Rhodry felt as sick as if he’d bitten into rotten meat.
“Fortunately, I keep a strict guard,” the dweomerman went on. “But from now on, if you have a dream or even an idle fancy that troubles you, tell me straightaway. Never be in the least embarrassed about it.”
“Done, then.”
“Good.” The old man began pacing back and forth. “Well, I’ve just learned an important thing. Our enemies aren’t retreating. That dream was a challenge, Rhodry. They’re going to stand and fight me over this.”
After his unsuccessful attempt to take over Rhodry’s body, Alastyr’s exhaustion muddled his mind like drink. He had never expected the silver dagger to have such strength of will, though, as he thought about it, a hardened warrior would have to develop a certain power of concentration to survive in battle. The most puzzling thing, however, was the simple feel of Rhodry’s mind and the way his dream-self looked on the astral plane. Given Rhodry’s mental strength, however untrained it was, his dream-projection should have been unusually solid, but it had flickered constantly, at times looking more like a man-shaped flame than a body. Somewhere in his stock of lore was the explanation for that. He sat quietly, letting his mind wander as it would from one flickering thought to another tenuous connection.
“By the dark power itself!” he said abruptly.
Startled, Sarcyn looked up and turned to him.
“I just realized somewhat,” Alastyr went on. “I’m willing to wager that Rhodry’s father was no more Tingyr Maelwaedd than he was me. I swear that lad is half one of the Westfolk.”
“Indeed? Then it’s no wonder that all the Old One’s predictions and star craft were wrong.”
“Just so. Well, he’s going to be interested to hear that.”
“If we live to tell him.”
Alastyr started to make some reply, then merely shrugged. Yet once again he wondered if they should simply kill Camdel and flee for their lives. But there was the stone. If only he had the Great Stone of the West, he could subjugate its spirits and tap untold power for his own use and to further the plans of the dark powers. From years of study he knew that the Great Stone had a direct link to the mind of the High King, a link that could be used to drive him slowly mad and plunge the kingdom into chaos. Then could the dark masters work as they pleased in Deverry. Sarcyn was watching him with dark, unreadable eyes.
“Are you thinking of escaping on your own, lad?” Alastyr growled. “I have ways of finding you if you try.”
“Naught of the sort, master.”
Alastyr’s dweomer told him that the apprentice was speaking the truth, but still he felt some other thought, hiding below the surface of his mind. It was time, he decided, to put his apprentice in his place a bit.
“Take care of the horses and your pet,” he said. “I need to be alone to do a working.”
Sarcyn went out to the stable of the isolated farm they’d appropriated by the simple means of killing the old farmer who owned it. Crouched in the straw of an empty stall was the farmhand, whom they’d left alive because he looked useful. A solid, middle-aged man of about forty, he was so thoroughly ensorcelled that he rose to his feet obediently the moment Sarcyn snapped his fingers.
“Feed and water the horses,” the apprentice said. “Then come into the kitchen for my next order.”
He nodded agreement, swaying as if he were drunk.
The kitchen was a big quarter-round room, set off from the rest of the house by wickerwork partitions. It was an old-style house, with one hearth in the middle under a smoke hole in the thatched roof. In the straw on the floor Camdel lay curled up like a baby. When they were rummaging through the farm, Sarcyn had found an iron chain with a cuff that had been doubtless used at one point for restraining an ox. Now it coupled Camdel’s ankle to an iron ring for hanging a pot by the hearth. When Sarcyn unlatched it, Camdel moaned and sat up.
“Want some breakfast, my noble sir? There’s proper barley porridge.”
Unshaven and filthy, the lordling nodded. Later, Sarcyn decided, he would let the creature bathe.
“The worst is almost over,” he said with bravado he didn’t feel. “Once we’re back in Bardek, we’ll have a good place to live and get you some decent clothes and suchlike.”
Camdel forced out a tremulous smile. It was odd, Sarcyn thought, how men differed. Some fought his domination to the very end; others found they had a taste for the strange sexual pleasures that he introduced them to. In a very satisfying way Camdel was one of the latter. As he watched the lord eat his breakfast, Sarcyn realized that he was glad of Camdel’s tastes. He felt an odd emotion gnawing and nagging at him, so unfamiliar that it took him a long time to identify it: guilt. All at once he remembered being a small child and weeping over Alastyr’s rape. It was worth it, he told himself, because he brought me to the warrior’s path. The reassurance rang hollow even to him.
