Dark Magic (32 page)

She spoke gently enough, but still her tone brooked no refusal and he bowed his head, accepting, following her down from the hillock and back toward the hut, aware that she changed along the way, becoming once more the crone, Edra. She closed the door—silently as before—and went to her pallet. Calandryll resumed his place by the hearth, sure now that he dreamed, for still Bracht and Katya slept on, and in moments he joined them.

H
E
woke greatly refreshed, the strange events of the night blurring in the light of a new day, becoming, as is the way with dreams, steadily less distinct as he rose and stretched and went out to the spring to bathe. Bracht came with him and when they were done and Katya took her turn, they went to the barn to check the animals, who seemed content enough. The storm was long spent now, the sky still hoary, but brightened by the sun that hung hazy behind the curtaining grey, cheering the hollow with the promise of the turning season. Dew shone on the grass and birds sang, flashes of color on the surrounding hillocks.

“I was wrong, it seems,” Bracht admitted, elaborating when Calandryll expressed his incomprehension, “about Edra. If she be a marsh witch, she’s a kindly nature.”

Calandryll nodded, something tugging at his memory, insubstantial, so that he could not quite pin it
down. Indeed, it seemed to him that he had forgotten something important until they were once more on the road, breakfasted on griddle cakes and cheese, their farewells said and Edra’s hovel left behind. The crone guided them to the highway, standing beside a hillock as they set heels to their mounts and cantered northward.

He looked back then, raising a hand in salute, and saw a single shaft of sunlight glance down, illuminating the old woman. In that moment she became again the goddess, radiant, her own hand lifted in benediction. He gasped, the night in all its details flooding back, knowing that it had not been a dream. Beside him he heard Katya’s startled cry, looking toward her and seeing on her face an expression he knew must be the mirror of his own. When he looked again to where Dera stood, she was gone.

“What’s amiss?” Bracht stared from one to the other, frowning. “Your faces tell me you look on ghosts,”

“Not ghosts.” Calandryll shook his head, a smile shaping, tentative, through burgeoning certitude. “A goddess.”

“I thought I dreamed,” Katya murmured. “I had forgotten it until I looked back and saw her.”

“I, too,” said Calandryll.

“I looked back,” said Bracht, “and all I saw was an old woman.”

“Not Dera?” asked Katya.

The Kern shook his head, frown deepening. “The goddess? No—I saw only Edra.” He turned in his saddle, eyeing Calandryll with an expression close to suspicion. “You, too, saw Dera?”

Calandryll nodded. “For a moment, when the sun shone down.” His smile grew wider, no longer tentative. “And last night she spoke with me. In a dream, I thought; but now . . .”

“Tell me,” Bracht urged.

Calandryll outlined all that had been said.

“So—if your . . . dream . . . was true—you’ve a useful
blade,” Bracht’s face was thoughtful now. “And you, Katya, what did she tell you?”

The warrior woman spoke over the pounding of the hooves, her eyes alight with excitement and, Calandryll realized, something else. It seemed as though a weight were lifted from her, the depression that had assailed her since parting from Tekkan and the Vanu folk banished, her familiar spirit restored in full measure.

“Edra woke me,” she told them, “and asked me to walk a while with her. I did—it did not occur to me to refuse and I thought I must tread the paths of sleep, dreaming, though it was a most realistic dream. Like Calandryll, I had forgotten it until I saw her then, but now . . .” She smiled as though savoring the memory, brilliantly. “We walked across a meadow akin to the high grasslands of Vanu, under the moon, though I felt no chill, nor any fear. She told me—still Edra, then—that I need not go on, but might be restored to my own folk, brought safe home to Vanu. I . . .” She looked away a moment and Calandryll thought he saw her blush as she glanced sidelong at Bracht. “I said I could not leave you; that we are sworn to hunt Rhythamun, no matter where he goes or what dangers we face. She became Dera then and told me to hold faith, that although they are bound by laws above man’s understanding, the Younger Gods aid us as they can. And that I should not mourn the parting from my people, but take joy in what stands clear before me, offered.”

She broke off then, her cheeks darkened beneath their tan, and Calandryll was sure she blushed as Bracht demanded bluntly, “What is that?”

“Love,” she said, low-voiced. “Such love as is rare, and to be treasured greatly.”

