Yraen turned on his heel and strode off toward the dun. Grabbing Gwer’s reins, Carra followed, keeping his broad back in sight as he found them a path through the round houses and looping alleyways that led this way and that but always uphill. Finally she could stand it no longer.
“Yraen, don’t be a rotten beast, will you? I’m sorry.”
He stopped and let her catch up with him.
“I’ll escort you back,” he said. “Then I’d best ride out after the others and tell them you’re safe.”
“Well, truly, that’s a good idea. Or I can find my own way back.” She grinned at him. “I found my way out, didn’t I?”
For a moment he kept his face expressionless, then slowly, as if he begrudged the effort, he smiled in return.
“I’ve got to get a fresh horse anyway. Here, I really should be leading Gwer for you.”
When he held out his hand, she gave him the reins, and they walked side by side when they went on. Carra never knew what to think of Yraen. Although he was technically a handsome man, he was as cold and hard as a steel blade in winter, occasionally smiling, rarely laughing, always, it seemed, on the edge of some great rage. Even Rhodry, with his wild berserker fits, seemed more human, more warm that Yraen ever did. As they plodded along, his silence began to get on her nerves.
“I’m still surprised you knew where to look for me,” she said.
“I know what a sneak you can be, that’s all. So I thought, well, if I wanted to slip back into a dun, what would I do? And so I waited at the east gate, because that’s the one I would have chosen, and lo! in you walked.”
“A sneak! I do like that.”
“Well, look at the clever way you plotted your escape from your brother. And I still don’t know how you worked on Rhodry, after you met us on the road, I mean, to get him to guard you for the journey here.”
“I still don’t know, either. He was so odd, that night in that miserable little tavern where I met you both. He kept talking about his lady Death, and how I was carrying his death with me. It made me feel awful, actually.”
“Don’t take it to heart. He’s talked that way for all the years I’ve known him.” Yraen sounded deeply aggrieved. “I don’t know why I keep riding with Rhodry, I truly don’t, but I always stay even when I get a chance to ride some other road.”
“Well, I suppose that two silver daggers are safer than one. On the roads and suchlike, I mean.”
“That’s true, of course.”
They had reached the top of the market hill, the second highest in Cengarn, and a vast open space, partly grass, partly cobbled, where on each full moon of spring and summer the town held a fair, although its real purpose was providing pasture for cattle during a siege. From its crest they could look across to the dun, rising dark and grim, towering over everything round it.
“Oh, I hate to go back!” Carra said with a dramatic sigh. “Couldn’t I run away with you, Yraen, and be a silver dagger?”
She started to laugh at her own jest, but the look on his face stopped her. For one brief moment his heart lay open like a night sky, so that she could pick out every constellation of desire and grief and frustration. Then he turned away with a snort.
“As if a skinny lass like you could ever learn to handle a sword!” he snapped. “Besides, there’s this small matter of your baby to consider.”
“Oh, I know.” She could barely speak, desperately searched for some jest to cover her unconscious cruelty of the moment before. There was none, “And I have my place and all that. Yraen, I’m sorry.”
He merely shrugged, staring across the little valley at the dun. For a few moments they stood together, wrapped in the misery of a revealed truth. Although Carra knew she was pretty, in her world beauty meant so much less than position and a good dowry that she had never thought of herself as desirable to men of her own kind. That Yraen would love her was completely unexpected, and more frightening than pleasing.
“I’m tired,” she said at last. “Could you please lead Gwer and let me ride? You were right, back at the gate.”
He smiled, briefly, and held the bridle while she mounted. During the rest of the trip back to the dun, neither of them said a word.
Although Carra had been hoping that she would some-how manage to slip past the women waiting for her in the great hall, her luck had left her for the day. As they walked through the gates, the guards shouted, calling out her name and cheering. Labanna, with the serving women and Jill right behind them, came racing out into the ward. Carra dismounted, bracing herself for the scolding of her life.
“My dear child! What could you have been thinking of?” Labanna started right in. “Of all the stupid, heart-less—”
“Hush.” Jill stepped in between them. “Your Grace, my lady, please. Will you leave her to me?”
