The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage. Katharine Kerr

poor dear child,’ Bevyan said. ‘I know how unbelievably dreadful this all is. My heart aches for you. I can hear in your voice just how tired and lonely and frightened you are.’

      ‘Well, I am, and all of those things!’ Abrwnna seemed on the edge of tears. ‘When we were riding today, I just wanted to turn my horse and gallop away, just ride off somewhere and be lost. Anything would be better than another summer of this beastly war.’

      Merodda felt a sudden chill – so! Bevyan had been riding with the Queen, while she’d been left behind.

      ‘Well, we can all understand that.’ Bevyan sat again, but she turned the footstool so the Queen could see her face. ‘But you feel it much more keenly than any of us.’

      ‘I’m just so tired,’ Abrwnna whispered. ‘It’s just not fair.’

      ‘It’s not, truly,’ Bevyan said. ‘We did ride such a long way today. Shall I comb out your hair for you? And then perhaps you can sleep. The morning will bring the sun and better things.’

      ‘I’d like that.’ Abrwnna turned to one of her women. ‘Fetch my combs for me.’

      While Bevyan combed the Queen’s hair, she kept up a flow of chatter in her soft, dark voice that soothed the Queen the way stroking will soothe a frightened cat. She allowed Bevva to lead her to her bedchamber, too, and tuck her in. When Merodda left the women’s hall that night, she wondered if everyone she met could smell her fear – it seemed to trail behind her like smoke. To be supplanted this way! How could she possibly allow it?

      Out in the deserted broch Lilli and Brour were ready at last to work the ritual of evocation. At each of the four directions stood a candle lantern which Brour lit from a fifth. In one curve of the wall lay a couple of cloth sacks – supplies, he said. On the floor he’d drawn a big circle with flour.

      ‘It’s a bit wobbly, isn’t it?’ Brour said, frowning at the mark. ‘Well, the circle that really matters is the one I’ll visualize, anyway.’

      Lilli sat down cross-legged in the centre of the circle, facing their approximate east. Brour had brought a big pottery bowl for her scrying; they didn’t dare risk Merodda noticing that the silver basin had gone missing. He filled it with ink from a leather bottle and set it down in front of her.

      ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

      ‘I am.’ Lilli took a deep breath to steady her nerves. ‘Let’s begin.’

      Brour stood directly in front of her, again facing east, and raised his arms high above his head. For a moment he gathered breath; then he began to chant in an odd vibrating growl of a voice. The words themselves meant nothing to her; they were Greggyn, she supposed, or some other ancient tongue. From his telling, however, she knew that he was invoking the Light that dwelt beyond the gods and drawing it down into himself to give power for the working.

      He lowered his arms till they were straight out from his shoulders and chanted again, waited, then let his arms drop. To Lilli it seemed that the room had suddenly become larger – and crowded. Although she could hear nothing but Brour’s hard breathing, she felt that the room buzzed with life and noise, like the great hall on some state occasion. Brour held out one hand as if he were holding a sword and began to chant again. As he growled out the sacred words, he slowly turned, east to south to west to north and east again, drawing a circle of blue light out on the astral plane – or so he’d told her. Again, she could see nothing of this, but all at once she realized that the stone walls of the broch shimmered in a faint silvery light, as if some reflection of the magic had come through to her sight.

      ‘I invoke thee!’ Brour began to intone in Deverrian. ‘I call unto thee! O Great King of the Element of Earth, I invoke thee into my presence! Show thyself and be known, in the names of the great sigils of the elements and the Lords of Light!’

      Brour turned toward the north, and Lilli twisted round so that she could see. The candle lantern set there threw a mottled pillar of light up the stone wall, at first no different than any of the others in the room.

      ‘I invoke thee! Lord of Earth and the North, home of the greatest darkness, come to me and show thyself!’

      The mottles of golden light on the wall suddenly swelled and ran together to form a blazing pillar. Lilli gasped; as the light brightened, it changed colour to glowing silver. Within the pillar of light a figure was forming, man-shaped though strangely slender. It stayed cloudy, shifting with the dancing of the light, yet it seemed far more substantial than a shadow. A faint greenish-grey light rippled across its body, if one could call it a body, while a russet glow formed behind its head. Its feet stood upon a sphere of polished black. Lilli heard words form in her mind and knew that this Other had sent them.