Deverry - A Time Of War Part 3

'Meer? Why are you going east?'

'That's a fitting question, considering how I've dragged you away from hearth and home, but I'm not going to answer it.'

'Here! Not fair!'

'Fair has naught to do with it.'

Jahdo felt all his homesickness boil and turn to rage. He scrambled to his feet.

'Then you may just find your way without me. I'm going home.'

He grabbed a bag of food from the ground and marched off, sighting on the last glow of the setting sun.

Behind him Meer howled, a huge sound as if ten wolves sang.

'Come back, come back!'

Jahdo heard stumblings and cursings, but he kept walking.

'Stop!' Meer's anguish floated after him. 'Wait! I'll tell you, then.'

Jahdo stopped and turned round, but he hesitated. In the last of the light he could just see the bard's silhouette, flailing round with his stick as he tried to follow over the rocks and hummocks. He moved remarkably well, considering, but he was angling away fast from the path that Jahdo had actually taken.

He'll die out here without me, Jahdo thought.

'Meer, stop! I'm coming back.'

The bard sobbed once in relief and held still. Jahdo led him back to their camp, sat Meer down on a log, then busied himself with striking sparks from his flint and steel until the readied tinder at last caught. Jahdo blew the spark into a flame, fed in a little dried gra.s.s, then some twigs, and at last pieces of broken branch. As the light leapt and spread he moved back from the unwelcome heat. Meer was sitting with his head between his hands, his face turned as if he were staring into the fire. Seeing him look so defeated brought Jahdo a strange insight: never before had he argued with, much less bested, a grown man, and rather than exulting, he was frightened. Yet he refused to back down.

'Well, tell me now. Why are you going east?'

'It's a long and bitter story, but you're right enough that you should hear it. Pay attention, though, because I can only bear to repeat it this once.' Meer cleared his throat several times before he went on.

'I have an elder brother who became a powerful razkan, what you'd call a captain in your tongue, I suppose, the man who leads a group of warriors. And what with his raiding and then the legitimate battles between our various cities, he became famous, gathering many a free-born warrior round him, as well as the usual slave soldiers he bought with all his booty.'

'Hold a moment. Slave soldiers? How can you give a slave weapons and make them fight?'

'They've been bred and born among the Gel da'Thae, and they know that if they fight well, they'll be set free.'

'But still, I don't understand. You think they'd just kill this razkan fellow and run away.'

'Run to what? The wilderness? They know the civic authorities would hunt them down, and the G.o.ds wouldn't help them the way they helped your people escape, because they'd be rebels and traitors.'

'The G.o.ds helped us?'

'Of course they did. They sent their own children to save and succour you, out on the gra.s.slands to the south.'

'I never did hear that before. I heard that it was sonic people who raised horses or suchlike. Why did the G.o.ds help us?'

'Now here!' Meer spoke with some asperity. 'Do you want me to finish this tale or not? Fewer questions, if you please.'

'I be sorry.'

'Very well, then. Now, as I say, my brother, Thavrae his name is, his warrior's name, I mean, though Svar was the name our mother gave him. Ah alas, woe betide the day she birthed him, and woe betide that his kin and clan have lived to see his infamy!'

'What's he been doing?'

'Whoring after strange G.o.ds. G.o.ds? Did I say G.o.ds? One of the three hundred sixty-four kinds of demon, more like! False G.o.ds, anyway. They're supposed to be new G.o.ds. Now I ask you. If a G.o.d wasn't around to help make the world, what kind of a G.o.d can she be? G.o.ds don't just pop up all of a sudden like, out of nowhere, appearing at your table like some unmarried uncle in search of a dinner!'

Jahdo giggled.

'Just so.' Meer nodded firmly. 'But for some years now these false prophets have been coming round, preaching these new G.o.ds to anyone stupid enough to listen. These so-called seers come from the wild tribes of the far north, where the demons have been appearing and "working marvels, or so they say.

Alshandra's the name they mention most, a powerful G.o.ddess of war, or so they call her.'

'Your people, they'd be liking her, then.'

'Just so. But most of these prophets are gone now. Some got themselves caught and strangled in the public square by the authorities, and the rest haven't been seen for some while. They've turned sensible, if you take my meaning, but a few fools have listened to them. And my brother, my own blood kin, little Svar as I'll always think of him, he's one of them, claiming allegiance to this Alshandra creature. It broke my mother's heart.'

'I'll wager it did. That be too bad, Meer, really tis so.' Jahdo was trying to imagine what the mother of a man such as Meer would be like - even more formidable than his own mother, he supposed. 'I guess she could talk no sense into him, huh?'

