The Gold Falcon (17 page)

“Am I disturbing you?” Dallandra said.

“Not at all,” Val said. “In fact, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve done this reading twice today, and I can’t seem to interpret it.”

Dallandra sat down on the opposite side of the scrying cloth. Light came in through the smoke hole in the roof, caught Val’s golden hair, and made it gleam like the silks. She held up delicate hands, clasped over a fresh handful of semiprecious stones. She whispered an invocation of the Lords of Aethyr, then scattered the gems over the cloth. Amethysts, citrines, lapis beads, dark jades, and fire opals—they lay glittering on the patches of silk among the rarer jewels. Here and there, as ominous as wolves lurking around a flock of sheep, sat tear-shaped drops of obsidian.

“I don’t see any pattern at all,” Dallandra said.

“Neither do I.” Valandario looked up with a brief smile. “That’s the problem.”

“Which makes me assume that there’s trouble coming our way.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree. How many gems have fallen on their own colors? Only four out of twenty, and the black have dropped on the gold squares. I don’t like this.” Val shook her head. “I don’t like it at all.” She began gathering up the stones and shoving them into leather pouches. “I’ve spent too much time poring over it, and it still baffles me. The first spread was even more chaotic. Two stones rolled right off the cloth.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Something is happening—no, something is trying to happen, some large event is struggling to be born, and it doesn’t bode well.” She frowned as she pulled pouch strings tight. “That’s all I can say.”

“It matches the omen-dreams I’ve been having.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do but wait.”

“Wait and be cautious. I was wondering, do you think you could join your alar to the prince’s? I’d feel better knowing that another dweomermaster rode on guard.”

“I don’t see why not. Dev always enjoys exchanging lore with the prince’s scribe, and I’d be glad of the chance do some more reading in your books.”

“Good. If we keep traveling fast, there won’t be a problem finding enough food and water for both herds.”

“And it seems to me that fast is the way we should be traveling, for a lot of reasons.” Val patted the pouch of stones with one hand. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll leave a day before you and then camp where there’s plenty of grass. Once you catch up, we’ll head straight north. I’d best tell Dev now, so he doesn’t plan an extra performance.”

They went to look for Devaberiel and found him a little ways from camp, where he was standing and practicing his latest declamation with only the grass for an audience.

“Clinging like lice on the backs of hoofed death—” Dev broke off in midsentence, then grinned at the two women. “Not, of course, that I was speaking of you.”

“I assumed that,” Valandario said. “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve changed our plans. We’ll be leaving the festival a little early, then joining the prince’s alar.”

“All right.” Dev shrugged, smiling. “Whatever you two think best.”

Dallandra left them discussing details and walked back to camp.

Over the next several days, some of the earlier arrivals rode out, taking their stock to better pasture. New alarli rode in to take their places, and one of them brought a changeling infant with them. The bewildered father, Londrojezry, escorted Dallandra out to the horse herd to see the child before he’d even unpacked his travois. On top of a pile of tied-down blankets, the baby lay in a cradle of leather stretched over a wooden frame, and his purple eyes showed nothing but suspicion.

“He hates to be touched,” Lon said. “He screams if you try to pick him up.”

“How has your wife been feeding him?” Dalla said. “He doesn’t look malnourished.”

“She has to express her milk into a bowl. First she dipped it up with a bit of cloth and gave him that to suck. Now, and my thanks to the Star Goddesses, he’ll take it from a spoon. But it’s still exhausting her, it takes so long.”

“He was born when?”

“Six moons ago.”

“Try feeding him something other than milk. Deverry oats cooked to a fine paste, and broths.”

“My thanks, Wise One.” For a moment Lon stood looking down at the cradle with tear-filled eyes. “I wanted a son so badly.” Then he stooped, picking up the cradle. “I’ll tell my wife about the food.”

Dallandra watched him hurry away. She’d seen this type of changeling before, and she knew that nothing but more grief lay ahead for him and his father both. They became utterly withdrawn as they aged, this kind of child. Some wandered away from their alarli and were never seen again; others drifted along at the edge of their parents’ camps, accepting food or the occasional piece of clothing but nothing more, never speaking, never reaching out.

