A Time of Omens (32 page)

Back in the tavern he found Yraen up and busy. The fire was burning again, the lumps of sod neatly stacked to one side of the hearth; both bedrolls were lashed up and laid ready with the other gear by the door; Yraen himself was badgering the yawning innkeep about heating water for shaving. In the morning light Rhodry could see that the lad did indeed need to shave and revised his estimate of Yraen’s age upward again.

“Morrow, my lord,” Yraen said. “There’s naught for breakfast, our innkeep tells me, but bread and dried apples.”

“It’ll do, and don’t call me your lord.”

Yraen merely grinned. Over breakfast Rhodry tried arguing with him, snarling at him, and downright ordering him to go home, but when they rode out, Yraen rode alongside him. The lad had a beautiful horse, a dapple-gray gelding standing close to seventeen hands, with a delicate head but a barrel chest. When Rhodry glanced at its flank, he found the king’s own brand.

“A gift to my father from his highness,” Yraen said. “And my father gave him to me.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that you left with your father’s blessing, do you?”

“I don’t. I snuck out in the night like a thief, and that’s the one thing that troubles my heart. But I’m one of four brothers, so he’s got plenty of heirs.”

“I see, and you had no prospects at home, anyway.”

“None to speak of.” Yraen flashed him a sour sort of grin. “Unless you count riding in a brother’s warband as a prospect in life.”

Since Rhodry had once been in the same position, he could sympathize, though not to the point of weakening.

“It’s a better prospect than you’ll have on the long road. At least if you die riding for your brother, someone will give you a proper grave. A muddy ditch on the battlefield’s the best a silver dagger can hope for.”

Yraen merely shrugged. Whether eighteen or twenty, Rhodry supposed, he was too young to believe that he would ever die.

“Now look, I’m not going to stand you to the dagger and that’s that. You’re wasting your time and your breath, following me and begging.”

Yraen smiled and said nothing.

“Ye gods, you stubborn young cub!”

“Rhodry, please.” Yraen turned in the saddle so that he could see his unwilling mentor’s face. “I’ll tell you somewhat that I’ve never told anyone before. Will you listen?”

“Oh, very well.”

“When I was about fourteen, just home from serving as a page, my mother gave a fete. And one of her serving women has the second sight, I mean, everyone says she does, and she’s usually right if she outright predicts something. So she dressed up like an old hag and did fortunes, looking into a silver bowl of water by candlelight. Mostly she talked about marriages and silly things like that, you see, but when she came to do mine, she cried out and wouldn’t say anything at all Mother made me leave, so the fete wouldn’t be spoiled or suchlike, but later I made the woman tell me what she’d seen. And she said she saw me riding as a silver dagger, somewhere far, far away in a wild part of the kingdom, and that when she saw it, she just somehow knew that it was my Wyrd, sent by the gods. And then she started crying, and I had to believe her.”

Rhodry gave him a sharp and searching look, but he’d never seen anyone so sincere. In fact, the lad blushed, and that very embarrassment stood as witness to the truth of his tale.

“I’ll wager you think it’s daft or womanish or both.”

“Not in the least. Well, ride with me a while, then, and we’ll see what the long road brings us. I’m not promising anything, mind. I’m just not sending you away. There’s a difference.”

“There is, at that, but you have my thanks, anyway.”

As he thought about the story, with its talk of serving women and fetes, Rhodry realized why Yraen looked like a man of twenty but at times acted like a boy. He must have been raised in a very wealthy clan indeed, sheltered down in Deverry by their power and position from the hard times that aged a man fast on the border. Grudgingly he admitted that he rather admired the boy for wanting to leave all that comfort behind and ride looking for adventure. He’ll learn soon enough, he thought. One good rough time of it, and I’ll wager I can send him home—if he lives through whatever the gods choose to send us.

At the moment it seemed that the gods were planning on sending them a storm. Slate-gray swirled with black, the sky hung low in the cold morning, though the rain held off for a few miles. They rode through farmland at first; then a twist in the road brought them to a thin stand of pines and an overlook, where they halted their horses. Some thirty feet below them lay Loc Drw, dark and wrinkled in the wind, stretching off to the north where, in a haze of distance, they could just pick out the stone towers of the gwerbret’s dun.

“I’ve heard that it stands on a little island,” Rhodry remarked. “You reach it by a long causeway. A splendid defensive position.”

