Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  Everyone dutifully laughed at the jest, but Carra and Labanna exchanged glances full of anxiety. Even though Jill agreed with the gwerbret’s line of reasoning, she intended to keep up her nightly scrying. Thinking of the scrying did, however, remind her of another grim reality.

  “Dar, I do have one rather nasty thought. When our enemies arrive, they’ll have dweomerworkers with them— at least one, maybe more. I’d just as soon they didn’t know your men were on their way. Why don’t you send messengers now to find Calonderiel, tell him the situation, and ask him to gather his company and keep them ready? We can send other men when I see the army approaching, for the final warning, like, but this way the banadar will know our situation.”

  “Good thinking,” Dar said. “And he’ll know to march anyway if he never hears any more news. What shall we tell him? We have a festival, Delanimapaladar, to mark the day when the light and the dark are an equal length. What about then?”

  “Sounds a good choice;” Cadmar smiled all round. “Jill, you’ve got a good head for war, I must say.”

  “I’ve seen more than a few, Your Grace. Too many, truly, far, far too many, all in all.”

  “So have I.” Cadmar looked away, suddenly troubled. “Huh. All this waiting’s bad for a man, gets on his nerves. Which reminds me. I wonder why Lord Tren hasn’t sent me a message about that letter I sent him? Sure enough, the priests down at the temple are putting in a claim for his brother’s lands. I sent another man off to Tren with that news just yesterday, so maybe it’ll jog him into some action.”

  Everyone nodded, looking back and forth at one another. In her worry over Alshandra, Jill had almost forgotten that there was more than one kind of trouble brewing, this one from an all too human source.

  That very morning Daralanteriel sent his pair of messengers off with letters and tokens for Calonderiel. From her tower room Jill watched them ride out, leading a packhorse, carrying their short, curved hunting bows strung at the ready and slung over their shoulders. She would scry for them, too, off and on over the next few days, until she could be sure that they were safely out in the grasslands and on their way south unharmed.

  More and more she believed that some enemy was scouting the dun just as she was scouting the surrounding countryside. Although she doubted very much if another shape-changer lurked physically round Cengarn, such a sorcerer might well have been scrying by more conventional means or prowling out on the etheric plane. Every now and then, when she was traveling in the body of light, she would peer round her through the billowing blue waves of etheric energy and see hints that someone else had passed the same way. Occasionally as well she would run across the Wildfolk, who in their true home were beautiful creatures, all geometric shapes and lines of colored light. At times they would flock round her in an exhalation of rage, perhaps caused by an interloper in their world, at others of terror, as if that interloper had frightened them.

  Besides, she and Rhodry both still had the sporadic feeling that they were being watched. Of course, many people who have no dweomer of their own suspect it everywhere and in the most normal of occurrences, a thing true in Jill’s time just as nowadays. Not only was Rhodry half-elven, however, with that race’s natural sensitivity to magic, but dweomer, for evil as well as good, had touched his life many times in the past. When he said that he felt it now, she believed him.

  “But you know what’s strange about this, Jill?” he remarked one morning: “I don’t feel any malice when this mind or whatever you’d call it turns my way.”

  “You don’t? Interesting! I’ve felt malice in good measure, myself, and so have the Wildfolk. Somebody’s terrified them.”

  “Stranger and stranger.”

  “Well, I’ll make a guess that we’re dealing with two different dweomerfolk, but that’s only a guess.” She hesitated, then decided that there truly was naught more to say until she had more evidence. “What I do know is that this wound of yours is healed up nicely. I think me it’s time for you and the dwarves to get on your way.”

  “Are you sure I wouldn’t better serve the gwerbret by staying here? If there’s war coming—”

  “Soldiers the gwerbret has. You’re the only man on this earth who can find that dragon and unravel Evandar’s tedious little riddle.”

  “And you think it’s truly important that the dragon get itself found?”

  “I do. I can’t tell you why, but I do.”