And yet, as she walked back to camp, she found herself wrestling with a strange feeling: envy. Not envy of having a changeling, certainly, but—of what? Lon’s wife loved that child so much she was draining her own life to keep him alive, and he’d never repay her with anything but grief. But would the grief truly matter to her?
To love someone that much. Is that what I envy?
Dallandra wondered at herself. It seemed a sick sort of thing, that kind of love.

Later that evening, Dalla stood just beyond a circle of firelight and watched Lon feeding his son a broth of oats boiled with milk. The wife, Allanaseradario, hunkered nearby and watched as the child slurped up the food. Now and then she would wipe its sticky chin with a bit of rag. Dalla felt all her familiar disgust with the mess and raw crudity of caring for infants.
I made my choice,
she thought.
I took the dweomer willingly.
Yet the envy came back, squeezing her heart, it seemed, as she stood in the shadows, looking into the circle of firelight. Finally she turned away with a toss of her head only to realize that Calonderiel was standing nearby, watching her in turn. She waited for him to speak, but he merely walked away, shoving his hands into his pockets and striding off.

The time was wrong to think of grievous things. The festival proceeded with songs and declamations, feasts and dancing, powerful enough to draw most of the changelings into a web of laughter and good music. For an afternoon here, an evening there, Dallandra could even forget the danger gathering in the west. But the threat never quite left her, and others feared as well. Carra in particular began to worry about her younger daughter, Perra, riding with her husband’s alar.

“They really should have been here by now,” Carra remarked one morning. “Dalla, don’t you think so?”

“Perhaps, but the festival only began three days ago.”

“I suppose,” Carra said, “but you never know these days. Things happen. If the Horsekin start raiding . . . ” She let her voice trail away.

“That’s true enough,” Dallandra said. “I’ll scry.”

Dalla walked down to the lakeshore and stared at the rippled water while she thought about Perra. The image built up fast: Perra was kneeling in the grass and lashing a blanket-wrapped bundle to a travois while her husband led over the horse chosen to pull it.
Thanks be to the Star Goddesses!
Dallandra thought.
I wonder how I would have told Carra if they’d come to harm?
Carra loved her children extravagantly, just like Londrojezry and his wife.
And I?
The question nagged at Dalla all day.

One worry solved itself when Perra and her alar rode in before nightfall. Dallandra was relieved to see that the new grandchild, some four months old, showed every sign of being an ordinary baby. In fact, she looked completely elvish, with furled ears and cat-slit purple eyes, just as if her grandmother’s human nature had never tainted her blood.

“I’m glad, too,” Carra told Dallandra. “She won’t get teased about her ears the way poor Perra was. Children can be so awfully cruel.”

“Well,” Dalla said, “they do cruel things, but they do them out of ignorance. They don’t know how much pain they’re causing.”

“I suppose. At least Rori’s learned to fight back. The last time someone teased him, he knocked him down with one good punch.”

“He seems to have something in common with the man you named him for.”

They shared a laugh at Rhodry Maelwaedd’s expense.

“It’s so odd, Dalla,” Carra went on. “Here you never wanted children of your own, but you’ve ended up the honorary aunt of so many. Every mother who has a changeling in her care turns to you for advice.”

“You’re right, aren’t you? It goes to show, that you never know what your wyrd is going to bring you. But I did have a child once, a son—I must have told you that story.”

“You did, yes. I’m sorry, I’d just forgotten him.”

I tend to do that myself,
Dallandra thought.
Poor little Loddlaen!
Aloud, she said, “Well, it was all a very long time ago now.”

Carra let the subject drop.

And of course, there were more worries than those about children for the alarli to discuss. When she told the men in Perra’s alar about Salamander’s fears of a Horsekin incursion, they had information for her, a few scraps only, but better than nothing. She contacted Salamander that very evening. In the vision she could dimly see a stone wall behind him and a faint silver light.

