“By the way, oh younger brother of mine, what are we going to do about the other horses? The ones that used to belong to Gwin’s obnoxious expedition.”
Rhodry stopped packing his saddlebags and sat back on his heels to consider Salamander, who looked sincerely vexed as he squatted down next to him.
“Leave the wretched beasts here for the stable owner to sell,” Rhodry said. “They’ve been naught but a cursed nuisance.”
“What? We can’t just leave twenty-four perfectly good horses behind.”
“We can, and we are.”
“But that’s like throwing gold into gutters!”
All at once Rhodry understood.
“We are not, oh elder brother of mine, out on the grasslands. You don’t need to hoard every spavined nag that comes your way.”
“I don’t care. If we leave them here, can we come back for them at some point later?”
“When, you stupid dolt?” It was Nevyn, striding into the room. “For all I know, we’re riding to our deaths, and you’re worrying about extra horses? Ye gods!”
“But what if some disaster falls upon us, and we need remounts?”
“No doubt we can buy them in some town or other. You and Jill seem to be dripping with coin. Which reminds me. Just how did you two earn all that money, anyway?”
“Oh, um, performing in the marketplace.” But Salamander had gone dead-white. “I’m a gerthddyn, after all, and Jill was a good draw just by being a blonde barbarian lass.”
At the word “marketplace” a crowd of Wildfolk materialized: sprites swooping through the air, gnomes leaping and dancing, and in a shuddering curtain of purple light the Wildfolk of Aethyr made their presence known. Faint thunder boomed.
“You didn’t!” Nevyn turned as grim as a berserker.
“Er well, I can’t lie. I did.”
“May the Great Ones rend your soul! You stupid chattering elf! Real dweomer in the marketplace?” Nevyn stopped talking and started sputtering in sheer rage.
“My lord?” Rhodry broke in. “But it saved all our lives. Gwin told me that the Hawks never even suspected who Evan was until it was too late.”
“And that statement, Rhodry lad, has just saved your scapegrace brother’s life—from me. Still, I’ve more to say on this subject. Salamander, come with me, will you?”
Since Nevyn grabbed his arm and hauled him up with a grip as strong as a blacksmith’s, Salamander had little choice about it. Berating him all the while Nevyn dragged him out into the corridor, and Rhodry could hear the old man’s voice for a long time before they moved out of earshot.
When he finished packing, Rhodry went down to the inn yard, where Amyr, Gwin, and the rest of the warband were milling around, waiting for his orders. Although Rhodry still didn’t recognize the men from Eldidd, with Jill’s coaching he’d learned their names and enough small things about them to hide his lack of memory. Amyr, in particular, he had reason to remember, because according to Jill that young rider had helped save his life in battle some years back—not that Rhodry could recall a single thing about it. Yet oddly enough, although he remembered no concrete details like names or places or battles, he did remember being a lord, just as he remembered how comfortable and masculine it was to wear brigga rather than a tunic now that he had a pair of trousers back on. Since he was heading a warband again, and every man in it was treating him with utter deference, all the feelings of leadership returned to him, from the easy pride to the hard worrying about their safety, as well as a way of standing and holding his head, a way of smiling even, that Rhodry the slave footman would never have dared allow himself, indeed, that he would never have recalled. When Amyr came forward to bow to him, he smiled and raised one hand in a gesture that felt familiar even though he couldn’t consciously remember learning it. No doubt, it occurred to him, he was aping his mother’s husband, the noble-born man who’d raised him, in some way.
“Do we ride out today, my lord?” Amyr said.
“We do. Amyr, you’re going to be the captain for this ride, and always remember that we’re heading for the strangest battle of our lives. If you notice anyone acting strange, brooding, maybe, or saying things that don’t make sense, tell Nevyn straightaway. From what Jill’s. been telling me, our enemies can work on men’s minds from a long way away.”
“I’ll stay on guard then, my lord. Shall I get the men saddled up and ready to ride?”
“Do that.”
As the others hurried off, Rhodry noticed Gwin, standing a little ways apart and looking a little bewildered, as if he had no idea of how he fit into this new order of things.
