Days of Air and Darkness

by Katharine Kerr

The weeping stopped, but there was no answer. Davylla knocked and ordered and begged as well, but the only reply was a furious “Go away! I hate you!”

  “Ah, well,” Davylla said at last. “There are plenty of beds in other chambers. Here, perhaps it would be best, anyway, if you two shared a chamber nearer my own. I have plenty of nightdresses, too.”

  “She’ll be better in the morning,” Wbridda agreed. “We can talk to her then.”

  Although Sevinna hated to leave Babryan alone with her wounds, there was no getting her cousin to open the door, and she allowed herself to be swept off by Lady Davylla. As soon as she was lying in a comfortable bed, she fell asleep without any worries for either present or future, but all that night she dreamt about Dwaen.

  Since Jill and Rhodry had been given a chamber of their own, Jill was planning on sleeping as late as courtesy would allow, but the gray of first dawn still filled the room when she woke to hear someone pounding on the door. Grumbling and swearing, Rhodry sat up just as Dwaen burst in.

  “Rhodry! Lady Mallona’s escaped.”

  “What, Your Grace?” Rhodry sat bolt upright. “How could she?”

  “Someone unlocked the door from the outside. On your feet, man—there’s not a minute to lose.”

  “If His Grace would be so kind as to turn his back so my lady can dress, we’ll be as quick as ever we can.”

  The tieryn strode over to the window and stared out. While Jill and Rhodry dressed, he told them how a page had wakened him only a few minutes ago, saying that the servant who went up to feed the lady had found the door unbolted and the prisoner fled.

  “Elyc and Tudvulc are going to question the womenfolk,” Dwaen finished up. “It must be one of them, and I’ll put my wager on that little Babryan.”

  “So would I,” Jill said. “But how did Mallona get out of the dun?”

  “A stolen horse and men’s clothing again, probably. There hasn’t been time to question the gatekeeper yet.”

  They were all hurrying down the staircase to the great hall when they met a page hurrying up.

  “Your Grace, the Lady Babryan’s gone, too.”

  Jill felt as sick as if she’d bitten into tainted meat.

  “The faithful little dolt! You’re right, Your Grace—there’s not a minute to lose.”

  The table of honor framed a tableau of hysteria. Lady Davylla and Wbridda wept and clung together; Elyc and Tudvulc paced back and forth and shouted at each other. In the background hovered Cenwyc and a crowd of frightened servitors, while across the hall the men ate standing up and straining to hear every word. Sevinna ran over and caught Jill’s arm.

  “I’ve been searching the chambers. All of Lady Mallona’s herbs and stuff are gone, and so are Baba’s traveling cloak and riding boots. They took the blankets off Mallona’s bed, too.”

  “Do you know if Mallona had a weapon?” Jill said.

  “A dagger. It was a long one with a metal handle, because she used it for the rites. That’s gone, too.”

  “I’m less worried about steel than I am about herbs,” Rhodry broke in. “Oh, ye gods, where do they think they’re going? How do they think they’re going to get away with this?”

  “I doubt me if either of them’s thinking at all,” Dwaen said. “Especially the Lady Babryan.”

  “Just so.” Sevinna turned to him, her voice quivering in rage. “Mallona’s been working on her. She’s got ways of doing that. She tried them on me, but it didn’t avail her much. I beg you, my lord, don’t think unkindly of my cousin for this. I swear she’s been ensorcelled.”

  “Never did I think anything else,” Dwaen said. “And for your sake, I’ll bring her back safely or die in the attempt.”

  Sevinna dropped him a curtsy, then hurried back to her aunt. With an impatient bellow, Tudvulc waved them over.

  “The grooms are getting the horses ready. You’d better eat fast, lads.” He grabbed a couple of chunks of bread from a bowl on the table and threw them, one at a time, to Jill, Rhodry, and Dwaen. “When I catch this fiend who’s got my daughter, I’m going to skin her alive!”

  “I trust His Grace is merely overcome by his feelings,” Dwaen said. “The penalty that great Bel decreed is hanging.”

  Tudvulc snarled wordlessly.

  “Well, Your Grace, the laws say—”

  A yell from the door stopped Dwaen’s disquisition.

  “My lords! He’s dead! Gello—he’s been stabbed.”

