Days of Air and Darkness

  The dimly lit chamber reeked with the sickly odor of vomit and some sweetish drug. On the canopied bed lay a figure, huddled up, clasping its stomach with both hands. Rhodry strode over and pulled the blanket back to find a stout man, naked, his skin bluish, his broad face contorted and blue from his last agony. He lay in a pool of vomit and urine, and his bloodshot eyes stared up sightless at the embroidered blazons on Lord Beryn’s bed. Rhodry stepped back fast.

  “Gods preserve us! She’s a ruthless little bitch!”

  He ran to the door and unbarred it to let Lord Beryn and the gwerbret in. At the sight of the corpse in his bed, Beryn swore aloud. He began to shake, a tremor of rage that left him speechless and scarlet-faced. Behind him came Coryc with Dwaen and Lord Cadlew, with Jill trailing behind. Coryc’s careful mask of sympathy shattered at the sight.

  “Bavydd!” Coryc said. “It has to be! Oh, by the hells, then where’s Lady Mallona?”

  “Your Grace, if I may speak?” Jill broke in. “I’ll wager she’s wearing Bavydd’s clothes and riding one of her husband’s horses. It must have been her that the servants saw leave the dun last night.”

  “And she’s heading south for Cerrmor,” Beryn snarled. “I’ll wager on that.”

  “Cerrmor?” the gwerbret said. “Why would she do that?”

  “Where else can she go?” Beryn spoke so quietly that it was frightening. “Her wretched brother had a wife and children there, and Bavydd must have kin. I know my wife, Your Grace. She could fool the gods themselves when she gets to lying. But she’ll never reach Cerrmor. I swear it by the Lord of Hell himself. She’ll never reach it alive.”

  Yelling for fresh horses, Beryn ran down the stairs. Although the gwerbret hurried after him, Dwaen hesitated, motioning to Jill and Rhodry to wait with him.

  “Think we’ll catch her?” the tieryn said.

  “Who knows, my lord?” Rhodry said. “She’s got a day’s start on us, but only one horse. Huh. I’ll wager she can steal others. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  “Not after this.” Dwaen shuddered. “She must have been driven mad, the poor woman. Maybe she started hating her merchant, seeing him as the man who’d led her into these crimes or suchlike. The source of her dishonor, that kind of thing.”

  “His Grace is much too kind,” Jill broke in. “I’ll wager she wanted to save her own skin and naught more. But she hasn’t ridden south.”

  The men turned to stare at her. Rhodry was struck by how odd she looked, pale, yes, as might be expected, but cold sweat beaded her forehead, and her eyes stared across the room as if she were seeing someone standing there. When Rhodry glanced, he could see no one.

  “Jill, what do you mean?” Dwaen said. “How do you know?”

  She shook her head, on the verge of trembling.

  “I don’t know how I know, Your Grace, but I do know. We can ride south all we want, but we won’t find her.”

  In the end, Jill was proved right, but they did take a prize of sorts. The gwerbret left Tieryn Dwaen and Lord Cadlew behind to keep order at the dun, then rode out with Lord Beryn and a token escort from his personal warband. Rhodry went with them to bring back a report for the tieryn. In the blue twilight, they trotted fast down a dirt road and headed for the forest preserve where Beryn had his hunting lodge. By the time they reached the forest edge, night had fallen, forcing Beryn to slow the line of march. Their only road was a winding track between old oaks.

  “I trust his lordship knows the trail,” Coryc shouted.

  “Like a gamekeeper,” Beryn called back. “It’s not far now.”

  In a bit, a faint glow appeared in the darkness ahead. Cursing under his breath, Beryn broke into a jog and headed straight for it. Rhodry kicked his tired horse and caught up just as they burst out into a clearing, where stood a long wooden building, half-house, half-shed. The glow came from its unshuttered windows, a pleasant firelight burning against the night’s chill. Out in front, three men were yelling at each other as they frantically tried to saddle their horses; they’d been warned by the unmistakable clatter of riders coming their way. Screaming a war cry, Beryn drew his sword with a flourish and charged. Sword in hand, Rhodry followed, but at the sight of the gwerbret and his men pouring into the clearing, the three fell to their knees and cried surrender.

