Darkspell

by Katharine Kerr

  Besides, they’d come so close to getting the lass, too close to give up now. Alastyr was sure that if he could take Jill alive, he would be able to trade her to Nevyn for a promise of safe passage out of Deverry—with the stone.

  Although Jill wanted to wait at the patrol station for Rhodry, no silver dagger could refuse a direct order from a gwerbret’s captain to take an important message to the gwerbret himself, not without getting flogged, at any rate. Since Sunrise was too weary to risk riding, the groom gave her a sturdy black to start her journey. The captain had already given her an official token; as long as she was riding on his grace’s business, any of Blaen’s vassals would give her a fresh horse and a meal to speed the message on its way.

  “Now, listen,” Jill said to the groom. “Sunrise had cursed well better be here when Rhodry arrives.”

  “And what do you think we are, horse thieves?”

  “There’s many a great lord who’s ‘traded’ for a horse whose owner had no mind for a trade.”

  “True spoken, but your nag’s safe enough. I’ll tell you somewhat, silver dagger. We men of Cwm Pecl hate horse thieves the worst of all the thieves in the world. A horse thief doesn’t just get his hands cut off. He gets fifteen lashes and a public hanging.”

  “Splendid. Then I’ll be on my way with a peaceful heart.”

  Jill left the patrol station at a fast pace, alternately walking and trotting until she came free of the mountains. On the easier slopes of the foothills, she could gallop every now and then. Just before noon she arrived at the dun of a noble lord, got her meal and a fresh horse, and galloped on again. Quickly the hills fell away behind her, and she was riding in the rolling meadowlands of Cwm Pecl. Although much of the province was unfit for farming, it was perfect for stock. In the well-watered meadows among stands of white birches, she saw plenty of horse herds, grazing peacefully while mounted herdsmen kept watch, or white cows with rusty-red ears lying in the shade to chew their noontide cuds.

  On the flatter land she could keep up a gallop-trot pace, and she changed horses twice more. The city was a good fifty miles from the patrol station, a distance that only a speeded courier like herself could hope to cover in one day. By her third change the sun was low in the sky, and the lord who was giving her the fresh horse remarked that the gwerbret’s courier was welcome to shelter the night. Jill considered, but one of her dweomer-warnings cut through her like a knife. She had to go on, and as fast as possible.

  “My thanks, my lord, but my message is truly urgent.”

  “No doubt you know best, then, silver dagger.”

  When she left, she rode out at a full gallop, and the dweomer-cold rode with her. Someone knew where she was, and that someone was following her to work her harm. After her broken night she came close to falling asleep in the saddle every time she let the horse walk or pause for a rest, but she kept rousing herself and kicking her mount to a trot to keep them both lively. Whenever she passed anyone on the road, she would yell at them to clear off in the gwerbret’s name. With startled shouts they would move aside and let her by.

  At last she crested a low hill and saw below her the gwerbret’s city of Dun Hiraedd, spreading on either side of a river and surrounded with high stone walls. The river was glittering so brightly in the sunset that Jill could barely look at it with her exhausted eyes. Sunset. The town gates would be closing for the night. She kicked a burst of speed out of her horse and charged, dashing up to the gates just as they were swinging shut.

  “A message for the gwerbret!” she yelled. “From the Cwm Pecl pass!”

  The gates held open. As a guard ran out to meet her, she swung down and presented the token with a flourish.

  “Well and good, silver dagger,” the guard said. “I’ll take you up to the dun straightaway.”

  When the gates swung shut behind them, Jill felt a relief so strong that she knew it had to be dweomer-in-spired. Here, for a little while, she’d be safe.

  The city guard led her through a maze of cobbled streets and close-packed roundhouses. Windows shone with lantern light; people were hurrying home after a day’s trade; here and there a scent of cooking drifted from a house and made Jill’s stomach growl. At the far side of town stood a low artificial hill, ringed with stone walls. There were more gates, more guards, but the token brought them into the ward of Blaen’s enormous dun, where a triple broch towered over sheds and stables. After a page took Jill’s horse, the city guard led her inside the great hall.

