Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

“Ah.” Dar looked up with a brief smile. “Well, that’s true spoken. Wise One, my apologies. I hate to argue with such as you, but it griped my soul, always seeing the man there. But you’re right.” His voice colored with learned con’ tempt. “He is a silver dagger.”

  “Just so, but a decent man and a fine watchdog withal.”

  “If the Wise One says so. My thanks for hearing me out.”

  “You’re most welcome.”

  Dar lingered, studying the floor.

  “Is there somewhat else, Your Highness?”

  “Oh, not truly. I was just wondering, we were all wondering, truly, if you’d seen anything yet. Enemies, I mean. The waiting’s starting to stretch everyone’s nerves like bow-strings.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t. I assure you that you’ll know as soon as I do.”

  Prince or not, Dar had to be content with that. Over the next few days, whenever she walked about the dun, Jill could see the truth of his words. Servants squabbled and swore, while the men in the warbands shoved each other and got into fistfights; Carra and the serving women seemed always on the edge of tears, while Lady Labanna was very, very cheerful, except in repose, when she looked deathly ill. Once, even, late on an afternoon when everyone was hungry for their dinner, Jill rounded a shed out by the stables and saw pages brawling, screaming and punching each other while they rolled back and forth on the filthy cobbles.

  “Stop it!” Jill yelled, darting forward. “Stop it right now, or I’ll turn you all into frogs!”

  The threat brought instant peace. The boys broke apart and rolled free of each other, young Lord Allonry to one side, Jahdo and Cae to the other. Although Jahdo and Cae seemed mostly bruised and filthy, Alli’s nose bled and his lip was split.

  “He was hitting Cae,” Jahdo burst out. “I was trying to make him stop.”

  Cae nodded fast agreement. Alli merely sniveled.

  “I see,” Jill said. “My lord Allonry, I should have thought you’d have tasted enough trouble over that matter of the root cellar without wanting another meal of it.”

  “They all hate me because of that,” Alli whined. “They mock me all the time and they won’t let me forget the whip-ping I got.”

  Jill fixed Cae with a sorcerous-seeming eye. He turned white and began to stammer.

  “A bargain,” she said. “Jahdo and Cae, neither of you mention the root cellar again. Alli, in return, no more mocking Jahdo for a bondman. The first one to break the bargain—into the marsh with him!”

  Never had Jill had anyone agree with her so fast as the three lads did. She sent Cae off to the cook and Alli to the chamberlain, but she took a look at Jahdo’s bruises herself.

  “Naught too bad,” she announced. “But you’ll need a bath before dinner.”

  “I do know that, my lady, and bathe I shall, though it be likely it be in the horse trough there, all cold as it be. I do miss the hot springs of home, I truly do.”

  “No doubt. Well, with luck we’ll get you back home one of these days soon.”

  “Do you truly believe this thing, my lady? I daren’t hope, from the wanting of it so bad.”

  Jill considered the question seriously, but the only dweomer feeling she received was a small surety.

  “I do believe it, Jahdo, though I’ll wager the way home won’t be all that easy to walk. I’ll do my best to make it so.”

  Jahdo grinned, a lopsided gesture what with the swelling on his right cheek.

  “If you do say it, then it be so,” he pronounced. “Yraen do say that sorcerers, they do know what be so and what be not — He says you’ll find these enemies as soon as soon.”

  “Let’s hope Yraen’s right, then. Now go wash that muck off you.”

  The boy’s blind faith in her power wrung Jill’s heart, because there was nothing she could do but watch and patrol, whether in the hawk form or her etheric double. Although at moments she was tempted to hope that Alshandra had given up her mad plan, deep in her heart, deep in her very soul where all dweomer warnings spring, Jill knew that there was no hope, only waiting.

  When Rhodry and the dwarves left Lin Serr, at first they had easy walking, with a pack animal to carry their gear down a proper dwarven road and farms close at hand to sell them fresh food. At every farm where they stopped, Rhodry saw only men, most of them young, some little better than boys, who lived a life as communal as any warband’s. As far as he could tell, anyway, from his brief looks round, and he certainly didn’t want to be caught prying, they slept in barracks and ate in communal cook houses as well.

