THREE

In those days, Cerrmor had yet to expand to the place where the Gwarmael and the Bel rivers meet. A small village, Dei’ver, stood there, some forty houses and a pair of wooden docks, with a couple of inns to serve travelers who couldn’t reach Cerrmor before nightfall. The royal galley put in there, ostensibly to buy ale, but in reality to set Jill ashore. Since Salamander had letters for the gwerbret, he would be marked at once as an important man in the city. Since she wanted to ask some questions of the kind of people who would have nothing to do with anyone associated with His Grace and his wardens, she needed to ride in alone.

Carrying the old saddle and bridle she’d brought from Dun Deverry for this purpose, and laden down with her gear, too, she made a great show of limping and cursing as she came into the village, as if she’d had to walk a long way in her riding boots. When she reached the dusty open space that did duty as a town square, she saw a couple of idlers sitting in the shade of a willow tree.

“What happened, silver dagger? Lose your horse?”

“I did. Broke his leg about five miles north of here. Is there anyone in town who can sell me another? By the love of every god, I hope I never walk that far again.”

Since horses were a luxury beyond their reach, the villagers laughed in a nasty sort of way, but one of them waved his hand southward.

“Try the big inn by the Cerrmor road, lad. Old Mat sometimes has an extra horse or two in his stable.”

“My thanks. By the way, have there been any other silver daggers through here recently? I’m looking for a friend of mine, an Eldidd man he is, but I wouldn’t know what name he’s traveling under.”

The two of them exchanged a brief look.

“Well, seeing as how you’re another silver dagger and all, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in telling you. An Eldidd man calling himself Adoryc came through here two days ago. He had the dagger in his belt.”

“What’s he wanted for?” the second man chimed in.

“Cursed if I know. The gwerbret’s men don’t tell the likes of me their business.” Jill shrugged as best she could under all her burdens. “Well, I’ll be getting along. My back’s breaking.”

As she limped away, Jill was thinking that Rhodry must have spread plenty of silver around on his ride south to keep local tongues mute. Even so, it was odd that no one who’d seen him had told the gwerbret’s men the truth once the man who’d given them the coin had ridden on. It was probably the reputation of silver daggers that kept them honest, she supposed, the simple fear that Rhodry or someone else would come back to slit their throats if they failed to keep the bargain.

She found the big inn and Old Mat easily enough, and indeed, he did have a horse for sale, a decent gray gelding with a white off-fore and a white blaze. She haggled long enough to be convincing, then paid over some of Blaen’s coin and saddled up the gelding. They left the village at a quick walk-trot pace, but once they were well on the road, she let the gelding canter.

In about an hour, not long before sunset, Jill reached the north gate of the city. Coming to Cerrmor always made her a bit melancholy. Since her parents had been born and raised there, she’d heard about it all her life, and it seemed that it should have been her home, too. Except that I have no home at all, she thought. Now she had even more reason to feel a total stranger, because dweomer was riding into town with her. With a bitter twist of her mouth, she realized that whether she fought against her own dweomer or not, it had already made her an alien among her people. It was also putting her in danger. As she led her horse down the narrow, twisting streets, through the packs of beggars and crowds of merchants and townsfolk, she was aware of how easy it would be for someone to slip up behind her and stick a dagger in her ribs. During her long walk down to the harbor, she constantly looked around and behind her.

That was probably why she saw the old woman at all. Just as Jill crossed the market square, a wagon filled with hay for the gwerbret’s horses took a turn a little too sharply and tipped, blocking the street. Cursing, the carters picked themselves up off the cobbles as the strollers who had been right behind them milled in confusion and a noble on horseback began yelling at everyone to get out of his way that very instant. Jill turned her horse around and started working her way back along the edge of the square. All at once, she felt that she was being watched and spun around, perched on a low wall with a market basket in her lap was a gray-haired woman wearing the black headscarf of a widow. Although much-mended, her plain blue dress was clean, caught in by a precisely folded kirtle. She was staring at Jill so intensely that Jill laid her hand on her sword hilt without thinking. The old woman shrank back.

“My apologies, lad. You just remind me of someone I used to know, like.”

“No offense, good dame.”

