The Gold Falcon (24 page)

“I see.” Yet the lord never moved, and his hand stayed on the sword hilt.

“I couldn’t have come straight here,” Salamander said. “It would have been too suspicious. I didn’t want to lead anyone to your dun.”

“You have my thanks for that.” Honelg took his hand away from the sword. “Come in, gerthddyn. You can wear
her
arrow here safely enough.”

With a smile of heartfelt relief, Salamander pinned the gold arrow to the collar of his shirt, then followed the lord inside the gates. The two men-at-arms sheathed their weapons, then began to shove the gates closed. A groom came running to take Salamander’s horses. A young page appeared and bowed to Honelg and Salamander impartially.

“We have a guest, Matto,” Honelg said. “Put his things in a chamber in the broch. Ask the chamberlain to help you.”

“I will, Da.” Matto ran off after the groom.

“My son, of course,” Honelg said to Salamander. “I can’t take pages in the usual way. Too dangerous.”

Inside the walls stood a single flat-roofed stone tower, wider at the base than the top, and a clutter of wooden sheds. Off to one side Salamander caught a glimpse of a long narrow building, two stories high and made of wood, that seemed to house stables and warband alike. Over everything hung the rich, moist smell of livestock.

Honelg escorted Salamander into the great hall, a shabby dusty half-round of a room, housing a scatter of rough tables and rickety benches. They sat down together at the honor table, Salamander on a bench, the lord in the only chair. A servant brought them mead in pottery goblets, but despite these small signs of respect, the lord sat bolt upright in his chair and looked his guest over. Not once did Honelg smile. Salamander knew that if he made one blunder the lord would kill him.

“Tell me about Zaklof,” Honelg said. “How did you come to know him?”

“I was in Cengarn plying my trade,” Salamander said, “when the gwerbret’s men returned with Zaklof. He’d made up his mind to die, but they were taunting him, waving food under his nose and trying to tempt him. He resisted them all, and with such calm.” He put urgency into his voice. “I had to know how he could be so calm, facing death.”

“It’s a marvel, truly, how the Holy Ones can do that,” Honelg said. “You said you spoke with him?”

“I did. There was a young woman working in the kitchen—her father lived in town—and she, too, was impressed with Zaklof. The gaol stood right out in the ward, you see, and so at night she went sneaking out to talk with him through the window in his cell. So I took to joining her.”

“Ah.” Honelg nodded, leaning back in his chair. “I wish I could have heard him myself.”

“Toward the end he grew weak, but his voice stayed steady, telling us of Alshandra’s power over death, and how he’d go join her soon. On the last day they brought him out of the cell to lie in the sun. It was his last wish, like. And I’ve never seen another man die like that, smiling, whispering a blessing upon his captors.”

“I heard about that, truly.” Honelg nodded again. “But here, I’m forgetting my courtesy. You must be hungry.” He turned in his chair and beckoned a servant. “Bring bread and meat for our guest!”

Salamander let out his breath in a soft sigh of relief.

The servant had just set out the food when a woman, dressed in clean gray linen with a blue-and-black plaid kirtle at the waist, came down the spiral staircase and joined them. Honelg presented Salamander to her, then introduced her as his wife, Lady Adranna. To Salamander, she looked oddly familiar, a pretty woman if a bit short, plump and dark-haired, though her blue eyes were narrow as if with perpetual suspicion. He combed his memory, but he couldn’t place her or where he might have seen her before. She sat down on the bench at her lord’s right hand, across the table from Salamander.

“Evan saw Zaklof die,” Honelg said.

“You did?” Adranna leaned forward. “Could you tell me about it? I don’t mean to be rude, but—”

“Not rude at all,” Salamander said hastily. “I should be honored.”

Fortunately, he remembered a good many secondhand details, and this time through, he elaborated the story. Adranna listened, wide-eyed, her mouth slack, while Honelg nodded to himself at intervals, as if savoring the tale. Salamander began to feel more guilty than fearful, deceiving people who had entrusted their souls to a spirit he knew to be naught but an imposter.

