The Gold Falcon

by Katharine Kerr

  “If you command, then I can but obey.”

  Rocca smiled, Honelg and his womenfolk all smiled, and Salamander pledged them with his goblet of mead. Rocca got up, her smile disappearing into a yawn.

  “I be fair tired,” she remarked. “There be a need on me for sleep.”

  “Now, Your Holiness,” Adranna said, “are you sure I can’t give you a proper bed in the broch?”

  “Very sure. Straw in the stables be good enough for me in this world. We shall all have so much better one fine day.”

  When she left, Salamander said his good nights as well and went upstairs to the spare little chamber he’d been given. Rocca’s easy faith in his lies had made his guilt return in a breaking wave of shame. It receded, however, once he was safely alone and could do some hard thinking. He’d have wagered a fortune, had he had one, that Taenalapan, that city in the far west, must have once been called Tanbalapalim, an elven city destroyed by Horsekin over a thousand years before. The ancient lore stated that a vile plague had then conquered the conquerors, but Salamander knew that the ancient lore had already been proven wrong about one group of Horsekin, the civilized Gel da’Thae of Braemel. It could well be wrong a second time, as he remarked to Dallandra once he’d contacted her.

  “That’s certainly true.” The thought-image of her face turned grave. “I don’t know exactly where Tanbalapalim was, but I’ll wager Meranaldar does.”

  “Dar’s scribe? No doubt! He’s a great man for lore, Meranaldar. Endlessly and perennially great.”

  “Now he can’t help being a bit tedious.”

  “He could too help it if only he wanted to, but no matter, O mistress of mighty magicks. What counts is this new dun that Rocca spoke of.”

  “Well, yes. I’ve been searching for that spirit you saw, by the way, the white womanlike creature. I’ve found no trace of her. She may have just been curious about Branna, not vengeful or the like.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  Salamander may have considered Meranaldar tedious, but he soon realized that he’d never known how tedious tedium could be. In the morning, when he and Rocca set off for the west, Salamander urged her to take his horse and ride, but she insisted on walking. She did at least allow him to tie her rough cloth sack, containing her few possessions, onto the packsaddle of the second horse. They left the dun and followed a leveled dirt road through farmland. Rocca strode along at Salamander’s stirrup, talking all the while. Her harsh life, spent mostly out of doors, had given her a splendid pair of lungs.

  “Numbers be the key,” she began. “All the novice lore it does circle around numbers like ducks around a pond. The most important numbers be seven, thirteen, and fifty-two.”

  “Seven, thirteen, and fifty-two. Very well, I’ll remember those,” Salamander said. “You know, I could shift some of the packhorse’s load so that we could both ride.”

  “I want not to ride.” She sounded near laughter. “Our goddess did give me the power to walk where I will, and I’d ask for naught more. Now. We start with seven. There be fifty-two lists of seven sacred things each, and there be a need on you to remember them in the correct order. First, the planets.”

  Salamander allowed himself a brief surge of optimism. He knew the names of the seven planets already, and perhaps the rest of the lore would be equally easy to learn. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that Alshandra’s priests would never name any sacred thing in either Deverrian or Elvish.

  “Azgarn and Rebisov be what we call the sun and the moon,” Rocca said. “Then there be Jalmat, Ringonnin, Saddet, Fomthir, and Honexel. Repeat those back.”

  Salamander did manage to repeat that first lot, but as the morning wore on, and the lists kept coming, he felt his heart turn as heavy as sgarkan, one of the seven sacred metals, otherwise known as lead. He had hated the early teachings of the dweomer for just this same emphasis on memory, the lists of names, the formulae of rituals. Now he was starting over in yet another system, learning a vast bundle of minutiae, all of which would doubtless prove to be of crucial importance at some point, just as the dweomerlore had proved to be.

  “Sooner or later,” Rocca said cheerfully, “there’ll be a need on you to learn the sacred language. That be where all these names do come from.”

  “No doubt,” Salamander said. “It’s the language of the Horsekin, isn’t it?”

