Authors: Katharine Kerr
“What do you think of Comerr’s chances now?” Erddyr said.
“They’re good. He’s lived through the worst, and there’s no sign of either gangrene or lockjaw.”
With a sigh of relief, Erddyr handed Dallandra a slice of bread and poured her ale with his own hands. Sharing a wooden trencher, they ate roast pork and bread in silence. Finally the lord leaned back in his chair.
“Well, naught for it but to wait for the gwerbret’s answer to that message of mine. I wonder if Nomyr sent a request for intervention himself?” He held up a greasy hand and ticked the names off on his fingers. “Adry’s dead, Tewdyr and his heir are dead, Oldadd’s dead, Paedyn’s dead, and Degedd’s dead. Ah horseshit, I’m not sure I give a pig’s fart about this war anymore, but I’ll beg you, good herbwoman, don’t tell another man I ever said such a dishonorable thing.”
In two days the messengers returned with the news that the gwerbret was riding to settle the matter with his entire warband of five hundred men. Erddyr was to select twenty-five men for an honor guard and ride to neutral ground; Nomyr would do the same or be declared a traitor. Although Dallandra would have liked to have ridden to hear
the settlement, her first obligation was to the wounded. Although a good half of the casualties had died during the long journey back to the dun, she still had some twenty men who needed more care than the servants could give them. Late that evening, when she was tending them in the barracks, the messenger sought her out; he’d been given a note for her at the gwerbret’s dun.
“Can you read, good dame, or should I fetch the scribe?”
“I can read a bit. Let me try.”
Although written Deverrian was difficult for her, the note was brief.
“Ah, it’s from Timryc the chirurgeon! He’s riding our way as fast as ever he can, and he’s bringing supplies with him.”
She was so relieved that she wept, just a brief scatter of tears while the messenger nodded in sympathy, glancing round at the men whose luck had been worse than his own. She could never tell him or any other human being that her heart was troubled more by revulsion than sympathy for all this gouged and shattered flesh, cut meat exposing splintered bone.
Close to midnight, Dallandra went for a walk out in the ward. By then the gibbous moon was already slouching past zenith. Most of the men were asleep, but she could see through the windows a few servants still working in the firelit great hall. Although she’d come out for a breath of air, the ward stank of dungheaps and stable sweepings, a pigsty and a henhouse. Mud from the spring thaw lay everywhere, slimy and half-alive with sprouting weeds and fungi.
For a moment she wanted to scream and run, to find a road back to Evandar’s country no matter who might need her here in the world of men, to leave, in fact, the entire physical world far behind her. How could she condemn Elessario or any of the Host to this foul existence? Even the People, for all their long lives, suffered illness and injury and death out on the grasslands; even they, for all their former glory, spent cold wet winters huddled in smelly tents while they rationed out food and fuel. Perhaps Evandar was right. Perhaps it would be better to never be born, to live for a brief while in the shifting astral world
like flames in a fire, then fade away in peace, the fire cold and spent.
She looked up to the moon, waning now, only a bulbous wedge of light in the sky and soon to disappear into the darkness. Yet, in turn again, it would shine forth and grow till it rode full and high in the sky—a visible symbol of the waxing and waning of the Light, the sinking and rising of birth and death. Once Dallandra would have found comfort in meditating on such a symbol; that night in the stinking damp ward she was simply too weary, too sick at heart for it to seem anything but a sterile exercise.
“Evandar, I wish you’d come to me.”
Although she only breathed a whisper, she’d surprised herself by speaking aloud at all. There were times when she could summon him by trained and concentrated thought, but that night when she tried she could only feel that he was far out of reach, off perhaps on business of his own rather than hovering near her in the country he called the Gatelands. Perhaps his brother had broken their truce? Remembering the fox warrior, wondering if some peculiar combat was being joined, made her shudder with a sick loathing.
“Evandar!”
No thought, no breath of his presence came to her, yet she was sure that she would know if he was dead or somehow being kept from her against his will.
“Evandar!”
She could hear her voice, the wail of a lost child. Yet she felt nothing but a vast lack, an emptiness where his presence might have been. She had no choice, then, but to face her melancholy alone.
