Читать книгу A Time of Justice - Katharine Kerr - Страница 7

ALBUS

The opposite of Rubeus in all things, thus generally an omen for good. Yet when it falls into the House of Lead, pertaining to matters of war, it does signify days of air and darkness, and an evil upon the land.

The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster

Under a starry night two men and a dragon camped by a river. Though the wind blew warm, the men had built a fire for light, and the great wyrm lay her head as close to it as she dared. The rest of her glittering body and folded wings stretched away into shadow. Well over twenty feet long, not counting the tail curled round her haunches, the greeny-black dragon kept raising her head to look about her and sniff the summer wind. On the opposite side of the fire sat a young man of the Mountain People, though he was tall for one of them at five and a half feet. He had high dwarven cheekbones and a flat nose, narrow eyes, shadowed under heavy dwarven brows, and his hair was a brown close to black, as was his close-cropped beard. Every time the dragon went on guard he would start up, then mutter a curse under his breath and sit again.

‘Rori?’ he said finally. ‘What be troubling the beast?’

Rhodry Maelwaedd stopped his restless pacing and walked back into the pool of firelight. He was well over six feet tall but built straight from shoulder to hip, and his raven-dark hair and cornflower blue eyes marked him for an Eldidd man, even though that province lay hundreds of miles to the south, all the way across the far-flung kingdom of Deverry. Weather-beaten, grizzled, Rhodry was still a handsome man, and he looked human enough – at first glance, anyway.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity you never learned the Elvish tongue, Enj. It’s the only thing she speaks.’

‘And where would I have come across elves, all the way up here? Well, before I met you, anyway.’

‘True spoken.’ Rhodry turned to the dragon and began speaking in the language of his father’s people. ‘What’s wrong? Do you smell trouble on the wind?’

‘What? No, not yet, anyway.’ The dragon’s voice rumbled and growled like a turning millstone. ‘But I like to keep a bit of a guard.’

‘Sensible enough, and my thanks.’

She rippled her long wings, then rested her head on her coppery-green paws, though she kept an eye open to watch him. On the third finger of his right hand Rhodry wore a silver ring, a flat band inscribed on the outside with a design of roses and on the inside, with her true name.

‘Naught’s wrong.’ Rhodry sat down on the ground a few feet from Enj and spoke in the rough patois of Deverrian and the mountain tongue that they both could understand. ‘She’s just troubled, like we are.’

‘It’s been a miserable bad day, truly.’

Rhodry laughed, a high mad chortle of a berserker’s howl that made Enj wince and the dragon raise her head to hiss like a thousand cats.

‘You must admit, Enj old lad, that you’ve a fine gift for understatement. You’ve lost home and kin both, and I’ve lost a woman I loved with all my heart and soul, and what do you call it? A miserable bad day. Well, truly, it was that, I suppose.’

‘My apologies, then!’ Enj snarled like the dragon. ‘But ye gods, what do you expect me to do? Orate like one of your wretched bards?’

Rhodry wiped his grin away.

‘I’m sorry. Forgive me.’

The two men stared at each other for a long moment; then Enj held out his hand. Rhodry shook it. His mouth set hard against mourning, Enj returned to watching flames dance along logs.

Rhodry’s heavy sword belt lay beside him on the ground. He pulled a dagger free of its sheath and began fiddling with it, polishing the narrow blade on his sleeve holding it up to catch the light. When he flicked it with a thumbnail, the blade rang like silver, though it was as hard as steel. The dragon’s coppery eye followed every glint.

Their camp lay in a broad valley where a river flowed through scattered pines and high grass. All round rose the mountains of the Roof of the World, in those days untrod and unsettled by either dwarf or man. Framing the valley, hills climbed, dark with trees, while beyond them rose the high peaks, their perpetual snow gleaming a faint silver in the light from the overarching stars. Down from the foothills the night wind brought them the sound of wolves howling on the hunt. Arzosah raised her massive head to listen.

‘They’re moving away from us,’ she remarked. ‘I do wish you’d sheathe that knife, Rori. It’s driving me daft, watching you play with it.’