  “Where’s Mallona?” Beryn yelled. “Where’s my wife?”

  “Not here, my lord. I swear it! We were waiting for Bavydd to bring her.”

  The lords and their men dismounted and surrounded their prey.

  Rhodry ducked into the house and took a good look round. Bedrolls and other gear lay strewn on the uneven wood floor; hunting spears hung on the wall by the rough hearth. Judging from the garbage strewn about, the pack had been waiting here for some days. Only one unusual thing caught his eye, a little silver chain lying on a bench near the door. When he picked it up, he found hanging from it not a pendant or silver bauble, but a raven’s feather. Reflexively, he slipped it into his pocket, then trotted back out and found the three men spilling everything they knew in the hope of a quick death, not a slow one.

  Jill’s theories had been as accurate as they needed to be. Petyn had hired the fellows in a town to the south, where they were hanging round a tavern in hopes of getting work as caravan guards. He’d taken them to the hunting lodge, where Bavydd had turned up, scattering coins and bringing good provisions to buy loyalty. At first, they’d had their doubts about the job, until Bavydd made it clear they weren’t really going to murder Dwaen, just make it look like they were going to.

  “But then he told us to take that lady on the road,” one of the men burst out. “I didn’t like that.” He shot his fellows a venomous glance. “Bastards, all of you, and Petyn was the worst.”

  “Oh, bastards, are we?” snarled the other. “You were quick enough to take that fat merchant’s coin, lad.”

  “That’s enough,” Coryc said. “What did the merchant tell you to do to the lady after you’d taken her?”

  “Whatever we wanted to,” the lad said. “I didn’t like that, Your Grace, I swear it. We were to bring her here, have our sport with her, and talk like we were Beryn’s men. Then we were supposed to put her back on her horse and let her go.”

  “It’s a cursed good thing Tieryn Dwaen isn’t here right now,” Coryc remarked to no one in particular.

  All three of the captured men were staring at Rhodry.

  “Oh, I recognize you well enough.” Rhodry turned to the gwerbret. “These are the lads, all right, who killed Dwaen’s rider, the one who was escorting Ylaena and her servingwoman.”

  “Very well, Silver Dagger. They’ll pay for that, too. My Lord Beryn? Let’s get our three rats on their horses and get back to your dun.”

  Before they rode out, Beryn found a torch in the lodge and lit it at the hearth, then had one of the gwerbret’s men put out the fire. Everyone followed the bobbing point of light from the torch at the head of the line as they picked their way back through the forest and across the meadow. By the time they reached the dun, it was close to midnight.

  Beryn’s great hall, such as it was, was crammed with men, sitting on straw, standing and leaning against the wall, while frantic servants rushed back and forth with ale and bread. The noble-born found what stools and benches as they could and moved them round the battered-planks-over-trestles that served Beryn as a table of honor. Beryn sat slouched in the only chair, one foot braced against the table, and drank steadily, looking across the room with eyes so dark it was doubtful that he was seeing the farther wall.

  “Now, here,” Coryc said at last. “It’ll be futile to take tired men on tired horses out on the south road tomorrow. I want to see your lady brought to justice as much as you do, but by the hells, we don’t even know if she went straight south. If she keeps her wits about her, she’ll ride a roundabout road to throw us off the track.”

  Beryn grunted and stared into his tankard of ale.

  “Wits are the one thing she’s never lacked,
” Dwaen put in. “I wonder if we’ll ever get her back.”

  “I’ll send messengers to Cerrmor tomorrow,” Coryc said. “The gwerbret there will relay them to the city council, and out of courtesy to him, they’ll find her.”

  “If she’s even going to Cerrmor,” Jill muttered.

  The noble-born ignored her and went on squabbling for some time, until Dwaen found his common sense.

  “Now here, Your Grace, we’ve got a pair of silver daggers, and they’re famous for tracking men who need to be tracked. Why not a woman?”

  “True spoken.” Coryc turned to Rhodry. “I’ll put a bounty on her. There’ll be fifty silver pieces for you if you bring her back to my justice.”

  “His Grace is most generous,” Rhodry said, “but there’s somewhat about being a bounty hunter that rubs me wrong.”

