The Dragon Revenant (19 page)

“Well, whoever he was, he’s probably far away by now,” Porto said at last. “And the archon’s men are just going off watch, too. I’ll go down to the guardhouse later and report this to the watch captain, and tonight they’ll have a patrol swing by here at regular intervals. Let me see, what’s happening this morning? Any visitors?”

“That wizard from the marketplace is coming to tell our mistress’s fortune, about two hours before noon. She invited him last night at the party.”

Porto groaned in distaste.

“It’s her money, but why doesn’t she just throw it into the gutter if she wants to waste it? I’ll go down to the archon’s when he comes. I can’t abide that sort of nonsense. You stay close at hand the whole time he’s here, boy. I don’t want to find any of the silver missing after he’s gone.”

“I’ll stay right by the door and keep an eye on him.”

“Good. Well, dawn’s breaking. You go start chopping the firewood for Vinsima, and I’ll wake the others.”

Rhodry went outside through the kitchen. As soon as he stepped out the door, the rising sun cast a wash of light across his face. Blinking and swearing, he turned his back and remembered. Jill. He had seen her, she had been there at the party, the woman he loved, the woman he’d lost, somehow, long ago, in Deverry—in Cerrgonney. To that piss-poor excuse for a noble swine Lord Perryn, when they were both fighting in some lord’s blood-feud. He was a silver dagger, then, and he’d been trapped in a siege. First Jill had ridden with the army that relieved it; then they’d gotten separated. How? Why had he left her in Tieryn Graemyn’s dun? Because the King’s herald was coming! He’d ridden out with his hire, Lord Nedd, to greet the herald, and when they’d ridden back, Jill was gone, stolen, or so they said, by Nedd’s cursed ugly cousin. With a toss of his head he laughed aloud, jigging a few steps of a dance right there near the woodshed. He remembered finding Perryn, too, and the exquisite joy of beating him senseless. Then he’d … and then he’d … the fog within his mind rose again and shut away all memory of what had happened after he left Perryn bleeding on the ground by a cowshed wall. No more could he remember anything before he and Jill had ridden up to Lord Nedd’s crumbling roundhouse on a sunny day—how long ago? He had no idea.

“Rhodry!” Vinsima’s bellow cut through his brooding. “Where’s that kindling? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you feel well?”

“A thousand apologies! I’m on my way right now.”

While he worked, he went on brooding about what he’d remembered. Ther e was something especially important about the King’s herald, but try as he might, he couldn’t bring it to mind and eventually gave it up as a bad job. He was going over and over the rest of the precious new memories to fix them in his mind when it occurred to him to wonder why they’d come back to him. Only then did he remember the wizard Krysello announcing that he would remember “everything” when he saw the sun again.

“Oh by the gods, so I did.”

A few at a time Wildfolk materialized around him, two brown and purple gnomes, a delicate pale sprite with needle-sharp teeth, and the gray gnome he’d seen down at the marketplace.

“Jill’s gnome!”

The little creature leapt into the air, danced a few steps in victory, then disappeared, taking its fellows with it. Rhodry began to tremble. All at once, he could smell freedom, and now that he’d seen Jill, freedom had meaning again. He realized then that somehow an entire identity had died along with his memories, that what we call a man’s character is little more, at times, than the sum of his memories. The thought gave him a cold feeling on the edge of panic, and he shied away from it like a horse who sees an adder in the road.

The man who was using the name Pirrallo was short, pale, and pudgy, with a thick neck and full cheeks that would, with age, swell and sag to make him look like a toad. He had a face full of pimples, too, that would, with time, scar and leave dark marks much like the blotching on a toad’s skin. The man known as Gwin was surprised at how much he hated Pirrallo. He had, after all, looked upon many a thing more loathsome in his thirty-two years, but perhaps it was because he knew that Pirrallo was as much a spy as a partner. The knowledge that someone was watching their every move and using magic to report it back to the Hawkmaster would have terrified most initiates of the Hawks; Gwin found it only irritating, because he didn’t care if he lived or died. Another thing that surprised him these days was, in fact, just how little he did care. Although he could have committed suicide at any time, the effort seemed too great for the uncertain reward of being dead, just as the dubious joys of being alive were too little an incentive to make him suck up to the man sent to judge his trustworthiness. He was even willing to make the possibly fatal admission that he’d quite simply failed his assignment back in the farming village of Deblis, rather than whining and making excuses the way most Hawks would have done, but only so long as he admitted it to the Hawkmaster himself, not to a toad like Pirrallo. It was a matter of pride, the small sort of pride that was the only thing he had left in life.