He smiled and closed one broad hand around its hilt.

‘You know,’ she went on, ‘if you need someone to hate, you could blame Evandar. I do.’

‘For what? The vanishing of Haen Marn?’

‘Nah nah nah. What do I care about your stupid island? It wasn’t my home. I blame him for the troubling of me.’

‘I should have known.’ Rhodry translated this exchange for the puzzled Enj, then turned back to her. ‘Well, if he hadn’t given me this little ring, you’d be all nice and snug, sure enough, lolling round in your fire mountain and chewing on a cow bone or two.’

‘Don’t mock! It’s bad enough you’ve enslaved me. Don’t mock me, too.’

‘Watch your courtesies when you speak to me.’

She whined, rolling an enormous copper eye to the stars. He held up his hand to catch the firelight on the ring.

‘My apologies,’ she said. ‘You’re a harsh man, Rhodry Dragonmaster.’

‘I intend to stay that way and stay alive.’

She whined again, flopping her head onto her paws. He glanced at Enj to find him utterly expressionless.

‘We should turn in,’ Rhodry said. Think you can sleep?’

‘Not without dreaming. Let’s let the fire burn a while.’

‘Very well.’ He looked at the dragon, who was quietly snarling to herself. ‘Still thinking of Evandar?’

‘Yes. If ever I find him again, I’m going to eat him. Munch crunch gobble gone.’

‘A fine sentiment, but I’m afraid you can’t really eat him. He doesn’t have a real body, not one made out of meat, I mean, like you and me.’

‘Just like him! The final cheat of all!’

‘A spiteful beast, isn’t she?’

The voice came out of the dark beyond the fire. His dagger in hand, Rhodry scrambled to his feet as a figure strolled toward them. A silver glow like moonlight hung in the air round him so that they could see him clearly, a tall fellow, slender, dressed in a long green tunic and buckskin trousers. His hair was the bright yellow of daffodils, his lips were the red of sour cherries, and his eyes were an unnatural turquoise blue, bright as gemstones. Yet the strangest things of all were his ears, long and delicately pointed, furled tight like a fern in spring.

‘Evandar!’ Rhodry hissed.

The dragon slapped her tail upon the ground with a dull boom like an avalanche. He could hear her scuffling to her feet behind him.

‘The very one.’ Evandar made a bow, then raised one hand to point a long and slender finger at the dragon. ‘Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz! Remember that I know your name.’

She snarled, opening her mouth wide, but she held her place. Enj crouched by the fire and stared at their visitor.

‘What brings you here?’ With a nod Enj’s way to include him, Rhodry spoke in the Deverrian patois.

‘A warning for you,’ Evandar said in the same. ‘Are you heading south?’

‘We are. Cengarn’s under siege. Did you know that?’

‘Of course. I know everything that’s worth knowing about this war, Rhodry Maelwaedd.’

‘Oh, do you now? Then where’s the relieving army? We’ll be looking to join up with it.’

‘Go to Lin Serr first. Garin and his troop of axemen haven’t left yet.’

‘What? I’d have thought them long gone.’

‘There’s an obstacle in their way.’ Evandar flashed him a grin. ‘A small army’s tramping round the countryside. Horsekin.’

Enj winced and swore.

‘The filthy bastards!’ Rhodry said, half-laughing. ‘I want a chance at killing me a few.’

‘You’ll get it,’ Evandar said. ‘But stay on guard while you’re flying south, because there’s some peculiar birds who soar between worlds, and I think me one of them means you harm.’

‘Shapechangers!’

Evandar smiled, briefly.

‘It’s the raven I’d watch out for. A bird of ill omen, always, but particularly ill-omened is the raven I have in mind. You’re wearing some sort of talisman of hiding, aren’t you?’

‘I am.’

‘I thought so. No doubt your enemies are having a fair bit of trouble scrying you out, and so they’ll have to come look for you in the flesh. Be careful, very careful. The raven woman’s as dangerous as they come.’