“Gwin? I’ve been thinking. There’s no reason for you to ride with the rest of the warband—you don’t truly belong there. Will you be my bodyguard from now on?”
Nodding his agreement, Gwin studied the ground for a moment, then looked up and smiled at him with an affection that went far beyond the deference of a rider to his sworn lord. Rhodry knew that Gwin loved him; he was touched at times, embarrassed at others, but always he had more than one reason to be grateful to him—of that, he was painfully aware. He gave Gwin a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“Come ride next to me, will you?”
“I will. My thanks.”
“Welcome enough. You’ve got to be at the head of the line if you’re going to keep an eye on me.”
Gwin smiled again, and for a moment they stood there together, savoring each other’s company and little more. Then Rhodry glanced up to see Jill, Nevyn, and a much-subdued Salamander coming down the outside staircase together. He felt an odd guilt at the sight of his betrothed, as he thought of her these days, but even more, a resentment, to see her in the company of sorcerers. At times he felt that she was drifting away from him, floating out to a measureless sea on a cryptic tide, inexorably sailing farther and farther away beyond his power to call her back.
“What’s wrong?” Gwin said. “You look half-sick about somewhat.”
“Naught, naught, just thinking. I’ve been penned up too long. It gets on my nerves.”
With Salamander and Jill in tow Nevyn swept over to join them, and the old man was grinning like a berserker himself.
“Are you ready to ride, lads?”
“We are,” Rhodry said. “But do you know which way we’re going?”
“I do—in a general sort of way. The Old One’s villa is to the east of here, up in the high hills, and a good ways away. I finally thought of the obvious and asked the Wildfolk. They know it well—to avoid it.”
“Oh by the Clawed Ones!” Gwin burst out. “Can they lead us straight there?”
“The Wildfolk have never led anyone straight to anything. I’ll do my best to think up something better, but for now, they’re the only guides we’ve got.”
Although it wasn’t very wide and neither graveled nor drained, there was a road of sorts that ran roughly east and west through Pastedion. To the west, or so the priests told Nevyn, it dwindled to little more than a goat track before it ended at an insignificant village, but to the east it wound all the way through the mountains past Vardeth to Wylinth far across the island. If Salamander had taken that road after rescuing his brother from slavery, he might well have led Rhodry right to the Old One, Nevyn realized—provided, of course, that the Old One’s villa did indeed lie to the east of Pastedion but the west of Wylinth. On the material plane, the Wildfolk are easily confused; such abstract concepts as east and west are beyond them, to say nothing of true abstractions such as distance or time, and, without abstractions, they can only follow routes that they’ve traveled before, even if those routes are the longest possible way to their destination. For all Nevyn knew, the gnomes who were trying to help him had once started out to the east, then wandered off in another direction, or doubled back, or simply gone skipping from hilltop to hilltop all over Surtinna before they’d ended up near the Old One’s villa. If he’d been trying to find an ordinary person or place, he could have sent the Wildfolk out on random hunts over
the countryside, but he refused to let them near someone as dangerous as the Old One, anymore than he would have sent Salamander out flying in his newly learned and unstable bird-form.
“By the way,” Nevyn asked the gerthddyn that morning. “When you fly, what bird are you?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“What?”
“Well, you don’t exactly get to pick the bird whose shape you want to assume. The dweomer itself finds one that reflects your nature. It’s rather like freezing water in a clay pot. When you break the pot, lo! ice in a pot-shape!”
“True, true, but what bird do—”
“I might as well admit it and get it over with, oh Master of the Aethyr. Try though I might to take a nobler form, I always end up a magpie.”
Nevyn laughed.
“See? Everyone laughs.”
“My apologies, Ebany. A magpie can fly with the best of them.”
“How kind. Yet true, truly though alas. I’m willing to shapechange if you need me to. Mayhap the Old One would never suspect a giant magpie of possessing dweomer. Then again, he might be laughing too hard to harm me.”