Up ahead the crowd cleared and began to disperse. Jill hurried through the opening, then stopped cold. That voice—the old woman’s voice—by the gods, it had sounded familiar! But whose? Like her mother’s. And the old woman had found her familiar in turn. Swearing under her breath, Jill got her horse turned around in the crowd and shoved her way back to the wall. The old woman was gone. Although she searched the area around the market square for some twenty minutes, she never caught another glimpse of the woman who might have been her grandmother. She felt her eyes fill with tears, irritably wiped them away, then headed down to the harbor. Rhodry—and the dweomer—had to come before her and her kin.

Immediately around the Cerrmor harbor, of course, was the area known as the Bilge, a tangle of narrow alleys, dirty shops, brothels, and taverns, all catering to the sailors, or perhaps preying upon them would be the better said. As much as Jill needed the kind of information the Bilge could give her, she had no intention of spending a night there. A safe distance upriver, in a bleak but decent district of warehouses and longshoremen’s cottages, was an inn called the Capstan that had a good reputation among silver daggers, or at least, as good a reputation as any silver dagger inn could possibly have. Jill stabled her horse in a smelly split-roof shed, while the bald, squint-eyed innkeep scratched himself as he watched without a move to help her.

“You’re cursed young to have the dagger.”

“What’s it to you?” Jill laid her hand on its hilt.

“Naught, naught. You can have a chamber to yourself if you like, lad. Custom’s slow this time of year.”

“Done, then.”

The chamber was a tiny wedge of the second story, with warped shutters over the window and a mattress on the floor. When she kicked it out of the way, bedbugs swarmed and roiled. She dumped her gear in the corner, then left, padlocking the door behind her. The long narrow tavern room was dark and smoky, but the tabletops and the straw on the floor were reasonably clean. Jill swaggered in, trying to look as masculine as she could, and got herself a tankard of dark. Sooner or later someone was bound to realize that she was a lass, but she preferred it to be later. Since it was right at the dinner hour, the tavern was crowded with sailors spending their wages, a couple of wenches to help them at it, traveling peddlers, and a sprinkling of indifferently dressed men who were most likely thieves. The tavernman pointed to the hearth, where a stout woman fussed over a kettle.

“Beef stew tonight, silver dagger.”

“Good.”

Jill saluted him with her tankard and strolled away to stand with her back to the wall. She’d had only a few sips of ale when she heard someone yelling out in the innyard. The tavernman ran to the window.

“Ye gods, it’s some of the gwerbret’s men! They’re coming here.”

Several of the customers melted away out the back as a man in mail threw open the front door. Three swordsmen, all dressed in dark red brigga, marched in and collared the innkeep.

“Any more customers upstairs?” the leader said.

“Not that I know of. Here, what is all this?”

“We’re looking for someone, that’s all.”’ The swordsman turned to study the crowd. “We’ve already swept the Bilge. You can wager that we weren’t entirely welcome, but sweep it we did. Here, you, silver dagger! Get over here.”

Jill walked over as slowly and as insolently as she dared.

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Gilyn. What’s it to you?”

“Naught, scum, if that’s the stance you’re going to take. Do you know a man named Rhodry of Aberwyn? He’s a member of your band.”

“I do. Last time I saw him was up in Cerrgonney. What are you looking for him for?”

“Naught that concerns you.” He started to turn away, then glanced back with a conciliatory smile, “Here, I’ll tell you this, though. I swear on my honor that we mean him good not ill. He’s not wanted for a crime or suchlike. If you see him tell him that, will you? It’s worth gold in his hand if he’ll just come to His Grace’s dun.”

“I will then.”

The gwerbret’s men stomped out again, and the tavern’s customers gave a unison sigh of relief. The tavernman turned to Jill.

“Do you believe what they said about your friend?”

“I do, at that, because Rhodry’s a strange kind of man.” She paused for a sip of ale. “He’s never said a word about his past, and silver daggers don’t pry into what a man may have done, but I’ll wager he was noble-born.”

“Indeed?” His eyes widened. “A lord with the dagger?”

She noticed that a number of people had paused to listen.

