“No doubt. My sympathies.”
“Oh, well, I was as angry as a boil-bum demon when it happened, but then I think, well, at least the dragons keep the Horsekin off, and so maybe one cow’s a cheap enough price.”
“Do you really think the dragons are driving off the Horsekin?”
“Ain’t any round here, are there?”
“True enough. My thanks for the information. I’d best get back on the road.”
When Salamander decided that he was far enough away from Cengarn, he found the gold arrow he’d bought from Warryc and tucked it into a pocket in one of his saddlebags. It might come in handy, he decided, if any of Alshandra’s followers still held true to their faith, up on the lands that Lord Matyc and his brother Lord Tren had once ruled.
On a muggy afternoon, under a sky black with storm clouds, Tieryn Cadryc led his men back to his dun. Branna was in the great hall with Lady Galla when they heard the clatter of hooves on the cobbles and the shouts of the pages and grooms as they ran out to greet the men. Branna had to stop herself from joining the general rush. She was surprised at how happy she felt merely from knowing she’d see Neb again. For decorum’s sake she waited inside—but just inside, and by the door in the servants’ and riders’ half of the great hall.
Not long after she’d taken up her post, Neb came hurrying in, loaded up with a bedroll, a basket, and some lumpy parcels wrapped in his extra shirt. Branna glanced around and saw Clae nearby.
“Take those up for your brother,” she said. “Well, if you can carry them all.”
“ ’Course I can!” Clae trotted over. “Here, Neb, hand them to me.”
“I’ll keep the basket,” Neb said. “There are things in there that cost our tieryn a good many coppers. Just take the blankets—wait, don’t tug!”
Branna solved the resulting confusion by grabbing the basket herself and letting Neb sort out the rest. Once a burdened Clae was heading for the staircase, she held out the basket. Smiling, Neb took it from her. For a brief moment their fingers touched. Mindful of her noble-born kin, standing not all that far away, Branna drew her hand back, but as they talked, exchanging ordinary pleasantries, she found that her hand kept reaching for his, almost of its own will, and that his definitely seemed to be seeking her fingers as well.
“Ah, well,” Neb said at last, “there’s your aunt coming. I’d best put the things I bought away, too. Oh, wait! I have a message for her from Lady Solla.”
Neb fished in his shirt, took out the message tube, and handed it to Branna. “If you’ll just give this to our lady?” He bowed and hurried upstairs, two steps at a time.
That evening, in the privacy of the women’s hall, Branna read the message aloud for Lady Galla. Out of boredom as much as anything, Branna had badgered her father’s scribe into teaching her how to read, an art that her aunt had never mastered.
“My dear Lady Galla,” Branna began, “I send my greetings and my hopes that you are well. I have some news to give you, though for now I implore you to keep it shut up in your women’s hall. My brother has started negotiations for a marriage. As of yet I’m not at liberty to tell you with whom, but as you can no doubt guess, she’s the daughter of a man of high estate. I tell you this now because I’m sore troubled. Once my brother is married, his wife will be his chatelaine, and I fear me that I’ll have only a grudged place here. If out of the kindness of your heart you might offer me a place with you as a servingwoman, I should be forever grateful. I do have a small legacy that I could contribute to my maintenance. I do hope you’ll consider my plea, yours, Solla of Dun Cengarn.”
“As if I’d ask a servingwoman to pay for her food!” Galla burst out. “The poor lass, she must be desperately afraid if she’d write such things.”
“Just so,” Branna said. “I rather know how she feels.”
“Indeed. Well, she’s certainly welcome here. On the morrow I’ll send her my answer, that she’s not to worry. We’ll invite her for a visit, and then we can discuss the matter. Our scribe will doubtless lend you some ink and suchlike.”
“It would be better if he wrote the whole thing. Reading’s a fair bit easier than writing.”
“Ah. I suppose it must be. I hope he can keep a secret.”
“Oh, I’m sure he can. He’s a man of excellent character. Well, or so it seems to me.”
Galla suddenly smiled. “You seem quite taken with young Neb.”
