Days of Air and Darkness Read online

  Rhodry mouthed an oath.

  “Do you want to hear a strange thing, Master?”

  “By all means. It seems to be the day for them.”

  Arzosah rumbled in her version of laughter.

  “So it is, so it is. But when she dropped into our world and looked at you, I could have sworn she recognized you.”

  Borne on its inner wave, the memory rose again, and this time, the image of a face came with it. Impossible! he thought. It could never be her, never! And yet in a wordless way, he knew perfectly well that it was, that he had met again an enemy from many years past, when he and Jill were young. It had happened, in fact, during their very first year of riding the long road together. And a strange affair that was, he thought, as soaked with evil magic as a battlefield is with blood, strange then and stranger to look back on now, when I know a thing or two more than I did then.

  PAST

  Gwaentaer and Deverry

  Spring, 1063

  CONJUNCTIO

  This figure brings good out of prior good, and evil out of prior evil Yet by a most cunning paradox, when it does fall into the Land of Steel, which governs marriages, it produces evil even unto the point of death.

  —The Omenbook of Gwarn,

  Loremaster

  1

  THE TAVERN CATERED, IT seemed, to shabby young men, laughing and talking among themselves—craftsmen’s apprentices from the look of them. Jill propped one foot up on a bench and settled her back against the curved stone wall. Since she and her man both carried the silver dagger, the mark of a notoriously poor band of wandering mercenaries, the other customers seemed willing to ignore them, but she preferred to take no chances. Besides, even though she wore men’s clothing and had her blond hair cropped off like a lad’s, she was very beautiful back in those days, and men had seen through her ruse before.

  “What’s so wrong?” Rhodry whispered.

  “They’re all thieves.”

  “Ye gods! Do you mean we’re drinking in a—”

  “Shush, you dolt!”

  “My apologies, but why are we—”

  “Not so loud! What other tavern in Caenmetyn is going to serve a pair of silver daggers? It’s a fancy sort of town, my love.”

  Rhodry studied the crowd and scowled. Even in a black mood, when Rhodry was young (and he was barely one-and-twenty that year), his elven blood was obvious to those who knew how to look; his face, handsome all through his life, was so finely drawn in those days, with a full mouth and deep-set eyes, that it would have seemed girlish if it weren’t for the nicks and scars from old fighting.

  “Which way shall we ride tomorrow?” he said at last. “I’ve got to find a hire soon.”

  “True enough, because we’re blasted low on coin. You should be able to find a caravan leaving here, though.”

  “Ah, by the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell! I’d rather find some lord with a feud going and ride a war. I’m as sick as I can be of playing nursemaid to stinking merchants and their stinking mules! I’m a warrior born and bred, not a wretched horseherder!”

  “How can you be sick of it? You’ve only ever guarded one caravan in your life.”

  When he scowled again, she let the subject drop.

  Oddly enough, about an hour later, someone offered Rhodry a very different type of hire. Jill was keeping a watch on the door when she saw a man slip into the tavern room. All muffled in a gray cloak, with the hood up against the chill of a spring night, he was stout, on the tallish side. When he approached the table, the hood slipped, giving Jill a glimpse of blue eyes and a face handsome in a weak sort of way.

  “I heard there was a silver dagger in town.” He spoke with a rolling Cerrmor accent. “I might have a hire for you, lad.”

  “Indeed?” Rhodry gestured at the bench on the opposite side of the table. “Sit down, good sir.”

  He took the seat, then studied them both for a moment, his eyes flicking to Jill, as if her standing while he sat made him nervous. Since he was wearing striped brigga and an expensive linen shirt under the cloak, she figured he might be a prosperous craftsman, perhaps a man who made incense for the temples, judging by the scent that lingered around him. All at once, Jill’s gray gnome popped into manifestation on the table. He had his skinny arms crossed over his narrow chest, and his long-nosed face was set in a disapproving glare for the stranger, who of course saw nothing. The stranger leaned forward in a waft of Bardek cinnamon.

  “I have an enemy, you see,” he whispered. “He’s insulted me, mocked me, dared me to stop him, and he knows blasted well that I’ve got no skill with a blade. I’ll pay very high for proof of his death.”

