The Gold Falcon

by Katharine Kerr

  But it’s better than starving, Neb would forcibly remind himself. It was also better than being enslaved by Horsekin, but Neb did his best to keep from thinking about that. In the farming village he’d had two friends, boys his own age who were most likely dead now, and their mothers and sisters enslaved. At times, memories crept into his mind like weevils into grain, but he picked them out again. Now and then he indulged himself with the hope that at least one friend had managed to escape, but he never allowed the hope to blossom into a full-fledged wish.

  To distract him, he also had work to do. With the winter wheat almost ripe for harvest, the tieryn’s farmer vassals would soon owe him taxes in kind—foodstuffs, mostly, but also some oddments such as rendered tallow for candles and soap. The elderly chamberlain, Lord Veddyn, took Neb out to the storehouses, built of stone right into the dun’s walls.

  “I must admit that it gladdens my heart you’re here,” Veddyn said. “I used to be able to remember all the dues and taxes, store them up in my mind, like, but it gets harder and harder every year. I’ve been wishing I knew a bit of writing myself, these past few months.”

  “I see,” Neb said. “Well, we can set up a tally system easily enough, if you’ve got somewhat for me to write upon. Wax on wood won’t do.”

  “I’ve got a bit of parchment laid by. It’s not the best in the kingdom, though.”

  In a cool stone room that smelled of onions, Veddyn showed him a wooden chest. Neb kicked it a couple of times to scare any mice or spiders away, then opened it to find a long roll of old vellum, once of a good quality, now a much-scraped palimpsest.

  “It’s cracking a bit, isn’t it?” Veddyn said. “My apologies. I thought it would store better than this.”

  “We can split it into sheets along the cracks. It’ll do.”

  Out in the sun Neb unrolled about a foot of the scroll and released a cloud of dust and ancient mold. He sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then held the roll up to the light.

  “This must have been a set of tax tallies,” Neb said. “I can just make out a few words. Fine linen cloth, six ells. Someone someone ninety-five bushels of somesort barley.”

  “It’s from our old demesne—what’s that noise?”

  Neb cocked his head to listen. “Riders coming in the gates,” he said. “I wonder if his grace has ridden home.”

  “Not already, surely!”

  They hurried around the broch to find a small procession entering the ward. Four armed men with oak leaf blazons on their shirts escorted a heavily laden horse cart, driven by a stout middle-aged woman, while behind them came a person riding a gray palfrey. Taxes, Neb thought at first, here early.

  As the pages and a groom ran out to take the horses, the rider dismounted with a toss of her long blonde hair, caught back in a silver clasp. A pretty lass, though not the great beauty he’d seen in his earlier dream, she was wearing a faded blue dress, caught up at her kirtled waist, over a pair of old torn brigga. The Wildfolk of Air, sylphs and sprites both, flocked around her, and perched behind her saddle was a little gray gnome, who looked straight at Neb, grinned, and waved a skinny clawed paw. The gnome looked exactly like the little creature in Neb’s dream.

  “It’s Lady Branna!” Veddyn said. “Here, greet her and her escort, will you? Where’s Lord Mirryn, I wonder? He’s always off somewhere when you need him! And the pages have their hands full. I’d better go tell Lady Galla her niece has arrived.”

  When Neb walked up, the lady turned around and smiled at him, a distant but friendly sort of smile such as she doubtless would give to any stranger, but Neb felt his heart start pounding. Instantly he knew two things so crucial that he felt as if he had waited his entire life for this lass to appear. One, he loved her, and two, she shared all his secrets, perhaps even secrets he hadn’t realized he was keeping. He tried to speak but felt that he was gasping like a caught fish on a riverbank.

  Fortunately, Branna appeared just as startled. Her smile vanished, her eyes grew wide, and she stared at him unspeaking. He studied her face with a feeling much like hunger: narrow mouth, snub nose, a dusting of freckles over her high cheekbones, dark blue eyes. He had never wanted anything more than to reach out and take her hand, but someone behind them called her name and sharply. Branna flinched and looked away.