Sarcyn strode to the door and found the farmhand waiting, as numb as a beast. Sarcyn sent out a line of light and fastened it around his aura, then sent the aura spinning.
“You’re going to fetch us more food. You’re going to say naught but the tale we told you. Look at me, man.”
The farmhand looked up and stared into his eyes.
“I’ll go get the rabbits,” he whispered. “I’ll say naught but the tale you told me.”
“Good. Then get on your way.”
The farmhand rose and shuffled away to the stables. Sarcyn walked through the little chambers, fanned out around the hearth, into the storeroom. There he stopped, grunting in surprise. Alastyr stood before the window, and the corpse of the dead farmer was standing, too, a pale thing, gray and bloodless, but moving nonetheless, swaying on awkward feet. Alastyr shot his apprentice a sour smile of triumph.
“I bound Wildfolk into it. They’ll keep it alive for some time, and it’ll do our bidding. Now, tell me, you little dog, can you match my power in that?”
“I can’t, master, truly.”
“Then mind what you say to me, or you’ll end up the same way one fine day.”
Sarcyn felt a revulsion so strong that he wanted to turn and run from the chamber, but he forced himself to stare at the thing calmly while the master gloated over it. He had the brief thought of trying to escape, but he knew that he was in this dark muck too deep to get out.
Nevyn insisted that Jill and Rhodry have breakfast with him in his chamber, and when a page came, saying that the gwerbret wanted his cousin to come sit with him, Nevyn sent back the answer that the silver dagger was otherwise occupied. Although he doubted that Alastyr could form a link with a rider in Blaen’s warband—or, indeed, anyone else in the dun—things were too dangerous to take chances. All it would take was one crazed kitchen lass with a cleaver and the unnatural strength of ensorcellment to bring his plans to an abrupt end. As he thought about it, it was strange that the dark master had been able to work on Rhodry’s dreaming mind. He began to think that the enemy he was facing was the same man who’d caused the war in Eldidd the summer before, someone who’d seen Rhodry and had had the chance to study him.
Later that day he had another piece of evidence to feed that suspicion. He was perched on the windowsill and watching Jill and Rhodry dice for a pile of coppers. As soon as either had won the lot, they would divide it in half and start all over again. To distract himself, Nevyn began using his second sight to see which one would win each particular game. He had just prophesied to himself that Rhodry’s luck was turning when Blaen himself came into the chamber.
“Cornyn’s back from the Cwm Pecl pass,” he announced. “They wiped out those bandits, and he’s brought back a prisoner. He might know somewhat of interest.”
“So he might,” Nevyn said. “I think I’ll run the risk of leaving here to watch the interrogation. Come along, silver daggers. I don’t want you out of my sight.”
Out beside the warden’s guardroom stood a small, squat tower that served as a dungeon keep for local criminals awaiting trial or punishment. Whe
n they came into a small room, ill lit by one tiny window, they found that the wardens had been busy. Bound to a stone pillar stood a man, naked to the waist. Nearby an assortment of irons and pincers lay on a table. A stout man with arms as muscled as a blacksmith’s, the executioner was laying bits of charcoal into a brazier and blowing on the coals.
“Should be nice and hot in a minute, Your Grace,” he said.
“Good. So this is the rat my terriers dragged in, is it? Rhodry, have you seen him before?”
“I have. He was one of the pack who attacked us, sure enough.”
The bandit laid his head back against the pillar and stared so desperately at the ceiling that Nevyn could guess he was wishing that he were dead with the rest of his band. Although Nevyn disapproved of torture on principle, he knew that nothing he could say would convince the gwerbret against it. Blaen strolled over and slapped the bandit across the face.
“Look at me, swine. You have a choice. You can die mercifully and quickly, or slowly, in pieces.”