  “The gatekeeper,” Rhodry muttered. “Poor bastard.”

  Old Gello, as frail as a stick, lay broken on the floor of his little hut beside the gates. He’d been stabbed once from behind and thrown face down, so that a pool of blood stained his shirt.

  “It’s still wet.” Dwaen knelt down and laid a hand on his face. “And he’s barely cold.”

  “What?” Elyc sputtered. “How could—”

  “My lord?” Rhodry broke in. “It means they waited till he opened the gates. Just at dawn, not all that long ago at all.”

  “We’ve just missed the bitch,” Elyc snapped. “Ye gods, her gall!”

  Tudvulc chained a string of foul oaths worthy of a bard. Elyc turned and yelled to his men, clustering out in the ward.

  “Get every man in the dun into the town! You, you, and you—run like the hells were opening under you! I want the town gates closed!”

  Jill glanced at the sky, where the true dawn was just beginning to brighten. With luck, some, at least, of the town gates might never have been opened.

  In a tumult of shouted orders, Elyc and Tudvulc began organizing the search. Dwaen grabbed Jill’s arm, and with Rhodry trailing after, led her round the curve of the broch where they could hear each other speak.

  “I don’t like this!” he snapped. “How could she have killed the man and then just walked out the gates? There’s too many folk about, even at first light. She must have known they’d never make it to the road unseen.”

  “Just so,” Jill said. “Unless she had a friend in town, somewhere she knew she could hide.”

  “She’s been here weeks, and she must have left the dun now and again,” Rhodry put in. “To go to market for those herbs if naught else.”

  “They must have dashed like foxes for an earth,” Jill said. “Well, if—oh, ye gods! An earth, indeed. What if they’ve never left the dun?”

  “Ye gods!” Dwaen whispered. “As bold as all that, to wait till we’ve all charged out, and then stroll out after us?”

  Rhodry tossed back his head and howled his long mad laugh. Yelling at the top of his lungs, Dwaen ran to fetch his warband and start them searching. As Jill jogged after him, she heard Tudvulc start to bellow, then break off. She and Rhodry reached the lords in time to hear them start yelling at their men to search the dun.

  They found them in the boldest place of all, the chamber where Mallona had been imprisoned the night before, up high in one of the half-brochs. The men had charged like whirlwinds through every other building by the time that Jill found a kitchen maid, all wide eyes with excitement, who admitted seeing a lady in a cloak going in the door to that tower.

  “Was it Lady Taurra?”

  “I only saw her back, like. I thought maybe it was our Lady Davylla, come to bid the murderess farewell.”

  “Not too likely, lass.” Jill turned away and yelled back to the others. “My lords! Rhodry! Come on!”

  Shoving the lass out of the way, Jill charged inside and clattered up the spiral staircase. She could hear the sound of the men, swearing and shoving as they followed. At the landing, she hesitated, but just one door stood closed. She flung it open only to stop short at the threshold. Mallona was standing in a shaft of sunlight in the center of the room. In front of her, Babryan slumped in a chair like a heap of discarded dresses. At first Jill thought her dead, but the lass breathed, her mouth half-open. Her fevered eyes turned Jill’s way in an agony of pleading. At her throat, Mallona held the long-bladed ritual dagger.

  “One more step, you little meddler,
and she’ll die.” Mallona’s voice was as strong and quiet as ever.

  From the oaths and boots trampling behind her, Jill knew that the men were mobbing the landing. When Tudvulc shoved his way through to stand in the doorway, Mallona turned calm eyes his way.

  “Your daughter’s been poisoned, and only I know the antidote. Let me go, and I’ll give it to you. Here’s my bargain. Fetch me a horse, and that smelly silver dagger will ride with me outside the town. There I’ll give her the vial, and she’ll take it back to you. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time, at least till noon, before Baba dies.”

  “You whore to pigs and dogs,” Tudvulc whispered. “You impious bitch!”

  “And if you and your men follow me and Jill,” Mallona went on, “you’ll never get the vial, because I’ll break it. Swear on your sacred honor that I go free, and Babryan lives. How would bards sing of your name if you let a child of yours die?”

  Tudvulc was shaking, his face scarlet, the veins on his forehead bulging and pulsing. Elyc laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and dragged him back a step.

