The Dragon Revenant (41 page)

“We’ve had a real setback, haven’t we?”

“How perceptive you are, oh partridge of perspicacity.” Salamander had a long swallow and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “They’re talking about summoning Brindemo to testify.”

“That could take months!”

“Indeed. If our fat friend even lived to reach the court. The idea is to force us to drop the case.” He finished the other half and held out the goblet to be refilled. “The sagacious archon of this fair and fountain-studded city seems most unwilling to prosecute Baruma.”

“He’s afraid of the Hawks, no doubt.”

“Of course. I have been repeatedly assured that, if it were a simple matter of freeing Rhodry and getting on our way, our affairs could be attended to in the proverbial twinkling of an eye. There have even been hints of a substantial reduction in the usual fees, as recompense for the inordinate amount of time which we’ve been forced to spend on what should be—and here I get a veritable dumb show of knowing winks and significant glances from each official present—what should be a routine matter.”

“Bastards.” Jill poured herself a cup, too. “I imagine Rhodry would be pleased to drop the case, though. He wants to kill Baruma himself. Letting a lot of common-born folk tell him what to do won’t sit well, either.”

“How simple life must seem to the likes of my beloved younger brother!” Salamander was smiling, but his fingers were twining round his wine cup so tightly that Jill was afraid he’d snap the stem. “But I think me we don’t have much choice.”

“Why? I thought the whole point of this lawsuit was to waste time.”

“Just so, but wasting time does not include wasting yet another life. If the archons send for Brindemo, the Hawks will kill him, one way or another, if not in Myleton, then somewhere along the way. And please do not even begin to tell me that Brindemo would deserve no better, because flawed though he may be, he’s a human soul and a child of your gods and so on and so forth.”

“He also refused to send Rhodry to the mines. That’s enough for me.”

“A practical soul to the core, aren’t you? Well and good, then. We shall ask His Holiness to solemnize Rhodry’s freedom on the morrow, and the day after that—you have to wait a full day and night, you see, which is all to the good in our pending precarious and perilous predicament—we’ll register it with the archon, and then … well, indeed, what then? Do you think we dare take the risk of scrying Nevyn out?”

“Will the Hawks know it if we do?”

“Most like.”

Jill sipped her wine and considered the grim alternatives. With a vast sigh Salamander got up and, still clutching his wine cup, wandered over to the lectern, where a candle as long and thick as a child’s arm stood impaled on an iron spike in readiness. He flicked his fingers and lit the candle, frowned, flicked them again and put it out, then waved his hand in the air and summoned a candle-shape of pure golden light to hang above the scroll laid out on the lectern.

“Why are you reading that stupid thing now?” Jill snapped. “We should be thinking about the trouble we’re in.”

“What a nasty temper you have! I’ve already thought about the trouble and have reached the conclusion that there isn’t one—a conclusion, that is. Like the shepherd in the ancient fable, caught twixt lion and wolf, no matter which way we run, we are somebody’s dinner.”

“There are times when I feel like strangling you.”

“No doubt.” He was bending over the scroll, but whether or not he was actually reading, she couldn’t tell. “There are times, turtledove, when my blather even gets on my own nerves. This is one of them.”

The first night out of Indila, Nevyn and his men had stayed, just by traveler’s luck, in a little town beside the road that had a small inn and a bigger caravan yard right in the middle of its public square. For the second night, however, he had a particular destination in mind, a temple of Dalae-oh-contremo up in the hills that was more of a hermitage for elderly priests than a working temple. It was a day’s ride, twenty miles, from Pastedion, far enough to ensure its residents’ privacy, but close enough to the big urban temple so that the younger priests could ride over now and then and see if their elder brethren required anything.

A complex of low, rambling white buildings and big gardens, the temple stood on top of a cliff on the east side of and about three hundred yards above the river and river road, and the only way up was a switchback trail cut out of the living rock. When Nevyn and his men arrived at the bottom of this trail, it was just at sunset, and as he looked up, idly wondering how their tired horses would take the climb, the setting sun washed the buildings with a gentle pinkish light. All at once he went cold, because the light changed to sheets of blood in the sight of Vision.

“What’s wrong, my lord?” Amyr said. “You’re white as snow.”