“Is it shameful of me?”
“Not in the least. He strikes me as the sort of man who becomes a gwerbret’s councillor or suchlike one fine day.”
Branna smiled in profound relief. With a little laugh Galla patted her arm. “In a way, my dear,” Galla went on, “your father’s nasty wife has done you a great favor. It’s not many lasses who have the freedom you do when it comes to picking a husband.”
“That’s true, isn’t it? I’d not thought of it that way before.”
“Well, you see? It’s a stingy flood that doesn’t leave fish behind, as they always say. But I wouldn’t be in a great hurry, either, to marry your scribe. You might wait to see what game the dogs rouse before you mark your hare. And besides, there’s Gerran.”
“True spoken. There certainly is Gerran.”
Over the next few days Branna felt more like the hare than the hunter. It seemed that no matter where she walked in the dun, Gerran would suddenly appear at her side, attentive but no more talkative than he’d ever been. Aside from the usual greetings he would merely stare at her, silent but as tense as a strung bow. At first she tried to make conversation, and he’d usually manage to squeeze out a polite sentence or two before resorting to staring at her with an expression that might be considered devotion. She began to notice, too, that after a few strained moments of Gerran’s silence Neb would suddenly come hurrying over to rescue her.
“They must both be keeping a lookout for me,” Branna complained to Galla. “I can’t go anywhere without one or the other just popping up out of nowhere like the Lord of Hell.”
“Oh, come now, dear.” Galla smiled at her. “It’s very flattering.”
“Of course, but what if they come to blows or suchlike? I doubt me if Neb could match Gerran.”
“Now that’s true.” Galla’s smile disappeared. “Neb is far too valuable a servitor to lose. I’ll have a word with your uncle, and he’ll have a word with Gerran. There’s enough trouble with the wretched Horsekin. We don’t need more inside the dun.”
Lord Ynedd was screaming in rage while tears poured down his face and snot down his upper lip. He had set his skinny back against the dun wall and was flailing out with his fists. Clae and Coryn strolled back and forth in front of him and taunted, “Little lass! little lass! look at her pretty curls!” One or the other of the bigger boys would dance in, pull the lordling’s hair, then dance out again to let the other have a turn.
“Here!” Neb yelled. “Stop it right now!”
The startled boys spun around just as he charged, slapping both of them, grabbing Clae by the shirt. “What would Mam say?” Neb growled. “To see you acting like this?”
Clae wilted. He slumped, stared at the ground, and made no answer. Coryn turned and raced off, disappearing among the storage sheds. Neb gave his brother one last shake and let him go. “Two against one,” Neb said, “and both of you bigger.”
“I’m sorry.” Clae mumbled, looked at Ynedd, then mumbled a little louder. “I’m sorry.” With one last glance at his brother he took a few steps away. When Neb didn’t respond, Clae turned and ran after Coryn.
Ynedd leaned against the wall and went on crying so hard that, Neb supposed, he might not even realize that his tormentors had fled. He knelt on one knee in front of the boy, then pulled an ink-stained rag out of his brigga pocket.
“Here, here,” Neb said. “Come along, my lord. Wipe your face and blow your nose.”
Gulping for breath, Ynedd took the rag and followed orders. “It’s my hair,” he stammered. “They keep mocking my hair.”
Ynedd nodded and turned his back—and the offending curls—toward Neb. The pen knife’s sharp but short blade could cut only one curl at a time, a process that must have cost the lordling a good many pulls and pains. Yet he never whimpered once as they came free and fell to the cobbles. With his hair short he looked a good bit older as well as more comfortable.
“There,” Neb said at last. “That’s better, a nice clean fit under a pot helm.”
Ynedd reached up to feel the cut edges, then kicked a clump of curl with the toe of his boot. “My thanks, good scribe,” he said. “Truly. You saved me.”
“You’re welcome,” Neb said. “I’ll take the cut-off hair and put it out for the birds. They’ll use it in their nests.”
