Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  Rhodry took the long scarf and tossed it over one shoulder. If he was going to have to walk blind at some point, he wanted to carry his own hooding. In the pale blue light from the phosphorescent walls the three of them hurried across the main cavern, skirting the maze, and turned into an alcove. Massive stone stairs led down, plunging straight and steep, much like the flights inside Cengarn, to a narrow landing below. To either side of the marbled floor, tunnels branched off, while ahead yet another flight of stairs plummeted down. Garin waved at the side tunnels.

  “These lead to the high city, and truly, if we weren’t leaving so soon, I’d try to talk the council round to let you see it. It’s a nice bit of work, if I do say so myself. But with luck, well be out of here by the morrow noon.”

  “I see.” Rhodry glanced down the stairs to darkness. “Doesn’t look like this scarf’s going to be all that needful.”

  “Well, if you didn’t have elven blood in your veins, we wouldn’t bother, like, but you do.” Garin considered the slope for a moment. “I think me that for safety’s sake you’d best be able to see on the way down.”

  With careful small steps they climbed down, keeping close to the wrought-iron handrails at the side. After some fifty feet the blue light from the landing above faded away, leaving the darkness gray to Rhodry’s half-elven sight. The steps just below him he could see, naught else. He had a brief wondering if dying was going to look like this, a peculiar light that would fade into a black like fur, as this light did at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Here we are.” Garin was whispering. “Hold where you are.”

  Rhodry did as he was told.

  “I can’t see a thing,” he remarked.

  “There’ll be light farther on.”

  “Well and good, then.”

  When Rhodry tied the scarf round his eyes, he truly could sense little difference. Garin laid his hand on his arm to guide him.

  “Just down here. There aren’t any more steps, by the by.”

  “Good. How high’s the ceiling?”

  “A grand thing that you asked.” Garin sounded profoundly apologetic. “You’ll have to stoop a bit, I’m afraid.”

  When at a tunnel entrance Rhodry reached up, he found the ceiling some inches shorter than he was. For some fifty paces they walked straight ahead; then Garin guided him round a corner. Through the scarf Rhodry was aware of reddish light, and he could smell charcoal mixed with a resinous incense. As they walked on, the red light faded to be replaced with a dim ghost of the usual blue phosphorescence. He heard a door open, then shut behind them; they turned a number of times; there were other doors. The dwarves need never worry, he decided, about his ever finding his way through this maze alone. Just as his back was beginning to ache from walking crouched, Baeo piped up in Dwarvish.

  “The hall of the mothers,” Garin translated. “You can stand up here, Rhodry, and pull that scarf off.”

  “My thanks.”

  When Rhodry did so, his eyes adjusted fast to the pale blue light, streaked in places with fine silver fibers—some new kind of moss, he supposed. They were standing in a circular cavern of living rock under a dome of the same, festooned with blue and silver light. Behind and ahead, to his left and his right, tunnels led off into darkness. Fresh air wafted through, and he could hear water running with the whisper of a distant waterfall. Waiting in the center was a group of three women, dressed in long white smocks, belted high under their breasts. Their long jet-black hair was braided or swept up and piled on top of their heads, kept in elaborate place with combs and pins of red and purple gem-stones. Although they were no taller than Deverrian girls, they moved with such authority that no one would have ever considered them immature.

  When Garin spoke in Dwarvish, they nodded, answering briefly in the same while they looked Rhodry over in some curiosity. One of them walked over and reached up a small and slender hand. For a moment he thought she was going to lay it on his chest, but she merely held it in front of him, moving it in a circular pattern as if she were feeling something in the air while she studied his face. Finally she nodded with a certain satisfaction.

  “You may travel on,” she said in Deverrian, and her accent reminded Rhodry sharply of Jahdo’s. “I think you be an honorable enough man, Rhodry son of two fathers, or so I hear be true. Bain’t?”

  “It is, my lady, in a manner of speaking. I was fathered by one man and raised by another.”

  She nodded again, considering.

  “Othara do be old,” she said at last. “She will ramble on, no doubt, but I would ask you be forbearing.”