After catching sight of Rhodry, Gwin left the city and rode north, rejoining his allies some three hours past dawn only to find the toad still asleep. They were camped some twelve miles outside the city walls of Wylinth with the small caravan that provided the rationale for their traveling around the islands. Although Pirrallo sometimes claimed to be a slave trader, keeping actual slaves with eyes to see things and mouths to blab them would have been far too risky; instead, they had a string of twenty-odd horses for sale or trade and two stock handlers who were in fact lesser initiates of the Hawks. Gwin himself was supposed to be Pirrallo’s property, just because owning one barbarian gave the toad a reason for asking to buy another, a ruse that rankled, because the stigma of having been born into slavery stuck to him wherever he went, even among those who followed the dark paths. Until the summer before he’d faced or fought it down when he could and took a perverse pride in it when he couldn’t, but his brief trip through Deverry had turned his views on life and his self upside down. He’d spent a long time thinking about this change in himself, and he decided that simply living among free men had brought it about, but, of course, deeper levels of the soul and memory were working on him, more deeply than he could know. Although Gwin was no true barbarian—his father had been a Bardek man though his mother, a Deverry girl—he’d felt in some odd way that Deverry was home, that he’d been trapped all his life unknowing in a foreign exile, and that, of course, the exile would continue without hope.

His one comfort these days was knowing that the other two Hawks hated Pirrallo as much as he did. After all, Brinonno and Vandar stood to die, too, if their toad-spy turned the Hawkmaster against them. That morning, the three of them sat at the cold campfire and ate stale bread and last night’s vegetables while Pirrallo snored in his tent on the other side of the campground. Vandar even said aloud what all of them were thinking, that he hoped the fat fool would do something stupid and get himself killed or arrested when they reached Wylinth.

“Not too likely, unfortunately,” Gwin said. “He knows his work, all right.”

“You don’t suppose he’s scrying us out right now, do you?” Brinonno said with a start. “And listening to what we’re saying?”

“I doubt it very much.” Gwin allowed himself a twisted smile. “You know what his big flaw is? He loves himself so much that it never occurs to him that other men hate him.”

“I’m willing to bet he doesn’t have much power for scrying, anyway,” Vandar put in. “Always bragging, yes, but why are we wandering all over, playing out this elaborate hoax, if he can really scry for Rhodry? I know he’s never seen the barbarian himself, but you have, and a real master can work through someone else’s eyes.”

“Only if that someone’s willing to let him crush his will.” Gwin felt his voice turn flat. “By the Clawed Ones themselves, if he tried to put his toad’s paw on the back of my neck, I’d knock him halfway to Hell, and I think he knows it.” Then he laughed in self-mockery. “Not that it’s fear of me that’s holding him back, mind. No, when he arrived, he announced that there were fresh orders from the Hawkmaster. He had reason to think that it would be dangerous to scry too much, or use much dweomer for anything, for that matter. Pirrallo didn’t tell me why.”

“Probably the master didn’t tell him,” Brinonno said.

“Maybe not.” Vandar stood up, stretching. “But the little pig-bugger was probably lying, too. Well, I’m going to water the stock. It’s shaping up for a warm day, now the rain’s gone.”

When the two walked off together, Gwin sat by the fire and considered them. Doubdess they would tell the Hawkmaster everything he’d said, especially if it would save their own skins later, but he was sure they’d let nothing slip to Pirrallo. Since in his own way Gwin was a good judge of men, he knew honest hatred when he saw it.

“Salamander?” Jill said. “Can you tell fortunes?”

“I can, but I wouldn’t use true dweomer for such a stupid game.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“These dies that Bardek women play around with? All they do is focus your intuition. I shall make up some highly colored, titillating, and thus satisfying blather for the Lady Alaena that more or less fits when I intuit about her, and into this spicy stew I shall weave all the bits of information I picked up about her at the party.”