In the vain hope of finding cleaner air, she started for the gates, only to find someone there ahead of her, climbing down the ladder from the ramparts. When he turned round, she could see with her elven sight that it was Rhodry, yawning as he came off watch. In the shadow of the dun she paused, hiding out of a weary reluctance to speak with anyone, but being a man of the People as he was, he spotted her and strolled over.
“You’re up late,” he remarked.
“I just finished with the wounded. By the gods of both
our peoples, I hope that chirurgeon gets himself here soon.”
“Shouldn’t take him long. Shall I escort you to your luxurious chambers? I trust our lord found you a clean place to sleep, anyway.”
“He did, though splendid it’s not. One of the storage sheds.” All at once she yawned. “I’m more tired than I thought.”
Silently they walked round the dun and made their way behind the kitchen hut to the ramshackle thatched shed that was serving her as a bedchamber. Since like cats the People can’t see in pitch-darkness, she had a tin candle-lantern, perched on an ale barrel far away from the heap of straw where she’d spread her blankets. When she lit the candle with a snap of her fingers, Rhodry flinched.
“You never truly get used to seeing that,” he said, but he was grinning at her. “May I talk with you a little while? I’d like to ask you a few questions and all that, but I can see you’re weary, so send me right away if you want.”
She hesitated, but not only did he deserve answers, she quite simply didn’t want to be alone.
“Not that tired. Bar the door, will you?”
She sat down on her blankets amid a scatter of her gear, and watched him as he sat by the barrel a few feet away. In the shadow-dancing candlelight she was struck by how good-looking he was, especially for a man who was half-human; somehow, in all the danger and hard work of the past few days, she simply hadn’t noticed. In her dark mood the streak of gray in his hair and the web of lines round his eyes made him seem only more attractive. Here was a man who knew defeat and suffering both.
“Who or what is Evandar?” he said abruptly. “He’s not a man of the People, is he?”
“He’s not, and no more is he human. He’s not truly incarnated or corporeal at all. Do you know what those words mean?”
“Close enough.” He shot her a grin. “Not only did I spend a few years in the company of sorcerers, but I was raised a Maelwaedd. I’ve a bit more learning than most border lords or silver daggers either.”
“Well, my apologies—”
“No need, no need. I don’t suppose anyone else in this
dun would know what you’re talking about, except maybe young Yraen, and he wouldn’t believe you.”
They shared a soft laugh.
“But Evandar’s only one of an entire host of beings, some like him—true individuals, I mean. The others are about as conscious as clever animals but no more, and there’s even some who seem to have never truly evolved at all into anything you could call a man or woman.”
“Indeed? And what about that badger-headed thing that keeps trying to steal this whistle?” Rhodry laid a hand on his shirt, just above his belt. “Is he one of Evandar’s people?”
“He’s not, but a renegade from another host, headed by Evandar’s brother, and a strange thing that is.” She shuddered again, remembering the sheer malice in the black and vulpine eyes. “I don’t truly understand them myself, Rhodry. I’m not trying to put you off. You’re probably thinking of the old stories, of how I left Aderyn hundreds of years ago, but you’ve got to remember that as Evandar’s world reckons Time, I’ve only been there a month or so.”
His lips parted in a soft “oh” of surprise.
“No more do I know what that whistle may be,” she went on. “I suspect that it’s not magical at all, but just a trinket, like that ring of yours.”
“Now wait! If there’s no dweomer on this ring, why does that female keep trying to take it back?”
“Alshandra? Evandar told me about your skirmishes with her. She doesn’t truly understand what she’s doing. I fear me that she’s gone mad.”
“Oh, splendid!” Rhodry snarled. “Here I am, chased round two kingdoms by a thing from the Otherlands and a mad spirit, and no one even knows why! I just might go daft myself, out of spite if naught more.”
“I couldn’t hold it to your shame, but it would be a great pity if you did. You’re going to need your wits about you.”
“No doubt. I always have, for all of my wretched life, except perhaps for those few years out on the grass. That’s the only peace I’ve ever known, Dalla, those years with the People.”
All at once he looked so weary, so spent, really, that she leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee.
“It aches my heart to see you so sad, but you’ve got a
tangled Wyrd, sure enough, and there’s naught that I or any other dweomerworker can do about that.”