Alshandra had possessed dweomer beyond the power of any human master of that craft. Although she’d used those powers coldly and deliberately to get herself worshiped, a goddess she wasn’t, merely a strange spirit of the race known to the elves as Guardians. In the end she’d proved just as mortal as any elf or human, too, but her worshipers had refused to believe the truth, that she’d been defeated and slain. Salamander had never understood why, or why her legend continued to spread after her death. There was no doubting that it had grown in strength here in the Northlands. The lord and lady both sat as still as if they’d been ensorcelled by his story, until he finished with a small sob and a broken sigh.

“I heard that Zaklof’s body smelled of roses,” Adranna said, “not of rotting flesh at all.”

“I wouldn’t know, my lady,” Salamander said, quite truthfully for a change. “After he died, they carried him away, and I wasn’t close enough to tell.”

Adranna plucked a handkerchief from her kirtle and wiped a tear from her cheek. “It’s so sad,” she murmured, “dying a captive.”

“Ah, but we’re all captives, prisoners in our flesh.” Honelg turned to Salamander. “Zaklof visited us several times, you see. I remember him as a strong man, and so full of life, but we know he’s now where we all want to be, free of this cursed rotten world at last, with
her
in our true home.”

“Truly,” Salamander said. “He crossed over into her kingdom on a bridge of prayers.”

“It’s a good thing you tell tales for your living,” Honelg went on. “Can you stand to tell it again? Tonight we’re having a very special guest.” He shot a meaningful glance at his wife. “I think me she’ll want to hear it. Zaklof died a true witness to our faith.”

“I’m sure she will. And, Evan, you speak so beautifully.”

“My thanks, my lady. You’re very kind to say so.”

At dinner that night, Salamander met the rest of the lord’s family, his daughter Treniffa and his elderly mother, Lady Varigga. His son Matyc served everyone like a page, then sat down and joined in the meal. From their talk Salamander realized that even the lowliest servant in the dun believed in Alshandra and her false promises. Everlasting life in a glorious version of the Otherlands had its appeal, Salamander realized, but still he wondered why they would believe so fervently in things they’d never seen. The twenty men of Honelg’s warband, eating on the other side of the hall, drank a toast to the goddess’ name, marking themselves as believers as well.

So, apparently, were all the farmers and their families who sharecropped land in Honelg’s demesne. Just as the meal was being cleared away, the farm folk began arriving, walking into the great hall in threes and fours, sitting down on the floor and chatting with each other so casually that Salamander realized they came here often. Among them he recognized Marth and a few other villagers.

“It’s for the services.” Apparently the aged Lady Varigga had noticed him studying the farmers. “You’ll see. There’s a great treat in store for you.”

“Splendid, my lady. It’s very kind of you to take me along.”

“It’s in
her
name. There’s a place for every sort of person in
her
world.” She paused to consider his dirty traveling shirt with no trace of a smile. “Even for the lowest.”

Apparently those persons would be expected to stay in their places, too, but then, Varigga
was
noble-born, even if she and her equally noble son did live like foxes in a den, praying that the hounds would never run their way.

“It’s time,” Lord Honelg said. “Nearly dark out.”

The lord stood up, and at his signal everyone in the great hall did the same. In a mannerly throng they strolled out of the dun and followed their lord across the twilit ward.

When he’d first arrived, Salamander had wondered why the lord’s warband lived in a freestanding building instead of the usual barracks. Now he saw that a very different sort of structure took up that particular space. A shabby wooden door looked as if it would lead into a root cellar or suchlike, but in truth it led into a long, narrow chamber. The only fresh air came from chinks in the stonework, but fortunately, the masons had left plenty of those in their deceptively shoddy work.

Once inside, the only light came from a single candle, carried by Lady Adranna down to the opposite end of the room from the door. The lady, her mother-in-law, and the son and daughter sat down on a bench just at the foot of a wooden platform. Behind them sat the chamberlain and the equerry right next to the common-born cook and stablemen, and, on the next set of benches, the warband. The dun’s servants and the farm people crowded together on the floor at the rear. Honelg closed the door, then stood in front of it and beckoned Salamander to do the same.

“We all have our places in the ritual.” Honelg patted the hilt of his sword. “You and I will be the sentinels tonight.”

“Very well, my lord,” Salamander said. “Do you think we’re in danger?”

“Not at the moment, but one day those cursed priests of Bel might find us, and so we need to stay ready for them.”