Now—much to Calandryll’s surprise—it was the Kern’s face that reddened. He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, staring fixedly ahead awhile, then shrugged and grinned like a boy caught out in some
prank. “You know that I love you,” he said, no louder than she had spoken. “Have I not made that clear?”

“Aye.” Katya nodded solemnly, gravity disappearing as she smiled again. “But now our love is blessed, and I see that I was wrong to grieve so for what must be. That parting from my people is necessary to our quest, and that we shall meet again.”

Calandryll saw Bracht catch that “our,” his face lighting from within. He thought that were it possible he should fade discreetly into the background, to leave these two alone; but that was not possible and he contented himself with holding silent, a hoofbeat behind.

“That is good,” Bracht said, louder now and gravely. “And I am pleased you mourn no longer.”

“The promise made remains,” said Katya. “Not until we bring the Arcanum safe to Vanu and it is destroyed . . .”

“I know,” Bracht said, “and I accept.”

“I hope,” Katya said, “that it is not too long.”

Bracht’s laughter rang out at that, startling a flock of geese that browsed a little distance from the road, sending the birds skyward on thundering wings, honking. The skein circled overhead, wary until the three riders had moved on, then settling back to the dank grasses.

“One thing in all this troubles me,” Bracht announced after a while. “Why did I not see Dera?”

Calandryll pondered a moment, then suggested: “Mayhap because you are the only one of us without doubt. When I saw how Rhythamun had used me, I grew uncertain, I felt his treachery hard; Katya was saddened by parting. But you, you’ve never faltered—mayhap you had no need of Dera’s succor.”

“Mayhap,” the Kern allowed.

“I think it must be that,” Katya agreed. “Only you have never questioned where we go, or what we face.”

Bracht nodded without speaking further and Calandryll wondered at his expression. The Kern’s dark features were set in impassive lines, but in his
eyes there was a clouding, as if he felt less certain. “There are some I’d lief not face again,” he murmured lowly, the words not meant to be overheard, but carried back on the wind so that Calandryll caught them. Katya, a little ahead now, did not hear and Calandryll decided against questioning Bracht. Instead, he heeled the chestnut gelding alongside, matching the black stallion’s stride, and they spoke no more, only rode, hard, for the north.

T
HE
weather harshened as they came to Wessyl, a wind howling in off the Narrow Sea, herding lowering black billows of threatening cloud across the sky, laden with rain that fell in fierce flurries, the droplets often enough freezing so that they arrived as hail, bouncing off the road and stinging exposed flesh with their insensate attack. The land, too, was bleak, no longer quaggy but rising in great sweeps of desolate heath, scattered with stands of wind-wracked trees and outcrops of the hard grey stone from which the city was built.

It was a forbidding place, unyielding in the dimming light of the rainswept afternoon, set atop a headland that stood guardian over the bight of Eryn, its harbor below, almost a separate town, connected by a long walled avenue to the larger structure above. Sundry vessels lay at anchor, tossed on a choppy sea, lateen-rigged caravels and fishing craft for the most part, but among them the bulkier shapes of singlemasted nefs and lean, low warboats. The shipyards of Eryn, Calandryll saw, had been busy, that realization prompting him to wonder how far ahead Tobias might be. The thought was alarming: a progress such as his brother made did not travel fast. The new-hailed Domm and his bride would be feasted by their peers in each town they visited, gifts would be exchanged, treaties renewed, and fresh agreements reached. For all he knew, Tobias might be here in Wessyl. Surely the city would be posted with his likeness, and he
wondered, despite Dera’s assurance of safe passage through Lysse, how well his disguise would stand up.

He could not help but feel tension grip him as they approached the city gates and he was grateful for the rain and lengthening shadows that allowed him to huddle within his cloak, the cowl drawn forward to conceal his features. It abated somewhat as the guards, deterred from close examination by rain and wind, waved them through with only the briefest admonishment that they entered a peaceful and law-abiding town and had best curb their Kernish ways while sojourning within the walls. Then, as he saw a pillar plastered with an assortment of notices, his proscription among them, the tension returned and he rode again uneasy past rain-washed buildings that seemed to press in suspiciously, their glistening granite walls reminiscent of jail’s confines.

He expressed his fears to Bracht and the freesword laughed, assuring him that none should take him for more than a wandering Kern, a mercenary returning home to Cuan na’For. He felt less confident, thinking that Bracht yet rode on the surge of good humor Katya’s revelation had launched, but it seemed his comrade was correct, for they found lodgings in a tavern close by the walls and none there paid him especial attention.