  With a little gasp she stopped walking. He reined in his horse and turned in the saddle to look at her, watching him wide-eyed and frightened as she stood in the road.

  “Rocca, everyone here in the north knows about the Horsekin,” Salamander said. “Why do you keep trying to pretend they don’t exist?”

  “Well, I—” She let her voice trail away.

  Salamander dismounted so they could talk face-to-face, but she refused to look at him, even when he walked up close to her.

  “I’ve noticed a couple of times now how you nearly say some word and then shy away from it. That word’s Horsekin, isn’t it? Your Horsekin masters?”

  “True enough. It does frighten people, Evan. They think the Horsekin be evil, horrible slavers who live to conquer the whole world.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “Of course not!” She tossed her head and looked up at last. “They merely be wanting to spread the word of Alshandra and salvation. But Deverry folk understand this not, and they attack us.”

  “From what I’ve seen, I’d say that the attacks generally come from the Horsekin.”

  “Well, at times there be a need on us to protect ourselves by striking first.” Rocca hesitated for a long moment. “Truly, once you meet the high priestess, then the understanding will come upon you, truly it will.”

  Salamander felt a ripple of dweomer cold run down his spine. No doubt he’d understand danger, though not a danger of the spirit, once he reached the new fort, but he’d expected nothing else. She took a step toward him and held out a hand.

  “You will be coming with me, won’t you?” Rocca said.

  For a moment, with the dweomer cold all around him, he hesitated. She watched him silently. With her dirty face and rough clothes, she looked like a beggar child, utterly vulnerable.

  “Of course I will,” Salamander said. “I long to see Alshandra’s shrine. Naught will keep me away from that.”

  Rocca smiled, and despite the dirt her face turned beautiful. Salamander soothed his guilt by pointing out that seeing the shrine meant seeing the dun that housed it, so that in a way, he wasn’t truly lying to her.

  By midafternoon they’d left the settled farmland behind. The road turned into a narrow track through sparse forest where slender pines grew among shrubby underbrush and long grass. Judging from the cut stumps and broken limbs, these trees had been supplying firewood to Honelg’s people for some years. On such rough ground it became impossible for Rocca to walk next to him as he rode, and the horses had to pick their way on the uneven ground. With her long easy stride Rocca took the lead, though occasionally she would pause to let him catch up. Each time she’d ask him to repeat one of the lists—the wretched, revolting, vile, and despicable lists, as Salamander came to call them, though not, of course, aloud.

  Toward sunset they reached a wild meadow, where he could tether out his horses and let them graze. Salamander made a bed of rocks, cleared the grass from around it, then stacked up scraps of deadfall wood that he scrounged from the forest edge. For kindling, he mounded up bark and dry leaves. After they’d eaten, and once it was growing dark, he struggled with flint and steel to light the tinder. In front of Rocca he didn’t dare invoke the Wildfolk of Fire, though eventually they took pity on him and showered a few sparks onto the leaves. The bark caught, and with it the wood. Salamander sighed his relief, then sat down next to Rocca, who’d been watching all of this with a small smile.

  “It truly does comfort the heart to have a bit of light at night,” Rocca remarked.

  “Don’t you make yourself a fire when you travel?” Salamander said.

  “I d
on’t. Since there be with me no horse to feed or tend, I be accustomed to traveling till it be too dark to see, and by then I want naught but sleep.”

  “Ah.”

  She turned toward him and seemed about to speak—more lists, he thought.

  “Somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Salamander said hurriedly. “That iron bracelet you wear. Does it have a meaning?”

  “I’d not call it a meaning, precisely. I do wear it to repel dweomer, were it to be used against me.”

  “Repel dweomer? Iron can’t do that.”

  “The high priestess herself in Taenalapan did tell me of its power, and she’d not be lying, would she, now? There be a need upon anyone who goes east among Deverry folk to wear this blessed vambrace for the fending off of their nasty dweomer.”

  “Ah. You—I mean we—we see dweomer as evil, then.”