“I don’t know yet, lad, but I’ll wager somewhat’s very wrong indeed. We’ll leave most of the men here with the horses, but you and I are going to climb up to take a look.”

“Do you think there are enemies waiting up there?”

At that a crowd of burly purple-and-black gnomes appeared at Nevyn’s feet. Although they were obviously agitated, screwing up their faces in fear and leaping up and down, they shook their heads no in a silent answer to Amyr’s question. Just to be on the safe side, Nevyn brought Praedd along, too. Panting and puffing the three of them climbed up on foot with the gnomes rushing ahead until at last they stood before the wooden gates of the compound and could look down, while they caught their breath, at the little figures of the men and horses beside the tiny river far below.

Yet they lingered only the barest moment. When Nevyn knocked on the gate, it creaked open under his fist a few inches to let him see an elderly man, his dark face twisted in agony, lying on the ground, one hand stretched toward the gate in a desperate attempt to reach it. A puddle of blood was drying round him and clotting in his snow-white hair.

“Ah gods!” Nevyn’s cry was more of a moan under his breath. “Brace yourself, lads.”

They shoved the gate open and strode into a central courtyard with flower beds blooming red and yellow round a cobbled court. Although that first dead man had almost reached the gates, two others had fallen back by the entrance to the shrine across the court. All three had been stabbed to death. With the Wildfolk to guide them, Nevyn and his men found two more round back at the washhouse, and the last three in the kitchens, where, apparently, they’d been sharing the humble task of preparing their evening meal of bread and stewed vegetables. As they searched, Nevyn felt curiously numb, a little cold maybe, but perfectly calm.

Since he knew that the priests would have wanted to lie close to their holy altar, he had the men carry them into the narrow, white-washed shrine and lay them down on the tiled floor in front of the enormous block of polished stone. Behind it on the wall was a fresco of the Wave-father soaring serene and free over the sun-gilded ocean, just as, or so he hoped, their souls now soared in the One True Light. By the time they’d covered all the victims with blankets from their individual cells, night had fallen. When Nevyn made a glowing sphere of golden light appear above the altar, neither Amyr nor Praedd seemed to notice. Both young men were white and shaking, but with rage.

“The piss-poor whoreson bastards!” Amyr burst out. “Slaughtering old men! Creaking ancients, my lord! They stood the same chance of fighting back as a candle’s got of melting the Third Hell!”

“It gripes my soul!” Praedd snarled. “Will we get a strike on them, my lord?”

“I sincerely hope so, lads. I’ll wager anything you want that these men were slain just so they couldn’t shelter us.”

Only then did his grief hit home, grief and rage and sheer overwhelming guilt, that these wise and gentle elders had died because of him and his troubles—but not because of him alone, he reminded himself, rather from the foul evil that was infecting the islands like rot in the timbers of a ship. He knew he was trembling, his heart pounding, felt himself turn as cold and hard as a sword carved of ice. The Wildfolk of Aethyr gathered round him like a summer storm, crackling and hissing in the air, rushing up and down the walls in the blue fire of sheet lightning.

“I swear by all my holy vows, they who slaughtered these innocent souls will pay the price in blood-coin.”

As his voice echoed in the silent shrine, a flash of brilliant white burst over the altar with the acrid smell of lightning. Praedd and Amyr sank to their knees in awe and terror both.

“The god has witnessed my vow. So be it!”

And with the deepest thunder of all, three great knocks throbbed and rolled through the shrine.

If he had been alone, Nevyn would have walked through the night in his holy rage to reach Pastedion, but as it was, he had men, and beasts, too, for that matter, under his care. They all spent a restless night—even the horses seemed to have picked up that something was wrong—camped with their backs to the cliff. Though everyone else managed to sleep, Nevyn stayed up, pacing back and forth by the river as he kept up a guard in more worlds than one.

In the morning no one grumbled when Nevyn insisted they make an early start. By pushing themselves they reached Pastedion well before sunset, just as it was waking up from its noontide nap and its citizens were beginning to wander down to the marketplace for a snack and a gossip. Everyone turned to stare at the party of well-armed and grim horsemen who clattered through the streets on their way to the archon’s palace. They all dismounted in a died courtyard planted with cypresses and set with marble fountains. When a pair of harried-looking servants rushed out and announced that the archon, Graffaeo, was receiving no visitors, Nevyn grabbed the closest unfortunate by his tunic and lifted him half off his feet.