‘We’ll keep alert, then, and my thanks. Answer me somewhat, will you?’

‘Probably not, but you can ask. I only set riddles. I don’t answer them for naught.’

The dragon swung her head his way and growled. Oho! Rhodry thought.

‘All right, then,’ Rhodry said aloud. ‘Why would you come to warn me? I don’t recall ever doing anything for you, and yet you’ve helped me a good many times now.’

‘I don’t know. It’s a riddle I’ve set for myself, I suppose a riddle as new and shiny as a gold coin, and here I never meant to do such a thing.’ Evandar tilted his head a little to one side, suddenly solemn, and yet it seemed that he was acting the role of a man thinking rather than truly thinking something through. ‘I suppose there’s only one thing the answer could be.’

‘And that is?’

Evandar laid a hand along the side of Rhodry’s face, then kissed him full on the mouth. His hand felt oddly cool, more like silk than flesh, but the kiss was warm enough. Rhodry could neither move nor think till Evandar released him.

‘That could be it, indeed.’ Evandar took one step back and vanished, suddenly and utterly gone, without so much as the flicker of a shadow.

Rhodry raised his hand and touched the dagger to his mouth, stood there narrow-eyed and speechless while Enj goggled and Arzosah made the long rumbling noise that did her for a laugh. Rhodry turned on her with a snarl.

‘Oh stop your cackling, Wyrm! Why didn’t you tell me you could speak the language of men?’

‘You never asked, Dragonmaster.’ She stopped rumbling, but he suspected her of doing whatever it was dragons did when they smirked. ‘So. Evandar isn’t real flesh and blood, is he? I never would have guessed it.’

‘I said hold your tongue!’ Rhodry flung his hand up to make the ring flash. She whined and crouched like a kicked dog. ‘Oh, my apologies. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.’

‘A harsh man, but a just one.’ She relaxed with a toss of her massive head. ‘I could be enslaved by worse.’

There remained Enj. It took Rhodry a long moment to make himself look his friend in the face.

‘That wretched wyrm,’ Enj said. ‘Pretending she couldn’t understand a word I said, making you babble back and forth like an ambassador!’

Rhodry let out his breath in a sigh. The matter, he knew, would stay closed between them from now on. He sat down again and leaned back against his bedroll.

‘And what or who is this Evandar fellow?’ Enj said.

‘I’m not truly sure. He has the ears and eyes of a full-blooded elf, but I’ve been told by sorcerers that he’s naught of the sort. Riddles, indeed!’ Rhodry spat into the fire. ‘They say he’s some kind of spirit who’s never been born, and that he lives in some kind of magical country that lies beyond the world, not that it’s floating in the air or suchlike – just “beyond”, they say. None of it makes a bit of sense to me, curse them all! But Evandar’s got dweomer, all right, the way other men have blood running in their veins.’

The dragon clacked her fangs in a sound that, he suspected, did duty as a snicker.

‘Indeed?’ Enj considered for a long while. ‘Do you think he’d know where Haen Marn’s gone off to?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I suspect that if anyone does, it’d be him. Maybe I’ll get a chance to ask him.’ Rhodry shot the dragon a murderous glance. ‘And no smart remarks from you.’

Arzosah curled her paw and contemplated her claws, but he could have sworn she was smiling.

After a few hours’ troubled sleep they woke at dawn. Arzosah clambered to her feet and stretched her wings, throwing huge shadows over the entire campsite, then folded them back and waddled down to the river to drink, which took a while because she lapped water like a cat rather than sucking like a cow. The men sat by the ash of their dead fire and shared stale flatbread and a strip of venison jerky.

‘How long till we reach Lin Serr?’ Enj said.

‘On her back? No more than three days, more likely a pair.’

‘There’s some food left, but not much. If we could wait a day, I could catch us more.’

‘Truly, I’ve never seen a man as good as you at foraging in the wild country. But time’s short.’