  After three days of this comfortable travel, they reached the edge of the plateau, where the farmland petered out among the rising hills and the white mountains towered close. Like clouds the snowy peaks seemed to float above pine forests so dark a green they seemed almost black, streaked here and there with outcrops of gray basalt. At the last farm Otho traded the mule for the privilege of cramming their packs with all the dried food and cheese they could hold.

  “And it looks scant enough,” Otho remarked with a sigh. “No doubt the gods will starve us before they throw us into the dragon’s maw, just to make us suffer, like.”

  “Otho old lad,” Rhodry said. “If you’d stayed behind you’d be handing over your life’s fortune in jewels to your debtors right now.”

  Otho snarled and swung a weak fist in his direction.

  “We may be able to snare a rabbit or two,” Garin put in. “Gather a few wild herbs, certainly, and spear some trout along the way.”

  Rhodry found that a heavy pack sits lighter on a man who’s used to walking. Although his back burned by the end of the first day’s march, bit by bit he grew accustomed to the weight until he could almost keep up with the dwarves, not that he would ever match their stamina fully. Even once he hit his stride, they were still forced to stop for rests they didn’t need and to make camp a little earlier than they would have chosen on their own.

  The terrain was hard traveling, anyway—steep, rocky hills, thickly forested valleys, some narrow enough to be called ravines and little more—treacherous enough to make them decide to march during the day. Although Garin seemed sure of the route, Rhodry never was aware of their following anything that could be called a path, merely places where the scrub and brambles grew less thickly. At times, only some hard work with a dwarven ax got them clear of underbrush without doubling back. The traveling might have been easier, of course, if it weren’t for Otho’s constant grumbling, whether he was snarling in rage or merely muttering under his breath. At least once a day Garin would threaten to drown the old man and leave his bones for the ravens.

  Every night they camped as high as possible and preferably among rocks, not trees, where they could take turns standing watches and keep an eye out, as Garin said, just in case something was following them. Yet they never saw an enemy, not in the night or even during the day. For the first time all summer, Rhodry slept without dreams of watching eyes. From these high camps he could see for miles, looking back down toward Lin Serr and Deverry itself, lost beyond the horizon, as if it had fallen away from this vertical world of rock and ravine. When he turned north he would see the white peaks, so close in the morning air that it seemed he could jump, stretch, and touch them.

  After some six days in wild country, when they were beginning to run low on supplies, the weather began to change. Toward sunset cirrus clouds wisped across the sky from the west, and by the time the moon rose, about halfway between its first quarter and its full, a mackerel sky webbed its silver light. Morning brought a gray roil of cloud. In a whipping wind they broke camp and headed north in silence, looking up as often as they looked forward.

  “How far to Haen Marn?” Mic asked.

  “I don’t know,” Garin said, chewing on his lower lip. “But we should find the first road stone today.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Otho snapped. “You’ve been there thrice.”

  “And each time it appeared at a different twist in the road.”

>   Otho goggled.

  “It did, and there’s naught more I can say about it.” Garin shrugged mightily. “Disbelieve me all you want, but I know what I saw. And the third time no one let me in, either.”

  “What is this place?” Rhodry said. “A dun? And what kind of people would turn a stranger from their gates, anyway?”

  “People who live by different laws than yours, but they made sure I had the food to get myself home again. I’m not saying a thing more, because you won’t be believing me, anyway. You’ll all see for yourselves, you will, and with luck it’ll be soon now.”

  Round midday they panted up a particularly steep hill, crested a lifeless rise of black basalt, and looked down into a thickly forested valley, some two hundred yards across at the widest point and about five hundred long. Down this length a stream ran, crossing the middle of a clearing about fifty yards wide and too precisely circular to be a natural formation.

  “Oho!” Garin said. “Now that looks promising, lads.”

  They fought their way downhill through grasping brambles and thick shrubs to the valley floor, hit the-stream, and followed it back and forth along what seemed to be its entire length. They never found the clearing.

  “Ye gods,” Garin whispered. “It’s starting already. Well, we might as well get out of this cursed gulch.”

  “Now wait,” Rhodry said. “I for one need a meal, and a clearing like that just doesn’t up and take itself away.”