  “No hope for it, then,” He flashed her one of his lunatic grins. “I shall do my lady’s bidding and walk strange roads, climb high mountains, freeze in the snows, and deal with dwarven madmen, and all of this shall I do with cheerful heart and—”

  “Will you hold your tongue? This is no time for daft jests.”

  “On the contrary, my lady.” Rhodry bowed low to her. “What better time for a daft jest than when the times themselves are mad?”

  She started to snap at him, then decided he was right enough.

  “Let’s go out to the common room. I want to talk to Otho about provisioning this expedition. By the by, did he ever hand over the coin he owed you?”

  “Of course not. It’s all gone to the innkeep for my bed and board.”

  “The gall! I’ll speak to him about that.”

  “No need. We’re doubtless all about to die, anyway, gulped down for a tidbit by this wyrm, so what does a handful of coppers matter, anyway? Of course, it might give the beast indigestion, if it ate my pockets with me, and so we’d have a revenge of sorts.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t jest like that.”

  He hesitated, then turned away with a shrug.

  “As my lady commands, then.”

  “And the paying of that coin’s important, Rhoddo. He should pay and maintain you as well.”

  “At the moment I can’t much worry about a handful of coin.”

  “Nah nah nah, I didn’t mean important to you. Important for Otho.”

  Rhodry blinked at her.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered what got him exiled?” she went on.

  “Many a time. I never thought it my place to ask.”

  “Right you were, too, and if you ever tell anyone you know this, I’ll be displeased.”

  Rhodry shuddered, but it was only half a jest.

  “He wouldn’t pay a debt.” Jill ignored the gesture. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but he owed a man some steep fee, and he wouldn’t pay. He had it all worked out why he shouldn’t pay in his own mind, like, but no one else agreed, and he had to go into exile.”

  “Go into exile for a debt of coin?”

  “Just so. The Mountain People take their obligations very seriously.”

  “So that was it.” Rhodry winced at the memory. “When Garin asked me not to judge them all by their kinsman, I knew I’d made some sort of botch of my courtesies. Well and good, then. Let’s go torment the old man a little.”

  They found Otho sitting in the common room with his kinsmen, drinking and playing at dice. At the hearth, the innkeep was adding chunks of some indefinable vegetable to the stew pot, but he stopped to listen in.

  “Otho,” Jill snapped. “You owe Rhodry and Yraen coin.”

  The elderly dwarf howled and turned his face to the distant sky, perhaps asking it to witness his sufferings.

  “Is this true?” Garin snapped.

  Otho moaned, muttered, moaned again, but when every dwarf in the room stared at him, arms crossed over their chests, he reached for the pouch at his belt. Jill took half of what he handed over to give to Yraen.

  “Will you all be going with your kinsman?” Jill said to Garin.

  “I will, at least as far as Haen Marn, though Jorn here won’t. If Enj won’t take our clan’s coin, I’ll go a-hunting the wyrm instead, hut a weak reed I’ll be to lean upon, I tell you. I’m sure that loremasters spend years memorizing all the things I know not about dragons.”

  “I’ll go,” Mic broke in. “May I, Uncle Otho? I’ve never been anywhere nor done anything.”
>
  “Hah, and no doubt you’ll wish you’d stayed in that blessed condition before this little walk is over,” Otho said. “But come along you may, if your father allows.” He glanced at Jorn and raised an eyebrow. “Think he will? My brother was always the most stubborn man on earth.”

  “Until his son was born and took the title from him,” Jorn said, grinning. “Well, ask him. You’ll have to go home first before you head out to Haen Marn. He’ll probably want to set a blood price for young Mic, though, in case he never returns.”

  “A blood price? The gall!”

  “Otho!” Jorn and Garin spoke in chorus.

  Jill left them squabbling and went back to the dun.

  Yraen she found in the great hall, sitting and drinking at a table near the back door. When she gave him the coins, he grinned, a rare thing for him, and slipped them straightaway into the pouch he wore round his neck and under his shirt.

  “Rhodry taught me to do that,” he remarked. “Keep your coins out of sight, I mean. He said he learned it from you.”