“Ah. Well, maybe if this feud in the hills has come to naught, we can find shelter there.”

Rhodry merely nodded. Seeing the lake was affecting him in a way that he couldn’t understand. Although he’d never been in Pyrdon, not once in his life, the long sweep of water looked so achingly familiar that he wasn’t even surprised to hear someone calling his name.

“Rhodry! Hold a moment!”

When Rhodry turned in the saddle, he saw Evandar riding up on a milk-white horse with rusty-red ears. The Guardian was wrapped in a pale gray cloak with the hood shoved back to reveal his daffodil-yellow hair.

“You took my advice, did you?” He smiled in a way
meant to be pleasant, but Rhodry noticed his teeth, as sharp and pointed as a cat’s. “Good, good.”

“I had little choice in the matter, but truly, good advice it seems to be. She hasn’t followed me here.”

“I doubt me if she will.” Evandar paused, rummaging in a little leather bag he wore at his belt. “A question for you. Have you ever seen a thing like this before?”

“A whistle, is it?” Rhodry automatically held out his hand and caught it when Evandar tossed it over. “Ych! It looks like it’s made of human bone!”

“Or elven, truly, except it’s too long. I thought at first that two finger joints had somehow been joined into one, but look at it, close like.”

Rhodry did so, holding it up and twisting it this way and that. All at once he remembered Yraen. The lad was clutching his saddle peak with both hands, leaning forward and staring, his mouth slacked open like a half-wit’s.

“I told you that you should ride back to your father’s dun,” Rhodry said, grinning. “It’s not too late.”

Yraen shook his head in a stubborn no. Evandar looked him over with a thoughtful tilt of his head.

“And you are?”

“My name’s Yraen,” he snapped. “What’s it to you?”

“Yraen? Now there’s a well-omened name!” Evandar laughed aloud. “Oh, splendid! You’ve found a fine companion, Rhodry, and I for one am glad of it. Good morrow, lads. A good morrow to you both.”

With a friendly wave he turned his horse and trotted off along the lakeshore, yet, before he’d gone more than a hundred yards, both he and his horse seemed to waver, to dissolve, to change into mist, a puff of it, blowing across the water and then gone.

“Ye gods,” Yraen whispered. “Oh, ye gods.”

“Go home, then, where spirits fear to ride.”

“Shan’t. That’s what we get, riding on Samaen day, and cursed and twice cursed if I’ll run from some rotten ghost.”

“No such thing as ghosts. Our Evandar’s a good bit stranger than that, and by the hells, he’s gone and left me with the wretched whistle.” Rhodry breathed a few quiet notes into it. “It makes a nasty sound, it does.”

“Then maybe you’d best just throw it into the lake. Last thing we need is a pack of spirits, coming at your call.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, lad. There are spirits and spirits, and some can be useful, in their way.” He grinned and leaned forward to unlace the flap of his saddlebag. “It’s too strange to throw away. Looks like it’s been made from the bone of a bird’s wing, but one fine big bird it must have been, an eagle or suchlike. Want a look at it?”

“I don’t.” Yraen cleared his throat to cover the squeak in his voice. “We’d best get riding. Going to rain soon.”

“So it is. Well, south and east, our Merro said, and we’ll see if this feud has a hire for the likes of us.”

At about the time that Rhodry and Yraen were riding away from the lake, Dallandra woke, after what seemed an ordinary night’s sleep to her. The cloth-of-gold pavilion was empty except for the sunlight, streaming through the fabric so brightly that it seemed she lay in the middle of a candle flame. Yawning, rubbing her eyes, she got up and stumbled outside, where she stood for a long moment, getting her bearings in the warm day. The dancing was over; the meadow, empty, except for Evandar, sitting under the oak tree. When he saw her coming, he rose and hailed her.

“There you are, my love. Refreshed?”

“Oh, yes, but how long have I slept?”

“Just the night.” He was grinning in his sly way. “And you needed a bit of a rest.”

“Just the night here, yes. How long?”

“Oh, some years, I suppose, as Time runs back in your country. It was winter there, when I left Rhodry on the road.”

“When you what? Ye gods! Will you tell me what you’ve been doing?”

“I will, but there’s not much to tell. I just wanted to see if he was safe and well.”

“Let me think. He’s the one with the ring, isn’t he? You know, I do wish you’d tell me about that ring.”