  “Here, who are you?” The stout woman who’d been driving the cart came striding over. A widow’s black scarf half-covered her gray hair, and she wore gray dresses, much stained. She pointed a callused finger at Neb.

  “My name is Nerrobrantos, scribe to Tieryn Cadryc,” Neb said. “And you are?”

  “Her ladyship’s servant.”

  “More like my guardian dragon,” Branna said, then laughed. Her voice was pleasantly soft. “Don’t be so fierce, Midda. A scribe may speak to a poverty-stricken lady like me.” She turned back to Neb. “Do people really call you Nerrobrantos all the time?”

  “They don’t.” Neb at last remembered how to smile. “Do call me Neb, my lady.”

  “Gladly, Goodman Neb. Here comes Aunt Galla, but maybe we’ll meet again?”

  “I don’t see how we can avoid meeting in a dun this size.”

  She laughed, and he’d never heard a laugh as beautiful as hers, far more beautiful than golden bells or a bard’s harp. For a long time after Lady Galla had led her inside, Neb stood in the ward and stared out at nothing. He was trying to understand just what had convinced him that his entire view of the world was about to change.

  Mirryn brought him out of this strange reverie when the lord hurried over to the men of the lady’s escort, who were waiting patiently beside their horses.

  “What’s this?” Mirryn said. “I see our scribe’s just left you all standing here.”

  “My apologies, my lord,” Neb said. “I don’t have the slightest idea of where to take them. I’ve never lived in a dun before.”

  Mirryn’s jaw dropped. Neb had never seen anyone look quite so innocently surprised. The lord covered it over with a quick laugh.

  “Of course not,” Mirryn said. “You’re a townsman, after all, or you were.”

  Neb smiled, bowed, and made his escape. He carried the roll of parchment up to his chamber, where he could cut it into sheets with his new penknife, but even as he worked, he was thinking about Lady Branna.

  “Now,here,myladyship,” Midda said. “I’m sure we can make you a better match than a scribe, and besides, you just met the lad.”

  “What makes you think I want to marry him?” Branna said.

  “The way the pair of you were looking at each other. All cow-eyed, like.”

  Branna shrugged and went to perch on the wide windowsill of her new chamber. Lady Galla had given her a decent situation, especially for a destitute extra daughter, unwelcome in her own father’s dun. The sunny chamber had its own hearth, a comfortable-looking bed, and a window that sported proper wooden shutters against possible rain. Branna had brought along her dower chest, made of plain wood and chipped around the lid—the best that her stepmother would part with. Midda was at the moment inspecting its contents to make sure they’d not suffered any damage during the journey. Branna had spent hundreds of hours working on them: two woad-blue blankets in an overshot weave and an embroidered coverlet for the marriage bed, the unassembled pieces of a heavily embroidered wedding shirt for her eventual husband, and various dresses and underclothes for herself. The little gray gnome sat on the bed and concentrated on picking at his long toenails.

  “Well, I certainly don’t want to marry Neb,” Branna said. “He just reminds me of someone I saw once. I was surprised, is all.”

  “And where would you have seen the lad before?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t have been surprised, would I now?”

  Midda sighed with a shake of her head, then resumed the unpacking. From a sack she took out two old, threadbare blankets, another grudged gift. When she spread them over the bed, the gnome vanished only to reappear in Branna’s lap. Neb sees the Wildfolk, too, Brann
a thought. I could see his eyes move, following them.

  “I’m off to get some firewood and the like,” Midda announced. “It might be chilly tonight.”

  “Well and good, then. Has that chamberlain given you a decent place to sleep?”

  “He has. A nice little space set off by partitions, private like, and only one other woman to share it with, and us with a mattress apiece. Much better than I had—” She paused to gesture at the room. “Than we had at your father’s dun.”

  With one last snort of remembered disgust, Midda bustled out of the room. The gnome reached up a timid little paw and touched Branna’s cheek.

  “It is nicer,” Branna said. “And I certainly can’t be any more miserable than I was before. Now, if only I really had dweomer, I’d turn my stepmother into a frog, and I’d not turn her back unless she begged me.”