Labanna scowled, but she made the dweomermaster a small curtsy and retreated to the company of her ladies. When Jill laid a firm hand on her arm, Carra wished that she could faint or perhaps even die. She was never going to be able to work Jill round by being contrite and winsome the way she’d planned to do with Labanna.
“Come up to your chamber with me, Carra,” Jill said. “It’s time we had a little chat.” She glanced at Yraen, still standing nearby. “Are you going to fetch the others?”
“I am. Just going to get a fresh horse and find a hunting horn.”
“Good. Tell Dar to come talk with me when you find him. Now. Carra, come along.”
Feeling like a dog about to be whipped, Carra trailed along behind as Jill led the way up the spiral staircase. Once they were safely shut up in the chamber, Jill perched on the windowsill and motioned for Carra to sit down. She sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if she could pretend to faint—not and fool Jill, she supposed. For a moment the dweomermaster considered her with cold blue eyes that seemed to bore deep into her soul. All at once she laughed, a pleasant chuckle under her breath.
“Good for you,” she said, still smiling. “I always knew you had spirit.”
Carra felt herself goggling openmouthed like some village half-wit.
“Carra, listen,” Jill went on. “Things will be different once you and Dar get out on the grasslands with his people, very, very different. Your life will have a much wider horizon there than any Deverry woman ever has here at home. Your life’s likely to become more than passing strange, mind, but restricted it will not be. Now, until then, you need to behave like a Deverry woman. Can you understand that? I have naught but sympathy for you, lass, but there’s no help for it. While you remain here in Deverry, you’ve got to be the lady and the dutiful wife. Can you do that?”
“Of course. Haven’t I been trained for it, all my life?”
“Good.” Jill smiled again. “But remember my promise. I don’t know when you and Dar can return safely to his people. It might not even be till after the child is born. That depends on things that—well, on things, and some of them are matters of war. These are not the best of times, Carra.” She stood up. “Don’t worry about Labanna and the other women. I’ll tell them that you’ve been properly scolded.”
Jill left the chamber without another word, leaving Carra utterly confused. Yet, despite Jill’s talk of war, she felt strangely cheered, thinking that some new and exciting life lay ahead of her. She rested for a while, then had a wash and changed her clothes. Although she had to summon all her courage to go to the women’s hall, the other women made a great fuss over her, as if compensating for the terrible things Jill had said. Carra managed a few proper snivels for the look of the thing, but all in all, the matter was closed.
There remained her husband, of course. She was dreading his homecoming, but much to her surprise his reaction was similar to Jill’s—a laugh and a certain sympathy. Once they were alone, he kissed her repeatedly, then sat her down in the single chair in their chamber while he paced back and forth. By then it was night, and in the glow of the candle-lanterns his chiseled face seemed leaner than ever, picked out as it w
as by deep shadows.
“Forgive me, my love,” he said. “I thought that you’d want me to leave you be, here with the other women. Isn’t that what Deverry women expect from their lords?”
“Well, most of them do, I suppose. Dar, your people must be very different from mine.”
“Worlds and worlds different, my love, and I wish to every god of both our tribes that I could take you there straightaway. Life is cleaner out on the grasslands, clean and free and honest, not like here, all shut up in stone tents like animals in pens with the smell of filth hanging round everything. And everyone’s always scheming and plotting and trying to get the gwerbret to like them best of all the lords and suchlike. Sometimes I want to heave, just sitting at that table with Matyc and Gwinardd and watching the fencing for favor going on between them. Truly I do.”
His vehemence shocked her so much that she found nothing to say. He knelt beside her and caught her hand in both of his.
“Forgive me, I don’t mean to insult your people.”
“I’m not insulted, just surprised. I didn’t realize how much you hated it.”
“That’s why I hunt so much. To get away, out to the wild country.”
“I wish you’d told me! I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”
He laughed, then kissed her hand, first the back, then the palm.