Enj nodded, glancing away upriver, where once the magical lake and island of Haen Marn had sat upon the countryside like a bowl on a table. By its dweomer it had vanished, taking itself away from marauders and the dangers of war – how or where, they didn’t know. With it, though, had gone Enj’s kin and clan, his home and his entire life, leaving behind only a long stretch of empty grass, green in the bright sun.

‘I was just thinking,’ Enj said in a shaking voice. ‘That it may be that the isle will return, with the danger gone off south.’

‘Think it likely?’

Enj shrugged. His eyes were brimming tears.

‘Tell me somewhat,’ Rhodry went on. ‘Have you ever marched to war?’

Enj shook his head no.

‘I thought as much. Here, why don’t you let me take what food we have, and you stay here to hunt and wait. I’ve seen you in wild country, and I know that you can live here for years if you have to. If the war ends soon, I’ll come back. If Haen Marn returns, you come south and find me.’

‘Will you think me a coward if I stay, Rori?’

‘Never, my friend. Never that.’

Enj started to speak, then wept, covering his face with his hands. Rhodry got up and strolled down to the river to join Arzosah.

‘The small creature’s snivelling again,’ she remarked.

‘He’s no warrior. Let him weep. If my soul weren’t dead, I’d weep too.’

‘Your soul is dead?’ She swung her massive head round fast to look at him. Water drops gleamed among the scales on her chin.

‘Just a way of speaking.’

‘Never ever say such a horrid thing again! It curdles my blood, just hearing the words. Don’t you realize that such can happen to men, and that it’s the most unclean thing of all under the sky?’ She shuddered with a swishing of wings. ‘Horrible!’

‘Well, my apologies. I feel like my heart’s died, then, if that suits you better.’

‘It does. A dead heart is sad, but not horrible. Rather common, actually. Males do kill their own hearts over losing the females they love.’ She sighed in a long rustle of wings. ‘Was this Angmar the only woman you’ve ever loved?’

‘Do you care?’

‘I do. We females like knowing these things.’

‘Well, then, no, she wasn’t the only one. I loved someone named Jill when I was very young, but she left me.’

‘And that’s sad, too. Was it for another man?’

‘It wasn’t, but for the dweomer.’

‘Ah! Naught to be done about that! When it calls, you follow.’

‘So she told me.’

‘You sound bitter still.’

Rhodry shrugged and watched the river flow. He could see the rippling reflection of her massive head, watching him.

‘I’ve lost a mate,’ she said at last. ‘My heart didn’t die, me being female and all, but his loss wounds me still. For your Angmar’s sake as well as his, I’ll eat the first Horsekin we slay.’

It was, Rhodry supposed, an honour of sorts.

‘Then I thank you. Ah well, I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve lost her – Angmar, I mean. It’s better she’s gone, for her sake.’

‘Well, if the wretched Horsekin had found Haen Mam –’

‘Just so. No doubt my one true love sent them. She’s the jealous sort, truly, which is why I’ve lost every woman I’ve ever loved. If I’d dared to go on spurning her, she would have sent Angmar to the Otherlands. She’s a great queen, you know, and she could have done it easily. I’ve been marked for her love from the beginning of my life, no doubt about that, and I’ve lost all her rivals.’

‘And just what are you talking about?’ The dragon swung her head round to glare at him. ‘What great queen?’

‘The one woman I’ve ever loved who’s truly loved me in return.’ Rhodry flung one hand in the air in salute. ‘My lady. Death. Oh, we’ve had a long fine affair of it, Death and I, and always have I served her well, sending her many a pretty gift from battle. Someday she’ll take pity on me, like she takes pity on all men, and let me sleep in her cold cold arms. I tell you, Wyrm, I begin to long for her more and more.’

Arzosah stared at him, her huge and alien eyes unreadable. At length he laughed, but it was just a normal sort of chuckle.

‘If you’ve drunk enough,’ he said, ‘it’s time to fly south.’

‘I suppose you’re going to put those nasty ropes round me again.’

‘I am. But not as many this time, because Enj will be staying here.’

‘Well, that’s one thing to the good, then. He’d get so beastly sick, and I was always afraid he was going to soil my scales with one of his ends or the other. Are you sure I can’t just eat him and put him out of his misery?’

