Bristling Wood (39 page)

“Rhodry’s almost to Drauddbry, and he seems to be traveling south. He’s bought himself a second horse to make speed. It would appear that he’s heading for Cerrmor.”

“I wonder what they want in Cerrmor.”

“They, Your Grace?”

“Well, isn’t Jill with him?”

“My apologies, Your Grace. I forgot you wouldn’t know. He and Jill were separated by an unfortunate turn of events. She’s following along after him with a friend, a gerthddyn who gallantly offered to escort her. The last I heard, they were coming to Dun Deverry to beg your aid.”

“Which they’ll have, of course.” Blaen considered for a moment. “Have you ever met my cousin or his woman?”

“I’ve not, Your Grace.”

“They match each other like a pair of fine boots. If Rhodry’s going to inherit Aberwyn, I’d rather see Jill beside him than the noble-born sheep his mother would pick for him.”

“But isn’t she common-born?”

“She is, but details like that have been arranged away before. I’ll have to think on it.”

Several hours later, it occurred to Blaen that he implicitly believed what Madoc had told him. I’ve seen dweomer before, he reminded himself, but still he shuddered. What had Madoc been reading in the cloudy sky?

Thanks to the rain, the bargemen had hung canvas across the bow of the barge, an imperfect shelter but better than none at all. Jill wrapped her cloak around her tightly and watched Salamander staring at the foaming water rushing by. Every now and then his mouth would frame a silent word or two. By then, her sight was nearly back to normal. The water was merely water; Salamander no longer changed color to reflect what he was feeling. There was only a certain vividness to colors, a certain urgency to patterns of line and shape, to remind her of the splendors she had seen when she’d been bathed in forbidden power. With a grudging self-mockery, she had to admit that in a way she was sorry to lose that dangerous beauty. Finally Salamander turned to her to whisper.

“I’ve just been talking with Lord Madoc. He wanted to know where I’d last scried Rhodry out so he could tell Blaen. Not that it’ll do much good, truly. A speeded courier still couldn’t catch up with him.”

“True enough, but the courier could tell the gwerbret in Cerrmor to watch out for him.”

“If he stays in Cerrmor.”

Jill raised her hands in a gesture of frustration. She was wishing that she hadn’t taught Rhodry the ways of the long road so well. For days now he’d slipped through the net of riders looking for him like a fox through a hedgerow.

“Well, we’ll be in Dun Deverry tomorrow,” Salamander said. “And we can talk with Blaen directly.”

“Good. You know, in spite of everything, I’m really looking forward to seeing the king’s city. I’ve wandered over this kingdom since I was eight years old, but I’ve never been there. There aren’t any hires for silver daggers in the king’s own lands.”

All at once the gray gnome popped into being, not a foot away from her. When she held out her hands to it, it hesitated, screwing up its face at her.

“Oh, here, little one! What have I done to make you so angry with me?”

It held out for only a moment longer, then threw itself into her. She hugged it tight.

“I’m so glad you’ve forgiven me. I’ve missed you.”

Smiling, it reached up to pat her cheek.

“We’ll be back with Rhodry soon, with any luck. Have you visited d him? Is he well?”

It nodded yes to both questions, snuggling against her like a cat.

“I wish I knew where he was going.”

The gnome looked up and pointed at her.

“He’s following me?”

Again it nodded yes, but so indifferently that she wasn’t sure if it had truly understood. Salamander had been watching all of this closely.

“Interesting and twice interesting,” he pronounced. “But I wonder what it means.”

Although the leech advised Perryn to stay in Leryn for at least five days to recover from the beating, he left town as soon as he could possibly ride. Once he’d tuned his mind to Jill, her presence ached him like another wound, drawing him after her. Yet his longing was tempered with fear, of the strange fellow with the moonbeam pale hair who had taken her away. As he thought things over, he wondered if he had somehow dreamt that terrifying scene where he’d seen clouds of colored light and glowing swords. Every time he tried to convince himself that he’d been dreaming, he came up against the inescapable fact that Jill was gone. He simply refused to admit that she ever would have left him of her own free will; there had to be another man involved, and him a powerful one. Although most people in the kingdom dismissed tales of dweomer, Perryn had always instinctively believed they were true, that indeed there was a thing called dweomer and that with it men could work marvels. Now, to his very cold comfort, he’d been proven right. His one consolation in all this was that if he didn’t have Jill, neither did Rhodry.