“There’s naught to tell. The ring is just a perfectly ordinary bit of jewelry.”

“Aha! Then Jill’s right. It
is
the word inside that’s so important!”

“You’re too clever for me, my love. So it is, and I wonder if Jill’s found the secret yet. No doubt she will, because she’s as clever as you are, in her way. And so, why should I
waste my breath, telling secrets that you’ll only unravel between you?”

When Dallandra made a mock swing his way, he laughed, ducking back.

“Are you hungry, my love? Should I call a servant to bring you food?”

“No, thank you. There’s naught I need but answers.”

Grinning, he ignored her hint.

“Help me look for something, will you?” he said. “That wretched whistle. I had it this morning, and now I’ve lost the thing.”

“It’s just as well. It was ill-omened, I swear it. Why don’t you let it go?”

“Because its owner might come looking for it, and if I had it, I could make a bargain.” He paused, frowning at the water reeds. “I was walking over there when I came back. Maybe I dropped it in the river. By those hells men swear by, I hope not.”

“Why not scry for it?”

“Of course!” He grinned in a sly sort of way. “Here’s a trick you might not have seen before. Watch.”

When he knelt beside the river, she joined him and did just that while he described a circle in the air with a flick of one hand. The motion-trace glowed, became solid, then settled upon the flowing water like a circle of rope, but unlike the rope, it remained in the same spot instead of floating downstream. Within the circle pictures appeared, all hazy and strange at first, then forming into clear images: a muddy road, a rainy sky, a vast lake, rippled and dark. Two riders appeared, one dark-haired, one light.

“Rhodry,” Evandar remarked. “And the yellow-haired fellow’s Yraen. Now here I am, riding up to them.”

Riding up, talking, and handing Rhodry the whistle—the memory vision broke when Evandar swore under his breath.

“I forgot to take it back from him. Well, it’s gone, then. No use in worrying over it.”

“Now just wait! We can’t leave him with that ill-omened thing without even a warning. It’s as you said: what if its owner comes looking for it?”

Evandar shrugged, turning half away to stare at the swift water, flowing between the sword-sharp rushes. All at once
he seemed old, his face fine-drawn and far too pale. The sun darkened, as if it had gone behind a cloud, and the wind, too, blew suddenly cold.

“What’s so wrong?” she said, and sharply.

“I forgot, that’s what. I simply forgot that I’d handed him the whistle, forgot that I left it back in the lands of men.”

“Well, everyone forgets something every now and then.”

He shook his head in a stubborn no.

“You don’t understand,” he snapped. “This is a serious matter. I grow weary, my love, more weary every day, and now, it seems, feeble-minded as well. How long will I be able to keep our lands safe and blooming?” He paused, rubbing his eyes with both hands, digging the palms hard into his cheekbones. “It’s true. You’ve got to take my people away with you, and soon.”

She started to make her ritual protest, to beg him to come himself, but an idea struck her, and she said nothing. He dropped his hands and looked at her with a flash of anger in his turquoise eyes.

“Well,” she said carelessly. “If you’ve made your mind up to stay behind, who am I to argue with you?”

“I’m no man to argue with, no.” But for the first time, she heard doubt in his voice.

She merely nodded her agreement and looked away.

“Well, someone had best go after Rhodry,” she said. “Will you?”

“I can’t. One of us has to stay here, on guard. It was foolish of me to leave while you slept, truly.”

“But I’ve never seen him in the flesh. Sharing your memory won’t help me scry him out.”

“True.” He hesitated, thinking. “I know. Scry for the whistle. You’ve handled it, even.”

“True enough. All right, let me see if I can, before I actually go anywhere.”

Sure enough, picturing the image of the bone whistle led her in vision straight to Rhodry. Yet, when she found him, she was glad she’d been so prudent and not gone haring off to Deverry in search of him without a look first. The vision showed her a stone dun, far east of the elven border, where a cold and sleeting rain turned the outer wards to mud. Inside, the great hall swarmed with human men, most
armed. Off in the curve of the wail the whistle appeared in sharp focus, held in Rhodry’s hands, although Rhodry himself was hard to see clearly, simply because she’d never actually met him on the physical plane, merely seen him in several states of vision over the years. As far as she could tell, he was showing the whistle to some lord’s bard, who merely shook his head over it and shrugged to show his ignorance of the subject.