‘Very sure. Now, come along.’

As Rhodry started to walk back to the camp, dweomer touched him as tangibly as a cold hand, then let go and vanished. He suddenly felt as if someone were watching or trying to watch him before this disembodied gaze swept on and disappeared. He swore aloud.

‘What is it?’ Arzosah snapped. ‘You’ve turned white.’

‘Let’s get out of here. Someone’s looking for us, just like Evandar said, and I don’t much like it.’

‘I don’t suppose any creature in its right mind would. Here! I just thought of somewhat. You’ve got that lovely talisman round your neck, so how did Evandar find us? Unless, of course –’ She paused for a clack of fangs. ‘Unless love guided him.’

‘Hold your black and ugly tongue, Wyrm, or I’ll order you into that river!’

Rhodry turned on his heel and strode back to camp, with Arzosah padding after in a rumble of laughter.

Every morning at dawn Jill would leave her chamber in the broch of the gwerbret’s dun. She’d trudge up the five floors’ worth of circling staircase and climb through the trap door onto the flat roof of the main tower, which had become an arsenal of sorts. All round the edge stood little pyramids of stones, ready for a last desperate defence, and bound sheaves of arrows wrapped in oiled hides to keep off the rain. While she caught her breath, she would look out and consider their situation. Like an island from a shallow sea, the three hills of the city of Cengarn rose from its besiegers, who spread out on all sides and camped just beyond bowshot from the town walls.

Cengarn lay in a beautiful situation for defence. To the north, across a narrow valley, lay broken ground lower than the city itself, and beyond that strip rose hills that would have taken two armies to secure against a counter-force. Even though the invaders had to place men on the north ground to complete their line, those troops were exposed and vulnerable. To the east, the broken ground became a long ridge, where white tents decked out with red banners stood. Jill suspected that the important leaders of the Horsekin sheltered there.

To the south and west the land fell away, leaving the city perched on the top of cliffs. At the western edge of town, where the dun itself stood, any climb up would require ropes and stakes, while to the south the road ran steep and narrow. Below the cliffs in those directions stretched a wide plain, where the bulk of the army camped, comfortable but vulnerable to attack when the relieving army finally arrived. To protect their men on the plain, the Horsekin were digging ditches and piling up earthworks, or rather, their human slaves were doing the digging and piling. Since they depended on their heavy cavalry and needed to ensure free movement for their own horsemen, they would never be able to make a solid ring all the way round the camp. Rather, they’d placed earthworks as baffles more than walls to protect vulnerable points.

Inside the city walls seethed potential chaos. Crammed into every valley among the three hills, lining every street, crowding every open space, townsfolk and refugees from the farms roundabout huddled amidst cattle and sheep, dray horses and chickens. They’d been living that way for weeks now, and the gwerbret’s town marshals had recruited some of the men from their lord’s warband to help keep order. Fights were breaking out, over food and water, though for now at least the town ran no danger of starving, and over space, a scarcity indeed. Filth, human and animal, was piling up, swept or carried down to line the inside of the walls. In a pinch, it could become another weapon, hurled by basket or catapult. Even up at the dun, which stood behind its own walls on the highest hill the stench rose thick. From long practice Jill could ignore it, but the threat of plague was another knife at the city’s throat.

She herself felt none too strong these days, nor did she look it. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s, was perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, so that her blue eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, she was shockingly gaunt, not that such was so unusual for a woman who was over seventy. What worried her was the shaking fever she carried in her blood, an unwelcome memento from a long-ago sojourn in tropical lands. Even though she was the greatest master of dweomer that the kingdom had ever seen, she could cure herself with neither magic nor the medicines known in those days. All she had to fight it was her strength of will.