  “Don’t be a dolt, Rhodry,” Jill snapped. “That’s enough coin to buy you a remount if you lose your horse in a scrap someday.”

  “True enough. Well and good, Your Grace, we’ll take your hire—if, of course, Tieryn Dwaen will release me.”

  “Gladly. I don’t suppose my life’s in danger anymore.”

  Beryn got up, the tankard in his hand.

  “Not from me. That rotten young cub of mine was too much like his mother, anyway.”

  Beryn hurled the tankard against the wall, then ran from the room. They heard the door slam behind him.

  “The poor old bastard,” Cadlew remarked with a sigh. “I’m blasted glad now I never screwed his wife.”

  “You’re the very soul of honor,” Dwaen said. “But you should be glad for more reasons than one. If she’d got tired of you, she might have served you some cursed strange mead.” All the men laughed in a small spasm of nerves.

  Noble-born and commoners alike, the men found themselves what places they could to sleep that night. A little hunting out in the ward brought Rhodry and Jill a storage shed, festooned with the few remaining strings of last year’s onions, with enough room near the door for them to spread out their blankets. Exhausted as he was, Rhodry sat awake, watching the dapples of candlelight on the rough walls.

  “What’s wrong?” Jill said.

  “I just keep thinking of poor old Bavydd. He wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  “He wasn’t, but well, we’ve both seen worse.”

  “Just so, but this was a particularly vile sort of death. I mean, there he was, poisoned by a woman.”

  “Is that what makes it so vile, that his killer was a woman?”

  “Of course. Ye gods, she must be a fiend from hell!”

  “I don’t know. I mean, truly, she broke every law of the gods and the king both, but I almost feel sorry for her.”

  “Have you gone daft?”

  “Well, here she was, trapped in this dun with a man like Beryn.” Jill sat up, shoving the blankets back. “Everything I’ve heard about her said she’s got more wits than most people, and a strong will, too, and some of the women said that when she was young she was so merry, always laughing and singing. She would have been a perfect wife for a great lord, running his big household and angling to get him favors at court and suchlike. But she ends up moldering here, and all because she defended her brother from their father’s wrath.”

  “A lot of women end up in country duns. They make the best of it without taking lovers and studying poisons.”

  “True enough. I suppose you’re right.”

  Yet she sounded doubtful still. He would have said more, but she slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He could forget all his worries in the feel of her body, pressed close to his.

  Yet in the morning, the worries about the bounty hunt ahead of them came back with the rising sun. After they dressed, they opened the door against the reek of onions. Jill pulled on her boots, then merely sat on the floor, looking out at nothing in particular.

  “Somewhat’s troubling you,” Rhodry said.

  “It is. Where did she get that poison?”

  Rhodry had to admit that it was an interesting point. When he’d been growing up in Aberwyn’s court, he’d been taught a bit about poisons in sheer self-defense—highly placed men were always in danger of intrigues—but he’d never seen or heard of anything like the drug that had killed Bavydd.

  “Well, they say you can buy some cursed strange things on the Cerrmor docks,” Rhodry said. “Imports from Bardek. Bavydd probably brought it to her.”

  “If he brought it, how come he was stupid enough to drink it?”

  “Good point. Unless it was tasteless. The best poisons always are.”

  “Maybe. I mean, it must have been that. But I’d like to make sure, and for that, we’ll need its name.”

  “Well, I can tell you the one Bavydd used in the gwerbret’s palace—just a raw dose of belladonna.”

  “Bavydd? Oh, of course, it must have been him who gave that serving lass the mead. So if he had the belladonna, he must have brought her the other poison, too.”

  “He just never dreamt she’d use it on him.”

  It made perfect sense, yet they exchanged an uneasy glance. With a toss of his head, Rhodry rose, catching the doorjamb in one hand and staring out across the ward, where the gwerbret’s men were beginning to ready their horses.

  “Jill? Do you think there’s sorcery mixed up in this somehow?”

  “I do, but I couldn’t tell you why.”