With a smile for the thought, Ynedd trotted off in the opposite direction to the one the bigger boys had taken. Neb set his pen knife back in its little sheath, then picked up the curls. He straightened up and turned around to find Midda, Branna’s servant, standing and watching him. At her feet lay a big bundle of dirty laundry, tied up in a sheet.
“That was nicely done, scribe,” Midda said.
“Were you watching the whole thing?” Neb said.
“I heard our little lord shrieking and was coming to see what was wrong, but you got in before me and did such a splendid job that well, think I, no use in interrupting.” She poked at the bundle with one foot. “I’d best be taking this out. The other women are already at the stream.”
“Here, I’ll carry it for you.”
The stream ran across the long meadow out behind the dun’s hill. The laundry party had set up in the shade of two willows. Servants knelt on the bank and rubbed soap into wet clothes or pounded out dirt with rocks. Already out on the grass lay a good many clean dresses and shirts, spread out to dry. Lady Branna was sitting with her back against one of the trees and singing to keep the lasses amused while they worked, though her song, an old folk ballad about the Civil Wars, seemed an odd choice, dealing as it did with treachery and murder. Midda called out to her, and Branna broke off the song in mid-verse.
“Here’s the last of the shirts, my lady,” Midda said. “The warband’s filthy lot.”
The servants all groaned aloud and put down their work for a moment’s rest. Midda took the bundle from Neb and trotted forward to dump it onto the grassy bank of the stream. Branna got up, stretching her arms above her head and tossing back her long blonde hair. The sight of her standing by the stream—Neb suddenly found his breath gone, felt himself turn cold. For a maddened moment he wanted to rush forward and grab her, to haul her back from the brink to safety. But she’s not in any danger, he told himself. The blasted stream’s no more than three feet deep!
Fortunately no one had noticed his odd fit, as he labeled his reaction. The servant lasses were alternately giggling and groaning as they joked about the warband’s stench. By the time Branna beckoned him over to chat, Neb had got control of himself again. He spread Lord Ynedd’s curls across the grass, then joined her.
But the memory of his reaction stayed with him. All during that day and on into the evening he felt as if he were struggling to remember some important thing or event, yet he couldn’t say what it was. Trying to recover it frightened him, not that the fear made him stop trying. Finally he realized that he was sure she’d drowned, even though that was impossible.
The fear clung to him until he went into the great hall for dinner. As he walked over to his usual table on the servants’ side of the hall, he saw Branna, sitting at the honor table and chatting with her aunt. There she is, you dolt! he told himself, and she’s not drowned, has she now? He’d just sat down when Gerran strolled over with a nod of greeting.
“A good evening to you, Captain,” Neb said.
“Same to you,” Gerran said. “My thanks for cutting Ynedd’s hair, and for pulling our other lads off him.”
“Most welcome. Seeing Clae acting the bully—I’ve not been that angry in a long time.”
“So he told me.” Gerran paused for a smile. “He said that when you get angry, ‘it’s like dragons.’ But I’ve got a favor to ask you. Clae’s doing well with his swordcraft, and he really should be sleeping out in the barracks with Coryn and Ynedd. A lad who’s going to be a rider, he’s got to get used to living in a warband.”
“I see.” Neb felt an odd coldness around his heart. “Well, he certainly may, if you think it best.”
“I do. My thanks. I’ll get him some blankets and the like. He might as well move over there today.”
The captain strode off, heading outside. Well, that’s that, Neb thought. My brother’s gone for a rider. He had the distinct sensation that some mental door had slammed shut on his boyhood. He also knew, though he could find no words to express how, that meeting Branna had led him to another door somewhere deep in his very soul. What lay behind it, he couldn’t quite see, yet he realized that soon, very soon, he would have to get up the courage to unlock the door and walk in to have a look.
Branna herself made the matter more urgent. At the end of the meal, she hurried over and sat down on the bench beside Neb. The very easiness of her gesture made his heart pound.
“I wanted to ask you somewhat,” Branna said. “About the gerthddyn. Uncle tells me that you were the last person to speak to him in Cengarn, the last of our people, I mean.”