Three days’ ride brought him to Gaddmyr, a large, prosperous town behind a double ring of stone walls. Although he would have preferred to avoid the town entirely, he was too low on provisions. Normally he hated being in towns, packed in with a lot of smelly, sweaty people, bound up in their petty human concerns like pigs in a sty, but that night he found it a certain comfort to sit in the tavern room of a shabby inn with human beings around him to distract him from his constant, aching longing for Jill. Out in the forest, he would have missed her constantly; there, he could drink down strong ale and try to forget her. When the tavernman came by to ask him if he’d be spending the night, on impulse he said that he would.

“But, er, ah, I don’t truly want to share a chamber with someone. Could I, oh, ah, sleep out in the hayloft?”

“No reason why not. Plenty of room out there.”

Perryn got himself another tankard of ale and found a seat in an out-of-the-way corner. Although he was planning on simply drinking himself so blind that he’d be unable to think, the tavern lass hanged his mind. She was a round-faced little thing, with dark hair and knowing dark eyes, and a smile that promised a few nteresting hours if not much more. Perryn decided that she was a much better way to distract himself from thoughts of Jill than a hangover would be. He chatted with her for a few minutes, asked her name, which was Alaidda, and found, as he’d expected, that she was utterly cold to him. When she turned to go, he gave her one of his smiles. Although he’d never understood what he was doing the smile worked as it always did. Alaidda stared at him, her lips half parted, her eyes stunned as she lingered beside him. When he smiled again, she cast a nervous glance at the tavernman, then came much closer.

“And is the innkeep going to mind if you talk a bit with a customer?”

“Oh, he won’t, as long as it’s just talk.”

“What are you, then? His daughter?”

“Hah! Far from it.”

“Indeed?” Perryn paused for another longing smile. “So—part of your hire is keeping his bed warm.”

Alaidda blushed, but she moved closer still, until her full breasts were brushing his arm. He smiled yet again and was rewarded by seeing her eyes go all dreamy as she smiled in return. When Perryn saw that the tavernman was engrossed in conversation with a pair of merchants, he risked laying his hand on her cheek.

“He doesn’t look like much of a man to me. A lass like you could use a little better company of a night. I’m sleeping out in the hayloft, you see. Out of . . . er, well . . . out of the way. I could go out there right now.”

“I could follow in a bit, but I can’t stay long.” She giggled in an drunken way. “But then, it won’t take long.”

With another giggle, Alaidda hurried away to the kitchen. Perryn lingered long enough to finish his ale and allay the tavernman’s suspicions, then slipped out to the hayloft. Since the lass had something to hide, he didn’t take a candle lantern. He found his gear in his horse’s stall, hauled it up the ladder, and stumbled around in the dark until he got the blankets laid out and off. As he sat waiting in the mounded hay, he began to wonder why he was even bothering with this seduction. No woman would ever match his Jill. The thought of her brought him close to tears, but in a few minutes he was distracted by the sound of Alaidda climbing the ladder. He went to meet her and kissed her before she got any thoughts of changing her mind.

“Oh ye gods!” She sounded honestly troubled. “I hardly know what’s wrong with me, running after you like this.”

“Naught’s wrong. Come lie down with me, and I’ll show you why you did.”

Meekly she let him take her to his blankets. At first she was shy in his arms, but with every kiss he gave her, he could feel not only a growing sexual tension, but a power, a strange dark feeling that rose from deep within and flooded him until it was almost more demanding than the sexual force. As the power grew, she responded to it, whimpering in his arms at every caress. Finally she caught his hand.

“I don’t have time to take my dress off. Just pull it up, and now. Please?”

As soon as they were finished, she gave him one last kiss and a sincere confession that she wished she could stay all night, then hurried back to her jealous man. By then, Perryn was so exhausted that he was glad she was gone. He fell onto his blankets and stared up into a strange light-shot darkness that revolved slowly around him. When he tried to close his eyes, the feeling of motion persisted, so strong that he wanted to vomit; he opened his eyes in a hurry. He could feel cold sweat running down his back and chest, and his trembling lips felt bloodless and cold. Although he wanted to get up and go ask for help in the tavern, he knew that he could never climb down the ladder without breaking his neck. He could only lie there, gripping the straw under him, and pray that he wasn’t dying.