The bandit set his lips tightly together. When the executioner set a thin iron into the brazier to heat, the charcoal hissed and exuded the smell of burned flesh. With a yelp the bandit squirmed until Blaen slapped him into silence.
“We know that someone hired you to attack the caravan. Who?”
The executioner took the iron and spat on it. The spit sizzled.
“I don’t know much,” the bandit stammered. “I’ll tell you everything I do know.”
“Good.” Blaen gave him a gentle smile. “Then kindly proceed.”
“Our leader’s name was the Wolf, and he was down in Marcmwr, just seeing what he could see about caravans and suchlike. Well, he comes back and says he has a bit of work for us. This old merchant type wanted us to get the lass who was riding with this caravan. Sounds easy, the Wolf says, so we’ll take the old fart’s coin for it. He had this plan. We’d hit the caravan, and the Wolf and a couple of the lads would grab the lass, and then the rest of us would just pull back, like, before we lost any men. We didn’t know she could fight like the Lord of Hell. ‘Don’t harm her,’ he says. Horseshit! As if any of us could have.” He paused to shoot Jill a venomous look.
“Keeping talking.” Blaen slapped him again.
“And we weren’t supposed to harm the silver dagger, either, if we could help it, anyway.” He looked at Rhodry. “He knew your name. ‘Don’t harm Rhodry,’ says he, ‘unless you have to save your life. He’s not as important, but I’d hate to see him dead.’ After you killed the Wolf like that, we cursed well forgot what the old man said, too, you bastard.”
Rhodry merely smiled. Oh, indeed? Nevyn thought, it must be the same dark master, then! But why did he want Rhodry alive? He’d wanted Jill, most likely, to bribe Nevyn to let him go, but why Rhodry?
“So anyway, Your Grace,” the bandit said, “we couldn’t get her. So we elected a new captain and went to meet the old man. We were thinking of killing him, see, for vengeance, but he gave us so much coin that we let him be.”
“What was he like?” Nevyn stepped forward. “Was he a Bardek man?”
“He wasn’t, but one from Deverry. He dressed like a merchant, and mostly he looked as if he came from Cerrmor way. He had this oily little voice that rubbed my nerves raw. One of his men called him Alastyr. He had a servant, see, and one fellow, a swordsman, that fair creeped my flesh. He looked us over like he’d like to slit our throats just to watch us die.”
“He probably would have enjoyed it, at that. Did they have a prisoner with them?”
“They did, this brown-haired fellow tied to a horse. His face was all bruised up real bad, and he wouldn’t look at nobody. He was a slender kind of lad, the sort who remind you a bit of a lass, like.”
“Camdel, sure enough,” Blaen broke in.
“I’m afraid so,” Nevyn said. “Very well, Your Grace.
I’m afraid there’s no more ale to be squeezed out of this turnip.”
“Hang this vermin publicly at noon tomorrow.” Blaen turned to the executioner. “But make sure he dies an easy death.”
With a sudden stink of urine the bandit fainted.
As they left the tower, Nevyn mulled over the bandit’s information. He remembered the shipmaster in Cerrmor, saying that the passenger he’d taken to Bardek also had an oily voice and looked like a typical Cerrmor man. It was quite unlikely that there were two dark dweomer-masters so similar. And this Alastyr had had only one apprentice. The battle odds seemed more and more in his favor.
Nevyn realized, too, that he’d been thinking that he knew his opponent, only to find out that he was wrong. He had an old enemy, a dark master with whom he’d crossed swords several times in the last hundred years, a Bardekian who was particularly skilled in reading omens of future events. The war last year in Eldidd, the attempt on the dweomer-opal, even leaving Rhodry alive as a kind of experiment—it would all have fit Tondalo perfectly. Of course, he reminded himself, Tondalo might be behind it from a distance. By now the Bardekian would be some hundred fifty years old, and likely too weak to travel far. Although dark dweomermen can keep themselves alive by unnatural means, they have no way of remaining healthy, especially toward the end. Nature herself tries to thwart them, simply because they go counter to her principles, like water trying to flow uphill.