“Even so,” he declared as they brought their horses into the stable, “I’d not linger here.”

“But the one night,” Bracht promised, “and so long as it takes us to purchase tents. Beyond that we’ve no cause to remain.”

Calandryll nodded, allowing himself to be mollified by the assurance. “Is this what it feels like to be an outlaw?” he murmured ruefully.

“Within a city’s walls, aye.” Bracht grinned, and added thoughtfully, “In Cuan na’For it’s easier.”

Something in his tone prompted Katya to look up from her grooming. “Someday you must tell me about your outlawry,” she said, smiling.

Bracht nodded, though his face remained thoughtful,
masking some hidden doubt as he replied with, Calandryll thought, a forced lightness, “Someday. Though soon enough I think we shall be in Cuan na’For.”

“Shall we?” Katya paused in her currying. “Are you so sure now well not find him in Gannshold?”

“Save he delay for some reason, I think not.” Bracht shook his head. “Can Tharn lie there? I think not—I think the Mad God rests, as all have said, beyond the world’s boundaries, and Rhythamun will not linger along the way but make all haste to his destination.”

“But still we might catch up,” suggested Calandryll. “If he believes us entrapped in Tezin-dar it might be that he feels no great need of haste.”

Bracht shrugged and said, “I think that such as Rhythamun learn little of patience no matter how long they live. I think he’ll not remain in Gannshold longer than he must.”

“You’d thought to perhaps overtake him,” Katya said. “What prompts this change of tune?”

“Dera promised Calandryll safe passage through Lysse,” the Kern replied slowly, “yet seemed unaware of Rhythamun’s location. Surely she’d know, were he in Gannshold, and have said as much. I fear he’s passed on, into Cuan na’For.”

“Perhaps,” Katya allowed, the admission reluctant. “But still he may linger there.”

It came to Calandryll then that she spoke more in hope than true belief, and it dawned upon him that those words she had spoken on the road had held a meaning—a confession, perhaps—that he had not until now fully recognized. She hoped, he felt, that their quest be soon ended as much now from the desire to realize the consummation of the promises exchanged with Bracht as for the reasons that had brought her questing out from Vanu. He did not—could not!—doubt her commitment to the hunt, but now that devotion was lent a greater urgency by the commoner emotion of love. It was hard for them, he realized, to
hold such feelings bound by the vows they had made. To ride so long together unable, thanks to those vows, to indulge, physically, the desire they felt, forbidden by their honor. Honor, he thought, was a strange thing, and hard-won, hard to hold; and both these comrades were honorable. Once more, he felt like an intruder, busying himself with his horse as Bracht said softly, “If Ahrd wills it, so shall it be. But still I think we must go farther.”

“To the Borrhun-maj and beyond?” said Katya, question and resignation mingled in her voice.

“Where we must,” said Bracht.

Katya ducked her head, torchlight striking silver sparks from her flaxen hair.

“So let’s be done here,” Bracht said firmly, “and eat and find our beds. And be soonest gone from this dismal city.”

“Aye!” Katya smiled across the horses. “As soon we may.”

By common accord they finished grooming the animals, saw them fed, and went into the tavern.

Calandryll’s fears proved groundless: they attracted no more attention than any other patrons, finding a table, as had become their habit, to the rear of the common room where they ordered a meal and mugs of ale. The folk of Wessyl were, it seemed, largely uncommunicative, for neither the landlord nor any of the guests attempted to engage them in conversation as the southerly folk had done. Instead, they were served mostly in silence and what questions they ventured answered curtly, as if folk in Wessyl kept themselves to themselves and met the inquiries of strangers with a grim and taciturn courtesy. Of Daven Tyras they learned nothing, which was not particularly surprising: it was far easier for a traveler to slip unnoticed through a city than to escape attention in the caravanserais along the road. That they gained on Tobias and his retinue was more disturbing, and Calandryll thought they should perhaps avoid Eryn and travel overland to Gannshold in hopes his brother
lingered at the shipyards. He felt more confident now that he could pass for a Kern among strangers, but should Tobias lay eyes on him . . . Surely his own sibling must see through his disguise. Him, or Nadama, or any number of the retainers who had known the young prince Calandryll den Karynth in Secca.