A Time of Omens (43 page)

“We do, Your Grace, and never would we break those laws.”

“Good.” Drwmyc allowed himself a thin smile. “But just in case temptation strikes, like, I’m putting guards on the silver dagger. Captain?” He turned to one of the men standing behind him. “See to it, will you, when we leave the pavilion?”

With the morning the malover reconvened, and the proceedings over the war droned on. Round noon, the gwerbret ruled in Comerr’s favor, that his clan should rule the new tierynrhyn. Since Tewdyr was dead without an heir, his grace split his lands twixt Erddyr and Nomyr, as a reward for bringing the matter under the rule of law. Since there was a vast sea of details to sail across, however, it was late in the day before everything was settled. Yraen was half expecting that Rhodry’s matter would be postponed yet again, but the gwerbret had forgotten neither it nor his obligation to even the least of the men in his rhan. When the proceedings were finally concluded to the lords’ satisfaction, Drwmyc rose, looking over the assembly.

“There you are, silver dagger. Let’s settle your matter now, and then we’ll have a good dinner to celebrate, like. Maybe I can talk Tieryn Magryn into standing for some mead for all you men. Come forward. We’ll hear what you and that other fellow, the spokesman—Gwar, was it?—have to say.”

The gwerbret’s jovial mood certainly boded well for Rhodry’s case, Yraen decided. In answer to the summons, Rhodry went forward, bowed, then handed his sword to a guard and knelt at the gwerbret’s feet. Gwar, however, seemed to have disappeared, though his three friends were sitting over at the right side of the pavilion. They got up
and began bowing and making apologies, while everyone else started grinning and making jokes about privies. After a few brief moments Gwar did indeed appear, hurrying into the big tent and threading his way down to the front. Yraen was suddenly struck by an oddity; after being so bold the day before, Gwar looked toward the ground as he walked as if he were afraid to meet anyone’s gaze.

“Good, good. Hurry up, lad,” the gwerbret said. “The rest of you, hold your tongues now! Let’s get the judgment under way.”

Yraen saw Rhodry studying Gwar as his enemy handed his sword over, and though he couldn’t see the silver dagger too clearly from this distance, he would have sworn that Rhodry had gone a little pale. Certainly he half rose from his kneel as if on sudden guard. Gwar walked forward, heading, or so it seemed, for the other side of the gwerbret’s chair. All at once he hesitated for a bare flick of an eyelash, then spun round and rushed at Rhodry, who had no time to get to his feet. Yraen saw Gwar throw himself on Rhodry and grab him round the throat, and the bronze knife gleam in Rhodry’s hand, before the pavilion erupted into shouting. Men leapt to their feet and swarmed forward. With a yell Yraen jumped up, thanking the gods for making him tall enough to see over this pack.

The gwerbret himself was on his feet, sword in hand and slashing at the man who’d broken order in his malover, but Gwar was already dead, crumpled over Rhodry’s shoulder like a sack of meal. As Yraen shoved himself forward through the mob, Rhodry slowly rose, shoving the corpse off, staggering to his feet with the reddened bronze knife in his hand. His neck bled from scratches and punctures, as if he’d been clutched by a gigantic cat.

“Chirurgeon!” the gwerbret yelled. “Get one of the chirurgeons!”

“Your Grace, it’s only a scratch.” Rhodry’s voice was choked and rasping, his face dead-pale. “But ye gods!”

Yraen managed to reach his side just as the captain of the gwerbret’s guard knelt and turned the corpse over. For a moment he stared, then he began cursing in a steady foul stream. The gwerbret looked and went pale himself. Lying at Rhodry’s feet was a creature in Gwar’s clothes, a badger-headed thing with a blunt snout and fangs. Protruding
from the sleeves of its shirt were hairy paws with thick black talons. Rhodry held up the bronze knife.

“Told you not to mock the herbwoman,” he croaked. “Without this, he’d have strangled me.”

All round them men were pushing forward to see, swearing or yelping and passing the news back to those who couldn’t get close. Suddenly Yraen thought of the obvious.

“Gwar!” he snapped. “What’s happened to him, then?”

While the apprentice chirurgeon washed Rhodry’s throat clean and put a few stitches in the worst wounds, his grace’s entire warband began searching the area. It wasn’t long before they found Gwar, naked and strangled, round back of the dun. At that point the assembled warbands, battle-hardened men all of them, began to break and panic. Even though the gwerbret sent to the tieryn’s town for every priest he could find, morale washed away like sand under a tide of rumors and speculations. All his grace could do was to call the various lords to him.