'No one could make him listen to reason, no one, not our mother, not our aunts, not our uncles. But anyway, some weeks ago Thavrae led his men out east.'

'Why?'

'Well, partly to spare our city outright war between his warband and that of his rivals. He did listen to our mother about that, when she begged him to take his men away before citizen slaughtered citizen in the streets. The authorities wanted to strangle him for blasphemy, you sec, but you don't just arrest a razkan when he's got his warband round him.'

'Then he does have some honour left.'

'Some, truly, though a poor comfort to our mother it is.'

'Wait a moment. You said these demons live in the north, right? Why did Thavrae head east?'

'I'm coming to that part. Hush. Apparently he'd received an omen from the G.o.ds, sending him to fetch a particular thing from the lands of the Slavers.'

'What was it?'

'How would I know? But I was sent to find him and beg him to come home.'

'Sent by your mother?'

'Just so.'

'Do you think you - I mean we - can find him?'

'I don't know.' Meer sighed, running both hands through his tangled mane of hair. 'By now he and his men should have found whatever this mysterious object is and be returning. I hope we'll meet them on the road back.'

'What road? We don't even know where we're going.'

'True.'

'Then how do you think we'll ever find him?'

'If I can get within a reasonable distance, the brother bond will guide us.'

'The what?'

'The brother bond.' Meer hesitated for a long time. 'Now, that's one thing I can never explain to you, Jahdo, even if you were to walk away again and leave me here to starve. It's a magick, and some magicks are Gel da'Thae. They cannot be shared. In the temple we swear holy vows.'

'Well, all right, then. My mam does always say that if you swear a thing, it's needful for you to do it. But I still don't see how we're going to find him. What if he goes north and we go south or somewhat like that?'

'It might happen, truly. But a mother's charge is a sacred charge, and I must travel and try.'

Jahdo hesitated, considering.

'Be you sure this is all you're doing? I did hear you talking to Verrarc back home, Councilman Verrarc I mean, and you were talking about your mother and stuff, but I did get this strange feeling. You weren't telling him everything, were you?'

Meer laughed.

'I figured I was choosing the cleverest lad in town, and I was right. But actually, I wasn't lying. I was merely editing. I didn't want to go into detail. There is somewhat about Councilman Verrarc that creeps my flesh. I hear things in his voice, somehow.'

'Things?'

'Overtones, odd hesitations, a peculiar timbre. He sounds enraged, but at the same time, he reeks of fear.' Meer paused, considering. 'I can barely put it into words, it's such a subtle thing. But he's an ominous man, in his way, an ominous man.'

Jahdo shuddered. Yet once again the buried memory tried to rise, bringing with it a cold shudder. He caught his breath with a little gasp. Meer turned an inquiring ear his way.

'Geese walking on my grave,' Jahdo said. 'O ych, I wish I hadn't said that.'

'More likely the evening breeze, lad. I wouldn't take it as an omen.'

Later, as Jahdo was falling asleep, he remembered that Meer had found him clever. In spite of the trouble this opinion had got him into, he was pleased.

It took three more days of their slow journeying before they left settled country behind. The road climbed steadily, and the last few farms they pa.s.sed nestled in hills where sheep, not cows, grazed the spa.r.s.e pasturage between huge grey boulders. What trees there were, scrubby pine and second growth alders and suchlike, hugged the narrow valleys, leaving the hill tops to gra.s.s and the wind. As the road diminished to a rocky path, Meer began to worry about the horse and mule, stopping often to run a huge hand down their legs to check for swellings and strains. He told Jahdo how to pick up their hooves and look for tiny stones or thorns that might have got stuck in the soft frogs. Although Jahdo was afraid of getting a kick for his trouble, as long as Meer was holding their halters or even simply touching them, the horse and mule stood still and docile.

'If either of these creatures comes up lame, lad, we're in for a miserable time of it.'

'I do see that, truly. Well, I'll be real careful and take good care of them.'

The next day early they left the Rhiddaer behind, not that there was a formal boundary or cairn to mark the border. It was just that Jahdo happened to glance back from the top of a hill and realize that he could see nothing familiar - not a farmhouse, not a shepherd, not a cultivated field nor a coppiced wood - nothing to mark the presence of human being or Gel da'Thae, either. For a long moment he stood looking back west and down across the low hills to catch a glimpse of the valley, all misty in the blue distance, where he'd spent his entire life. He felt torn in half between missing his family and a completely new sensation, a wondering what lay ahead, not behind, a sudden eagerness to see the new view that would lie east of these hills.

