The Dragon Revenant (30 page)

“Unless, of course, you tell me the truth. Let him speak, Karralo. He knows that if he screams for help, he’ll die right here.”

When the Hawk took his hand away, Baruma caught his breath in moist sobs.

“I didn’t betray you. I couldn’t. I went against the Old One’s orders when I brought you into this, didn’t I? He specifically said to sell Rhodry and let Fate take him. I wanted him dead or prisoner. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

Instead of answering the Hawkmaster reached up and pulled off his silk hood. With a shock Baruma realized that the man was handsome; his skin was the lustrous blue-black of Orystinnia, his mouth soft and full, his black eyes wide and beautifully shaped. He’d always imagined the Hawkmaster as some scarred monstrosity.

“You’ve seen my face now, little Baruma. Do you know what that means? The only way you’ll leave my side from now on is by dying. Do you understand me? Oh, you’re as pasty as spoiled cheese, so I think you do. The only reason you’re staying alive is because I can use you. You’ve seen this mysterious Rhodry, and that means I can scry through your eyes. You’ve been to the Old One’s villa, and that means you can take me there. I’m going to break your will like a wild horse and ride you like the beast you are. As long as you’re useful, you’ll live. Give me the slightest trouble, and your pain will number itself in weeks, not hours, before the Clawed Ones eat your soul.”

Baruma felt hot urine spurt down his leg. The Hawkmaster laughed, then grabbed his shoulder to inflict the same sort of fiery agony as before. This time he couldn’t scream, didn’t dare make any noise that would attract the attention of the other people in the inn, because he knew that a cry for help was worse than futile, that the Hawks would drag him away long before help could arrive and begin their slow tortures that very night instead of in some indefinite future. As the pain ebbed the Hawkmaster looked full into his eyes, and Baruma felt the clutch of his will as the worst pain of all. It seemed to grow into his mind like the tendrils of some poisonous plant, burrowing deep into every crack of memory and thought, burning and biting as it went, yet still he could not look away.

“Obey me, and in a time, you will cease being a beast and start being a servant. This is the only hope you have. For a brave man it would never be enough, but it will keep a coward like you alive and obedient, crawling at my feet, but alive.”

The drunkenness swirled round his mind, that trained and disciplined mind that he’d been so proud of, that he’d bragged about, that had seemed to him clear proof of his superiority over the common class of men. Now it was swirling and staggering, and he was staggering, too, as the Hawks let him go. He took a few steps, lurched forward, and fell to his knees at the master’s feet.

“Get his gear,” the master said to the others. “We’ll go through it in a safer place. Get up, piglet. You’ll be carrying this load to spare the strength of the real men.”

Obediently Baruma rose, swaying a little, still dizzy. When he caught the edge of the table to steady himself, the dizziness passed off. Around him the Hawks were talking again; their words came and went through his mind like a barely comprehensible song.

“A dagger made out of silver—some ritual thing, I suppose—no, Deverrian—never mind that now—we have work to do tonight—a little surprise for the Old One’s men? We don’t know.”

When the words faded into a wind-sound, Baruma realized both that he’d been ensorceled and that the Hawkmaster had left him enough mind to know how little he had left. Even though deep in that last fragment of mind he was roiling with rage, he knew that his fear of dying and the torments that went with it would make him obey. Thanks to those tenors, he would shuffle along before his master the way a top spins before the child who whips it.

Down in Aberwyn, not far from the harbor, was a tavern that existed on the very cliff-edge of respectability. If its owner, the widow Sama, hadn’t worked so hard, the Three Swans would have slid over that edge years before, but she was up before dawn to mend up the fire and scrub tables, on her feet all day cooking solid meals for decent folk and serving good ale for a fair price, and late at night, by the light of a dying fire and a cheap tallow candle, she was sweeping the floor and starting the next morning’s porridge to stewing. All of this exhaustion enabled her to save a handful of coins, which she’d portioned out, a few at a time, as dowries for three of her four pretty daughters, so that they were all respectable married women now instead of hanging round the tavern working for the wrong kind of coin. Everyone in the neighborhood, even the unmarried young longshoremen, honored the widow for her virtue, and even in their most drunken moments none of them would have ever considered brawling in her tavern, where they might break a precious mug or overturn an expensive table and thus add to the widow’s hard lot in life.