  “So he did, when we were both a fair bit younger.”

  “I’m glad old Otho finally came across. I was wondering if he ever would. Here, is he daft?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Cursed strange thing, a few nights past. I happened to run across him in the ward. Come to pay me, have you? says I. All in good time, says he, I’ve been to visit the princess. And all at once he fixes me with this look. You owe her a debt, says he, though you won’t remember it, and if ever a debt should be paid, it’s that one. And then he stumps on by without so much as another word.”

  “Well, um, odd indeed.” Jill fished round and came up with an evasion. “Maybe he thought you were someone else. He’s getting on a bit.”

  “True enough, true enough. That’s probably all there was to it, then.”

  Jill left the matter there, but she was honestly surprised that Otho would recognize in their new bodies souls he’d known so long ago, in his youth but when they were living out other lives, turns of the wheel of birth and death that had long since ended. It was all because of Carra, or so Jill assumed, who back in that other long-gone existence had been the only person in the dwarf’s entire life whom he had ever loved. Jill wasn’t about to probe that old wound, how-ever, and ask the old man for details.

  Over the next few days, Cengarn began to prepare for war. The gwerbret took to spending much of the day riding his lands, with his servitors in attendance, going from farm to farm, sizing up the harvest and having a word here and there with various yeoman farmers who could be counted on to join the muster. Messages went back and forth between his various vassals, too, discussing plans. The townsmen began making preparations of their own, gathering in what supplies they could, meeting together to discuss mutual support and to choose the men and wagons they owed the gwerbret in times of war. Yet in all the flurry of hard work and messages, no one ever heard from Lord Tren, not the gwerbret himself, not his loyal vassals. Whenever Cadmar sent him a messenger, the man was always well treated, told that an answer would follow, and sent away empty-handed. No answer ever did come.

  During these days Jill spent more time at her scrying than ever, yet never did she find one sign of military action along the gwerbret’s borders. More and more, too, she worried about Dallandra. It had been close to a fortnight since she’d seen her, but of course, as she reminded herself, that lapse of time could have been a mere afternoon up in Evandar’s country. As she often did, she sent her gray gnome, who was beginning to form a seed of true mind, to find Dallandra. Although the gnome couldn’t give her a concrete message, often his arrival was enough to remind Dalla that Jill wanted to see her. Yet every time, the gnome came back without her. When Jill tried asking him simple questions, he would shrug and wander round her chamber, peering into things, shrugging again. She could figure out that he meant he simply hadn’t found Dalla anywhere he’d looked.

  Finally Jill decided to try contacting with Evandar or his people herself. When Prince Daralanteriel took his men out hunting, she rode with them until she found a place where two streams joined and a farmer’s fence ran to meet them. It was just this sort of contrast on the one hand and a mingling of disparate natures on the other that seemed to harbor those mysterious gates Dallandra had discussed with her.

  Jill waited until the prince and his men were out of earshot, then dismounted, tied her horse to a fencepost, and walked over the three-way join. She could indeed feel a slight difference in the place, a certain stirring of the energy of the earth, a tension in the air, a scurrying in the water. No doubt if she’d been carrying a torch, it would have burned the brighter on this spot. She glanced round—no one in sight but a white cow, drinking at the stream.

  “Evandar!” Jill called out. “Dalla! Can you hear me?”

  Nothing, not a sound, not a change of energy, not a ripple in the etheric forces to count as an answer. She sat down, leaning against a post, and allowed herself to slip into a light trance so that she was half-aware of the etheric, half of the physical. She could see in the blue light a sort of shimmering plate or shape, but she had not the slightest idea of what to do with it. With a shake of her head she brought herself back and abandoned the attempt.

  When she caught up with them, not one man of the Westfolk asked her what she’d been doing. They had had too much experience with dweomer to question a Wise One. As the warband let their horses walk slowly back to the dun, Jill rode beside Dar. The hunting had been good; they were bringing three deer back with them.

  “I’ve heard these sieges can last for months,” Dar remarked.