Every day, before she began her magical work, she would try to scry out Rhodry. Normally, since she’d known him so long and so well, she would have seen his image simply by turning her mind his way; her vision would have appeared on any convenient dappled thing – the clouds in the sky, sunlight dancing on a bucket of water, trees tossing in a wind – with barely an effort on her part. These days, though, she could only summon a haze as thick and grey as smoke where an image should have been. Although she couldn’t know, she could guess that he wore some powerful talisman, whose bound spirit worked to hide him. On the morning that Rhodry took leave of Enj, though, her scrying just happened to coincide with Rhodry’s thinking about her, and for the briefest of moments she caught a glimpse of him.

‘At least he’s alive,’ she said aloud. ‘And I’ll thank the gods for that.’

It was, of course, perfectly natural to fear for a fighting man at the beginning of a war, but Jill had a further concern. Some months past she’d received in a hideous flash of ill-knowing a glimpse of bitter Wyrd hanging over him as if upon dark wings. The omen had come in such a rush of certainty, like a brand burnt into her mind, that she knew the vision for a true one. Yet even if he’d been close by, there was nothing she could say to him, no warning she could deliver. Mentioning such an evil omen to a man might well bring it about, just by planting the thought in his mind that he was doomed. She could only try to protect him as best she might when the event came upon him.

At the moment she could spare little time for worrying about the man she once had loved and still considered a friend. Her real work was guarding the city by reinforcing a peculiar sort of battlement round it. In the brightening dawn servants were hurrying round the ward far below on their various errands, and from their barracks the warband strolled out, yawning and stretching, occasionally looking up her way, but the dun had seen enough dweomer by now to put up with her standing on the tops of towers and doing odd things. She walked into the centre of the circular roof and focused her mind on the blue light of the etheric.

It seemed that the bright sunlight round her faded and a different light rose, dim and silvery, though through it she could clearly see the physical world. In this bluish flux she raised her arms high and called upon the power of the Holy Light that stands behind all the shadowy figures and personified forces that men call gods. Its visible symbol came to her in a glowing spear that pierced her from head to foot. For a moment she stood motionless, paying it homage, then stretched her arms out shoulder high, bringing the light with them to form a shaft across her chest. As she stood within the cross, the light swelled, strengthening her, then slowly faded of its own will.

When it was gone, she lowered her arms, then visualized a sword of light in her right hand. Once the image lived apart from her will, she circled the roof, walking deosil, and used the sword to draw a huge ring of golden light in the sky. As the ring settled to earth, it sheeted out, forming a burning wall round the entire town of Cengarn. Three times round she went, until the wall lived on the etheric of its own will. At each ordinal point, she put a seal in the shape of a five-pointed star made of blue fire. After the sigils of the kings of the elements blazed at the four directions, she spread the light until it was not a ring but an enormous sphere of gold, roofing over the dun and the town both and extending down under them as well. Two last seals at zenith and nadir, and Cengarn hung in the many-layered worlds like a bubble in glass.

At the end of the working, she withdrew the force from the image of the sword, dissolving it, then stamped three times on the roof. Sunlight brightened round her, and she could hear the sounds of the dun, shut out earlier by sheer concentration. The portion of the sphere above the earth, however, remained visible – that is, visible to someone with dweomer sight. Such sight could never penetrate the glowing shell, and everyone inside the sphere would be safe from prying eyes as well as from spirits sent by their enemies.

Before she left, she made one last attempt to find Rhodry. This time, nothing – not one scrap of vision, not the slightest sense of place. With a shake of her head, she went down to the noise and bustle of the great hall, where men talked in low voices of matters of war.

Rhodry was at that moment flying south from the Roof of the World on dragonback, which is not the smoothest sort of travelling in the world. Each wing beat thrust Arzosah forward in a rolling motion, at times close to a jump, especially when she was gaining height. Sitting on her neck or shoulder felt like standing on the prow of a small boat heading out from shore against the waves. After some days of practice, though, Rhodry had found his balance. Rather than trying to straddle her neck like a horse, he knelt and sat forward, steadied by his knees, resting as much on his own heels as her flesh so that he could roll with her wing beats. Bracing himself against them was futile. At times he would let go the ropes, first with one hand, then with both, to see how secure he really was.