  “It doesn’t, eh? Well and good, then. You lead and we’ll look for it.”

  “Done, then. Even a wretched elf like me can follow a running stream.”

  Back they went, and this time they’d gone not more than twenty yards when the trees began thinning ahead of them. Grinning in triumph Rhodry led them straight out into open ground.

  “There we are! I knew it—” All at once he felt his grin disappearing. “But where was it before?”

  “Just so,” Garin said. “Just so.”

  Mic and Otho were looking round openmouthed.

  “What’s that over there?” Mic pointed. “Looks like stone.”

  Stone it turned out to be, a huge pointed slab of black basalt, tipped on end and graved with writing in the dwarven language. Garin ran one finger down it, as if to assure himself of its reality.

  “This is the first marker on the road,” he said. “The one I was talking about. I doubt me if I would have found it, but Rhodry did, and that tells us somewhat, lads.”

  Everyone looked at him expectantly.

  “Ye gods, think!” Garin snapped. “It means he’s been foreseen or foretold or suchlike. From now on, Rhodry lad, you lead.”

  “What?” Rhodry said. “I’ve never been here before, and you’ve been thrice.”

  “So? I’ll act as guide, like. You’re the leader.”

  Otho moaned and rolled his eyes heavenward.

  “To think a cousin of mine and him an envoy at that would have gone daft! And us in mortal danger, too!”

  “We’re not in any danger at all,” Garin sighed. “And I know what I’m doing.”

  “Well and good, then,” Rhodry said. “Far be it from me to argue with dweomer, and this place stinks of it. Here, O Guide.” He paused for a grin. “What sayeth this most ancient stone?”

  “If you’re going to talk like an apprentice bard,” Garin said with some asperity, “I’m going to tip you over the next cliff. It says, and in good plain language, too, ‘This is the first writing stone on the road to Haen Marn.’ As I remember, the first two times I came this way, I found two more, and the last time I found four.”

  “And I’ll wager that they were always in different places, too,” Otho put in.

  “Just that.” Garin glanced up at the threatening sky. “At the moment, lads, I’d say we need to find shelter more than another trail marker.”

  As if in agreement a few fat drops fell, splashing on the black stone. Distant thunder cracked.

  “I knew our luck with the weather wasn’t going to hold, not this time of year,” Garin went on. “Over there, O Leader, your guide seeeth a clump of trees that look a fair bit lower than the rest. I say we get under them and let the tall trees draw the lightning.”

  In a patter of drops on branches above them they finished their meal, but as soon as they took to the trail again,the rain began in earnest. Although the greased canvas lashed over their packs kept the food dry, the men were soaked in minutes. They sloshed on, keeping to the lower ground and letting the lightning seek the high. Even though he was wet, chafed, and tired, Rhodry found himself singing whenever he had the breath, just odd snatches of elven songs that he’d learned from his natural father. He found himself laughing at every crack of lightning. Above them the white peaks hung invisible, shrouded in cloud.

  They camped wet that night and traveled the next day in weather that alternately threatened and made good its threat of rain, until finally, at midafternoon, on a race of wind the storm blew over. By sunset, the sky was clearing to the north and east. When they began looking for a camp’ site, Rhodry was expecting that he’d find another marker stone as well, just because it seemed fitting and no reason more. They clambered out of one last valley and climbed to the top of a hill, where boulders among high grass offered some kind of shelter. While the dwarves squabbled about it, Rhodry stood on the crest and looked back to the south, down the long slope up which they’d climbed, where dark clouds lingered over the forests, wreathed with mist as blue as smoke in the far distance. His old world lay under that mist, and he wondered why he was so sure he’d come into a new one.

  “Oy, Rhodry!” Garin called. “Are we camping here or not?”

  “We’re not. I don’t know why, but we’re not.”

  The answer lay not a half mile beyond. They scrambled down the hill on the north face, made a little turn between two slopes, and came out facing west to see ahead and some hundred yards down into a long valley, bisected by a deep river, flowing north to south. To the south, their left, grassland scattered with oak trees lay between steep hills all brushy and forested. To the north rose a high wall of cliff,blocking a view of hills beyond—they could just see peaks, black with trees, over the rise of sheer rock.