“Most likely I was, truly,” Neb said. “I was coming back to the gwerbret’s dun just as he was leaving it.”
“Did he say when he’d come back? Or, come to think of it, if he was coming back at all?”
“And just why do you want to know?” Neb heard a snarl crack his voice like a whip. He clasped a hand over his mouth as if he could stuff the words back in.
Branna laughed at him, then risked laying her fingers on his arm, just lightly and quickly. “You’re jealous,” she whispered.
“Am not!”
“Are, too!”
She continued smiling at him in such honest delight that he relented and returned the smile.
“Well, maybe I am,” Neb said. “Salamander’s a good-looking man.”
“Huh! To some, maybe.” She wrinkled her nose in mock disgust. “I just miss his tales of an evening, that’s all. I wish my uncle had a bard, but he’s never found one willing to move all the way out here.”
“They were good tales, truly. All Salamander told me was that he was going to stay in Cengarn when the rest of us rode home.”
“That’s a pity, then. I did love it when he’d talk about dweomer. Did you?”
Her voice was just a little too casual, her words a little too careful. Neb abruptly realized that she was afraid of voicing some question.
“It was amusing,” Neb said. “Overblown, but amusing. I doubt if anyone could really do the things he talked about.”
“I suppose not.” She looked away, suddenly sad. “Truly, I suppose not.”
Before he could speak again, she got up and, with a little wave, hurried back to her side of the great hall, where her aunt was waiting for her. Neb felt her disappointment like a blow. How had he failed her? He knew that somehow or other, he had. Just like the night river, he thought, just like when she drowned. He found himself remembering Salamander’s strange conversation at the gates of Dun Cengarn. Lives and wyrd, gratitude and wyrd—it still made no sense. With an irritable shrug he got up and left the great hall.
Salamander was dimly aware that Neb and Branna were discussing him, thanks to his strong ties to both of them from former lives. That night he’d camped beside the road some fifteen miles north of Cengarn. He sat watching the sunset while he ate the cooked meat and bread he’d bought in town, then gathered some deadfall wood from the forest fringe to build a fire. He’d been uneasy all day, he realized, though he couldn’t tell why, and he wanted the light.
While he watched the flames catch his kindling and spread to
the bits and pieces of branch, he opened the Sight and let the flames guide the fragments of visions that came to him. He saw Rori, soaring high in the sky, dipping and swooping down as he apparently hunted for game. He sensed Dallandra and Valandario rather than saw them. The two dweomermasters were hovering on the edge of the astral plane, working some sort of guarding ritual. When he turned his mind to Neb and Branna, Salamander found them easily. Neb was talking with his brother in the great hall while Branna sat with her aunt up in their women’s retreat. No danger there, he thought. But there’s some behind me.
Salamander rose and turned in one smooth motion. A woman in a tattered blue dress was standing at the edge of his camp, just beyond the circle of firelight. Or not quite a woman—when she moved forward, he could see that her hair was as blue as the dress and her skin, dead-white. She was floating a few inches off the ground while she considered him with eyes that were luminous pools of shadow.
“Uh, good evening,” Salamander said in Elvish. “Should you really be here? In the physical world, I mean.”
“Where’s Jill?” Her voice sounded like a reed flute, thin, not truly alive.
“I’m sorry, but she’s dead. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, yes! Where’s the new Jill?”
“Why do you want to know?”
The woman-spirit frowned, then called out, a high piercing wail like that of a banshee. As the cry faded, she disappeared. Salamander shuddered in a sudden cold sweat. Although he wanted to talk immediately with Dallandra about his visitor, she never answered his attempt to contact her. He could sense that she was still deeply immersed in her dweomerwork. He scrounged more firewood, then spent an uncomfortable couple of hours until at last he reached her.
“A most peculiar thing happened just now,” Salamander said. “I just had a visitor from another plane of existence.”
“Oh, did you?” Dallandra said. “Which one?”
“I’ve no idea, if you mean which plane. I certainly never summoned her or anything else, for that matter. She just walked into my camp.”
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