“Now there’s a wager I wouldn’t lay a copper on. I doubt me if the Old One’s laughed in fifty years. I’d go out on the etheric myself before I’d let an apprentice do such a dangerous thing.”
“It would be more dangerous for you just because the Old One’s going to be watching for you.”
“I’ll take that risk, if I have to. And it may come to that.”
“Let us devoutly hope it won’t. You know, they say here in the islands that anyone who makes a pact with the Clawed Ones always gets betrayed in the end. Maybe they’ll lead us right to their ancient servant. Or—sorry. I can see by your face that my feeble attempt at a jest wasn’t funny in the least.”
“It’s just my mood. I was thinking of somewhat that Gwin said earlier. He was afraid that the Old One was making us come to him by some magical means.”
“He’s not, then?”
“Oh of course not! Don’t be a superstitious lackwit! Now, wait a moment. That’s an interesting thought. Suppose he wanted to draw me here for some reason—to kill me, most like, knowing him. Wouldn’t our Rhodry be the perfect bait?”
“He got you here, sure enough.”
“Huh. I’ll have to think about this. I’ve been racking my brains, wondering where Rhodry’s political enemies could have found a guild of Hawks to hire, and here I may have maligned them. I never could make sense of this whole thing. I’ll talk to Gwin again later and see what his exact orders were.”
“You know, oh exalted master of our mutual craft, there’s somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you. Here’s Gwin, who’s probably murdered dozens of men and women too for all we know, and yet he strikes me as pathetic. Then there’s Perryn, who did indeed rape Jill, but unwittingly, at enormous cost to his own health, and without so much as bruising her—yet he strikes me as utterly repellent. Is it because Jill’s my beloved friend, while Gwin’s victims remain hypothetical and abstract in the extreme?”
“Partly, but mostly it’s because you share Gwin’s humanity, for all that you’re half an elf, and while Perryn may have a human body, his soul isn’t human in the least.”
For the first time in all the years he’d known him, Nevyn had the satisfaction of seeing Salamander speechless. He left him alone to think and guided his horse up to the head of the line, where Gwin and Jill were riding on either side of Rhodry.
“Gwin, come with me a moment, will you? There’s somewhat I want to ask you.”
Gwin did indeed remember the orders he’d been given when he and the man called Merryc had been sent to Deverry. It was clear from the beginning, as far as he could tell, that the Old One had sent Baruma to hire the guild, not that anyone knew exactly why. More and more Nevyn was sure that he could guess. He sent Gwin back to Rhodry’s side and rode on alone, getting about half a mile ahead of the line of march but never out of sight of the dust cloud that told him where they were. If the Old One wanted a strike at him, he was willing to let him try. Before they’d left Pastedion he’d set astral seals over the entire party to hide them from the Old One’s scrying, but there was always the possibility that their enemy would risk traveling on the etheric in the body of light in order to track them down. Although he couldn’t be sure that they were being watched in this way without going into a full trance, he could open himself up to the slight whispers and warnings of danger that the Old One’s presence would induce.
For the rest of that morning the road wound through an endless roll of greening hills and the dark slashes of the tree-choked valleys. Every now and then a gaggle of sylphs or mob of gnomes would pop into manifestation and point frantically to the east, then disappear again. It was well into the afternoon, however, before anything untoward happened. When he crested a particularly high hill, he realized that he’d put a dangerous distance between himself and the others—dangerous to them. What if the Old One chose to attack those least capable of defending themselves! Cursing himself for a shortsighted fool, he turned his horse and trotted back to fall into place beside Jill at the head of the line.
“Has anything untoward happened while I’ve been gone?”
“Naught. Or, well, I suppose this isn’t truly anything.”
“Out with it.”
“I just keep feeling like we’re being watched.”
“No doubt someone’s trying to scry us out. I’ve set seals that should frustrate the Old One good and proper.”
“Splendid. Tell me somewhat. Will the same seals keep out the Hawkmaster? The one who used to own Gwin?”
“They should. Why?”
“I don’t know. I told you how he sent the wolf back to me. I just can’t believe that he packed himself off and went home after that.”