  A cold stripe of fear ran down his back. Just the summer before, dweomer had swept into his life like a storm-wave, bringing Jill with it, leaving her behind like some long-buried treasure brought up from the sea. Yet he was always aware that sorcery threatened to sweep her away again. He kept remembering a man named Aderyn, who had magical powers beyond what Rhodry had ever believed possible, telling him that Jill was marked for the dweomer herself. He refused to believe it. She loved him, she belonged to him, and that’s all there was to that. But when he turned to look at her, sitting on their dirty blankets amid sacks of moldy flour, he found her staring off into one of those private spaces that only she could see.

  “Let’s ride,” he snapped. “Mallona has, I’ll wager, and she’s getting farther away all the time.”

  “No doubt.” Jill scrambled up. “Which way shall we go?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. There it was again: dweomer. As if she knew what he was thinking, she smiled in a wry sort of way.

  “Well, let’s go south for a little ways. That’s what I would do if I were her. Lay a false trail toward Cerrmor, and then go somewhere else.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Oh. Ye gods, I nearly forgot.” He reached into his brigga pocket and pulled the by now ill-used feather on its chain. “What do you think about this? I found it in Beryn’s lodge.”

  Jill took the chain and considered it with the same look she’d give maggoty meat.

  “I’ve seen one of these before, when I was still traveling with my Da,” she said at last. “They’d hanged the woman who was wearing it. I don’t know why. Da wouldn’t let me look at the corpse for more than a moment, and he wouldn’t let me ask the townfolk, either.”

  She started to toss it away, then reconsidered, kneeling down to put it in a saddlebag.

  “You should give that to the gwerbret,” Rhodry said.

  “Well, sooner or later. But I want to show it to someone else first. I’m starting to get another idea. You know, I heard some rather strange things about Lady Mallona when I was up in the women’s hail of Coryc’s dun.”

  “Obviously. Ye gods, I’ll never forget the look on poor old Cadlew’s face.”

  “Not just that, dolt. There were rumors that Mallona studied the Old Lore. Lady Ganydda swore she didn’t believe it, but she was awfully eager to repeat it. She was supposed to have been fond of a strange old woman near her brother’s dun when she was a child—”

  “And of course the poor old woman was a witch.” Rhodry finished this all-too-familia
r bit of gossip for her. “Any old woman who lives alone is always supposed to be a witch.”

  “True spoken, but consider this. Mallona had that lover for a couple of years, and she only had the one child by Beryn. Now, whether that was Beryn’s trouble, who knows, but if that lover was a cold stick, she wouldn’t have bothered with him, and she wasn’t interested in Cadlew for fine conversation. Why doesn’t she have a couple of bastard children to palm off as her husband’s?”

  “They always say the Old Lore can remove that kind of nuisance from a woman’s life, don’t they?”

  “Just that.” Jill thought for a moment. “Lord Beryn’s cook told me that every now and then, the lady had weak spells, when she’d take to her bed for days and look terrible ill.”

  “Ye gods! I never realized that the servants in a dun know about every blasted thing their masters do.”

  “Oh, doubtless the cooks and suchlike in Aberwyn could tell plenty of fine tales about you, Rhodry Maelwaedd.”

  Rhodry had the unpleasant feeling that he was blushing.

  The hunt should have been easy. A woman traveling alone was such an unusual thing in those days that anyone she passed should have noticed and remembered her. A woman who’d spent most of her life shut up in a dun should have had every possible trouble on the road, too. Although Lady Mallona’s life had hardly been pampered and courtly, still, she’d doubtless never had to build a campfire, haggle for food, find water for her horse, or do any of those hundred other tasks that fell to travelers on the Deverry roads.

  An easy task to find her, stuck somewhere with a lame horse or trying to bargain with suspicious innkeeps—except that after a full day on the south-running road, Rhodry had to admit that she seemed to have disappeared like dweomer. No farmer had remembered seeing her, no tavernman had given her shelter, no noble lord had wondered about a solitary rider traveling across his demesne.

  “I’m beginning to think that she didn’t go south after all,” Rhodry said. “Not even to lay a false trail. May the gods blast me if I give up, though. If any woman ever deserved hanging, she does.”

  “I suppose.” Jill thought for a while, staring moodily into the flames of their campfire. “Now, from the way she was described to us, I can’t believe she’d have any luck disguising herself as a man, not during broad daylight.”