  “If you kill me now, you’ll never know which vial is the right one,” Mallona remarked with a small smile. “I have many different herbs.”

  Jill stepped back to let Elyc have her place. She bumped into Dwaen, looked round but saw no sign of Rhodry. She could only assume that he’d got stuck on the staircase in the crush of warbands.

  “It gripes my very soul to say it, Your Grace,” Elyc said, “but I see naught to do but take her terms.”

  Tudvulc tried to speak, then merely nodded his consent.

  “Swear it then.” Laughing, Mallona held the dagger close to Babryan’s throat. “Swear on your honor, oh, your ever-so-sacred men’s honor! Swear on your swords, swear on your very clans that neither you nor your men nor your servants will do one single thing to impede my escape.”

  “So I swear,” Elyc said.

  “And I,” Tudvulc growled out. “Someday the gods will take my vengeance for me.”

  “Oh, I’m prepared to deal with the gods when my time comes. It’s your oaths I want now. Jill, swear the same, or I’ll kill your pretty little Baba.”

  “I swear on my silver dagger that I’ll do exactly what you’ve described.”

  “Done, then! Shut that door while I make my preparations.”

  Elyc reached in with one fist and slammed the door shut. Tudvulc went on shaking; Elyc looked as if he would weep; Dwaen crossed his arms over his chest and prayed softly to his god for vengeance, his eyes shut, his face raised toward Bel’s heaven. All at once, Jill heard a shriek, then a crash and thump from the chamber. Thinking that Mallona had stabbed Babryan after all, she sprang forward and flung the door open. Babryan moaned unharmed, but Mallona lay on the floor with a vial clutched in her hand and a silver dagger in her back. Laughing like a fiend, Rhodry climbed in the window and knelt down beside her.

  “You never asked me to take a vow. I’m not sworn man nor servant, am I? Only a silver dagger. And you should have held your ugly tongue while you were fetching that vial.”

  Rhodry grabbed her wrist and pulled the vial free. Mallona raised her head, struggled to turn over, but when she gasped, blood broke on her lips in bubbles.

  “You’ll have one wish,” Jill said, striding in. “You won’t hang.”

  Gasping, choking, Mallona pushed herself up, her hands paddling in her own blood, and raised her head to stare at Rhodry.

  “Aranrhodda,” she whispered. “Aranrhodda rica rica, crissi bregan crissi …”

  She coughed and writhed, her bowels emptying in a reflexive gush, so that like Bavydd of Cerrmor, she fell to lie dead in her own excrement. Jill shoved her fist in her mouth just in time to stifle a scream, because she saw, as clearly as a winter’s mist though no more, a dark woman’s form, with long hair that streamed out all round her face, come to tower over her worshipper’s corpse. Mallona’s soul, a naked woman made of pale blue light, rose from her dead body like smoke rising from a fire. Jill saw it throw itself into Aranrhodda’s arms, which folded round it like wings. The vision lasted but a few beats of a heart, but Jill could have sworn that the Goddess’s eyes turned Rhodry’s way and marked him.

  • • •

  “Well, here, Your Grace,” Rhodry said. “It wasn’t truly that much of a thing, and I feel dishonorable for stabbing a woman in the back. All I did was go into the next chamber, then climb out the window and go along the wall. The stones were so rough, they were as good as a ledge to stand on. I could hear her taunting poor little Baba, too, and I saw her holding up the right vial and telling the lass to pray that she lived to drink it. So I braced myself in the window and threw the dagger, and you know the rest.”

  “So I do,” Tudvulc said. “And I hold you honorable, because that was no woman, but a fiend from Hell. I’m going to see that you’re well rewarded for this bit of work.”

  “My thanks. Because the coin means more than the honor to a silver dagger.”

  “Ye gods, man! Will you stop berating yourself for your brother’s stubbornness? Here, what about that post in my court? I can’t let the man who saved my blood kin’s life just ride away. Even Rhys should be able to see that.”

  Rhodry merely shook his head in a no. He refused to weaken, no matter how tempted he might be.

  “Well, you know your own mind, I suppose,” Tudvulc said with a sigh. “One thing, though. Will you ride our way for the wedding?”

  “We might at that, Your Grace. Jill would like to, I know.”