  The gnome grinned and nodded his head in agreement.

  “If only I really had dweomer,” Branna went on. “I say that too much, don’t I? But they were such lovely tales I used to tell us. I suppose I should stop. I’m grown now and marriageable and all the rest of it.”

  The thought of abandoning her fantasies saddened her, because she’d told herself those tales for as long as she could remember. They had started as dreams, beautifully vivid dreams, so coherent and detailed that at times she wondered if they were actually memories.

  From those wonderings she had developed a detailed fantasy about another Then and another When, as she called it—another life somewhere that she and her gnome had lived together, when she’d been a mighty sorcerer who had traveled all over Deverry and far away, too, off to Bardek and beyond. Her favorite tale concerned a magical island far across the Southern Sea, where elven sorcerers lived and studied books filled with mighty spells. The gnome had always listened, nodding his head when he agreed with some detail, or frowning when he felt she’d got something wrong.

  “Neb,” she said aloud. “There was a man with a name like that in the tales, do you remember? But he was old. He can’t be the same person.”

  The gnome scowled and wagged a long warty finger at her.

  “What? You can’t mean he is the same person.”

  The gnome nodded.

  “Oh, here, that’s silly. And impossible.”

  The gnome flung both hands into the air and disappeared. Branna was about to try calling him back when someone knocked on the door. Lady Galla opened it and hurried in, with a page carrying a folded coverlet right behind her. Branna scrambled down from the windowsill and curtsied.

  “There you are, dear,” Galla said. “Do you like the chamber? I found somewhat to brighten it up a bit. Now that you’re here, we’ll have to start on some bed curtains for you. We should be able to get them done before the winter.”

  “Thank you so much,” Branna said. “I really really appreciate all this, Aunt Galla.”

  “You’re most welcome, dear.” Galla took the coverlet from the page. “You may go, Coryn.”

  The page skipped off down the hall. Together, the two women spread out the coverlet, linen embroidered with red-and-blue spiral roundels and thick bands of yellow interlace.

  “It’s awfully pretty,” Branna said.

  “And cheerful. Having somewhat cheerful’s important just now, I should think.” Galla reached out and patted her hand. “And don’t you worry, we’ll see about finding you a proper husband.”

  “Tell me somewhat. Would it be horribly wrong of a lass like me to marry some common-born man, one who has some standing, I mean, like somebody who’s serving a powerful lord?”

  “Not at all, truly, just so long as he could provide for you properly.”

  “Oh, I’m used to doing without.”

  Galla winced and glanced away. “Your dear stepmother,” she said at last. “Well, I’m sure she has her virtues.”

  “She popped out two sons in four years. That’s all the virtue Da cares about.” Branna heard the venom in her voice and tried to speak more calmly. “He never much liked me, anyway.”

  “Now, dear, it’s hard for a true-born warrior like him to show tender feelings.”

  “Oh, don’t try to sweeten it! You know that he blames me for my mother’s death. Well, doesn’t he?”

  “It’s a hard situation all round.” Galla hesitated. “He did at the time, dear, but I tried to make him see reason.” Again the hesitation. “Not that he did. Oh, it griped my very soul! You nearly died with her, you know, and your poor mother was never very strong anyway.” She collected herself with a little sigh. “Well, you’re here now, and I’m glad you’ve come to me.”

  “So am I. I truly am.” Branna crossed to the window and looked out. She could see past the ward and over the dun wall to the green fields and the stream beyond. “It’s even a lovely view. At home I could look out over the cookhouse, and the smoke really was awful.”

  “That woman!” Galla rolled her eyes heavenward.

  Branna sat down on the broad stone windowsill and leaned out, just slightly, to look up at the sky. A solitary raven was hovering over the dun on outstretched wings. As she watched, she realized that while it looked the size of an ordinary bird, it had to be flying extremely high, because she couldn’t see its eyes or the fine points of its wings. The only explanation could be that it was abnormally large. It flapped and circled, then hovered again, as if it were studying the dun below. She waited, watched, as it repeated the maneuver, but no other ravens flew up to join it, and it never made a sound. Finally, with one last flurry of black wings it flew away, heading north.

