Deverry - A Time Of War Part 25

'So he did, when we were both a fair bit younger.'

'I'm glad old Otho finally came across. I was wondering if he ever would. Here, is he daft?'

'Not that I know of. Why?'

'Cursed strange thing, a few nights past. I happened to run across him in the ward. Come to pay me, have you? says I. All in good time, says he, I've been to visit the princess. And all at once he fixes me with this look. You owe her a debt, says he, though you won't remember it, and if ever a debt should be paid, it's that one. And then he stumps on by without so much as another word.'

'Well, um, odd indeed.' Jill fished round and came up with an evasion. 'Maybe he thought you were someone else. He's getting on a bit.'

'True enough, true enough. That's probably all there was to it, then.'

Jill left the matter there, but she was honestly surprised that Otho would recognize in their new bodies souls he'd known so long ago in his youth, but when they were living out other lives, turns of the wheel of Birth and Death that had long since ended. It was all because of Carra, or so Jill a.s.sumed, who back in that other long-gone existence had been the only person in the dwarf's entire life that he had ever loved.

Jill wasn't about to probe that old wound, however, and ask the old man for details.

Over the next few days, Cengarn began to prepare for war. The gwerbret took to spending much of the day riding his lands, with his servitors in attendance, going from farm to farm, sizing up the harvest and having a word here and there with various yeoman farmers who couid be counted on to join the muster.

Messages went back and forth between his various va.s.sals, too, discussing plans. The townsmen began making preparations of their own, gathering in what supplies they could, meeting together to discuss mutual support and to choose the men and wagons they owed the gwerbret in times of war. Yet in all the flurry of hard work and messages, no one ever heard from Lord Tren, not the gwerbret himself, not his loyal va.s.sals. Whenever Cadmar sent him a messenger, the man was always well treated, told that an answer would follow, and sent away empty-handed. No answer ever did come.

During these days Jill spent more time at her scrying than ever, yet never did she find one sign of military action along the gwerbret's borders. More and more, too, she worried about Dallandra. It had been close to a fortnight since she'd seen her, but of course, as she reminded herself, that lapse of time could have been a mere afternoon up in Evandar's country. As she often did, she sent her grey gnome, who was beginning to form a seed of true mind, to find Dallandra. Although the gnome couldn't give her a concrete message, often his arrival was enough to remind Dalla that Jill wanted to see her. Yet every time, the gnome came back without her. When Jill tried asking him simple questions, he would shrug and wander round her chamber, peering into things, shrugging again. She could figure out that he meant he simply hadn't found Dalla anywhere he'd looked.

Finally Jill decided to try contacting with Evandar or his people herself. When Prince Daralanteriel took his men out hunting, she rode with them until she found a place where two streams joined and a farmer's fence ran to meet them. It was just this sort of contrast on the one hand and a mingling of disparate natures on the other that seemed to harbour those mysterious gates Dallandra had discussed with her.

Jill waited until the prince and his men were out of earshot, then dismounted, tied her horse to a fencepost, and walked over the three-way join. She could indeed feel a slight difference in the place, a certain stirring of the energy of the earth, a tension in the air, a scurrying in the water. No doubt if she'd been carrying a torch, it would have burned the brighter on this spot. She glanced round - no one in sight but a white cow, drinking at the stream.

'Evandar!' Jill called out. 'Dalla! Can you hear me?'

Nothing, not a sound, not a change of energy, not a ripple in the etheric forces to count as an answer.

She sat down, leaning against a post, and allowed herself to slip into a light trance so that she was half-aware of the etheric, half of the physical. She could see in the blue light a sort of s.h.i.+mmering plate or shape, but she had not the slightest idea of what to do with it. With a shake of her head she brought herself back and abandoned the attempt.

When she caught up with them, not one man of the Westfolk asked her what she'd been doing. They had had too much experience with dweomer to question a Wise One. As the warband let their horses walk slowly back to the dun, Jill rode beside Dar. The hunting had been good; they were bringing three deer back with them.