What he needed to learn next, he realized, was fighting from dragonback. He carried a curved elvish hunting bow which might serve him in battle, though he wanted to fight close in as well as from an archer’s distance. A spear would do splendidly, he decided. He could brace himself between two scales and thrust with a long spear as his Deverrian ancestors were said to have done back in the Dawntime, before they’d left their original homeland, that mysterious country called Gallia, now lost to their descendants forever.

By leaning well forward and screaming at the top of his lungs, Rhodry could talk to Arzosah in fits and starts.

‘Have you seen any traces of Horsekin?’

‘What do you mean, traces? You can see the road they took as well as I.’

He sighed. He was learning that she could be very literal minded.

‘I mean, have you seen any Horsekin? Now, I mean. Ones we can fight.’

‘Oh. No.’

‘Well, keep an eye open, will you?’

‘Of course. I – Here! What’s this?’

She flung up her head and sniffed the wind, then with a curve of her wings beat backwards to slow and steady herself in mid-flight.

‘Horsekin?’ Rhodry said.

‘Dweomer! I smell it strong!’

Rhodry swung his head round, scanning for enemies. He too could feel a sensation for which smell seemed as apt a metaphor as any, a tingling in the air that transmitted itself to the skin of his face and hands. For the briefest of moments the sky ahead of them seemed to swirl as if a wisp of smoke were blowing by. With a flap of wings and a harsh cry, an enormous raven materialized dead ahead of them, as suddenly as if it had come through an invisible door.

For a moment, as it hovered, beating its wings to keep its place, the giant bird stared straight at him. Behind the round, gold eyes Rhodry could see the human soul of the shapechanger – he was sure of it, irrational though it was – and feel the malice therein. All at once, he recognized her. The memory rose in his mind like a piece of flotsam, long drowned, that a storm wave catches and brings up into the sun for one brief moment, only to let it sink again. But he remembered remembering and knew that somehow, against all reason, he recognized this tormented soul and knew it to be female.

The raven shrieked and dodged. Arzosah flicked her head to one side and snapped, the huge jaws closing with a clack like a wagon gate, but the raven let herself fall away, fluttering helplessly as she spiralled down. With a roar Arzosah dropped after. The raven twisted in mid-air and vanished. A lone feather twirled down to the grasslands below. Arzosah flapped once, turned, and settled on the ground nearby.

‘Where did she go?’ Rhodry slammed a frustrated fist into his palm. ‘We almost had her.’

‘Off to Evandar’s country, most like. This creature has dweomer, master, power such as I’ve never smelled before.’

When the dragon stretched out her neck, Rhodry slid down to the ground, then paused.

‘How can you smell dweomer?’

‘It’s like the air after a storm when lightning’s struck, all clean and tingling but a danger-smell, too.’

‘Huh. Interesting. I think I smelled it myself, there for a moment.’

‘That’s your elven blood. All of the People know magic in their hearts.’

Rhodry retrieved the black feather which was like a real feather in every respect save one. It stretched a good three feet long. His memory taunted him. How could he recognize such a powerful creature without putting a name or time to their meeting? With a shake of his head he ran the feather through his fingers, felt it turn cold, seem to run like water, tingle in his hands. He yelped and dropped it. On the grass lay a long strand of raven-black hair, glistening with blue highlights in the sunlight.

‘Ah,’ Arzosah said. ‘She’s turned herself back, wherever she is.’

Rhodry mouthed an oath.

‘Do you want to hear a strange thing, master?’

‘By all means. It seems to be the day for them.’

Arzosah rumbled in her version of laughter.

‘So it is, so it is. But when she dropped into our world and looked at you, I could have sworn she recognized you.’

Borne on its inner wave, the memory rose again, and this time the image of a face came with it. Impossible! he thought. It could never be her, never! And yet in a wordless way, he knew perfectly well that it was, that he had met again an enemy from many years past, when he and Jill were young. It had happened, in fact, during their very first year of riding the long road together. And a strange affair that was, he thought, as soaked with evil magic as a battlefield is with blood. Strange then and stranger to look back on now, when I know a thing or two more than I did then.