  “What is it, dear?” Galla said.

  Branna drew her head back inside. “Probably naught. A solitary raven, and I thought it was watching us.”

  “It was probably just eyeing the stables in the hopes of stall sweepings. They eat the most disgusting things, ravens.”

  “True spoken, but this one—I don’t know why, but it chilled my heart. It seemed so large, for one thing.”

  “Perhaps it was a rook, not a raven at all.”

  “Well, that could be it. Silly of me, I know.” Branna arranged a bright smile. In her chilled heart she doubted very much indeed that the bird she’d seen was a rook or any other natural animal. Yet what else would it be? she asked herself.

  “I think we’ve finished here,” Galla said. “Shall we go down to the great hall?”

  As they were walking over to the table of honor, Branna noticed Neb, sitting on the servants’ side of the room near a window. In the patch of sunlight that fell onto his table lay sheets of parchment, upon which he was scoring lines with the back of his little penknife against a strip of wood. A fat yellow gnome crouched on the table beside the parchments. It turned its head, leaped to its clawed feet, and began dancing on the parchments. Neb laid down his penknife and swatted at the gnome, who turned and pointed at Branna. Neb raised his head and looked her way. He certainly does see the Folk! she thought. Young, skinny, so completely different from the old man she’d often dreamed about—and yet his ice-blue eyes seemed so familiar that she nearly ran to him, nearly called him by the name she’d given him for her tales: Nevyn.

  Neb raised his hand in greeting and smiled at her, as if he were hoping she’d join him, but Aunt Galla beckoned to her, and her cousin Mirryn was already sitting at the honor table. Branna risked a smile Neb’s way, then hurried after her aunt.

  Branna passed the afternoon pleasantly, playing Carnoic with Mirryn, chatting with Galla. Lord Veddyn joined Neb at his table and began reciting the list of taxes owed, stumbling every now and then over his faulty memory, so that the scribe could write them down. At each lapse, Galla would stand up and shout corrections Veddyn’s way. Once in a while, as casually as she could manage, Branna would steal a look at Neb. Often enough, she found him looking back. They would both blush and look away again.

  Since she was tired from her journey, Branna went to bed early. Unlike her old bed in her father’s dun, her new mattress was soft and comfortable, and the down pillo
ws smelled fresh, not sour. She lay down, then turned on her side to look at the sliver of starry sky visible through her window. Earlier, she’d resolved to give up her strange dreams of dweomer, but as soon as she fell asleep, a dream took her over.

  She was standing at another window, looking at the sky. A full moon drifted in the field of stars. As she watched, the moon began to shrink until it turned into a gem, an opal, she thought, but it gleamed just as brightly as before. Suddenly she stood inside a chamber, and an old man, dressed in the brown tattered clothes of a poor farmer, was holding the opal out to her.

  Branna woke and sat up. Judging from the wheel of stars outside her window, dawn lay a long way off. Her gnome appeared and flopped down on the bed beside her.

  “Another odd dream,” she told it. “Twice odd, really, because it wasn’t the sort of dream I used to weave into a story, but it truly did seem more important than the usual sort of dream.”

  The gnome yawned, then left its mouth half-open and began to pick its teeth with one skinny fingernail.

  “And of no interest to you, obviously. Humph!”

  Branna lay down again, and fell back asleep almost immediately. She had no more dreams that night, or at least, none that she remembered when she woke with the dawn.

  On the day after Branna’s arrival, the tieryn and his warband rode back to the dun. From the window of his tower room Neb watched them file through the gates—the horses weary, the men covered with dust from the roads. A provision cart and a couple of mules with empty packsaddles followed them, but no villagers walked behind, not a single man, woman, or child. Neb’s eyes filled with tears as his last shred of hope blew away like the dust in the wind. He and Clae alone had escaped the Horsekin.