  The room gleamed with firelight and candles. Jill stood blinking by the door while the guard went to speak to the gwerbret. Down at one hearth servants were putting out the evening meal for a warband of a hundred men at long tables. Near the honor hearth, the gwerbret dined alone. When she looked at the elegant stonework, the fine tapes-tries, the silver goblets and candelabra on the tables, Jill felt like cursing out the entire patrol. Why hadn’t the dolts sent a message to the gwerbret’s captain, instead of making her barge in like this on a great lord at his dinner? A dirty silver dagger like her should have been waiting outside in the ward.

  Blaen himself was hardly reassuring. When the guard spoke to him, he rose, tossing his head arrogantly and standing with a proud set to his shoulders. He was far younger than she’d expected, about two-and-twenty, and he reminded her strikingly of Rhodry, with dark-blue eyes and raven-dark hair, though, of course, he was nowhere as good-looking as her man.

  “Come here, silver dagger,” he snapped. “What’s this message?”

  Jill hurried over and started to kneel, but she was so saddle-weary that she lost her balance and nearly fell spraddled.

  “Your pardon, Your Grace,” she stammered. “I’ve been riding for two days and fought a battle before that.”

  “By the asses of the gods! Then get up off the cursed floor and have a chair. Page! Get some mead! Get a trencher! Move! This lad must be half-starved.”

  Before the startled pages could intervene, Blaen grabbed her by the shoulders, helped her up, and sat her down in his chair. He shoved a goblet of mead into her hand, then perched on the edge of the table, his meal forgotten behind him.

  “I’ll wager I can guess,” he said. “There’s been trouble in that demon-ridden pass again.”

  “Just that, Your Grace.”

  While Jill told the story, Blaen’s captain came over to listen. He was a heavyset man in his thirties, with a faded scar slashed across one cheek. When she finished, the gwerbret turned to him.

  “Comyn, take fifty men and a change of horses and leave tonight. I—here, wait a moment.” Blaen grabbed a slice of roast beef from a golden platter and tossed it to Jill. “Help yourself to bread, lad. Now, listen, Comyn. Chase these whoreson bandits into Yr Auddglyn. If Gwerbret Ygwimyr has the gall to complain about it, tell him it means war if we don’t have their heads on pikes in a week or two.”

  “I will, Your Grace, and I’ll send back a messenger the minute there’s somewhat to report.”

  Jill went on eating as they worked out the details. When Comyn left to pick out his men, Blaen took his goblet of mead and gulped a good bit down as fast as if it were water. A waiting page stepped forward smoothly and refilled it.

  “Looks like you’ve barely touched yours, lad,” Blaen said. “What kind of silver dagger are you to drink so slow? What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Gilyan, Your Grace, and I’m not a lad but a lass.”

  Blaen stared, then tossed back his head with a laugh.

  “I must be growing old and blind,” he remarked, still smiling. “So you are. What makes a lass take to the long road?”

  “The man I love’s a silver dagger, and I left my kin to follow him.”

  “Now, that was stupid of you, but then, who knows what women will do?” He dismissed the problem with a shrug. “Very well then, Gilyan. We can’t have you sheltering out in the barracks, so I’ll give you a chamber in the broch for the night.”

  Earlier that same day, the patrol of Cwm Pecl riders escorte
d the remnant of Seryl’s caravan back to the border station before they rode out again to go bandit hunting. Rhodry helped carry Seryl to a bed in the barracks, saw to it that his guards and the muleteers were properly fed, then went out to the stables to make sure Sunrise was safe. The groom told him that Jill had indeed ridden out at dawn as a speeded courier.

  “So she’d be reaching Dun Hiraedd about now.” Rhodry glanced out the door at the sunset.

  “Just that. Been in our city before, silver dagger?”

  “Once or twice. Well, I’m going to get my dinner.”