“Get your men on the road,” he snapped. “We’ll settle any last things with heralds. Get your men together and riding for home, and do it now.”

The lords were entirely too ready to obey for Yraen’s taste, but he did have to wonder at himself for being one of the calmest men in the pavilion.

“I guess it’s because I saw the shadow-thing, and I was there when the herbwoman gave you that knife, and all that. Hold a moment—herbwoman, indeed! Who was she, Rhodry?”

Rhodry merely shrugged for an answer.

“He shouldn’t be talking,” the chirurgeon snapped.

“One thing, though, lad.” Rhodry immediately broke this sensible rule. “Lord Erddyr. Find him and get our hire.”

“I can’t be asking him for coin now!”

Rhodry looked at him with one raised eyebrow.

“Oh, very well,” Yraen sighed. “I’m gone already and running, too.”

Yraen found his lordship in his tent, where he stood watching his body-servant shove his possessions all anyhow into whatever sack or saddlebag presented itself. The lord was more than a little pale, and his mouth was slack as he rubbed his mustaches over and over. When he saw Yraen,
however, he made an effort to draw himself up and salvage dignity.

“I owe your wages, I know,” he said. “You’re not coming back with us, are you?”

The question contained an obvious “you’re not welcome.”

“I don’t think Rhodry should ride, my lord.” Yraen was more than willing to play into the courtesy of the thing. “We’ll find an inn or suchlike to rest in, and then be on our way.”

Erddyr nodded, concentrating on opening the pouch that hung at his belt. He poured out a random handful of coin and shoved it in Yraen’s direction. Briefly Yraen thought of counting it, but he wasn’t that much of a silver dagger, not yet, at least.

For all that Rhodry kept saying his wounds were mere scratches, his face was so pale by the time the chirurgeon was done tending them that Yraen begged him to go lie down somewhere. The gwerbret, however, had other ideas.

“I think me you’d best ride out, silver dagger. I hate being this inhospitable to a man who’s done me no wrong, but once news of this thing gets round…”

“I understand, Your Grace,” Rhodry croaked.

“Don’t try to talk, man.” Drwmyc turned to Yraen. “Do you both have decent horses?”

“We do, Your Grace. Rhodry lost his in the war, but Lord Erddyr replaced it.”

“Good. Then saddle up and go.” He turned, looking down at the corpse. “I’m going to have this thing burned. If the common folk see or hear of it, the gods only know what they’ll do, and I doubt me if you two will be safe here.”

“Your Grace, that’s cursed unjust! Rhodry’s the victim, not the criminal.”

“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry managed to speak with some force. “Listen to his grace. He’s right.”

Yraen found their horses, saddled them and loaded up their gear, then brought them round to the rear of the pavilion where Rhodry was waiting for him, still under guard, but this time, Yraen supposed, the men were there to keep him away from others, as if he carried some kind of plague of the supernatural that the populace might catch. Yraen felt the injustice of it eating at him, but since he had
no desire to molder in the gwerbret’s dungeon keep, he kept his mouth shut.

At least they could travel unmolested; he doubted if Gwar’s three friends would bother to follow them, and with old Badger Snout dead, Rhodry was probably safe enough from creatures of that sort, whatever they might be. Yet, as he thought about it, Yraen no longer knew what might or might not be probable. His entire view of the universe had just gotten itself shattered like a clay cup hitting a stone floor. The calm and literate air of his father’s court, where bards and philosophers alike were always welcome, seemed farther away and stranger than the Otherlands. As they rode out of the dun, he found he had nothing to say. He could only wonder why he’d ever left the Holy City.

Already the sun hung low, catching a few mares’ tails high in the sky and turning them gold, a promise of rain coming in a day or two. A few miles from the dun, they crested a rise and saw down below them an unmarked crossroads, one way heading roughly east and west, the other running off to the north. A rider was waiting in the cross, a tall blond man on a white horse with rusty-red ears.

“Evandar, no doubt,” Rhodry whispered. “And me too hoarse to talk!” He tried to laugh, but all that emerged was a rusty cracking sound that made Yraen feel cold all over.

“Just be quiet, then! I’ll try to bargain with him.”

As they walked their horses down, Evandar waited, sitting easy in his saddle and smiling in greeting, yet as soon as they drew close, his eyes narrowed.

“What happened to your neck?” he snapped at Rhodry.

