Bristling Wood (37 page)

“Well, true enough. Let me think . . . the nearest dweomerworker is Liddyn of Cantrae. He can possibly find our Perryn and corral him. Truly, your first concern has to be Jill. Form a link with her aura and then—slowly, mind you—draw off some of that excess magnetism. The process should take some days, because you’ll have to absorb it yourself. Or, here, expend it. Do some of your wretched little tricks with it. It might amuse her.”

“I doubt me if any show of dweomer will do more than terrify her now.”

“Maybe so. Ah ye gods! What a nasty mess you’ve dropped in our laps!”

“So they have. Here, one more strange thing about Perryn. When I first saw him, I opened up my sight and looked into his soul. I was thinking perhaps that he was some man linked to Jill by his Wyrd or suchlike.”

“Was he?”

“I couldn’t tell you that. I couldn’t read his soul.” All at once Salamander looked rueful. “Truly, I must have let my rage, wrath, and righteousness override my reason. I kept seeing him as some of half-human monster, not as a man at all.”

“Valandario’s been telling you and I have been telling you that dweomer demands that a man keep his feelings under control. Do see now what we mean? Ye gods!”

“You have my true and humble apologies, O master. Here, since I’ve seen Perryn, I can scry him out whenever you or Liddyn need my aid.”

“And doubtless we will. He’s got to be caught.”

“True enough. I wasn’t thinking. It was just seeing our Jill so . . . well, so broken and so shamed. It ached my heart.”

“It aches mine, too.” Nevyn realized then that part of his anger at Salamander was only a spillover from his rage at what had happened. “I only wish I could come join you. If you’re riding south, maybe I will. It depends on how things go here.”

“Where are you, by the by?”

Nevyn managed a laugh.

“My turn for the apologies. I’m in the gwerbret’s dun in Aberwyn.”

“Ye gods! I’m surprised Rhys will let you cross his threshold.”

“Oh, he bears me no particular ill will. Lady Lovyan asked me to come with her and pretend to be a legal councillor. She’s going to try one last time to get Rhys to recall Rhodry.”

“No doubt the hells will melt first.”

“No doubt. On the other hand, Rhys loves Aberwyn, and he might do what’s best for her in the end.”

When Salamander looked profoundly skeptical, Nevyn sighed in agreement. Being stubborn was a crucial part of a noble-born man’s honor, and Rhys, like all Maelwaedds, would never betray his.

After finishing his talk with Salamander, Nevyn went to the open window and leaned on the sill to look out. From his chamber high up in the broch, he could see the gardens, a long reach of lawn lit with a hundred tiny oil lamps, where the ladies of the court were having an evening entertainment. Minstrels played, and the noble-born danced among the flickering lights. He could hear them laughing, half out of breath, as they circled round, stamping and slapping their feet in time to the harps and wooden flutes. Ah, my poor Jill, he thought, will you ever be as happy as they again?

His anger came close to choking him, a cold fury with Perryn, with Rhys, stubborn men who insisted on having what they wanted no matter what the cost to anyone else. Rhys was the worse, he decided, because his refusal to recall his brother could plunge Eldidd into open war. And then all those noble lords below would ride in a circling dance of death, this entertainment long forgotten. He pulled the shutters closed so hard that they banged like thunder in the chamber and turned away to pace back and forth. Finally he shook the mood away and turned to the brazier again. When he thought of Rhodry the image appeared in an instant. He was standing, his back to the wall, in a crowded tavern and watching a dice game while he sipped from a tankard. At times, when Rhodry was in a particular melancholy mood, Nevyn could reach his mind and send him thoughts, but tonight he was preoccupied and oddly enough, not at all unhappy. At times he smiled to himself as if remembering a triumph. Most odd, Nevyn thought. Why isn’t he brooding over Jill?

When someone knocked on his door, he canceled the vision. Lady Lovyan came in, her plaid cloak caught at the shoulder with a ring brooch set with rubies winking in the candlelight.

“Have you had enough of the dancing, my lady?”

“More than enough, but I came to see you for another reason. A speeded courier just rode in from Dun Deverry.” She handed him a piece of parchment, tightly rolled from its long sojourn inside a message tube. “This is supposedly for my eyes alone, but I doubt if Blaen would mind you reading it.”

