above the walls, a bird form, all right, but far too large for an ordinary creature. As the other bird turned and began flying in her direction, Jill sprang higher, soaring in an easy circle to gain height and thus advantage. Yet, as the other mazrak flew close, she could see that it was no raven, but rather a strangely indeterminate grey bird, something like a linnet, but its feathers bore no markings at all. Dallandra - come through to the physical plane in the bird-form! Without thinking Jill stooped and plunged, plummeting straight down like the falcon her body indeed was. With a shriek of terror the grey linnet broke course and flapped wildly away, heading for a copse. Cursing her bad manners, Jill broke from her plunge and followed more slowly, though she could still outfly the clumsier linnet.

'Dalla, it's just me!' Jill sent the words on a wave of etheric thought rather than sound. 'My apologies! I didn't mean to frighten you. The wretched falcon took me over for a moment.'

A wave of wordless relief floated back in answer.

Since the trees were far too small to shelter a pair of birds of their size, they circled down and lighted on the ground underneath, hopping a little to find footing on the uncongenial earth. The linnet shook herself and preened a few feathers on her breast to calm herself down, 'I am sorry,' Jill thought to her. 'I somehow thought you'd recognize me.'

'You're not the only master who flies in hawk form, you see. Alshandra's been known to take the nighthawk at times.'

'Indeed? Is one of her other forms a raven?'

"It's not, but a swan.'

"That's a strange thing, then, because I've just heard of a shape-changer in raven form. A lad from the far west claims he saw it but an eightnight ago.'

'No one I know flies as a raven. Ye G.o.ds! Talk about ill-omened! That would he too grisly even for Alshandra.'

'Judging from some of the things I've heard I wouldn't have put it past her. But here's an even stranger thing, and thrice ill-omened at that. It seems that our Alshandra's been pretending to be a G.o.d, and she's collected herself a band of worshippers, too, among the Horsekin.'

The linnet opened and shut her beak a few times, just as if she were trying to speak with a physical voice.

'She would.' Dallandra's thought flowed on a wave of sheer bitterness. 'She's just the sort who would.

Jill, let's fly. I can't bear it, perching here and listening to sour news all at the same time.'

With a few hops and a jump they launched themselves into the air, flying till they were high enough to be invisible from the ground. Up this far from the anchoring earth, the etheric sight turned the night sky into a swirl of black, studded with enormous silver stars, flaring and gleaming so close that it seemed they might have felt heat. Down below the countryside receded to a dull red glow. Slowly they rode the air currents in long aimless loops centred round Cengarn, a black lump rising from the red.

'What's Alshandra been doing?' Dallandra thought to her. 'Working magic in front of the Gel da'Thae?'

'I suppose, but I don't know for sure. My one witness doesn't trust me in the least, and I can't blame him, either, but he's not going to bare his heart and soul to me, From what he has said, though, I've gathered that her worship is considered heresy, fit only for outlaws and suchlike.'

'That's somewhat to the good, then. Are you still convinced that the Horsekin are those demonic Hordes the old elven lore speaks of? The ones who destroyed our cities?'

'More convinced the more I learn, though they're most certainly not demons.'

'Well, I never really thought they were. My teacher, Nananna, always said that they were most likely flesh and blood the same as us, whether they had the manners of demons or not, and she'd heard the tales a good bit closer to the destruction than we have.'

'Just so. Here, Dalla, you'd know this. Wasn't there an elven king named Ranadar?'

'He was the last of the Council of Seven Kings, as a matter of fact. After the cities were destroyed by the Hordes, and all the other six kings killed, Ranadar gathered a warband from the survivors and lived in the mountains like a bandit, raiding and harrying the Hordes, taking what revenge he could. He's the one who witnessed the horrible plagues that very nearly destroyed the Hordes. In fact, until you started talking about Gel da'Thae, I'd always a.s.sumed that the invaders had been completely wiped out.'

'Most people did, and I gather, from what I've been able to piece together, that the tribes who'd conquered the southern part of the elven homeland did die, down to the last child. But in the north some remain, and now they seem to be coming east.'

The linnet dipped and shuddered.

'But this Ranadar,' Jill went on. 'He was a real historical figure, then?'

'Very much so. Eventually he joined the other refugees out in the gra.s.slands, when he realized that he and his men weren't going to be able to reclaim the dead cities and suchlike all on their own. Why?'

'Meer - that's the Gel da'Thae bard I've got in custody - Meer used his name, but he called him the Hound of h.e.l.l with thirteen pairs of jaws. Rhodry told me that he's heard the bard pray, and that all of his G.o.ds have elven names, but odd and distorted ones, mostly fragments of the names of the old cities and palaces.'

Jill felt the linnet's mind shy briefly away, then return.

'Rhodry's here?' Dallandra thought to her.

'Very much a part of this, truly. Why so surprised? You mentioned once that you'd met him.'

'Only very briefly and some years ago. But that's a strange thing, truly, about the elven names. This whole situation's getting too complex, and I'm beginning to worry that everything's slipping out of control. I doubt very much, I truly do, if Evandar knows what he's doing with all his meddling. Foresight and understanding consequences are most definitely not talents of his.'

'But other talents he has in good measure. Dalla, how much can I count on his aid?'

'I don't know. I honestly don't know. He cares about his daughter and her coming birth more than anything else in the three worlds, but there's trouble in his own lands. I've been planning, you know, to come back to the physical plane and stay in the dun with you and Elessario's mother, but now I'm afraid to.'

In human form Jill would have sighed aloud, but as it was the falcon made a chirruping little sound.

'What kind of trouble?'