Panic hit him like waves slapping a pier in a storm. He found himself remembering the dweomerman who’d taken Jill away, the fellow taunting him, then adding one last insult: you’ve got to stop stealing women and horses, or it’ll kill you. At the time, Perryn had assumed the fellow meant that some outraged husband would murder him or suchlike, but now he realized the truth. Something was wrong, very gravely wrong, and he didn’t know what it was. Did the dweomerman know? Would he help if he did? Not likely from the hate-filled things the fellow had thrown into his face. In a confused babble, his thoughts went round and round until at last he slept, tumbling into a darkness without dreams.

About two hours before noon on the morrow, Jill finally got her first view of Dun Deverry when the barge tied up at the riverside piers about a half mile to the north. For a long while she stared at the massive walls that curved around the city, rising high above them on its seven hills. Even from their distance she could just pick out the roofs of the king’s palace. Floating high above the towers and snapping in the wind were tiny flecks of yellow that had to be the cloth-of-gold banners of the Wyvern throne.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Salamander said. “Let’s get those horses unloaded and get on our way. Just wait until you see the gates.”

The gates were easily twelve feet high and twenty broad, and they were carved all over with panels of key patterns set round with bands of interlace. The iron banding was stamped as well with rows of interwoven spirals and rosettes. Since the walls were a good twenty feet thick, they walked through a sort of a tunnel and found yet another set of gates at the other end, just as elaborately decorated as the first. Beyond them was a wide public space, planted with oak trees around a central fountain, where a marble wyvern rose from the spray. From this park the narrow streets unwound, spiraling through the houses and up the hills, or twisting down through shops and taverns toward the lake to the west. Everywhere Jill looked she saw people hurrying about on some business or another, or here and there the splendidly dressed riders of the king’s own guard.

Salamander led her to the inn he had in mind, a three-story broch rising in the midst of a grassy garden. She looked at the roof, covered with fine slate, and noticed that the windows glinted with glass.

“We can’t stay here! It’ll cost a fortune!”

“Jill, my miserly turtledove.” The gerthddyn shook his head in mock sadness. “If so, I shall earn a fortune in the tavern room to pay for it. I cannot stand cheap inns. They stink, and the mattresses are crawling with bugs. If I wanted to sleep on a floor, I would have been born a hound.”

“Well, but there’s plenty of decent inns that cost less.”

“Why cavil over a few silvers? Besides, someone is meeting us here.”

As they led their horses up to the gates, a burly young man strolled out. He glanced with some appreciation at Salamander’s beautifully woven cloak and gold-trimmed horse gear, then bowed.

“Is this silver dagger with you, sir?”

“He is. My bodyguard. Have you a chamber on the second floor?”

“We do. I’ll just call the lad to tend to your horses, sir.”

“Splendid. The first things we shall want are baths.”

But they had to postpone this by now necessary luxury for some time. When Jill followed Salamander into the tavern room, which had Bardek carpets on the floor and silver sconces on the walls, she saw a tall man in the plaid brigga of the noble-born pacing back and forth near the hearth. The sight of him wrung her heart, because Blaen looked so much like her Rhodry.

“That’s Gwerbret Blaen!” she said.

“Of course. He’s the one who’s meeting us here.”

“He doesn’t know about . . . well, about Perryn, does he?”

“Of course not! Don’t you think I have any respect for your honor? Leave that part of this to me.”

As they walked over, Blaen saw them and strode to meet them. Although Salamander made him a courtly bow, he barely returned it, instead catching Jill’s hand and giving it a hard squeeze.

“It gladdens my heart to see you, Jill, though it’d gladden it more if Rhodry were with you.” He looked around and found the tavernman staring gape-mouthed at the sight of the gwerbret greeting a silver dagger as an old friend, “Innkeep! Send up a flagon of your best mead to their chambers! And a plate of cold meats, too.”

The chambers justified Jill’s worst fears about expense. Not only were they carpeted, but all the furniture was beautifully polished wood, as heavily carved with interlace as anything in a lord’s dun. The flagon and the plate, both silver, arrived promptly. Blaen handed the servant lass coins worth twice what the refreshments, cost and dismissed her peremptorily.