He nodded, putting his hand over hers, just a friendly gesture at first, but it seemed to her that a warmth grew and spread between them. His fingers, the rough, callused fingers of a fighting man, tightened on her hand. She hesitated, thinking of Evandar, but when she sent her mind ranging out, she could sense nothing but a vast distance between them. When Rhodry raised her hand and kissed her fingertips, just lightly, she felt the warmth spread as if it were mead, flowing through her blood. He rose to his knees, pulling her up with him. She laid her free hand flat on his chest.
“In a few days I’ll have to leave this world and go back to the one I’ve made my own. If you ride with his lordship to the settlement, I could well be gone by the time you return, and by the time I come back to your world, a hundred years might have passed.”
“And would it ache your heart, to ride back and find me gone?”
“It would, but not enough to keep me here. In all fairness, you need to know that.”
He smiled, but in the candlelight his eyes seemed wells of sadness.
“A silver dagger’s no man to make demands upon a great lady, or to tax her comings and goings.”
She would have said something to comfort him, but he kissed her, hesitantly at first, then openmouthed and passionately when she slipped into his arms. At first she was shocked by how strong, how solid he was, real muscle and bone, warm flesh and the smell of flesh and sweat. When he laid her down in the straw, she could feel his weight, and his mouth seemed to burn on hers, and on her face and neck as he kissed her over and over, as if she were feverish and he, the healer. She found herself digging her fingertips into his back just for the sensation of solid flesh beneath her hands and pressing against him as tight as she could just for his warmth—an animal warmth, she realized suddenly, just as somehow she’d forgotten that she too was an animal, no matter how great her dweomer powers, no matter how far above the world of flesh she’d come to
dwell. At that moment she was nothing but glad that he was making her remember.
Afterward, she lay panting and sweaty in his arms and listened to his heart pounding close to hers. The candle threw guttering shadows on the wooden walls as outside the wind rose, whispering in the thatch. Rhodry kissed her eyes, her mouth, then loosened his hold upon her and moved a little away. He looked so sad that she laid her hand alongside his face; he turned his head and kissed her fingers, but he said nothing, merely watched the shadows leaping this way and that. She sat up, running both hands through her hair and sweeping it back from her face.
“Do you really have to ride with Erddyr when he goes?” she said.
He grinned at that and looked her way again.
“I already said we would, Yraen and me.”
“Is it going to be safe? Erddyr said something about Adry’s men wanting to kill you.”
“And the laws will make the gwerbret forbid them any such thing, if I appeal in his court. I want it over and settled before we ride on.” He sat up, stretching and yawning. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a fancy to travel the roads with a silver dagger? You don’t have to answer that, mind, just a wondering. I know you’ve work at hand, and I—ye gods! What’s that?”
She slewed round and saw someone—or something—crouched in the shadows at the curve of the wall. It was too small to be the snouted creature she’d seen before; more doglike, it had tiny red eyes that glowed like coals in a fire and long fangs that glistened wet. When Dallandra flung up one hand and sketched a sigil in the air, it shrieked and disappeared. Rhodry swore under his breath.
“I wish you’d just give me that wretched whistle and be done with it,” she said.
“What? And let you face those creatures instead of me?”
“I happen to know how to deal with them.”
“True spoken. But if I give it to you, what will you do? Go back to that other country?” All at once he grinned. “I’d rather you tarried here a little while longer.”
“Oh, would you now?”
She saw the whistle lying not far away, where it had
rolled when he’d taken his shirt off, and made a grab at it. He was too fast, catching her wrists and dragging her back, even though she struggled with him. She found herself laughing, let him pull her close, kissed him until he let her go so they could lie down together again. But before he made love to her, he picked the whistle up and tucked it into the straw under her head, where nothing could steal it away.
This time, when they were finished, he fell asleep, so suddenly, so completely, that it seemed he would sink into the straw and disappear. She slipped free of his arms and stood up. As naked as a country woman worshiping her goddess in the fields, she raised her arms and called down the light. Moving deosil she used her outstretched hand as a weapon to draw a circle of blue light round the hut and seal it at the quarters with the sigils of the kings of the elements. With a flick of her hand she set the circle moving, turning, glowing golden as it formed into a revolving sphere with the sleeping Rhodry safe in its center. No member of any host, whether elemental or astral, could breach this wall.