“This thing tried to strangle him,” Yraen broke in. “A fiend from the hells with a badger head, like, and claws. Rhodry killed it with the bronze knife that the old herb-woman gave him.”

“Good, good.” Evandar was still looking at Rhodry. “It came for that whistle, you know. Why don’t you let me have it back? They won’t come bothering you anymore.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Yraen said with as much authority as he could summon. “We want some answers.”

“Do you now?” Evandar paused to smile. “Well, I spoke to Dallandra, and she did mention that, but I’ve none to give you. That whistle, however, is mine by right of a treaty sealed in my own country, and I do wish to have it back.
You wouldn’t want me riding to the gwerbret and accusing you of theft, would you now?”

Rhodry made a painful gurgling noise that made Evandar frown.

“You’ve been hurt badly, haven’t you? That aches my heart, that you’ve taken a wound over a thing of mine. I consider you under my protection, you see.” Evandar held out one slender, pale hand. “Rhodry, please?”

Rhodry considered, then shrugged. He wrapped his reins round his saddle peak, then loosened his belt and reached inside his shirt to pull out the whistle. In the graying twilight it glimmered an unnatural white.

“Now here,” Yraen snapped. “You can’t just give it back after all that’s happened. He should at least give us a price for it.”

“Well put, lad, and fair enough.” Evandar raised one hand, snapped his fingers, and plucked a leather bag out of midair. “Here’s a sack of silver, given to Dallandra by that lord, but she has no use or need of it in my country.” He tossed it to Yraen. “How’s that for a price?”

“Not enough. I’ll hand the silver back again in return for some answers.”

“Keep the silver, for answers you shall not have until you guess them. I pose riddles, and men must find the answers. I never solve a riddle for free, lad, and it’s unwise of you to keep asking.”

Maybe it was only the darkening light, or the cool spring wind ruffling his hair, but Yraen abruptly shuddered. When he glanced at Rhodry, he found the silver dagger grinning in his usual daft way, as if leaving this exchange to his apprentice.

“Very well, then,” Yraen said. “We’ll take the silver.”

When Rhodry flipped the whistle over, Evandar caught it in one hand and bowed from the saddle.

“I’ll give you somewhat more in return, then, as thanks for your graciousness. Which way are you riding?”

“North, I suppose, to Cerrgonney.” Yraen glanced at Rhodry, who nodded agreement. “There’s always work for a silver dagger to the north.”

“Or east.” Rhodry cleared his throat with a rasp. “The Auddglyn, maybe.”

“I can’t ride through Deverry to get there.”

“And Rhodry had best stay clear of Eldidd,” Evandar broke in. “Why the Auddglyn, Rhodry?”

“We need a smith, and I used to know one down in Dun Mannannan.”

“Otho the dwarf!” Evandar smiled suddenly and bowed again. “Did you know that he made that ring you wear? Ah, I didn’t think you did. Well, he’s gone from Dun Mannannan, but his apprentice took over his shop, and he’s a skilled man, for a human being. Follow me.”

When Evandar turned his horse and headed for the east-running road, Rhodry followed automatically. Yraen hesitated, knowing in some wordless way that dweomer hung all around him. At this crossroads he had reached the crux of his entire life. He could sit here and restrain his horse, let them ride off without him, and then return to his safe life in Dun Deverry. His clan would forgive him for their joy in having him back; he would put his one adventure into his memory like a jewel locked in a casket and take up again the ceremonial duties of a minor prince. Ahead neither Rhodry nor Evandar looked back, and as Yraen watched, he saw what seemed to be gray mist rising from the road, billowing up to hide them—or was it to hide him, to rescue him from the foolish choice he’d made when he left home?

“Hold! Rhodry, wait for me!”

Yraen kicked his horse hard and galloped into the mist. Ahead he could see the glimmer of the white horse and hear hooves, clopping on what seemed to be paving stones. All at once sunlight gleamed, and he saw Rhodry on his new chestnut gelding and Evandar on the white nearby. Sunlight? Yraen thought. Sunlight? Oh, ye gods! Yet he jogged on, falling into place beside the silver dagger, who turned in the saddle to grin at him.

“You don’t want to lose your way round here, lad.”

Rhodry’s voice sounded perfectly normal, and when Yraen looked, he saw that his friend’s neck bore only a few green and yellow bruises, all faded and old.

“I can see that I don’t, truly.”

Ahead the mist thinned to a sunny day, and Yraen could hear the sea, muttering on a graveled shore. Evandar paused his horse and waved them on past.