“The gwerbret’s a decent man,” he said. “But he thinks of me as some kind of savage. He’s been telling me how to treat you, you see, since you’re a civilized woman with civilized expectations and all that. And of course I’ve been following his advice. Like a dolt. I thought you’d want me to.”
Carra laughed and threw her arms round his neck to kiss him.
“Well, then,” she said. “I must be a howling savage myself, because I fell in love with you long before you took the gwerbret’s lessons.”
“Good.” He sat back on his heels and looked away, his eyes pools of shadow. “By the Dark Sun herself I wish we could just get out of here.”
“Why can’t we? What’s so wrong?”
“A very great deal, my love. The Wise One talked with me when we returned.”
“The who?”
“Jill. My apologies. Wise One is what we call dweomermasters, out on the grass. She didn’t tell me very much, or I should say, she wouldn’t tell me any details, wouldn’t answer any whys and hows and wherefores, but she said over and over that some great danger’s brewing, whether raiders were riding for Cengarn or not.”
“She said somewhat about a war to me, too, but naught that was clear.”
“They deal in omens and strange speaking, the Wise Ones.” Dar sighed profoundly. “I wanted to take you along the next time we hunt, you see, but she absolutely forbade it.”
“Oh, I wish she hadn’t! I used to love to ride to the hunt. Why did she say I couldn’t go?”
“Because of the danger. Carra, I don’t understand all of this, but someone’s trying to kill our baby.”
She clasped both hands hard over her mouth to stifle a scream.
“Jill said I shouldn’t tell you, as if you were a child yourself, but you have to know.”
Carra shuddered, turning in her chair to see if the drape over the window had blown back in some cold wind, turning back again, feeling sick and frozen and furious all at once.
“I do have to, truly.” Her voice sounded so thin and high that she was shocked. “Why? Who?”
“I don’t know. An enemy with the dweomer, Jill said, and that’s all she’d tell me. But that’s why we’ve got to stay near a dweomermaster. Right now she can’t travel with us to the Westlands, because of the danger here to everyone else, and so here we are, stuck where she can watch over us. Eventually, she said, she’ll help us get home again and find another Wise One to protect us. But for now, well.”
She nodded her understanding, feeling her heart pounding hard in her chest. All she could think of was weapons and killing. She wanted to find that enemy and rend it, stab it, send it screaming to the Otherlands to freeze in the third hell for ever and ever. What happened to her seemed unimportant, but her child—that they would threaten her child!
“What’s wrong?” Dar snapped. “You’re dead-pale. Do you need to lie down?”
“I don’t. Dar, I’m so glad you told me this. I understand a lot of things now, like why I have to be so careful.” Unconsciously she laid her hands on her stomach. “For both of us.”
“Good.” He kissed her, then a second time. “Shall we go down to the great hall together? The Gel da’Thae bard is singing again.”
“Let’s. I do hate sitting up here in the same old room, and it’s going to be worse now, wondering what this enemy’s plotting and all of that.”
“Well, as long as we’re under Jill’s protection, we’ll be safe enough, I suspect. She seemed to think so, anyway, and after all, there are soldiers all round you, the gwerbret’s men as well as mine.”
“Oh, I know. I wish I knew how to use a sword, though, just in case.”
He laughed, kissing her on the forehead.
“I don’t think that’s truly necessary, my love. You have me to do the fighting for you.”
For a moment Carra felt like kicking him. There were some ways in which the men of the Westfolk and the men of Deverry were much alike.
Apparently rumors of her escapade spread into the town, for the very next morning Otho the dwarf came up to the dun to visit, just to see for himself, or so he said, that the princess was safe and sound. He brought along with him a young, dark-haired fellow, as short and stocky as he was but beardless except for some bushy sideburns, whom he introduced as Mic, his nephew.
“Do you remember the letters I sent off weeks ago?” Otho said. “To my kin, like, telling them I was here in Cengarn? Well, turns out that some of ‘em are glad enough to see me again. My cousin Jorn was already lodging in Cengarn on business, and now young Mic here shows up with another cousin, Garin. Looks good, looks good—not that everything’s settled yet.”