  After he ate, Rhodry checked on the wounded bandit, who had been locked in a storage shed. The precautions turned out to be unnecessary, because the lad was dying. Not only was he too feverish to talk, but Rhodry could smell the stench of his septic wound even through the bandages. He gave the lad a drink of water, then sat back on his heels and considered him. Never in his life had he seen a bad wound spread so fast—and he’d ridden in many battles. Since bandits weren’t known for eating like lords, no doubt the lad had been badly fed for some time and thus abnormally weak. Yet still, the foul humors should have spread more slowly, especially since Jill had put a proper bandage on the wound right after he’d got it. If someone had wanted to shut the lad’s mouth, they couldn’t have been luckier.

  “And was it just luck?” Rhodry said aloud.

  The dying lad moaned and gasped for breath in his fevered sleep. Although Rhodry had been ready to slit his throat the day before, he suddenly pitied him.

  Jill woke late in the morning and looked round confused. What was she doing in this luxurious bed with embroidered hangings? At last she remembered Blaen’s hospitality of the night before. When she pushed the hangings aside, she found sunlight streaming through the windows and a page hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

  “My—uh—lady?” the boy said. “The gwerbret requests your presence at the noon meal. Shall we fetch you a bath? There’s just time.”

  “A bath would be splendid. Noon? Ye gods! Here, will his grace’s lady be at the table? I don’t even know her name.”

  “It’s Canyffa, but she’s visiting her brother.”

  Jill thanked the gods for that. She hadn’t been looking forward to having a noblewoman scrutinizing her table manners. After her bath she got her other shirt, which was reasonably clean, out of her saddlebags, then decided she’d best change her socks, too. All at once she remembered the armband, which should have been wrapped up in her spare clothes. It was gone.

  “By all the ice in all the hells! One of those blasted muleteers must have stolen it.”

  Irritably she hunted through both saddlebags, but the armband simply wasn’t there. Down at the bottom of one, however, caught under the stitched flap, lay something small and hard. She pulled it out to find a sapphire finger ring, a fine, large stone set in a band of gold, with two tiny dragons curled round the setting. Jill stared at it for a long time.

  “How did you get into my gear? Must have been the Wildfolk, stealing the armband—” She paused, considering the weight of the ring in her hand. “The armband weighed about this much, didn’t it?”

  The sapphire gleamed in the sunlight. Jill felt an utter fool, talking to a ring as if it could understand her. She found a scrap of rag and wrapped it up, tucking it down at the bottom of the saddlebag again. With a gwerbret waiting for her, there was no time to worry about it now.

  It turned out that Blaen was extending her the honor of having her eat at his table because he was curious about her life on the long road. Since she knew that having people talk about his exile made Rhodry feel shamed, she did her best to say little about him during the meal, a job that turned easy when she mentioned that her father was Cullyn of Cerrmor.

  “Well, then, no wonder you can bear up on the long road so well,” Blaen said with a grin. “Here, Jill, I met your father once. I was just a little lad, six or seven, I think, and my father gave him a hire. I remember looking up at him and thinking that I’d never met a more frightening man.”

  “Da takes people that way, truly.”

  “But a splendid warrior he was. I don’t quite remember how the thing worked out, but my father ended up giving him a beautiful scabbard, all trimmed with gold, as an extra reward beyond his hire. Now, here, is he still among the living?”

  From that point Jill could fill the time with tales of her father’s various deeds over the years. When the meal was over, Blaen gave her a careless handful of coins as her pay for riding the message.

  “And when will this caravan of yours ride in, do you think?” the gwerbret said.

  “Not for at least three more days, Your Grace. Some of the men were wounded.”

  “Ah. Well, when they do, have the caravan master come see me.”

  Jill collected her gear and carried it out of the dun into the busy streets of the city, the only settlement worthy of that name in the entire province. Under arches in the walls, the river flowed through town and divided it into a west side for the well-off and the gwerbret himself, and an east for the ordinary townsfolk. All along the riverbanks themselves selves stretched a green commons, where cows grazed in the hot afternoon sun.

  Over by the east gate Jill finally found an inn called the Running Fox that was desperate enough to take her custom. As soon as she was alone in her filthy, small chamber, she opened her saddlebags and found the ring. This time a single dragon coiled about the setting.