  “Oh, indeed?” Rhodry’s dark blue eyes flashed with rage. “I’m no paid murderer. If you want to challenge him to an honor duel and formally choose me for your champion, I might take you up on it, but only if this fellow can fight and fight well.”

  Biting his lip hard, the stranger glanced round. The gnome stuck out its tongue at him, then disappeared.

  “An honor duel’s impossible. He, uh, well, won’t respond to my challenge.”

  “Then I’m not your man.”

  “Ah, but they always say that silver daggers have their price. Two gold pieces.”

  Jill nearly choked on her ale. Two gold pieces would buy a prosperous farm and its livestock as well.

  “I wouldn’t do it for a thousand,” Rhodry snapped. “But at that price, doubtless you’ll find someone else to do your murdering for you.”

  The fellow rose and dashed for the door, as if the dolt had just realized that he’d said too much to a perfect stranger. Jill noticed one of the thieves, a slender fellow with a shock of mousy-brown hair, slip out after him, only to return in a few minutes. He sat down companionably across from Rhodry without so much as a by-your-leave.

  “You were right to turn him down, Silver Dagger. I just talked to the idiot, and he let it slip that this enemy of his is a noble lord.” The thief rolled his eyes heavenward. “As if anyone would touch a job like that! If one of the noble-born got himself done in, wouldn’t the town be crawling with the gwerbret’s marshals, poking their stinking noses into every corner and wondering how the likes of us made our living? You silver daggers can just ride on again, but us guildsmen have to live here, you know.”

  “True spoken,” Jill broke in. “Here, did he say where this noble lord lived?”

  “Not to put a name to it, but I got the feeling, just from a few things he said, like, that it was somewhere to the south.”

  After the thief took himself off again, Jill sat down next to Rhodry on the unsteady bench.

  “Thinking of riding south, my love?”

  “I am. It gripes my soul, thinking of one of the noble-born murdered by some base-born coward. Wonder if we can find our plump little killer again?”

  But although they searched the town before they rode out, they never saw or smelled him.

  The late afternoon sun, flecked with dust motes, streamed in the windows of the great hall. At the far side of the round room, a couple of members of the warband were wagering on the dice, while others sipped ale and talked about very little. Tieryn Dwaen of Bringerun lounged back in his carved chair, put his feet up on the honor table, and watched the first flies of spring as he sipped a tankard of ale. His guest, Lord Cadlew of Marcbyr, sat at his right and fussed over a dog from the pack lying round their feet. A fine, sleek greyhound of the breed known as gwertroedd, this dog was new since Cadlew’s last visit, or at least, the last one when he’d had time to pay attention to something as mundane as a dog.

  “Do you want him?” Dwaen said. “He’s yours if you do.”

  “Splendidly generous of you, but not necessary.”

  “Go ahead, take him. He’s the last thing my father ever bought, and for all that he’s a splendid hunter, I’d just as soon have him out of my sight.”

  Cadlew looked up with a troubled toss of his blond head.

  “Well, in that case I’ll take him wit
h me when I ride home. My thanks, Dwaen.”

  Dwaen shrugged and signaled the page, Laryn, to come pour more ale. The boy was the son of one of his vassals sent to the tieryn for his training, and raising him was now Dwaen’s responsibility. Even though it was over a month since he’d inherited, Dwaen still found it terrifying that he was the tieryn, responsible for the demesne and the lives of everyone on it.

  “You know,” Cadlew said, and very slowly and carefully, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the death. I can’t help thinking you were a bit of a fool.”

  “Fine friend you are. Did you ride all this way just to twit me?”

  “Nah, nah, nah, my friend, and I call you that truly. I came to give you a warning. Lord Beryn offered you twice the gold of your father’s blood price. I don’t see why you didn’t take the lwdd and be done with it.”

  “Because I wanted my father’s murderer hanged. It should be obvious.”

  “But young Madryc was the only son Beryn had. He won’t forget this.”

  “Neither will I. Da was the only father I happened to have, too.”