  “Huh.” Tudvulc suddenly smiled. “By the by, meant to tell you. I do understand—now—that Sevvi wasn’t running off with that Dwaen fellow. Told her so, told her we’d find another man if she wanted and blast the scandal! But she says she likes her tieryn perfectly well, and so there we are. The Goddess must have brought us together, says she. Hah! Probably going to be a good match, eh? They can sit around and talk about the gods together. Daft, both of them.”

  When Tudvulc laughed, Rhodry joined him, but mostly for the courtesy of it. As soon as he could, he made a polite escape from the gwerbret and went to find Jill.

  She was sitting in the window of their chamber up in Elyc’s broch, turned sideways to look down on the ward. The sight of her there, up so high with naught between her and a fall, made him uncomfortable, even though her position seemed perfectly secure. When he shut the door, she turned her head his way.

  “You look so pale,” he said. “What’s so wrong, my love?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking about Mallona’s death.”

  “Oh, here, you’ve seen far worse deaths than that!”

  “I know. You’re going to think me daft, but I still feel sorry for her.”

  “What? You are daft, then! She would have had you maimed without thinking twice and then killed Babryan, too.”

  “Would she? Well, one thing’s sure, if her clumsy charge of thievery had held up, I would have lost a hand.” Jill shuddered, rubbing one wrist with the other palm. “But she wasn’t making that charge in cold blood. I doubt me if she was thinking at all, by then. She was so panicked, seeing her last safety gone. And as for Baba, well, we’ll never know the truth of that.”

  “And what about the gatekeeper?”

  “You have me there. The poor old fellow!”

  “She’s an evil woman, Mallona. Don’t you believe that?”

  “Probably so. I can’t really defend her, because, well—” She hesitated for a moment. “When she died, I thought—I saw the oddest sort of vision, as she lay there. The goddess came to claim her, Aranrhodda, I mean.”

  “Well, splendid! They can sit round in the Otherlands together and gossip over their pot of herb brew.”

  “Don’t! Oh, Rhoddo, hold your tongue! Never mock like that, oh please! It’s so dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” He tossed his head, tried to grin, would rather have spat on the floor. “Oh, come now, what is this? More of your blasted dweomer?”

  Jill started to spea
k, then began to cry in a shudder of tears. Rhodry ran to her, pulled her up, and pulled her into his arms.

  “Oh, here, here, I’m sorry, my sweet, please forgive me, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mock you.”

  “It’s not me that matters,” she sniveled out. “When it comes to mocking, I mean.”

  “Well, then, I don’t mean to mock the Goddess either. My apologies to her as well. It’s just all this talk of all this wretched dweomer! It gets on a man’s nerves, it does.”

  “Don’t you think it gets on mine?” She looked up, sniffing back more tears. “Oh, Rhodry, I love you so much. All I ever want is you. Truly.”

  He kissed her, savoring her words as much as the feel of her mouth on his.

  Yet later, of course, the memory of those words would return, a bitter haunting, when her dweomer finally tore them apart, as indeed the entire memory rose, all those many years later, when he looked into the golden eyes of a shape-changer, and knew against all reason, all possibility, against everything his intellect knew of life and death, that his old enemy Mallona lived again, and that she remembered him as clearly as ever he did her.

  That evening, while the dragon slept after feeding upon a doe she’d hunted down, Rhodry sat awake without a fire and stared into the dark, all glowy with moonlight and as bright as a summer twilight to his half-elven sight. Round him on the high plain, the land stretched silent toward the white peaks, glimmering under the stars. He was remembering all the cryptic hints that Jill had, much later in their lives, given him about such matters. She’d suggested more than once that each man or woman lives far more lives than one, that the gate to the Otherlands swings both ways, no matter what the priests may have taught to the faithful.

  “No!” And oddly enough, he found himself speaking Elvish rather than the language of men. “No, no, no! It can’t be true!”

  He refused to believe such a preposterous thing, absolutely refused. The wind picked up, stroking his hair as if to reassure him that the world was still solid and real despite whatever fancies he might be having. Yet deep in his heart, a feeling—or perhaps it was an insight—nagged and gnawed, that perhaps, just maybe, perhaps all the death-dealing that he’d done in his long warrior’s life was the most ridiculous thing in the world, because nothing had ever been or ever would be settled or finished, once and for all, by blood and the sword.