“Well, he wasn’t a lord anymore, but he had the manners of the noble-born, all bows and courtesy, and he knew bard lore, too. And then there was the way he sat on a horse. You don’t ride that splendidly unless your noble father’s riding master put you on a pony when you were but three years old.”

“I wonder what he did to be shamed?” a wench said with a melancholy sigh. “It sounds a sad tale. Was he handsome?”

“I suppose.” Jill shrugged as if indifferent. “I was more interested in how well he fought.”

“No doubt. Men!” She flounced off again to wait on a pair of staggering sailors in the corner.

Every one else smiled and drifted back to their tankards and talk. Jill was honestly startled at how well they accepted her as a lad. As she thought about it, she did have a dark voice for a woman in a country where a clear tenor was the most highly prized voice for a man, and no doubt they assumed her young, too, but she still was vaguely troubled when she realized just how much her years on the road had hardened her.

In a few minutes the tavernman and the wenches began passing out bowls of stew, which turned out to be surprisingly good, as was the bread served to sop it up with. When Jill found a place to sit down and eat, she was joined by a gray-haired man she judged to be a wandering peddler from his bent shoulders and the callus across his forehead from a pack strap.

“Tell me somewhat, silver dagger,” he said, wasting no time in pleasantries, “Is this Rhodry a typical Eldidd man, with black hair ad dark blue eyes?”

“He is, and built narrow from shoulder to hip.”

“I think me I saw him two nights ago. He was in a tavern in the crafters’ part of town. It stuck in my mind, like, because you don’t often see a silver dagger doing his drinking among the potters and blacksmiths.”

“True-spoken. Maybe you should tell that to one of the gwerbret’s men.”

“Maybe so. They might pay for it, like. Our Rhodry was calling himself Benoic, by the way. I wonder if he’s lying ill somewhere and that’s why they can’t find him.”

“Ill? Did he look ill?”

“Not that I could see, but he was asking about herbmen. There seemed to be a particular old man he wanted, too. Not just any herbman would do. It had to be this one and his granddaughter.”

“Nevyn.”

“That was the name, truly. Strange sort of name, think I.”

“It is. Well, the granddaughter’s a pretty wench, you see.”

“Ah.” The peddler grinned and winked. “Well, maybe I’ll step out after dinner and see if I can find one of the town wardens.”

“I would if I were you. If they’ve got the warband out as well as the wardens, it must be important.”

With a nod, the peddler devoted himself to his stew. Feeling close to despair, Jill ate mechanically, shoveling down food she no longer wanted just for the look of the thing. It was clear that Gwerbret Ladoic had ordered his men to search for Rhodry the moment he’d received the letters from the king. They hadn’t found him yet, and she was beginning to doubt that they would, simply because the Bilge was the most logical place for him to be. For a moment she toyed with old tales of thieves having a vast system of tunnels under Cerrmor, then dismissed them as a gerthddyn’s fancies. It also seemed clear that Rhodry had been certain that she and Nevyn were in Cerrmor. Someone had lied to him, lured him here—

All at once she broke off the thought and fixed her mind firmly on her meal. She concentrated on chasing a bit of meat through the gravy, forced herself to think of only that. For a moment, as she was thinking about Rhodry, she’d felt the touch of another mind on hers, just a light brush, but she could feel the cold, impersonal malice in it. In a few seconds the mind moved on, leaving hers. She laid the spoon down in her bowl. Appearances or not, she found it impossible to eat another bite.

“Just going out back,” she said to the peddler.

He nodded and went on eating. No one else even looked up as he headed out the back door in the direction of the privy.

Directly behind the inn stood a horse trough, where the water caught the firelight spilling out the windows. She paused beside it, idly trailing one hand in the water as if washing it off, and using the dancing ripples to think of Salamander. Immediately she felt the touch of his mind, but it was some minutes before he answered her. She could see his image on the water only dimly.

“My apologies for taking so long. I was having dinner at the gwerbret’s very table, and it took both some while and some fancy courtesies before I could leave.”

“No matter. Some of the gwerbret’s men were just in the Capstan. I take it that they haven’t found Rhodry yet.”

“They haven’t, curse them. Are you still certain he’s alive?”

