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.
Gwaentaer and Deverry Spring, 1063
This figure brings good out of prior good, and evil out of prior evil. Yet by a most cunning paradox, when it does fall into the Land of Steel, which governs marriages, it produces evil even unto the point of death.
The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster
The tavern catered, it seemed, to shabby young men, laughing and talking among themselves – craftsmen’s apprentices from the look of them. Jill propped one foot up on a bench and settled her back against the curved stone wall. Since she and her man both carried the silver dagger, the mark of a notoriously poor band of wandering mercenaries, the other customers seemed willing to ignore them, but she preferred to take no chances. Besides, even though she wore men’s clothing and had her blonde hair cropped off like a lad’s, she was very beautiful, back in those days, and men had seen through her ruse before.
‘What’s so wrong?’ Rhodry whispered.
‘They’re all thieves.’
‘Ye