  “It be not a question of seeing. We ken its evil nature. Once there were among my people those who did work dweomer, and of the worst sort, too. They did boast of their power to turn themselves into animals and birds, so that they might creep or fly about and spy on people. Mazrakir, the Horsekin did call them. When the joyous light of Alshandra began to shine among us, most of these sorcerers did lay aside their foul ways and worship her, but there were some among us who were too puffed up with pride to surrender their evil powers.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “A decree did go out, and they were slain. Their impious knowledge did vanish with them, so that none left among us now kens how to transform himself.”

  “Do the priests kill all magicians?”

  “They do and with great dispatch, wherever they may find them.”

  Gods help me! Salamander thought.

  “But what about the silver light?” he said aloud. “The kind you called down for the ceremony. That must have been dweomer.”

  “It be no such thing but a gift from the goddess. She be the one who did teach us how to draw down the light from her world.”

  “Well, but now that you know how, couldn’t you teach someone else?”

  “Speak not such foolish things! Without her blessing there would be no light.”

  “So you pray and the light appears, is that right?”

  “We do pray using the right words to beseech her and do prepare our hands to receive it. There be somewhat of a trick to it.”

  “Ah, so you are causing the light—”

  “Not by my own power, you dolt! It does come from her, the power and the light both. I would die, truly, before I’d let filthy dweomer stain my heart and soul.”

  A sudden rush of anger took him by surprise—how dare she scorn the dweomer this way! She spoke with such exasperated certainty that he realized he’d never be able to change her mind.

  “I understand now,” he said, instead of trying, “my thanks.”

  It was late that night before Dallandra heard from Salamander. He’d had to wait until Rocca had left the camp before he dared to stare into the fire. Even if he appeared to be merely thinking, or so Salamander told her, Rocca would have taken notice and asked him why he seemed so preoccupied.

  “She’s my spiritual guide now,” Salamander said. “I’m supposed to tell her everything.”

  “Whatever for?” Dallandra said. “Alshandra seems to have turned into an awfully nosy sort of goddess. But it is safe for you to contact me now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Rocca had to go into the forest alone. We novices aren’t allowed to watch the priestess praying her special prayers.” He went on to tell her of his day’s traveling, but like the gerthddyn he was, saved the most dramatic touch for the last. “This is all getting a bit fraught. I just found out that they kill anyone who knows dweomer.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Dallandra said. “Most human priests are jealous of the dweomer. Look at the Gel da’Thae, and how seriously they take their religion. Horsekin believers are bound to be even more fervent about this new one.”

  “That’s a good word for it, all right. Fervent, ardent, inflamed, and perhaps even rabid. And yet Rocca’s such a happy soul, at root, always laughing and smiling.”

  “Of course she is. She thinks she has the remedy for every trouble in the world. Who wouldn’t be happy, then?”

  “A very good point, O princess of powers perilous. Speaking of which, here she comes.”

  The link between them snapped as he broke it. Dallandra sat thinking for a moment, remembering a human woman named Raena, who some forty years past had made herself into a mortal enemy despite Dallandra’s efforts to help her. She was devoted to her goddess, too, Dalla thought. I wonder. Rocca seemed far too happy to be that bitter, twisted soul reborn. Until she saw Rocca—if she ever did—she had no way of knowing. With a shrug she got up and went to find Calonderiel.

  Mosquitos, gnats, and other night insects hovered around her in the humid air no matter how hard she swatted and swore at them. Summer in the Westlands had its difficulties. Now, with the festival over, the camp had dwindled to the prince’s alar, a scatter of tents upon ground worn to bare dirt by the presence of so many feet. Some hundred yards away from hers stood Dar’s gaudy tent. Beyond it, she could see to the meadows and the alar’s horses, grazing the scant grass while some of the young men rode on guard.