  With a sigh, Cadlew drank his ale in silence. Although he felt his wound of rage opening, Dwaen could forgive his friend’s lack of understanding. Doubtless every lord in Gwaentaer was wondering why he’d pushed the law to its limit and insisted that the gwerbret hang Madryc. Most would have taken the twelve gold pieces and got their satisfaction in knowing that Beryn had impoverished himself and his clan to raise them.

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” Dwaen said, choosing his words carefully. “It’s a wrong thing to take gold for blood when a man murders in malice. If it’d been an oath-sworn blood feud or suchlike, no doubt I would have felt different, but that drunken young cub deserved death.”

  “But it would have been better if you’d killed him yourself instead of running to the laws like a woman. Beryn would have understood that.”

  “And why should I add one murder to another when we’ve got a gwerbret not forty miles north of here?”

  “Ye gods, Dwaen, you talk like a cursed priest!”

  “If I’d had brothers, I would have been a priest, and you know it as well as I do.”

  In a few minutes, what kin Dwaen did have left came down from the women’s hall; his mother, Slaecca, and his sister, Ylaena, with their servingwomen trailing after. Her hair coiffed in the black headscarf of a widow, Slaecca was pale, her face drawn, as if she were on the edge of a grave illness, every movement slow and measured to mete out her shreds of strength. Ylaena, pretty, slender, and sixteen, looked bewildered, as she had ever since the murder.

  “Here, Mother, sit at my right, will you?” Dwaen rose to greet the dowager. “Cado, if you’ll oblige by sitting with my sister?”

  Cadlew was so eager to oblige that it occurred to Dwaen that it was time he found his sister a husband. Although he glanced his mother’s way to see if she’d noticed the young lord’s reaction, she was staring absently out into space.

  “Oh, now here, Mam, Da wouldn’t have wanted you to fill your life with misery just because he’s gone to the Otherlands.”

  “I know, but I’m just so worried.”

  “What? What about?”

  “Dwaen, Dwaen, don’t put me off! I can’t believe that a man like Beryn is going to let this thing lie.”

  “Well now, it’d be a grave thing for him to break the gwerbret’s decree of justice, and he knows it. Besides, he’s got his own sense of honor. If he kills me, there’ll be no one left to carry on the blood feud, and I doubt me if he’d do a loathsome thing like killing a man who had no hope of vengeance.”

  Slaecca merely sighed, as if in disbelief, and went back to staring across the hall.

  On the morrow, Dwaen and Cadlew took the gwertrae out to hunt rabbits in a stretch of wild meadowland some few miles from the dun. They had no sooner ridden into the grass when the dog raised a sleeping hare. With one sharp bark, it took off after its prey. Although the brown hare raced and dodged, leaping high and twisting off at sharp angles, the gwertrae ran so low to the ground and fast that it easily turned the hare in a big circle and drove it back to the hunters. With a whoop of laughter, Cadlew spurred his horse to meet it and bent over to spear the hare off the ground with one easy stroke. All morning, they coursed back and forth until the leather sack at Cadlew’s saddle-peak bulged bloody from their kills.

  The chase took them far from the farmlands of the demesne to the edge of the primeval oak forest, dark and silent, which once had covered the whole southern border of the Gwaentaer plateau, but which in Dwaen’s time existed only in patchy remnants. At a stream they dismounted, watered the horses and the dog, then sat down in the grass to eat the bread and smoked meat they’d brought with them. Cadlew cut the head off one of the hares and tossed it to the gwertrae, who stretched out with its hind legs straight behind and gnawed away.

  “Oh, a thousand thanks for this splendid gift,” Cadlew said. “I think I’ll name him Glas.”

  “If you like, tomorrow we can take the big hounds and ride into the forest. We could do with some venison at the dun.”

  “And when have I ever turned down a chance to hunt?”