“No doubt you’re right. Well, we’ll just have to deal with him, too.”
Yet even as he spoke, Nevyn felt the dweomer-cold run down his back, a warning against arrogance. As he considered its implications, he realized that he might be drawn into a situation where he would have to do something that he abhorred above all else: use violence to kill on his own authority, not that of the laws. Or would he have to offer himself as a sacrifice, now that his time was finally drawing near? The thought brought him close to tears, that he would lose Brangwen so soon after bringing her to her Wyrd, but he knew that he would always put the Light before all else, even the woman he’d loved for four hundred years, and that he would obey its will.
Yet even so, the decision lay heavily upon him, and it was nothing that he could share with Jill or even Salamander. That night, when the camp was asleep except for a trio of armed guards, he went a little ways away to the top of a hill and sat down cross-legged in the long grass. Above him the night sky was so clear that the great drift of the Snowy Road seemed to hang just an arm’s length away. As he slowed his breathing and let his mind calm of its own accord, the Wildfolk came to cluster round him, especially the gnomes, who patted his arm with timid paws and climbed into his lap as if they wanted to comfort him.
“I’m afraid there’s naught you can do, my friends. If there’s a sacrifice to be made, it’s mine alone.”
He felt their distress as an exhalation of sadness, wrapping him round and mingling with his own melancholy until he nearly wept. Then, with a toss of his head, he threw the feeling off: he had work to do, whether it cost his death or not, and he would do it.
“If I die, so be it,” he said aloud. “Now, let’s sec if we can find the Old One. You guard my body, my friends, and wake me up if anything goes wrong.”
As soon as he transferred his consciousness over to his body of light, Nevyn knew that he wasn’t alone; the feeling of another magical presence was so strong that it sent ripples through the blue light, like a stone thrown into a pond. In the swirling blue waves of the etheric plane he rose high above the hilltop, then let himself drift, turning this way and that as he tried to see his enemy. Up higher, fa
r above the sleeping camp, he saw a pentagram, a silver shape floating in the light, and all his blood ran cold, because this was no construction of the Old One’s demented mind, but a talisman of beauty, with the single point upright as is natural and holy, glowing in the center with a golden light that streamed from some plane far beyond the simple etheric. As Nevyn rose toward it, he was trembling with awe, so badly that he had to exert all his craft to keep his body of light from breaking up and dropping him unceremoniously back to the physical plane.
There, arranged in all their splendor round the pentagram, were the Kings of the elements: Aethyr, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, each a pillar and a blaze of many-colored light pulsating at a point of the star. In the center was a presence, impossible to see in the spill of golden brilliance pouring from the center—if indeed he had anything so concrete as a form to be seen. Even though Nevyn felt the presence as masculine and thus still linked to the worlds of form, they were too far apart to communicate in words or concrete thoughts. It seemed to him that the presence spoke—a clumsy word, but the one that’s available—to the Kings of the Elements, and they in turn spoke to him in waves of feeling and imagery, with here and there a snatch of thought. But even though he couldn’t know how he heard, he knew that he knew what had been spoken, a rebuke and a promise. Pride, his wretched princely pride had once again tripped him up and sent him stumbling into unnecessary pain. Who was he to think that he would be the sacrifice, the one whose ever-so-noble forfeit would rescue all those around him? And who was he to think that he stood alone, the only rescuer? He was needed, yes. There were things to be done that only a man like him could do. But there were other things that would be done for him. The very Kings of the Elements pledged their word on that.
As soon as he accepted their pledge, the star vanished, winking out suddenly into darkness, but the Kings remained, beckoning to him to follow them through the blue light. In the safety of their company he flew a long way east and slightly north, until they came to a little town called Ganjalo, or so the King of Earth named it. They swooped wide round the town, as if warning him to avoid it, then led him to the north until he saw an enormous walled compound below him. His companions sent out such a wave of loathing that he knew he’d seen the Old One’s villa. As he returned to his body, he also knew that he could find it again, and soon, because they were no more than two days’ ride away.