'I've heard these sieges can last for months,' Dar remarked.

'That's true. Do you think you and your men can endure it? Being shut up, I mean.'

'If it's not safe to take Carra away, I'll have no choice. I can endure what I need to. We all can.'

'Good, because she won't be safe out on the gra.s.s. I've thought of calling to other Wise Ones - you know that we have ways of doing so - but frankly, Dar, I've been afraid to. It's possible to be overheard, when you send thoughts through the fire and on the winds. And if it's enemies that hear us, it won't be a good thing.'

'I'd wondered about that.' He turned in the saddle to look at her. 'I a.s.sumed you knew your own affairs best.'

'My thanks, but I felt I owed you an explanation. One other thing I wanted to tell you. Rhodry will be leaving Cengarn on the morrow. I've sent him on a dangerous errand indeed.'

'I see. He's not going alone, is he?'

'Some of the Mountain People will be travelling with him. Why?'

'That shapechangcr worries me, the raven that he and Carra saw when he was escorting her to Cengarn.

Does he have a bow with him?'

'Not that I know of. Does he know how to use one?'

Dar grinned.

'You could say that. Oh, he'll make light of his skill, and he's got nowhere near the fine eye that, say, Calonderiel does, but all in all, he's a man I wouldn't mind having with me if I needed an archer.'

'Ah. Do you have a spare bow I could take him, then?'

'I do. I'll bring it to your chamber when we get back, and a quiver of arrows as well.'

It was late that day, close to sunset, when Otho came up to the dun to consult Jill about their plans.

Although she'd been hoping that the dwarves had built some sort of hidden exit or tunnel out of Cengarn, no such thing existed - the bedrock was too close to the surface, or so Otho said, and such tunnels were dangerous to a town built to withstand siege, if a traitor should betray their existence to an enemy.

'Now, don't you worry, though. We'll stay in the wild hills. There's a road there that only we know.'

'It'll have to do, then.'

'No one's going to spy us out, well, not unless they're using dweomer, that is, and such would find us no matter how deep under the earth we were. There's one good thing about Rhodry being half an elf. He can see well enough in the dark to travel at night, same as us, and that's what we'll do, travel at night and hide ourselves in the day.'

'Splendid! You have my thanks, you know, for what it's worth.'

'Worth a great deal.' Otho sighed with a shake of his head. 'Ah, it's strange how things turn out! I keep thinking of you as that golden little la.s.s you were when first I met you, years and years ago now, when you were just a silver dagger's brat, trailing along behind your da. Do you remember the riddle I told you?'

'About how "no one" could tell me what craft I'd learn?' Jill smiled, remembering herself as a child standing in his silversrnithy. 'I do, at that. Nevyn and I both got a good laugh out of it, once I'd sworn myself over to study the dweomer, because "nev yn" had told me, indeed.'

Otho nodded, looking away with one of his rare smiles. Then he sighed, turning sad.

'I'd best be making my farewell to the Princess Carramaena,' he said. 'Doubtless I'll never - ah well, I'm not going to weave myself a bad omen by saying that aloud. You'll be down at the inn to see us off?'

'I'll go down now. I want a word with Rhodry.' She patted the quiver of arrows. 'And I've got to give him Dar's gift.'

Jill found Rhodry pacing back and forth in the common room of the dwarven inn, and all alone, as if the innkeep and the other dwarves had fled to leave him to his brooding. By human standards he was a tall man, anyway, and in the midst of dwarven-sized furniture he seemed enormous, looming over everything in the pale, uncertain light, part blue phosph.o.r.escence, part fireglow, that danced about the stone chamber. He was in a sombre mood - she could tell by the way he laughed one of his crazed peals at the sight of her. At times she found herself wondering if he'd been possessed by one of the old G.o.ds of war, Gamyl, perhaps, or even Epona, Mistress of Horses. She was afraid to probe his mind and find out.

'What's that you're carrying?' Rhodry said. 'Looks like a hunting bow.'

'It is, and a present from Prince Dar himself. He says you've a fair hand with it.'