  “I can’t be going daft. You must be dweomer.”

  The stone glowed brightly for a moment, then dimmed to just the shine of an ordinary gem. Jill shuddered, then wrapped it up and put it in the pouch she wore round her neck, where all but a few coppers of her coins were stored. When she went down to the tavern room, she got herself a tankard of the darkest ale available to calm her nerves. Ye gods, here she was, in a strange town with a dweomer gem in her possession and Rhodry miles away! Nevyn, oh, Nevyn, she thought, I wish to every god in the sky that you were here!

  “He’s coming,” a thought sounded in her mind. “He’ll come save us both.”

  Jill choked so hard on her ale that she coughed and sputtered into her tankard. The innkeep hurried over.

  “There wasn’t no fly in that, was there?” He pounded her on the back.

  “There wasn’t. My thanks.”

  With a sympathetic nod he hurried away. That’s the last feather off this hen! Jill thought. I’ve got to find out more about this gem. Although there were bound to be several jewelers in a town this size, she had no intention of talking openly about a gem that could shapechange and send thoughts to people’s minds. There were, however, always other sources of information for a person who knew how to look for them.

  The tavern room was crowded. At one table sat a gaggle of blowsy young women who were eating breakfast porridge rather late in the day; at another, a handful of aspiring caravan guards; at a third, some young men who might have been apprentices to shopkeepers. When the innkeep came to refill Jill’s tankard, she did a bit of deliberate bragging, praising Blaen’s generosity and saying she’d never been so well paid for riding a message. Of course she paid the man from the pouch she wore openly at her belt, not the well-stuffed one round her neck. Then she went out to walk round the streets.

  The afternoon sunlight lay thick on the well-swept cobbled streets. Prosperous tradesmen hurried by on business or strolled along, gossiping idly. Women with market baskets or water buckets glanced at Jill’s silver dagger and pointedly crossed the street. Jill turned down all the narrow alleys she could find and strolled slowly, as if lost in thought. Finally, in an alley between a bakery and a cobbler’s shop, her hunt brought her game. As a young man passed, he bumped into her. He made a gracious apology and began to hurry on, but Jill swirled and grabbed his wrist. Before he could squirm away, she slammed him into the stone wall of the cobbler’s shop and knocked the breath out of him. Jill’s catch, a skinny little fellow with pale hair and a warty nose, stared up at her and gasped for breath.<
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  “My pardon, silver dagger, I never meant any insult.”

  “Insult? The Lord of Hell can take the insult. Give me back my pouch.”

  The thief kicked and made a dart sideways, but Jill grabbed and twisted him face forward against the wall. While he whimpered and kicked, she got her hand inside his shirt and retrieved her pouch, then took for good measure a wicked little dagger out of a hidden sheath. When she hauled him round to face her, he moaned and went limp in her hands.

  “Now,” Jill said, “if I take you to the gwerbret’s men, they’ll cut your hands off in the marketplace.”

  The thief’s face went dead white.

  “But if you tell me who your master is, I’ll let you go.”

  “I can’t! That would cost my life, not just my hands.”

  “Oh, you dolt, what do you think I’m going to do? Run and tell the gwerbret?” She held out the dagger hilt first. “Here, have it back.”

  As he considered, the color came back to his face. Finally he took the proffered dagger.

  “Ogwern,” he said. “Down at the Red Dragon Inn, on the east side of the river near the commons. You can’t miss it. It’s right next to the candlemaker’s.”

  Then he turned and ran, as fast as a startled deer in the forest. Jill strolled slowly after, letting him get back to Ogwern with news of her before she announced herself. She found that he was right about the candlemaker’s shop; it was indeed hard to miss. Out in a sunny yard in front of a long shed sat heaps of tallow, quietly stinking in the heat. Just across the narrow alley was a little wooden inn with balding thatch on the roof and unpainted, warped shutters at the windows. Unlike most inns, its door stood tightly shut. When Jill knocked, the door opened a bare inch to reveal a dark, suspicious eye pressed to the crack.