“You tell him that Lord Galrion of Aberwyn is here on urgent business for the gwerbret of said city, and that he brings horrible news to boot. The elderly priests who served the Wave-father up on the river road have all been murdered, practically in their beds. Understand?”

The slave squeaked and nodded a vigorous yes.

“Good. Then fetch him out here now.”

With one last squeak the slave wriggled free and rushed off into the palace as if demons were pinching his behind. Nevyn smiled, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

Although normally, freeing a slave is a joyous occasion in the islands—the former master is expected to spread a goodly feast for friends and relations—Jill and the others had no appetite for celebrating after the brief ceremony that set Rhodry free. They were all sitting glumly in the guesthouse, arguing in spurts over what to do next, when Brother Merrano came hurrying in with news.

“Rhodry, there’s a Deverry man at the archon’s palace who claims to be one of your servitors. A Lord Galrion.”

“Who?” Rhodry glanced at Jill, who only shrugged in puzzlement. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

“It sounds like a name out of an ancient chronicle or suchlike,” Salamander chimed in.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Merrano said with some asperity. “But he’s brought a pack of armed men with him, and the archon’s afraid that he’ll start cutting off heads if you don’t get yourself there to calm him down.”

“Now that sounds like an Eldidd man, truly.” Rhodry got up and grinned. “Well and good, then. Let’s go greet him.”

The walk from the temple to the archon’s palace was only a couple of hundred yards, but to Jill it seemed to stretch forever. As they made their way through the afternoon crowds in a light bunch, with Rhodry in the middle for safety’s sake, she was sure that she saw assassins in every shadow and on every roof, all waiting for their chance to rob Aberwyn of its rightful heir. Her nerves grew even jumpier when they reached the palace and found that the archon had brought out his handful of armed guards. Two spearmen stood at the gates, and two more at the door of the magnificent stone house itself. At the sight of them Gwin froze, just for the briefest moment. Salamander laid a friendly hand on his shoulder and whispered.

“Is anyone here going to recognize you?”

“They shouldn’t. You never know.”

“Well, if there’s lying to be done, leave it to me. I’m a master of the craft.”

Gwin managed a smile at that and let himself be led along into the archon’s reception chamber, echoing and gaudy with purple and gold tile. Sitting on the floor below the dais were ten Deverry men, perched uncomfortably on cushions and sipping wine from unfamiliar cups. Jill caught Rhodry’s arm and squeezed it.

“All these men serve you. Act like you remember them. The blond with the scar over one eye is Amyr. Make sure you call him by name.”

Then she looked at the dais and all her good advice caught in her throat.

“Nevyn!”

She found herself running like a child down the long room with no thought of courtesy or protocol. With his creaky laugh the old man got up to meet her, climbing down from the dais just as she launched herself into his embrace.

“Oh, Nevyn, Nevyn, you can’t know how it gladdens my heart to see you!”

“I think I can guess, child. There, there, don’t weep. We’ll fight this thing out and win yet.”

In something like shock Jill realized that she was indeed weeping. When she wiped her eyes on her shirt sleeve, Nevyn produced one of his usual horrid old rags from his brigga pocket for her to use as a handkerchief, a thing so familiar and common that it worked on her better than a mighty talisman, radiating sober sense and courage in the midst of dark magicks. She almost hated to hand it back.

“We’d best mind our formalities now,” he whispered.

Taking her arm he led her up to the dais, where the archon was standing, visibly puzzled. Rhodry’s men were on their feet too, but clustering round the gwerbret, all desperate to touch him and prove to themselves that he was real, alive, and there with them, some weeping openly, most keeping silent only by a great act of will. Yet even in the midst of the confusion Jill noticed Gwin, standing off to one side, and she would always remember the pain on his face, the stricken look of someone who realizes just what an outsider, what an outcast from all that’s decent and normal he is. Then the look was gone, swallowed into his usual blank lack of emotion, but at that moment she found it in her heart to pity him.