  “I will, my lady.”

  With a last nod she glided back to the other women. The three of them moved aside, waving delicate hands at a side tunnel, standing in tableau as the men moved through their domain and onward. In the tunnel Rhodry had to crouch again, but mercifully they had only a few yards to travel to a small wooden door. Baeo spoke to Garin briefly, then knocked.

  “You’d best go in alone,” Garin said. “She tires too easily to have a lot of visitors at once.”

  A young dwarven woman, dressed in brown, her hair pulled simply back and tied with a thong, opened the door and ushered him inside. Although he had to stoop to enter, inside the large chamber, heavily perfumed with incense, he could stand. Here the light shone green and silver, and it took him a moment before he could see. The room swarmed with shadows because it was crammed with things: fine chests, chairs, small tables heaped with oddments of silver and steel, leather sacks, cloth sacks, all bulging and piled in corners or arranged on the chests.

  On the far side from the door, in a bed made of wrought iron, an ancient, tiny woman lay propped up on pillows and covered by blankets. Her maid had apparently put some effort into this visit, because Othara wore a fringed scarf round her neck, and her thin, pure white hair was elaborately dressed, studded with at least four combs that Rhodry could see. At the sound of his entry she smiled, and her skin lay so tight and thin upon her face that she was no longer truly even wrinkled. When the maid gestured him closer, Othara turned her head his way. Her eyes were so milky and blank that he knew age had blinded her.

  “Is this the man that did bring my son to me?” Her voice creaked like a door in the wind. “Come here. It’s pleasing for me to know what you do look like.”

  “Of course, my lady.”

  Rhodry knelt at the bedstead and let her touch his face, her fingers moving light and sure as they felt out the shape of it.

  “And a handsome lad at that,” she said with a little laugh. “What be your name again?”

  “Rhodry Maelwaedd, my lady.”

  “I shall call you Rori, because it be much like a dwarven name, and more becoming.” She turned her head toward her maid, standing in a shadowed corner. “Lopa, pour the man somewhat to drink. Men always want drink when they pay visits.”

  The maid smiled and rummaged at a little table, gliding over in a moment with a glass goblet of the usual dark liquor.

  “My thanks.” Rhodry took a sip for politeness’s sake. “It’s very good.”

  “Of course. Do you think I’d be serving less than the old vintage to the man who did save my son? Ah, my eldest he is, at that, and always a wayward lad, but if a mother love not her son, then who will, I always say. Eh?”

  “Indeed.”

  She nodded, turning her head in a gesture that reminded him of Meer, glancing round as she remembered what it was like to see.

  “We do sit deep inside the earth, Rori. Is that distressing to you?”

  “Only at moments, my lady. My people are creatures of the grasslands and forest, and at times, the dark here does touch my heart.”

  “No doubt. It aches the heart of most men, even our men, who long to wander in the light above. Never have I seen the sun, Rori. Never did I want to. What do you think of that, eh?”

  “I’m surprised, truly.”

  She smiled, pleased with the effect.

  “I have heard of the high world from my
sons. Does that not be one of the things a son does for his mother, to tell her of the world above? But I be a woman and a mother, six times a mother, twenty-two times a grandmother, and now and already seven times a great-grandmother, and the earth I do know. I did earn my place, here in the heart of the earth, six times over. In the heart of the earth women be born, and we do rest in her heart, our mother’s heart, and we do hear her tales, long tales of fire and rock, and in the end, we do die upon her breast.” She smiled again, nodding a little as if she heard distant music.

  Lopa came forward with a cup of steaming water that smelled of herbs and helped the ancient dwarf take a sip.

  “Ah, well brewed, my dear,” Othara said. “Very well brewed. Does our guest need more drink?”

  “I don’t, but my thanks,” Rhodry said hastily. This “old vintage” was turning out to be quite strong, and he did have the long stairs to climb back to the upper world. “It’s truly good.”

  She smiled, nodded, glanced round the room with milky eyes.

  “They tell me, Rori, that you do travel north, hunting an ancient wyrm among the fire mountains.”