Caught in Alastyr’s strong grasp, the brown-and-white rabbit struggled, trying to work its hind feet free to rake him, but he knocked its head against the kitchen table until it went limp. He slit its throat with his knife, then leaned over to suck the hot blood directly from the wound. Even though he’d done it for years, the procedure always disgusted him, but unfortunately it was the only way to ensure that he got all of the blood’s magnetic effluent. He could never understand why other masters of the craft left killing their meat to their servants. As he drank, he felt the magnetic strength flow into him in a small rejuvenation. He wiped his mouth carefully on a rag, then set about skinning the rabbit and cutting it up.
As he worked, he felt his fear like a pounding in his blood. Although he wanted to flee, he was afraid to return to the Brotherhood with another failure on his hands. The Old One might well forgive him, especially since he’d know that Rhodry’s elven blood was the factor that had ruined his calculations, but the other masters of the dark path would see him as weak. Once a man weakened, he was likely to be attacked, torn apart, and drained of his power. Suicide would be a better fate than that. The thought of death made him tremble all over. After all, it was simply the fear of dying that had made him turn to the dark craft all those years before. Soon he would have to decide whether to flee or fight. Soon. Very soon. Although the dark dweomer sends no warnings of danger to those on the dark path, simple logic told him that time was short.
He looked up from his brooding to find Sarcyn watching him.
“What do you want?” Alastyr snapped.
“I only wanted to butcher the rabbit for you, master. It’s my place to wait on you.”
Alastyr handed him the knife, then washed his bloody hands in a bucket of water. Nearby Camdel sat crouched in the straw.
“If we do make a run for it,” Alastyr said, “Camdel has to die. He’ll only slow us down.”
Whimpering, the lordling shrank back. Sarcyn looked up with the knife in his hand, and his eyes were murderous with rage.
“I won’t let you kill him.”
“Indeed? And who are you to let me do or not do anything?”
Alastyr sent a wave of hatred down the link between his aura and Sarcyn’s, following it up with a twist of rage. With a gasp Sarcyn dropped the knife as the emotions translated themselves into pure physical pain. Writhing, he fell to his knees, his face twisted as he tried to keep the pain from showing there. With a snarl Alastyr released him, shaking on the floor.
“Now hold your tongue until you’re spoken to,” he snapped. “I have to think.”
He paced over to the window and stared out blindly, feeling his fear clutch and pulse within him.
Once he glanced back to see Sarcyn and Camdel clasped in each other’s arms. Fools! he thought. Maybe I’ll kill them both!
When the time came for the evening meal, Jill ate in Nevyn’s chamber with the old man and Rhodry. Although she had no appetite, Rhodry packed away roast beef and fried onions like the true warrior he was, eating cheerfully before a battle because he knew he might never get another meal. And what am I, then? she thought. A coward, sure enough. As much as she hated the word, she had to admit that she was terrified at the thought of dark dweomer wanting to capture her for reasons of its own. Finally she couldn’t stand to watch them eat any longer and went to the window.
Looking out on the golden sunshine of a summer evening reminded her that the real, solid world was still there, untouched by dweomer, yet she knew that she would never see that world in the same way again. A question haunted her, almost as frightening as the dark dweomer itself: How do I know so much about all of this? Although she’d been caught up in events that would have baffled most people, she’d known so many things instinctively: that the jewel could shapechange, that the apprentice had the dark dweomer and could use it to see if she was speaking the truth, that she could reach Nevyn through the fire. Reluctantly, slowly, fighting all the way, she was being forced to realize that she had not only a dweomer-talent, but a strong one.
Clenching her hands on the sill, she leaned out of the window and reassured herself by watching the ordinary bustle of servants in the ward below. Then she saw Bocc, lurking by the main gate of the dun and peering around him. He must want to talk with me, she thought. And why had she gone to the window at just the proper moment to see him?
“Is somewhat wrong, child?” Nevyn said. “You’ve gone a bit pale.”
“Oh, it’s naught, but Bocc’s at the gates, and I think we’d best speak with him.”
Nevyn insisted on sending a servant to bring Bocc up to their chamber rather than going down to the ward. The poor man was so nervous at being inside the gwerbret’s broch that he couldn’t bear to sit down. He paced restlessly back and forth, clutching the tankard of ale that Jill poured him.
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