The youngest and prettiest daughter, however, still lived with her mother, but not out of filial devotion. Although Sama had named her Heledd, everyone called her Glomer—as hard as coal at the very marrow of her bones, they all said, and why the Goddess saw fit to give a daughter like that to such a good woman we’ll never know! Even though she was sixteen and should have been married for several years, she’d turned down two decent suitors, saying the tanner’s lad stank too badly and the dyer’s lad had warts all over his hands. What Glomer wanted in her heart of hearts was the chance to work in the gwerbret’s dun. In those days being a servant for a generous clan like the Maelwaedds was a good position for a poor lass; you had plenty of food and drink, a new dress every year, a warm place to sleep and exciting events to watch, and you shared the labor with so many other servants, taken on for the status of the thing, that the actual work was much lighter than waiting on table and scrubbing pots in a tavern.

Unfortunately, to get a place in a dun you needed to know someone who already worked there. The only person Glomer knew, a serving lass named Nonna, came mincing down to visit her family, the potters who lived across and down by the coppersmiths, about twice a month. She would wear her newest dress and bring her mother and her siblings scraps of fancy cake from the gwerbret’s kitchen, then sit at their hearth like a fine lady and regale the locals with all the latest gossip and news. Every time Glomer tried to ask her to put in a word for her, Nonna would turn her nose up and make snide remarks, usually about Glomer’s supposed laziness. There were times when Glomer wished she could follow her into some dark street and strangle her on her way back to the dun.

Just lately the tales that Nonna brought home had been exciting ones indeed. Early in the fall a mysterious noble-born prisoner had arrived from Cerrmor, and Nonna overheard two men from the warband saying that, by all accounts, he wasn’t a man at all but a fiend in human form. Their authority for this was something that old Nevyn, who absolutely everybody said was a sorcerer, had let slip one night when he was leaving the prisoner’s guarded chamber. And now everybody was also saying that the enormous Bardekian ship’s captain was a sorcerer, too, because he’d captured the demon and brought him in. At any rate, not long afterward the famous Cullyn of Cerrmor, captain of the regent’s personal war band, had stopped Bryc the groom from murdering Lord Rhodry’s only heir. Everyone (including Bryc himself, before he went back to his father’s farm in the north) said that the lad had been bewitched. Nonna was sure that the prisoner from Cerrmor was responsible.

“Probably Nevyn doesn’t want to kill this red-haired demon because he can use his powers—Nevyn can use this Perryn’s powers, I mean, because I’ll wager the old man’s stronger than any wretched demon. You should see the old man, and the look in his eyes. Oooh, like ice they are, and he could bewitch anyone, I’ll wager, just by snapping his fingers or suchlike. Everyone’s afraid of him, well, except Cullyn of Cerrmor of course. I’ll wager he’s never afraid of anybody.”

And everyone sitting in the potters’ kitchen nodded their heads sagely and agreed.

Perhaps it was stories like this that made Glomer so suspicious of the peddler named Merryc. At first glance he was ordinary enough, a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair and the walnut-shell skin that bespoke some Bardek blood in his veins, and he had the easy courtesy and ready way with a jest that a traveling man had to have in order to survive by selling ribands and embroidery thread and bits of lace and beading. Certainly Sama trusted him when he told her that he needed a place to live for a few months, till the worst of the winter was over and he could get back on the road again. Of course, she always needed custom so badly that her judgment might have been blurred by the good copper coins he handed over for a week’s room and board. There was just something about him that sat all wrong with Glomer—his oily little smile, perhaps, or the way he stared at her buttocks when she went past. Late at night, too, she would sometimes hear odd noises coming from his chamber, as if he were whispering orders to large rats, who scurried td do his bidding.

“I wish you’d turn him out, Mam, I truly do,” Glomer remarked one afternoon when their lodger had gone out for a walk. “I swear he’s out to work harm.”

“Oh, listen to you! And what’s he going to do, steal my fine lot of silver dishes or all our lovely jewels?”

“I don’t mean harm to us. I—oh, no doubt you’re right, and I’m imagining things.”