  Dallandra found Cal and his son, Maelaber, kneeling on the ground in front of the prince’s tent and dicing in the elven way. Each had a handful of brightly colored wood chips in various shapes. In turn each shook his handful, then strewed it onto the tanned deerskin lying between them. Although Maelaber’s mother had ostensibly been human, Lady Rhodda had had some elven blood in her veins, and Maelaber looked more like one of the Westfolk than he did a Deverry man. His dark blue eyes appeared human if much larger than usual, but his ears curled in the elven manner.

  From inside the tent came the sound of people talking in soft voices. Prince Daralanteriel himself sat nearby, watching the dice game by the light of a small fire. At Dallandra’s approach the two players laid their dice down, and the prince acknowledged her with a wave of his hand. He was an exceptionally handsome man, Dar, even for one of the People, with his raven-dark hair and gray eyes, slit catlike to reveal lavender pupils.

  “Come join us,” Dar said.

  Calonderiel swept up the dice and offered her the doeskin.

  “Thank you.” Dallandra sat down on the skin instead of the bare dirt. “I’ve got some bad news. Ebañy’s heading straight into trouble.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Calonderiel glanced at the prince. “It’s a good thing we’ll be riding north.”

  “And meeting up with Valandario’s alar, too,” Dar said. “Does Devaberiel know his son’s stirring up trouble again?”

  “Oh, yes. He says he’s not in the least surprised,” Dallandra said. “Where’s your scribe, Dar? I’ve got a question for him.”

  “Inside, helping Carra get the children to sleep. They’re suffering from the sudden end of too much excitement, if you ask me. He can tell some good tales when he sets his mind to it.”

  The fire was burning low, but even so, its heat on this humid evening was making them all uncomfortable.

  “Mael, will you smother that?” Dallandra said.

  He nodded his agreement and picked up a shovel from the ground. While he pounded the embers into oblivion, Dallandra raised her hand and called upon the Wildfolk of Aethyr. They clustered around her, and when she snapped her fingers, they produced a silver ball of light, as misty as a moon through clouds. She tossed it straight up, where the Folk of the Air caught and held it.

  “That’s better,” Cal said. “But the smoke does keep some of these cursed gnats away.”

  “I’d rather have gnats than sweat,” Dalla said. “We’re almost out of wood anyway.”

  Not long after Meranaldar came out of the tent. Dar glanced his way and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “They’re asleep, my prince,” Meranaldar said. “Barely. The princess will stay with them until she’s s
ure that Elessi won’t wake.” He bowed to the prince, then sat down next to Dallandra. “Did I hear that you have a question for me?”

  “You did, yes. Where was Tanbalapalim? Do you know how it fared in the Great Burning?”

  “It was the most northward of the Seven Cities, and thus the first to fall. The Mera went on a rampage, or so the old records said, smashing and burning the place. Later they tried to rebuild, but I don’t know how successfully.”

  “They would have been wiped out, wouldn’t they? By disease, I mean.”

  “I’d say so—eventually. Since the plague began in Rinbaladelan, down on the seacoast, it stands to reason that it would have reached Tanbalapalim last. Why?”

  “Ebañy’s been told that Horsekin are living there again.”

  Meranaldar stared at her in surprise, then turned thoughtful. “They must have moved back recently. Evandar told me on several occasions that the plague had wiped out the invaders in every city.”

  “He told me the same thing,” Dallandra said. “Zatcheka and the Gel da’Thae have always assumed that they’re the only group of Horsekin to live in a city. They did resettle Braemel, but then they built new towns south of it. How far south of Tanbalapalim is Braemel?”

  “One book says a hundred and eighty miles, but another gives the distance as just over two hundred.” Meranaldar frowned in thought. “I hate it when sources disagree, but we can be fairly certain that Tanbalapalim was indeed distant. It was a northern outpost, really, in the High Mountains.”

  “It’s isolated, then.” Dalla said. “And the Gel da’Thae don’t travel too far from home unless they absolutely have to. They wouldn’t have stumbled across the Horsekin there.”

  “Even if they had, what then?” Daralanteriel leaned forward to join the conversation. “If they’ve fortified one of the old cities, we won’t be able to chase them out of it.”