'Only fair, I'm afraid, but if we're going to have shapechangers flapping round us, better to arm me than give us no archer at all.'

Rhodry laid the bundle on the table and began to unwrap it, whistling a little at the sight of the painted doeskin quiver and the golden buckles on its baldric. He laid that to one side, flipped the cloth one more time and freed the unstrung bow itself, a graceful curve like the ridge of a man's eyebrows, and made of two kinds of wood and horn, trimmed with silver round the handgrip. As he ran one finger along it, hib eyes filled with tears.

'Dar's sent me his own bow,' he said. 'Now that's an honour I never thought to have.'

'Well, it seems the least he can do. It's his lady you're risking your life for.'

'Jill, ye G.o.ds! You have a way of taking the bloom off a fine gesture, I must say.'

'It comes from having been born a silver dagger's b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'Well, no doubt. Now that I've spent many a long year at the bottom of things, as I'd suppose you'd call it, I begin to see your point. But still.' He ran a loving hand along the bow's shaft. 'I appreciate this stick of wood. Tell my prince that I'm honoured.'

'I will, then.'

They hesitated, looking at each other in the bizarrely coloured light.

'This is farewell, isn't it?' Rhodry said. 'Think we'll ever see each other again?'

'I hope so. If we don't, somewhat will have gone badly wrong for one or the other of us,'

'That's what I fear, sure enough. Ah well, if my Lady Death s.n.a.t.c.hes me away from you, it'll only be retribution for the way the dweomer took you from me, all those years ago.'

'Rhodry, I had to go.'

'Do you want to know a strange thing? I see that now. Now. All these years later.' He smiled briefly.

'Do young men ever see the truth of their women's lives? I doubt it, I doubt if they can, I doubt if we could and go on being the men our fathers and our king expect us to be, truly. But now, well, I don't remember how many years I've lived, but it's getting close to four score, isn't it? Must be by now, if not more. And I do see things a bit more clearly.' He turned away and busied himself with wrapping the bow back up. 'I just wanted you to know that. I don't know why.'

'My thanks. It means a great deal to me, a very great deal indeed. It's ached my heart, all these years, knowing you'd never forgiven me for riding away with Nevyn.'

He shrugged and tucked the last corner of cloth round the quiver, as lovingly as a mother swaddling her baby.

'One last thing,' he said. 'Do you remember when you came to fetch me from Aberwyn?'

'I do.'

'I'd hoped that we could ride together again.'

'I knew it.'

'You were cold enough to me, cold as a winter storm.'

'I had to be, you dolt!'

'Your Wyrd again?'

'Not mine; yours. You no more belong to me than I do to you, but I knew that you'd never listen to simple reason. You had to find a new road, Rhodry. I honestly thought you could live in peace out on the gra.s.slands, find a new love, no doubt, and a new life. I never dreamt that the dweomer had its claws in you so deep.'

He spun round, startled.

'So.' He managed a grin. 'You dweomermasters don't know everything there is to know, do you?'

'Of course not. If we did, you and I and Carra and everyone else wouldn't be in this wretched mess now.'

He laughed his berserker's howl, and hearing him sound so daft ached her heart. As if he'd picked up her change of mood he choked the laugh off. For a moment they looked at each other in a silence that rang loud.

'But Jill,' he said at last. 'If the worst happens, remember how I loved you, will you?'

'Always, Rhodry. And remember that before my Wyrd tore me away, I loved you.'

She turned on her heel and hurried out of the chamber, headed for the door and fast, because for the first time in some forty years, she was afraid that she would weep. As she walked back to the dun, she was remembering the hideous omen of a few days past, when she'd seen his Wyrd devour him. No one, not dweomermastcr nor king nor priest can turn a man's Wyrd aside, but Jill vowed that night that if ever she could undo Rhodry's fate after it had come upon him, she would risk whatever needed risking to do so.