  “I do, my lady.”

  “Ah, the north, the dragon north, the country of the Great Rift. We women call it the land of blood and fire, the earth’s blood, that do be, that do run red and gold through all the black veins round the rift. A land of splendor in the way we women think, but the men, they do fear it, the blood of fire. Do you know, Rori, why the earth does bleed so, there in the northland?”

  “I don’t. Will you tell me, my lady?”

  “I will, for be it not a woman’s work to tell the men tales of the deep earth? We live and we listen in the deep earth, and we do hear her tales, and we pass those tales on, mother to daughter to granddaughter, so the sons may know.” She paused, motioning for another sip of herbed brew. “The northland and the southland, they do be joined along the high mountains, the Roof of the World, or so the sons call it, but I tell you that it be no roof, no sheltering there, but the Great Rift.” For a long moment she rested, her mouth working. “The northland and the southland, they do go their own ways, Rori, like a wife who grows to hate her husband and does send him back to the high city. The earth splits and tears along the high mountains, and she bleeds, she bleeds. Some fine day the tear will run so deep that it will reach the sea, and in will rush the water, cold and salt, to soothe that burning.”

  Rhodry caught his breath. Othara laughed, a low mutter like gravel sliding downhill.

  “Be you frightened at this thought, the earth rifting and splitting?”

  “I see no shame in admitting it, my lady. I am. What of the folk who live there?”

  She laughed, then coughed. Lopa slipped an arm under her, helped her sit upright, and held the cup. Othara drank more of her medicinal, then lay back, resting before she spoke again.

  “Oh, they have a few more years before they’ll feel the danger, thousands upon thousands of years, Rori, a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, no doubt. The earth runs deep, but she runs slow.”

  “Well and good, then.”

  “The men think the earth is steady, but we women know that rock moves, floating on a sea of fire. It be our life, the earth, the deep, deep earth. Did you know that the very rocks do float upon fire?”

  “I didn’t, my lady, and I give you a thousand thanks for the telling of it.”

  She smiled and yawned. One hand plucked at the edge of the blankets, her fingers as long and thin as twigs, and as gnarled. Lopa stepped forward, alarmed, turning to Rhodry and framing a few silent words, “Leave soon.” He nodded to show that he understood, but Othara recovered herself.

  “I’ll give you a present, Rori, for all that you’re both a man and an elf, because you’ve brought my son back to me.” The old woman turned her head Lopa’s way. “Open the chest in the corner. Find the lead casket and do open that. You shall find a bit of blue silk. Well, it were blue once. Unwind it and you shall find a blue stone upon a chain.”

  The young woman scuttled off to do as she was bid. Out of a developing sense of what dwarven courtesy would include, Rhodry pointedly refrained from looking her way as she rootled through the ancient woman’s treasures. While they waited Othara closed her eyes, and her breathing rasped so loudly that Rhodry feared she’d drifted off. When the girl returned, though, clutching a gold chain, Othara held out her hand. She took the stone from Lopa, felt it carefully, then passed it back.

  “That be the one. Give it to him.”

  With a low whistle of awe, Rhodry took a chunk of lapis lazuli the size of a crabapple, fine-shaped and polished into an egg. At the narrow end the fine gold chain ran through a drilled hole lined with silver, to prevent wear, he supposed. Instinctively he closed his hand over it.

  “It feels like a presence,” he burst out. “A live thing, not a stone.”

  He opened his hand and looked again: it seemed an ordinary gem, if indeed so big a piece of such a rare thing could be called ordinary. Othara smiled, a draw of blue lips.

  “You feel it, do you?” she rasped. “Good, good. Then you be fit to own it. There be great dweomer on that stone. Wear it, and I think me your enemies shall find it a great travail to scry you out.”

  Rhodry slipped the chain over his head and settled the gem under his shirt.

  “I don’t know how to thank you enough,” he began. “You’re most generous—”

  The old woman had fallen asleep, her head turned into her pillow. With a waggle of her finger and a flick of her apron, Lopa shooed him out of the chamber to the corridor, where Garin waited.