'Jahdo?' Meer called. 'Somewhat wrong?'

'Naught, truly. Just looking behind us. Meer, you'd better let me lead the way now. This be a road no longer, just sort of a trail. I don't think your staff will be enough of a guide.'

'Well and good, then. Lead on. And please remember, lad, that you're my eyes. You've got to tell me everything you see.'

'I will then.'

Remembering to keep up a running commentary for the blind bard turned out to be difficult. At first Jahdo had no idea what information would be useful to him, and he tended to describe distant vistas rather than the footing just ahead. Thanks to Meer's constant and sarcastic comments, he did learn fast that a lovely view of trees in a valley wasn't half so valuable as news of a rock blocking the path.

The path, such as it was, wound along the sides of hills and ran, basically, from one gra.s.sy spot to the next, which confirmed Jahdo's guess that it was a deer trail. It was a good thing they were heading directly east; without the sun's direction to guide them, they could easily have circled round and round the broken hillsides and steep valleys. Water, at least, ran clean and abundant in a mult.i.tude of little streams and springs. Here and there they came to a deeper stream, roaring with white water at the bottom of shallow but steep ravines. It was one of those, in fact, that nearly proved fatal.

Late in the afternoon, as they skirted the edge of a fast-moving stream, Jahdo was so intent on telling Meer where to walk that he lost track of his own feet and stepped too close to the ravine edge. The moment his foot hit he felt the damp soil crumble under his weight. He tossed the mule's lead-rope back toward the animal just in time to avoid pulling Gidro after him.

'Meer!' he shrieked. 'I'm falling!'

The sky spun blue and bright, and the roar of the water far below seemed to fill the world as he went over, twisting, flailing, grabbing out at empty air. With a smack he hit a wall of pain and lay gasping for breath on a little ledge. Above, what seemed like miles and miles above, he heard the frightened mule braying and Meer yelling his name, but though he fought sobbing for air he could not speak or call out.

My ribs be broken, he thought. I'll never be able to walk. I'll have to die here.

All at once he realized that the sounds from above had stopped. His first panicked thought was that Meer had left him behind, but he realized almost immediately that the Gel da'Thae needed him too badly for that. His second panicked thought was that Meer was going to fall over the edge himself.

'Meer!' he managed to force sound from his burning lungs at last. 'Careful! The edge be soft!'

'Jahdo! You're alive! Thank every G.o.d! Lie still, lad, lie still and get your breath.'

Jahdo did as he was told, letting the pain subside as he listened to odd sc.r.a.pings of sound above him.

Suddenly Meer's face appeared at the cliff edge. Jahdo realized that the bard was lying on his stomach and feeling for the edge with one hand. In the other he held a rope.

'Make noise,' Meer called out.

'You be right above me.'

'Hah! Thought I heard you panting down there.'

If Meer had heard him breathing, no matter how noisily, over the sound of the white water below, then, Jahdo decided, his hearing must have been amazingly keen. When Meer tossed the rope, the end spiralled down and fell across his chest. Jahdo grabbed it with one hand and carefully felt round him with the other. He had just the room to sit up, and as he did so, he realized that while he ached from bruising, nothing was broken.

'I be whole enough, Meer!' he called out. 'And I do have the rope.'

'Splendid, splendid. Tie that end round your waist, lad, not too tight, now. You'll need to ride her up like a sling. I've got the other end on Gidro's pack saddle.'

With the mule pulling and Jahdo walking up the steep side of the ravine, he got to the top easily enough, but scrambling over with the rim so soggy and soft was something of an ordeal, because his back and shoulders ached like fire. At last he was crawling on solid ground. By grabbing Gidro's pack saddle he could haul himself up to his feet. Meer inched back from the edge and sat up into a crouch.

'My thanks,' Jahdo said. 'You did save my life.'

'And my own as well, eh?' Meer felt the front of his s.h.i.+rt and began brus.h.i.+ng off mud and gra.s.s clots.

'I do thank you anyway. You could have fallen and broken your neck, trying to save me.'

'I feared your mother's curse worse than I did dying. A mother's curse follows a man into the Deathworld, it does. And I thought we'd lost you for sure, lad. What happened?'

'I did step too close to the edge, that's all. This soft dirt, it be a jeopard, Meer. It's needful that you do test every step with that staff you carry.'

'And so I shall from now on. Here, do you see a good place to camp? How late it is? I feel a powerful need to rest, I do.'

'Well, the trail runs downhill from here, and I see some trees and gra.s.s down over to our left.'