Just at dawn Yraen woke out in the barracks to grey light, falling in squares through unshuttered windows. For a moment he lay awake, hands under his head, and listened to the sounds of other men sleeping in long rows, a noise that had become familiar, a mark of the only home he had left, during the four years since he'd left his father's holdings and ridden off to become a silver dagger. Out of long habit he turned his head to see if Rhodry were awake, but the bunk next to his was of course empty. b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he thought. I'm going to miss him. He lay still a moment longer, then rolled out of bed, dressed and, cradling his sword belt against his chest to keep it from jingling, he crept out before he woke anyone.

Out in the ward he paused, buckling on the heavy belt, sword to the left, silver dagger to the right. It was hot, that morning, with a sweep of mackerel clouds across the sky that promised coming rain. As he headed for the gates, the wind picked up, sighing across the ward in a rustle of thatch and a banging of shutters. Spring had turned into full summer. The days were growing longer and longer, and he'd heard the servants talking about the first harvest of winter wheat and short hay. If you had to send someone off on a fool's errand, it was as good a time as you were going to get, he supposed. At the gates a sleepy guard greeted him with a yawn.

'Where are you off to so early?'

'Oh, Rhodry's leaving town today. He owes me money.'

'Better get it while you can, then.'

Yraen smiled and strode on, wondering why he'd lied, why he had to pretend to some cold reason for saying farewell to a friend. All round him the town was just coming awake, with much banging of shutters and the smell of newly-lit fires. He walked down the middle of the streets, ready to dodge slops as he made his now-familiar way to the dwarven inn. In the brightening light Rhodry stood outside, yawning and leaning against the stonework round the open door. He was wearing a strange pair of boots, cut from sheepskin with the fleece inside and bound to his ankles with strips of dirty cloth, like a peasant would wear, a strange contrast to the gold-trimmed baldric across his chest and the painted quiver slung at his hip. Leaning next to him was a big peddlar's pack - stiff canvas sacks and a bedroll, lashed to a wooden frame - and beside that, a curved elven hunting bow, loose-strung for carrying. When he saw Yraen he grinned and strode over to meet him.

'You're up early,' Rhodry said.

'So everyone tells me. Ye G.o.ds, you look like a cursed woodcutter!'

'At least do me the honour of calling me a gamekeeper.' Rhodry patted the quiver. 'Please note the drinking cup at my belt, and the axe hanging from the pack. Our generous Otho has hung me with trinkets, all suitable to my new life as a creature of wood and heath.'

'Imph. Where are the Mountain Folk?'

'Squabbling inside. I'm cursed glad Garin's coming with us. He's the only one Otho'll listen to.'

'And what are they fighting about?'

'I wouldn't know. They're talking in their own tongue.' Rhodry paused for a laugh, but mercifully just a normal one, 'This is going to be a journey fit for a bard to sing about, Yraen my friend. The question is, will it be a n.o.ble tale or a satire on men's folly?'

Yraen tried to think of some jest and failed. Rhodry grinned, looking away toward the east, glancing up as if he were watching the sun brighten on the town wall.

'Are you supposed to carry that thing, by the by?' Yraen pointed to the peddlar's pack.

'I am, and so I will.' Rhodry looked at it with grave doubt. 'Well, it's going to be the strangest road I've ever travelled, but who knows? Maybe it'll lead me at last to the bed of my one true love, my Lady Death.'

'Will you hold your ugly tongue?' Yraen realized that he'd shouted and reined in his voice as he went on.

'I'm sick as a man can be of you indulging that wretched daft fancy '

'It's not daft. She'll have us all in the end, she will.' Again, Yraen found that he had nothing to say.

Suddenly solemn, Rhodry turned to him.

'My apologies. Keep yourself safe, will you?' 'I'll do my best. And the same to you, you berserk b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' Rhodry smiled briefly. There was, Yraen decided, nothing more to say. With a wave he turned and headed back, walking fast for the dun.

By the time he got back to the ward, the sunlight had topped the walls. Outside the barracks, the men of the warband were up and moving round, some ducking their faces in the water of the horse trough, others standing in a clot near the privies, a few straggling toward the great hall and breakfast.