  Thinking of the morrow’s sport, Dwaen idly looked into the forest. Something was moving—a trace of motion, darting between two trees among bracken and fern. Even though the oaks themselves were just starting into full leaf, the shrubs and suchlike among them were thick enough. Puzzled, he rose for a better look. Cadlew followed his gaze, then with a shout threw himself at Dwaen’s legs and knocked him to the ground just as an arrow sped out of the cover. It whistled over them by several feet, but if Dwaen had been standing, he would have been skewered. Growling, the gwertrae sprang up and barked, lunging forward at the hidden enemy. Another arrow sang and hit it full in the chest. With a whimper, Glas fell, writhed, and pawed at the air, then lay still. Another arrow hit the grass and struck quivering not two feet from Dwaen’s head. He felt a cold, rigid calm: they were going to die. With neither mail nor shield, it mattered not if they lay there like tourney targets or tried to charge; it was death either way. Oh, great Bel, he prayed, come to meet us on the misty road!

  “Shall we charge?” Cadlew whispered.

  “Might as well die like men.”

  Cadlew rolled free, grabbed a spear, and jumped to his feet with a war cry. As he did the same, Dwaen could almost feel the bite of the arrow bringing his Wyrd. But the enemy never loosed his bow again. When they took a couple of cautious steps forward, he saw nothing moving among the trees but a bird on a branch.

  “Well,” Dwaen said, “I think me I’ve just been given a message.”

  “Beryn?”

  “Who else? I wager that if I’d been alone, I’d be dead by now, but no doubt he didn’t want to murder you with me. He’s got naught against you and your clan.”

  “If he tries to kill you again, he’ll have to kill me first, but I’d rather it was in open battle.”

  “It might come to that.”

  Cadlew picked up the dead gwertrae and slung it over his saddle, but since Dwaen didn’t want his womenfolk alarmed, they asked a farmer to bury it for them rather than taking it back to the dun.

  All that afternoon, even though he managed to make polite conversation with his guest and his family, Dwaen brooded. Lord Beryn’s lands were only about ten miles to the west, close enough for him to haunt the edges of the demesne in hope of catching his enemy unaware. Yet he couldn’t imagine Beryn using a bow instead of a sword, and besides, how had the old bastard known exactly when and where he’d gone to hunt? Not that he and Cadlew had made any secret of their plan—the question was how Beryn had heard of it, a question that was answered the very same night, when he went up to bed.

  Theoretically, now that he’d inherited, Dwaen should have been using his father’s formal suite on the floor just above the great hall, but since he had no desire to move his mother out of her bed, he kept to his spare, small chamber on the third floor of the bro
ch. When he came in that night, carrying a lantern himself rather than bothering a page, he saw a lump under the blankets on the narrow bed. He threw the covers back and found a dead rat, mangled, stabbed over and over to a blood-soaked mess, and stuffed into a neck wound was the tail feather of a raven.

  With an involuntary yell, Dwaen jumped back, the lantern shaking and bobbing to throw wild shadows on the walls.

  “Dwaen?” Cadlew’s voice came muffled through the door. “Are you all right?”

  “Not truly. Come in, will you?”

  When Cadlew saw the rat, he swore under his breath, then took the poker from the hearth and flipped the foul thing onto the floor.

  “Beryn’s got a man in this dun,” Cadlew said.

  “Obviously, unless that peddler who was here this afternoon was actually a spy.”

  “Who would have let him come upstairs? Here, on the morrow, I’ll send a message home and tell them that I’m staying at your side.”

  “You’ve never been more welcome.”

  Dwaen gathered up his blankets and went to share Cadlew’s chamber, but he lay awake for a long time after his friend was snoring. Although he’d realized that Beryn would hate him for demanding justice, he’d never thought the lord would seek such a coward’s revenge. But he’s got no choice, he thought, because if he challenges me openly, the gwerbret will intervene. A traitor in his own dun! The thought sickened him, that one of his own men could be bribed against him. It might only be a servant, of course, but still, he was forced to realize that from now on, he could trust no one.

  The round, thatched farmhouse sat behind a low earthen wall about a hundred yards from the road. Out in the dusty yard, a man was throwing a bucket of slop to a pair of skinny gray hogs. When Jill and Rhodry led their horses up to the gate, he lowered the bucket and looked them over narrow-eyed.

  “Good morrow,” Rhodry said. “Would your wife happen to have any extra bread to sell to a traveler?”

  “She wouldn’t.” He paused to spit on the ground. “Silver dagger.”