  “That’s true. Do you think you and your men can endure it? Being shut up, I mean.”

  “If it’s not safe to take Carra away, I’ll have no choice. I can endure what I need to. We all can.”

  “Good, because she won’t be safe out on the grass. I’ve thought of calling to other Wise Ones—you know that we have ways of doing sq—but frankly, Dar, I’ve been afraid to. It’s possible to be overheard, when you send thoughts through the fire and on the winds. And if it’s enemies that hear us, it won’t be a good thing.”

  “I’d wondered about that.” He turned in the saddle to look at her. “I assumed you knew your own affairs best.”

  “My thanks, but I felt I owed you an explanation. One other thing I wanted to tell you. Rhodry will be leaving Cengarn on the morrow, I’ve sent him on a dangerous errand indeed.”

  “I see, He’s not going alone, is he?”

  “Some of the Mountain People will be traveling with him. Why?”

  “That shape-changer worries me, the raven that he and Carra saw when he was escorting her to Cengarn. Does he have a bow with him?”

  “Not that I know of. Does he know how to use one?”

  Dar pinned.

  “You could say that. Oh, he’ll make light of his skill, and he’s got nowhere near the fine eye that, say, Calonderiel does, but all in all, he’s a man I wouldn’t mind having with me if I needed an archer.”

  “Ah. Do you have a spare bow I could take him, then?”

  “I do. I’ll bring it to your chamber when we get back, and a quiver of arrows as well.”

  It was late that day, close to sunset, when Otho came up to the dun to consult Jill about their plans. Although she’d been hoping that the dwarves had built some sort of hidden exit or tunnel out of Cengarn, no such thing existed —the bedrock was too close to the surface, or so Otho said, and such tunnels were dangerous to a town built to withstand siege if a traitor should betray their existence to any enemy.

  “Now, don’t you worry, though. We’ll stay in the wild hills. There’s a road there that only we know.”

  “It’ll have to do, then.”

  “No one’s going to spy us out, well, not unless they’re using dweomer, that is, and such would find us no matter how deep under the earth we were. There’s one good thing about Rhodry being half an elf. He can see well enough in the dark to trav
el at night, same as us, and that’s what we’ll do, travel at night and hide ourselves in the day.”

  “Splendid! You have my thanks, you know, for what it’s worth.”

  “Worth a great deal.” Otho sighed with a shake of his head. “Ah, it’s strange how things turn out! I keep thinking of you as that golden little lass you were when first I met you, years and years ago now, when you were just a silver dagger’s brat, trailing along behind your da. Do you remember the riddle I told you?”

  “About how ‘no one’ could tell me what craft I’d learn?” Jill smiled, remembering herself as a child standing in his silversmithy. “I do, at that. Nevyn and I both got a good laugh out of it, once I’d sworn myself over to study the dweomer, because ‘nev yn’ had told me, indeed.”

  Otho nodded, looking away with one of his rare smiles. Then he sighed, turning sad.

  “I’d best be making my farewell to the Princess Carramaena,” he said. “Doubtless I’ll never—ah well, I’m not going to weave myself a bad omen by saying that aloud. You’ll be down at the inn to see us off?”

  “I’ll go down now. I want a word with Rhodry.” She patted the quiver of arrows. “And I’ve got to give him Dar’s gift.”

  Jill found Rhodry pacing back and forth in the common room of the dwarven inn, and all alone, as if the innkeep and the other dwarves had fled to leave him to his brooding. By human standards he was a tall man, anyway, and in the midst of dwarven-sized furniture he seemed enormous, looming over everything in the pale, uncertain light, part blue phosphorescence, part fire’s glow, that danced about the stone chamber. He was in a somber mood—she could tell by the way he laughed one of his crazed peals at the sight of her. At times she found herself wondering if he’d been possessed by one of the old gods of war, Gamyl, perhaps, or even Epona, Mistress of Horses. She was afraid to probe his mind and find out.

  “What’s that you’re carrying?” Rhodry said. “Looks like a hunting bow.”