“Weave things into a stew?”

“Not my best turn of phrase, truly.” Salamander waved the lapse away with a languid hand. “I wouldn’t tell fortunes at all, except it’s such a perfect way to get into her house. It would be wretchedly rude of me to just go marching up to her door and ask if she’d sell me her exotic slave. First I’ll get her confidence; then, most cleverly, dripping with guile, I shall work the talk round to my pressing need of another barbarian for our show.”

“Very well, then. You’ve been right enough so far.”

“I’m always right,” Salamander lolled back onto the cushions and saluted her with his wine cup. “But what particular occasion of my lightness earns your praise?”

“Finding Rhodry, of course. I owe you an apology. I thought it was daft, staying in the best inn, playing up to rich women, and here you were right all along.”

“Ah. Well, who else could afford him but some wealthy house?”

“So I see. Now.”

Salamander smiled, then gestured at the elaborate breakfast of cold meats and spiced vegetables.

“Eat, my turtledove.”

“Can’t.”

“Try. Anxiety is like worms—it thrives in an empty gut.”

In spite of herself Jill had to laugh. She took a slice of spiced pork, wrapped it in a round of bread, and forced down a couple of bites.

“But what if she won’t sell him?”

“I’ll think of somewhat, never fear. Now eat! We are due at her palatial residence in but an hour or so, and we must bathe and dress in our very gaudiest finery. After all, we have reputations as barbarians to keep up.”

When, wearing red-and-gold silk and brocade, and smelling of roses and violets, Jill and Salamander presented themselves to Alaena’s gatekeeper, the old man seemed more amused than impressed, but he did show them straight into the garden, where a pretty young maidservant was waiting to take them to the reception chamber, Even though Jill normally didn’t care for the Bardekian style of art, when she saw the airy trees and the brightly painted birds, she was charmed. The feeling the wall decorations gave her was somehow familiar, too, and all at once she found herself remembering the painted tents of the Elcyion Lacar. Before she could ask Salamander about the similarity, Alaena came through a side door to join them.

Dressed in simple white linen, set off only by a chain necklace of what looked like solid gold, Alaena greeted them with great courtesy and had them join her on the dias. After they’d settled themselves on velvet cushions around a low table, the maidservant brought in plates of dried fruit and sweetmeats and cups of sweet wine.

“And the box of tiles, too, Disna,” Alaena said.

“Yes, mistress.” The girl went over to an ebony cabinet. “They’re right here where Rhodry usually puts them.”

At the mention of her footman’s name, the mistress’s expression grew oddly strained, and she glanced at Salamander in a manner that was almost furtive before a bland smile blossomed. Disna brought over the box, set it down, and took off the fid.

“You may go now,” Alaena said. “Tell the cook to make orangeade. This wine is too strong for morning.”

“Her exalted loveliness is most kind to a humble wizard,” Salamander said.

“The humble wizard is most kind to come at her request. Disna, I said go.”

As the girl, who’d been hovering all a-twitch with curiosity, scurried out, Alaena dumped the tiles out of the box and began mixing them in a well-practiced thunder. She had lovely hands, Jill thought, slender and graceful, with long fingernails that had been stained a tasteful orange-red with annatto seeds and polished to such a glossy perfection that Jill found herself hiding her own calloused fingers and bitten nails in her lap. She also noticed that Salamander was watching the lady with a warm sort of appraisal of his own, approving of more than her hands as she laid out a selection of tiles in a star-shaped pattern.

“Aha.” Salamander leaned over the table. “I see many things, dark, hidden, recondite, a time for pain followed by rejoicing, laughter followed by tears, shafts of sun breaking through clouds, storms followed by sunsets of peace.”

With a delighted little shiver, Alaena stared at the tiles.

“I see you standing at a crossroads in life, oh favored one of the Star Maidens. Look at the Flowers blooming among Spears. The Raven is crying out, but he will be silenced. First of all …” He paused to lay one finger on the Ten of Flowers. “You have many loyal friends who care for your welfare. They have been worried about you, worried to see you fretting and listless, no doubt, over the question of whether to remarry soon or to wait and see what the waves of Life wash up on your shore. Always you must worry about being loved for yourself. There are some suitors who would marry your investments and your connections with the great trading houses.”