“That’s wonderful,” Carra said, smiling. “Come up-stairs with me. I have a special chamber, you see, for receiving visitors.”
During the visit Mic said little, mostly ate his way through the tray of sweet cakes that Carra’s maid brought up, but Otho was full of gossip from town and dun both.
“When are you going to pay Rhodry?” Carra asked him finally. “He keeps grumbling about it.”
“Oh, I’ve had the coin for him for a good long time now. It’s a jest, like, that’s all, me putting him off. Him and Yraen both, they get so indignant over their wretched hire!”
“Well, maybe so, but you can’t blame them. It’s all they’ve got in life.”
“Hah! They could have chosen better. Well, that’s unfair to Rhodry, but young Yraen decided that he had to have the dagger, and not one word of sensible advice would stop him from leaving his kin and clan and riding the long road.”
“Really? Here I thought he’d done some awful thing, like all the rest of them. All the rest of the silver daggers, I mean, not his kin.”
“Not Yraen, neither. That’s not his real name, of course. No mother names her cub for an ingot of iron, not even among my people. But he was glamoured of the idea of riding the long road, you see, and badgered Rhodry into taking him on. He’s from a noble house, Yraen.” Otho drooped one eyelid and held up a sly finger. “A very, very noble house, or so I think. Close to the throne, like.”
“By the goddess herself! How very odd!”
“It is, truly. Why anyone would leave the High King’s court to ride the long road is beyond me. He’s a strange one, Yraen, though he has his reasons, I suppose, whether he knows them himself or not.” All at once Otho looked away, as if something had pained him.
“Is there a draft from that window?” Carra said, glad to have a change of subject. “I can get my maid to—”
No need, no need. I was just remembering somewhat, like, from a long time ago.” Otho seemed profoundly sad. “I should pay tho
se coins over, my lady. You’re right, you’re right. The jest’s gone on too long.”
“Well, I—” Carra hesitated, profoundly uncomfortable, blaming herself for the odd turn in the talk. “Mic, would you like that last cake? Don’t be shy. Help yourself.”
The young dwarf blushed scarlet, but with a sidelong glance at his glowering uncle, take it he did. For the rest of the visit Carra kept the conversation firmly on the subject of Otho himself and his kinsfolk in Cengarn. But later that day, as she walked in the ward with the other women and their usual escort, she saw Yraen standing by the stables as they passed. He turned to watch her, his face carefully arranged into indifference, all the while that they were walking by. As they turned to go into the walled herb garden and out of sight, she glanced back to see him watching still.
From her tower room Jill happened to see the women passing by below, as well, but she never noticed Yraen, not that she would have thought much about him if she had. All that morning she’d been studying the books she’d brought back with her from a recent trip to the Southern Isles, looking for one last clue to a puzzle that had haunted her for years. Rhodry wore a ring given to him by his father a long time past, a simple silver band, graved with roses on the outside and a word written in Elvish characters on the inside, although when sounded out the word made no sense whatsoever in any language. She’d determined that it was a name, and a very peculiar kind of name indeed, and that Evandar had graved it there before passing it along to Rhodry’s father. Apparently Evandar believed that the owner of the name had some crucial role to play in the dark days ahead. Most likely it would act as a guardian to the unborn child.
So far, so good, but why give Rhodry the name and naught more? The name must have had some special significance beyond identifying its owner, but Evandar refused to unravel his own riddle, simply because he was Evandar and for no better reason at ail. At times Jill wondered if she hated him, meddling with all their lives this way, but there was no doubt that she needed his help if she were going to keep Carra and the child safe. As she read, turning page after page of obscure lore, Wildfolk gathered to watch her, a gaggle of gnomes upon her table, poking things best left alone, sylphs hovering above her like bubbles in the glass of air, sprites wandering back and forth at her feet. One particular gray gnome, all long limbs and warty nose, materialized right on top of her book, in fact. With a laugh she moved him to one side.
Days of Blood and Fire Page 17