After the long ritual salutations, the letter itself was brief: “I am in Dun Deverry in attendance upon the king. He tells me only that he’s most interested in talking with a certain silver dagger known to you. Would the dragon roar if our liege usurped one of his privileges? By the by, Lord Talidd seems to have found a friend in Savyl of Camynwaen. Blaen, Gwerbret Cwm Pecl.”

“Humph,” Nevyn snorted. “Blaen isn’t much of a man at subterfuge.”

“Rhys would have understood that message in an instant if he’d read it.” Lovyan took the letter back and dropped it into the glowing charcoal. The smell of burning leather drifted into the room, and Nevyn hurried to open the shutters. “The news about Savyl of Camynwaen’s troubling. I do
not
like the idea of Talidd’s finding another gwerbret to plead his case with our liege.”

“No more do I. Ye gods, this is all getting vexed!”

“Do you think Rhys would rebel if the king overrode his decree of exile?”

“Not on his own, but he might be persuaded by men who think they have a chance at the rhan if he died childless.”

“Just so. They’d try to push him into it, anyway. On the other hand, if the king does intervene, then Rhys could stop my nagging tongue without losing any face.”

“True enough. He could bluster about the decree all he wanted in front of the other lords but accept it privately.”

“So I hope. Well, we don’t even know if the king truly plans to recall Rhodry.” She looked at the twisted sheet of parchment ash in the brazier, then picked up the poker and knocked it into dust. “Let us hope that Blaen sends us more news soon.”

Rhodry had no trouble buying passage on a barge that was making the run down to Lughcarn. His horse shared the stern with the barge mules that would pull the boat upriver again; he had a place to sleep in the bow with the four crewmen, who spoke to him as little as possible. The rest of the barge’s hundred feet were laden with rough-shaped iron ingots from the smelters of Ladotyn up in the high mountains. Although the barge rode low in the water, the river current was smooth and steady, and for three days they glided south, while Rhodry amused himself by watching the countryside go by. Once the hills were behind them, the grassy meadows and rich grain fields of Gwaentaer province spread out, green and gold in the late summer sun, flat and seemingly endless.

On the fourth day they crossed the border into Deverry proper, though Rhodry didn’t see much change in the countryside to mark it, Toward noon, the bargemaster told him that they’d make Lughcarn that night.

“It’s the end of our run, silver dagger, but I’ll wager you can find another barge going down into Dun Deverry.”

“Splendid. This is a cursed sight faster than riding, and I’ve got to reach Cerrmor as soon as ever I can.

The bargemaster scratched his beard thoughtfully.

“Don’t know much about the river traffic south, out of the king’s city, but I’ll wager there’s some.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, whether there is or not, you’ll be only about a week’s ride from Cerrmor then.”

By late afternoon, Rhodry saw the first sign that they were coming close to the city. At first he thought he was seeing clouds on the southern horizon, but the steersman enlightened him. A dark pall of smoke hung in the air, smoke from the charcoal ovens, smoke from the charcoal itself as it fed the forges to turn rough iron into Lughcarn steel. By the time they turned into the docks just outside the walled city, his linen shirt was flecked with soot. The docks themselves and the warehouses just beyond were grimy gray. As he rode through the gate in the soot-blackened city walls, Rhodry was thinking that he’d be very glad to leave Lughcarn behind.

Yet it was a rich city under the soot. As he searched for a tavern poor enough to take in a silver dagger, Rhodry passed fine houses, some of them as tall as a poor lord’s broch, with carved plaques over the doors proclaiming the name of one great merchant clan or another. There were temples all over the city, too, some to obscure gods usually relegated to a tiny shrine in the corner of a temple of Bel, some, like the great temple of Bel itself, as large as duns, with gardens and outbuildings of their own. Until he finally found the poor section of town, down by the river on the southern bank, he saw very few beggars, and even among the wooden huts of the longshoremen and charcoal burners he saw almost no one in rags and not a child who looked in danger of starving.

He found a shabby tavern whose owner agreed to let him sleep in the hayloft of the stable out back for a couple of coppers. After he stabled his horse, he went back in and got the best dinner the place offered—mutton stew lensed with grease and served with stale bread to sop up the gravy. He took it to a table where he could keep his back to the wall and looked over the other patrons while he ate. Most of them looked like honest workingmen, gathered there to have a tankard while they chewed over the local gossip, but one of them might have been a traveler like himself, a tall fellow with straight dark hair and skin colored like a walnut shell that bespoke some Bardek blood in his veins. Once or twice, Rhodry caught the fellow looking at him curiously, and when he’d finished eating, the fellow strolled over to him with a tankard in his hand.