As Salamander’s eyes grew used to the dim light, he noticed a little door at the farther end of the long room. In a moment it opened, and a woman stepped onto the platform. She threw both arms into the air, tipped her head back, and called out a single word in a language he didn’t recognize. Silver light bloomed between and around her hands like a skein of yarn. Salamander gasped aloud, which drew a smile from the lord. When Lady Adranna blew out the candle, the priestess tossed the bundle of light toward the ceiling, where it stuck, sending its silver glow over the crowd. By its light Salamander could see a wood altar, topped with a long slab of stone that was, oddly enough, cracked in half.

“There’s our Holy One,” Honelg whispered. “The priestess Rocca.”

Despite the silvery glow, she stood far enough away that Salamander got only the most general impression of her—a slender woman, dark-haired and perhaps pretty, perhaps young, certainly vigorous.

“Did she ride in today?” Salamander whispered.

“She didn’t,” Honelg whispered in return. “She walks everywhere, all the way here from the Horsekin lands. She’s got a regular circuit, like, of believers.”

Salamander would have asked more, but Rocca was speaking. Her voice, low and pleasant, carried easily through the stuffy chamber, although she did speak with something of a rough accent. Her words sounded as if she were pronouncing them farther back in her mouth than most Deverry folk would, and her R’s and Rh’s were flat, not rolled. As he listened, Salamander realized from the way she used certain idioms that she hailed from the northwest, beyond Deverry and the Westfolk lands both.

“We be gathered here tonight in the shelter of our lord’s dun,” the priestess began, “to learn the truth. What be the questions we were about asking for our lives long?” She pointed at Honelg’s mother.

Lady Varigga stood up. Considering her age, her voice was remarkably strong. “We wish to know what we were, where we came from, where we now are, who we are now, and where we are going.”

“True-spoken. And the answers?”

“We are eternal spirits, we came from between the stars, we live in a prison, we are children of light still, and we are going to Alshandra’s country.”

“Also true-spoken.”

Varigga sat back down.

“At the beginning of the world,” Rocca continued, “Alshandra did make a green and lovely land, where pure water runs in crystal streams. Ripe fruit hangs heavy on every kind of tree, and when a fruit, it be plucked, a new one grows in its place. In her beautiful orchards the smell of ripening fruit wafts like perfume. And the flowers! I have seen in vision the banks of flowers, purple and pink and rose red, blossoming along the crystal streams. I do swear to you, my friends, that in her world all be color, and fragrance, and light.” Rocca paused for effect. “But why, then, does this world lie shut away from us? Why lack we the power to travel there? Why did she, the goddess of all things good, hide it from us?”

Lady Adranna stood up and laid her right hand over her heart in an obviously rehearsed gesture. “She hid it not from us, but from the Dark Lord Vandar.”

“True-spoken,” Rocca said. “And what did the evil Vandar steal from her?”

“Her daughter, her only precious child.”

“True-spoken. And why does Alshandra not appear to us? Once she walked among us, but she walks here no more.”

“Because she searches for her lost daughter over all the world, wailing as she goes.” Adranna paused briefly. “Why can she not find her daughter?”

This time the priestess gave the answer. “Because the Dark Lord has set evil guardians over the child and over the world.”

Adranna sat down, and Varigga stood again.

“What minions did Vandar send?” Rocca asked her.

“His dragons of evil, spewing poison,” Varigga said. “Huge they were, bent on destroying our goddess’s creation.”

“And did she slay them?”

“She did slay the mother and father of all dragons, but unknown to her their evil spawn still lived.”

“True-spoken.”

Varigga sat back down. Rocca leaned forward, staring into the crowd as if she wished to look each person there in the eye. “To this very day,” she said at last, “the silver wyrm and the black dragon do roam and ravage. They do slay by night, they do poison by day, rabid, evil in the foulness of their hearts.”

Ye gods!
Salamander thought.
She means Rori and Arzosah.

“The Dark Lord Vandar did set them at their post,” Rocca went on. “By his orders they fall upon
her
people and destroy them. Until Vandar at last does die, they will have strength, but once the Dark Lord be slain, all his minions will sicken, fail, and pass utterly away.”