A Time of War. Katharine Kerr
had shrunk into themselves, turned smaller, fainter, flames playing over a dying fire.
Yet still they were a beautiful people. Since they had no proper bodies or forms of their own, they’d taken the form of the elves that their leader loved so much, with hair pale as moonlight or bright as the sun to set off violet eyes, grey eyes, and the long delicate curled ears of that earthly race. For the most part their skin was as pale as milk, just touched with roses in the cheek, but some had seen the human beings of the far southern isles, and those who had wore a rich, dark skin like fresh-ploughed earth under a rain. They clustered in the golden pavilion, listened to sad songs played by indifferent bards, or sat in the pale sunlight, merely sat and talked in low voices, their dancing, it seemed, all done forever.
Whether their numbers had shrunk as well, he couldn’t say. Counting the Court lay beyond him or any being, truly, because most of them were like shapes half-seen in clouds or flames, at times separate, at others merging into one another, rising into brief individuality only to fall back to a shared mind. Only a few had achieved, as he had, a true consciousness. One of these, wearing the form of a young page, ran to take his horse as he dismounted. Although the boy stared at him, hoping for a few words, Evandar merely shrugged and walked away. As he hurried through the scattered crowd, faces turned toward him, eyes came to life, hope bloomed in smiles that he would save them as he had before. He doubted that he cared enough to try.
Down by the river, flowing broad and slow between rushy banks, sat a woman with steel-grey eyes and silvery-blonde hair that tumbled down her back. When she rose to greet him, he abruptly saw her slender body as a shaft of granite, hard and cold and real among the shifting forms of the Land. Round her neck she wore a tiny figurine, seemingly carved from amethyst, that echoed her body in every detail. It actually was her body, in fact, once physical meat and blood and bone but transformed by his magic so that she could live in his country. Dallandra was one of the truly-born, a member of that race called elves or Westfolk by men and the ‘Children of the Gods’ by the Gel da’Thae, though they called themselves simply ‘the People’. She was also a dweomermaster of great power, though no human or elven sorcerer could ever match Evandar’s skill.
‘What did your brother want?’ she said.
‘To blame me for letting his territories fall into disrepair. Let him build his own, if he wants them as badly as all that. I’ve no time to waste upon his snouted, hairy pack.’ He walked to the riverbank and looked into the astral water, thick and silver, oozing rather than flowing between the clumps of water reeds and the rushes. ‘No matter what I do, this river remains. I wonder if it will still exist – after I’m dead and scattered into nothingness, I mean.’
‘It might well, at that. Of course, there’s no reason for you to die with your domain. You could choose birth like your daughter has.’
She spoke casually, barely looking his way.
‘I’ve made my choice,’ he snapped. ‘Never shall I go live in the world of blood and muck and pain and mire.’
‘Well, then there’s naught I can do about it, is there?’
His hurt that she would sound so indifferent to his death stabbed like a winter wind. For a moment he was tempted to change his mind, just to spite her.
‘But I do have to visit it now and again,’ he said instead. ‘I’ve started a few more hares upon this field, and I have to go see how they run.’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’
He laughed, tossing back his head.
‘I hope I do, too, my beloved. I sincerely hope I do. Don’t you trust me?’
‘It’s not a question of trust. It’s just that everything’s getting so dreadfully complicated. You seem, to have so many schemes afoot.’
‘Only the one, to keep Elessario safe once she’s born.’
‘But you’ve a fair number of meats simmering in this particular stew. And I worry about Time, my love. It runs so differently here in your world than it does in mine.’
‘Why must you always refer to that world as yours? I want you to stay here forever with me.’
She hesitated, but in the end, although he could see longing in her eyes, she shook her head no.
‘My place is there, in the world of men, the world of Time.’
‘And the world of Death.’
‘It is, at that. Some things are beyond changing. But after death comes new birth.’
He tried to speak, but no words came. Whether it was beyond his changing or not, he knew that Time and her daughter Death were beyond his understanding. The knowing gave him doubts. Maybe he didn’t understand the universe as completely as he thought he did, maybe his power was far more limited than he thought it was. With those doubts, a distant city vanished from his lands forever, wiped away like a smear of charcoal from a hearthstone.
Although it seemed to Evandar that a mere hour or two had gone by since he’d seen the Gel da’Thae bard and spoken with Jahdo, ten whole days of Time as we measure it in our world had passed for them. They’d been following the stream south, stopping often to rest the horse and mule, since by then they were long out of oats. Although they skirted hills, rising off to the north and east, the river itself seemed headed for lower country. As the river deepened, the banks turned flat and grassy, so that the walking became much easier, even though the forest grew thick and wild to either hand. As Jahdo described the terrain to the bard, Meer remarked that someone must be inhabiting this country, whether they’d seen them or not.
‘Trees hug water, lad. Following this river should be a battle, not an easy stroll. Someone cleared this bank, and not so long ago, either, or second growth would have taken it over.’
‘Well, maybe so. I hope they don’t mind us using the road.’
‘So do I.’
Thinking about what might happen to them if they ran into hostile natives made Jahdo nervous enough to sharpen his eyes. As the river began turning east, he found himself studying the bank as they walked. Here and there he found brown traces of crumbling horse-dung, and the rare hoof-print, too, cut so deeply that the rains hadn’t washed it away.
‘Do you think that’s dung from Thavrae’s horses?’
‘It sounds too old from the way you describe it,’ Meer said. ‘So it more likely came from horses belonging to the natives. Hum. If they drive stock through here, clearing the bank would make sense.’
‘I wonder if they be the same people from the old tales? The ones who helped the ancestors escape.’
‘Those were the Children of the Gods,’ Meer snapped. ‘The lore says so.’
‘But what would gods want with real horses?’
Meer had to chew over this piece of heresy for a long time before he answered.
‘Perhaps your helpers were indeed horseherders, as your lore says, but acting under the direction of the gods or their children, as our lore says. That would make sense, all nice and tidy, like.’
‘Very well, then. If they are the same people, then we don’t have to worry. The tales talk about how decent they were, feeding the ancestors and giving them knives and mules and stuff so they could farm up in the Rhiddaer.’
‘Hum. Goes to show, then, that they were guided by the gods for purposes of the divine wills.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, any ordinary folk would have enslaved the ancestors all over again.’
‘The tales do say that these people were against keeping slaves, on principle, like, just like we are. They thought it was dishonourable and just plain rotten.’
Meer snorted in profound scepticism.
‘Not likely that anyone would believe such a thing, is it?’ he said.