“Where are you?” Dallandra thought to him. “I’m at the festival, and I’ve heard something about the Horsekin.”

“Up on the catwalks of our good tieryn’s wall. I came up to watch the moon rise, actually, though I had thoughts of contacting you once it had. Tell me what you’ve learned, oh mistress of magicks mysterious. I hang upon your every thought.”

“Well, it’s rather short on hard fact. One of the alarli here told me about an escaped Horsekin slave. They helped her get back to her people in Deverry, late last autumn, that was. As far as they can remember, she’d escaped from somewhere not all that far from the Westlands, up north and west somewhere. Either she didn’t know, or they didn’t remember just how far she’d traveled after she got away.”

“Of course. But alas, alack, and welladay anyway.”

“Now, they did ask her what Horsekin were doing, traveling so far south of their own country. She said she’d been brought along to cook for a group of important officials, whatever that may mean, traveling with a large armed escort. They were looking for something, she said, a good place to build something. She didn’t know what. They wouldn’t have told the likes of her any details.”

“My worst fear begins to materialize before me, but you have my thanks.”

“
Your
worst fear? It ranks high among mine, and Cal’s, too.”

“No doubt.” His image turned thoughtful. “Have you seen Zandro yet?”

“Yes, indeed I have, and here’s some good news. He can call some people by name now. He knows his own, and mine, and of course your father’s and a few of your father’s friends.”

“Splendid!”

“And he’s become quite protective of the little changelings. He and Elessi lead the little ones like a pack of wolves. They run through the camp together and laugh at everything. Zan’s not hit anyone or pulled hair or any such nasty trick, not since we’ve been here.”

“Wonderful! That gives me some hope he’ll find happiness of a sort.”

“Me, too.” Dalla felt suddenly weary. “When I worked so hard at getting those souls born, I didn’t stop to think of what they’d be like in their very first incarnation. Poor little spirits! They should have taken flesh when the world was new.”

“Indeed. In time they’ll grow full minds.”

“So we can hope. I honestly don’t know how many lives it will take them. But Zan at least has become very nicely behaved. Dev has the most amazing patience.”

“Now. He certainly never showed any with me.”

“Well, he was much younger then. He didn’t know how to treat a small child.”

“I suppose he did the best he could, given that my mother didn’t want me.”

Dalla could feel the bitterness in his thoughts—still, after nearly two hundred years. “She didn’t have much choice,” she said. “The fault lies in the way Deverry men treat their women, or so your father told me.”

“Perhaps. I don’t truly remember her, anyway, except that she was pink and soft and warm, and her name was Morri.”

“That wasn’t your mother. That was your nursemaid. Dev did tell me that much, but you know, it’s odd, he truly didn’t want to tell me more.”

In the image of his face she could see confusion, and his thoughts swirled round like autumn leaves, picked up and blown in circles by the wind, until, like leaves the wind has dropped, his mind steadied again. “Well, it hardly matters now,” Salamander thought to her. “But sometime when we have a moment to spare for talking about things long past, I’d like to hear the story.”

“Your father would most likely tell you more than he’d tell me.”

Salamander’s image looked profoundly sad.

“But we could always ask him for the tale together,” Dallandra said hurriedly. “I’m surprised you’ve not heard it already.”

“So am I. Continually, perennially, and eternally surprised, every time the subject comes up between me and the esteemed progenitor.” His face-image displayed a forced smile. “You would doubtless be even more surprised at the speed with which he can leap away from the subject, like a cat when someone empties a bucket of water nearby.” His image smiled in unconvincing dismissal. “But it matters naught. Tomorrow we leave for Cengarn. I’ll keep you informed of what happens there.”

Abruptly Salamander broke the link. She’d touched on an old, deep wound, Dallandra realized, and one that, in time, she would have to help him heal.

 

I’m surprised you’ve not heard it already.
After he broke the scrying-link, Salamander realized that his right hand had clenched into a fist and that he was tempted to throw a hard punch into the stones of the tieryn’s wall. A gaggle of gnomes materialized at his feet and raised little paws, as if signaling caution.