“Have you come from the north, silver dagger?”

“I have at that. Why?”

“That’s the way I’m heading. I was wondering what the roads are like up in Gwaentaer.”

Now, that I can’t tell you, because I came down on a barge.”

“A good way to travel when you’re coming downriver, but not so good going up. Well, my thanks, anyway.” Yet he lingered for a moment, as if wondering about something, then finally sat down. “You know, a silver dagger did me a favor once, a while back, and I wouldn’t mind returning it to a fellow member of his band.” He dropped his voice to a murmur. “You look like you hail from Eldidd.”

“I do.”

“You wouldn’t be Rhodry of Aberwyn, would you?”

“I am. Here, where did you hear my name?”

“Oh, it’s all over the south. That’s what I mean about returning a favor. Let me give you a tip, like. It seems that every misbegotten gwerbret has riders out looking for you. I’d head west if I were you.”

“What? By the black ass of the Lord of Hell, what are they looking for me for?”

The fellow leaned closer.

“There’s been a charge laid against you by a Tieryn Aegwyc up in Cerrgonney. He claims you took his brother’s head in battle.”

Instantly, Rhodry understood—or thought he did. No doubt Graemyn had put the blame on him in order to reach a settlement in the peace treaty. After all, who would believe a silver dagger’s word against that of a lord?

“Ye gods! I did no such thing!”

“It’s of no matter to me. But like I say, you’d best be careful which way you ride.”

“You have my thanks from the bottom of my heart.”

All that evening, Rhodry kept one eye on the tavern door. If that charge stood up in a gwerbretal court, he would be beheaded as the holy laws demanded. Fortunately, his years on the long road had taught him many a thing about avoiding trouble. He could no longer ride the barges south, not when they could be called to the bank at any point by the king’s guard and searched. He would have to slip south on back roads and, of course, lie about his name. Cerrmor itself was big enough so that he’d be able to stay unknown for at least a day or two. Once he found Jill, he’d have a witness on his side. Besides, he reminded himself, Nevyn’s there too. Even a gwerbret would listen when the old man spoke.

In the morning, he rode out the east gate to plant a false trail. Much later, when it was too late, he realized that Tieryn Benoic would never have been party to such a falsehood.

“Someone worked you over good and proper, lad,” said Gwel the leech. “Who was it?”

“Oh, er, ah, well,” Perryn mumbled. “A silver dagger.”

“Indeed? Well, it’s a foolish man who earns a silver dagger’s wrath.”

“I . . . er . . . know that now.”

In the polished mirror hanging on the wall of the leech’s shop, Perryn could see his face, still blue, green, and swollen. “You should have had this broken tooth out long before this,” Gwel said.

“True-spoken, but I couldn’t ride until a couple of days ago. He broke some of my ribs, too.”

“I see. Well, you give silver daggers a wide berth after this.”

“You have my sworn word on that.”

Having the tooth pulled was more painful than having it broken, since it took much longer, and the only painkilller the leech could offer him was a goblet of strong mead. It was some hours before Perryn could leave the leech’s shop and stagger back to his inn on the outskirts of Leryn. He flopped down on the bed in his chamber and stared miserably at the ceiling while his mind circled endlessly round and round like a donkey tied to a mill wheel: what was he going to do? The thought of returning to Cerrgonney to face his uncle’s scorn made him feel physically sick to his stomach. And there was Jill. It seemed as the days went by that he loved her more than ever, that he’d never appreciated what he had until he’d lost it. Thinking that most men were no different about those they loved was no consolation. If only he could talk to her, beg her to let him explain, tell her how much he loved her—he was sure she would listen, if only he could get her alone, if only he could get her away from that fellow with the terrifying stare and the even more terrifying dweomer. If only. He didn’t even know which way they’d gone.

Or could he find her? In his muddled state, half mad with pain and the aftermath of the leech’s mead, he found himself thinking of her as his heart’s true home, and with the thought came the pull, the sharp tug at his mind that had always shown him the way to other homes. Slowly, minding his aching jaw, he sat up on the bed and went very still. Truly, he could feel it: south. She’d gone south. He wept, but this time in rising hope, that he could track her down, follow her along until he had a chance alone with her, and somehow—oh, by great Kerun himself—steal her back again.