  “Oh, ye gods!” Garin whispered. “Haen Marn.”

  Rhodry laughed, one of his berserk peals as wild as a thunderclap.

  “This is it?” Otho snapped. “I don’t see a cursed thing but trees, neither dun nor hovel, naught. Wait! Those trees! Oaks don’t grow this high up.”

  “Worms and slimes!” Mic sputtered. “What’s wrong with this view? Is it my eyes?”

  As long as they looked down into the valley, “this view” made perfect sense, but when Rhodry looked round, he couldn’t see how the crest where he stood, on the east slope above the valley, connected up to the cliffs at the valley’s north end. They saw no dweomer-induced cloud or magical blackness swimming in the air; it was simply impossible to look at the place where the geographies must have sorted themselves out. The crest trotted right along, and the cliffs picked up—except they couldn’t have, but they did. The valley lay self-contained in one landscape; they all stood in another. The other dwarves were fuming, looking down, looking up again, staring all round them, but Garin merely sighed.

  “Haen Marn,” he said again, as if that explained everything. He pointed north, where the river flowed out through a crack in the cliff face. “That’s the entrance. Haen Marn itself lies beyond the cliffs.”

  “And what do we do, swim?” Otho snapped. “It’s a cold dark day for that.”

  Garin ignored him. Automatically Rhodry looked at the sky. The sun was already sinking off to the west, turning the scudding clouds deceptively bright.

  “Well, at least we won’t camp wet,” Rhodry said. “Better get on down, lads. Night’s falling.”

  Otho snorted profoundly. Settling their packs, they headed downhill, picking their way through the underbrush and boulders to come out into a valley brimming with shadows. When Garin turned
north and began marching purposefully toward the cliff, the rest trailed after, looking up and around them. While the valley itself matched the view they were remembering from the crest, some other thing fit wrong, so subtlely skewed that none of them could specify it. Off to the north, above the rise of cliff, Rhodry could still see the white peaks, about where they should have been and as high, too.

  “It’s the wind!” Rhodry said abruptly. “It was quiet up above, but it’s blowing here. Should be the other way round.”

  “Just so,” Otho snarled. “It’s eerie and dweomer-soaked and uncanny, and I hate it.”

  Mic nodded; there was not much more to add, truly.

  Eventually they caught up with Garin, who was rootling about between a trio of enormous gray boulders that lay at the foot of the cliff. Just as they reached him he grinned in triumph and pulled free a silver horn, all nicked and tarnished, at the end of a long chain.

  “There,” he said. “I’ll call, and let’s hope someone answers.”

  “Before we grow much older,” Otho muttered.

  “Don’t get your hopes up about that.”

  Even though the horn looked as if someone had been kicking it back and forth on the rocky ground, when Garin blew, the sound rang piercingly sweet, three long notes that brought tears to Rhodry’s eyes, although he could never say why, not then nor later. When he glanced at the dwarves, he caught Mic wiping his eyes on the back of his hand, and even Otho seemed moved. Garin blew the three notes three times, then returned the horn to its hiding place in a hollow among the rocks.

  “Now we wait. Naught else for it.”

  In the event they waited till the next afternoon. Some hundred yards from the river they found a sheltered spot among rocks where they could peg and weight their canvas lean-to. In between their watches the dwarves drowsed, sitting upright, heads on knees, and Rhodry slept, wedged tight between the packs and a boulder. He woke once in the middle of the night to hear rain drumming overhead, and a second time, some hours before dawn, when Mic shook him awake to go stand a watch.

  Stretching and yawning Rhodry eased himself free of the shelter. Outside the rain had stopped and the wind risen. When he looked up he could see the clouds rolling and scudding before the nearly-full moon. The stars winked through the drifting gray, then disappeared again, only to return in sheets of sky. He paced back and forth, cold and aching from one night too many spent sleeping on hard ground. He yawned, rubbing his face with both hands, frowning a little at the growth of beard. All his life, Rhodry had hated being bearded. When he thought back to some of the trouble he’d gone through to keep himself cleanshaven on the long road or out in the Westlands, he had to laugh at himself, in fact, but he was definitely hoping that this mysterious Haen Mam would offer a traveler soap and hot water.