The shock of hearing her daughter actually agree with her was almost too much for Sama. Muttering to herself and shaking her head she went out back to feed the chickens. But Glomer stayed in the tavern room and scrubbed tabletops until Merryc came back and asked politely for a tankard of red. When she handed it to him, she lingered briefly.

“And how was your walk about the town?”

“A bit damp, but pleasant.”

“Did you go up to the dun?”

“I didn’t. Naught for a man like me there.”

But his answer struck her as too slick and his tone too oily, just like his smile.

Round the bend in the street, just past the coppersmith’s, lived the Widow Dacra in a wooden hut. Although everyone said she was a witch, she made her living by dispensing the common sort of herbs and, on occasion, applying a combination of hot baths, mead, and slippery elm bark to induce abortions for the local whores. With the beginnings of a plan forming in her mind, Glomer filled a leather bottle with mixed ale and went round to see her on the morrow morning. She found Dacra, a handsome gray-haired woman, picking over dried hoarhound at her table while at her little fire a pot of honey and water simmered together.

“A lot of coughs this time of year,” Dacra remarked. “The blacksmith’s lad is bad, his mother tells me, so I’m just making up a potion.”

“I’ve come to ask you a favor.” Glomer set the bottle of ale on the table.

“Indeed? Have you found some lad to lift your skirts and then leave you?”

“I’m not with child! That’s not going to happen to me, thank you very much, not until I’ve married anyway.”

“Huh. It’s the ever-so-fussy lasses like you, young Glomer, who generally find a bit of filth to roll in at the last. Think about that, will you? Before you give yourself such fine airs that you find yourself twenty years old and moaning because you’ve got no husband.”

If Glomer hadn’t needed her advice, she would have thrown the bottle straight at her head. As it was she forced out a smile.

“I’ll think on it, indeed. Now, I only wanted to ask you somewhat. Suppose someone was a sorcerer? How could you tell? I mean, do they have a demon mark on the palm of their hand or suchlike?”

“What? Hardly anything so easy and quicklike, my fine lass. Why do you want to know?”

“Oh, I was just curious, like.”

“Indeed? You wouldn’t be stealing your mam’s ale just to satisfy your curiosity.”

“I didn’t steal it! I’m worried about her, too.”

Dacra considered her for a moment with shrewd gray eyes.

“Well, I can see you’re worried, sure enough. Is it that lodger of yours?”

“It is. How did you know?”

“And who else new has come here in months and months?”

“True spoken. There’s just somewhat about him that doesn’t sit well.”

Dacra dumped a generous handful of crushed hoarhound leaves into the pot of honey and water, then stirred down the roil, slowly and carefully, with a wooden spoon.

“Well, that’s true,” the herbwoman said at last. “Though I don’t know what kind of man he is. A murderer, I’d say, more than a sorcerer, but you never know.” She took the pot off the fire and set in on a slab of stone at one end of her table to cool. “When he came to stay, he must have brought bags and packs with him.”

“He did. A peddler’s pack and then saddlebags.”

“Saddlebags for a man who walks for his living? Curious, indeed.” Dacra gave the pot one last stir, then went to a freestanding cupboard and began rummaging through it. She brought out a tiny square of parchment. “A long long time ago an old woman made me this good luck charm. You see? It has a five-pointed star, and then this circle of writing round it. Well, the old woman told me to always hold this parchment so the star has one point upward, never two. Two points up bring bad luck, she said, and it’s a sign of evil sorcery. If I remember rightly, she said that every sorcerer would have some bit of magical gear marked with the evil star.”

“Merryc goes out for long walks all the time.”

“Does he now? But be as careful as careful, young Glomer. Nobody wants to see you turned to stone or your soul trapped in a bottle.”

Especially not Glomer. She waited until the afternoon, when Merryc went out for his usual long walk before dinner, then fetched a big basket of wicker rattraps and a handful of stale bits of bacon rind. She set several traps in the chamber she shared with her mother, and two more in the corridor before she went into his room. It was a small chamber, a slice of the roundhouse right in the curve of the wall, with a window that looked out over the street. Near the door and out of the draughts was a narrow bed and a wobbly wooden chest that had once done duty as a dower chest for her older sisters. Although she set one trap between that chest and the wicker-work wall, Glomer didn’t even bother opening it. She was sure that any sorcerer was going to be too clever to hide his evil magic in such an obvious place.