  “Well, that was kind of you to indulge the old dear,” Garin said.

  “Ye gods! ‘Old dear’ indeed! She’s one of the most powerful women I’ve ever met, and that includes Jill. Truly, my only regret is that Jill’s not here to sit with Othara awhile and hear her lore.”

  Lopa shot him a glance brimming with approval, but Garin seemed, really, to have heard not a word.

  “Very kind,” he said again. “Well, we’d best be getting back up. We’ve a lot of planning to do before we leave.”

  Over the weeks that Rhodry had been gone, Jill had fatten into the habit of scrying for him several times a day. Since she knew him so well, all die had to do was focus her attention on some mottled natural thing—a fire, a bank of clouds, wind moving over trees, and suchlike—and think of him to see his whereabouts. She’d traced his way through the hills and into Lin Serr, seen the old gatehouse through his eyes as well, and stored in her memory a hundred questions to ask him about these strange places in the hope, at least, that he’d live to tell her.

  It was just after Rhodry had been given his audience with Othara that Jill was sitting in her tower room, looking out the window at a summer storm piling dark on the horizon. When she thought of Rhodry she saw nothing, not the barest trace or flicker of an image, not the slightest feeling of his presence.

  “Odd,” she said aloud.

  On her table stood a cup of water. She picked it up, swirled the liquid round, and scried into that. Not a thing. She set it down and returned to the window, but no matter how carefully she focused her mind, she simply could not scry Rhodry out. More annoyed than frightened, she turned her thoughts to Otho instead and saw him immediately. With Mic trotting beside him, the elderly dwarf was hurrying down a corridor that shimmered with phosphorescence.

  As Jill watched, he crossed the main entry cavern of the city, turned down a short tunnel, and knocked on a door. She recognized it as opening onto the room in which she’d previously scried Rhodry out, but the moment the door opened the vision vanished into a blur of gray like smoke. Even though she called upon the various elemental lords that presided over scrying, her vision simply refused to penetrate the smudge.

  Muttering several truly foul oaths, Jill turned from the window and began pacing back and forth across the room. Someone had thrown a dweomer shield over Rhodry, then, but whether that someone was friend or foe, she had no way of k
nowing. Yet she felt no fear, sensed no danger, either, and knew that she would if Rhodry were in some mortal jeopardy. There was nothing left for her but to hope that at various times Garin or Otho would move far enough away from Rhodry for her to trace their party as they traveled.

  She wandered to the window, stood looking out at the scudding clouds while she debated flying one last patrol round the dun. Scrying in the etheric double during a storm would be impossible.

  “Jill?” The voice rang outside her door. “Wise One, may I disturb you?”

  “Of course, my prince. Come in.”

  Daralanteriel flung the door back and strode in, one hand clutched on his sword hilt.

  “What’s so wrong, Your Highness?” Jill said.

  The prince seemed to catch himself on the edge of some fault. He took a deep breath, letting his hand drop from the weapon.

  “My apologies, but it’s about that huge lout of a Round-ear.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yraen. Every time I turn round he’s right there.”

  “Well, Your Highness, I asked him to stand guard—”

  “Oh, I know, but I’ve got twenty men of my own, don’t I?”

  “When you ride out to hunt, they ride with you.”

  “I could leave some of them behind to guard my own wife, if that’s what you mean.”

  Jill thought she understood—his pride was wounded.

  “Your Highness, never would I impugn your ability to keep Carra safe. It’s just that human treachery is best spotted by human eyes. Yraen’s a shrewd and suspicious man who’s been in some rather ugly situations in his day. He knows the worst side of his own kind quite well.”

  Dar considered, chewing on his lower lip, By elven standards he was little more than a boy, much as Carra by human ones was still in many ways a girl, and he looked it that evening, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his dark hair uncombed and tousled.

  “It’s because of Lord Matyc,” Jill went on. “Consider how close he was to the gwerbret, how well entrenched here at the dun. If Rhodry hadn’t spotted him, he could have worked untold harm.”