“I am. It’s the one thing I have to cling to. But here, I contacted you because I felt someone else touch my mind, someone who hated me.”

“By the scaly underside of a dragon’s balls! Say no more about this now, my turtledove. I’ll see you on the morrow. There are times when words are safer than thoughts.”

With that, his image disappeared.

When Jill returned to the tavern room, she found the peddler gone, but he came back in just a few minutes. With a broad grin he held up two silver pieces to show the crowd.

“From one of the town wardens. He’s got a pouch of silver to pay for any information about Rhodry of Aberwyn, lads. I’d say that somewhat grand’s afoot.”

“Sounds like it’d be worth everyone’s while to remember what they can about him,” Jill remarked in what she hoped was a casual tone of voice. “My heart aches that I haven’t seen him in months.”

Everyone within earshot laughed their agreement and set to considering the question. Unfortunately, no one there had a scrap of information about Rhodry, and they agreed that lying to the gwerbret’s men was unhealthy in the extreme. After a few hours Jill went up to her chamber. For all her grief, she was so weary from weeks of traveling that she fell asleep as soon as she lay down on her blankets. Yet she dreamt of Rhodry. It seemed she heard him calling out to her out of a desperate darkness.

Nevyn spent much of that night awake. He was sleeping on a cot in Rhys’s chamber, where the slightest change in the gwerbret’s labored breathing would wake him, because to a man as badly injured or ill as Rhys was, the hours right before dawn are always the most dangerous, when the astral tides of earth run low and sluggishly. Although Rhys spent a better night than anyone had a right to hope for, still Nevyn sat up, brooding over the low fire in the hearth and using it to talk with other dweomermasters. He had set men and women all over the kingdom to scrying, not for Rhodry, which was futile, but for odd breaks and discrepancies in their visions which might reveal an astral seal set over something that a dark master wanted hidden. So far, no one had found a thing. If Jill hadn’t been certain that Rhodry lived, Nevyn would have despaired and thought him dead, but the sexual link between the pair was so strong that Jill would have felt his death like the loss of part of herself.

Toward dawn, when the tide of Aethyr came in, bringing fresh life to astral and etheric plane both, Nevyn fell asleep for a few hours, to be awakened by the servant come to help him bathe Rhys and turn him in the bed.

“Does His Grace still live, good sir?”

“He does.” Nevyn got up and yawned, stretching like a cat. “Fill that kettle at the hearth, will you? I have to brew his various medicines fresh today.”

Once Rhys was tended, Nevyn left him to his wife’s care and went down to the great hall. So late in the morning, it was mostly empty, but a serving lass hurried out to the kitchen hut to fetch Nevyn some breakfast He was eating porridge and ham at the honor table when Cullyn strode in, glanced around, and came over to join him. The serving lass brought Cullyn a tankard of ale, then retreated to the other side of the hall.

“Have you had any news of Jill?” Cullyn said..

“Not since last night. I heard from Salamander that he was staying with Gwerbret Ladoic, so I assume Jill is, too.”

Cullyn nodded, frowned into his tankard for a moment, then flicked out a bit of straw with one finger and drank.

“I still don’t understand how Jill and Rhodry got separated,” Cullyn said.

“No more do I.” Nevyn was thankful all over again that he’d refrained from swearing never to tell a lie—a vow that pleased the Lords of Wyrd, but which also made life unnecessarily difficult at times. “Although I do have a bit more information. It seems that Rhodry was asking around for me and Jill just before—well, before whatever it is that’s happened to him. I’ll make a guess that someone told him Jill had left him and headed to Cerrmor to find me or suchlike.”

“It’d make sense. Then all they’d have to do was get him into the Bilge. No one there would look twice if they knocked him on the head or suchlike.”

“Just so. Well, I’ll be hearing from Salamander soon, I hope. I’ll tell you the minute there’s any news.”

“My thanks. I’d be cursed grateful.”

While he finished his ale, Cullyn stared idly across the hall, then suddenly smiled, just a quick twitch of his mouth that he hastily stifled. When Nevyn followed the captain’s gaze, he saw Tevylla entering the hall, shepherding Rhodda ahead of her.

“Truly, Captain, the nursemaid’s a good-looking woman.”

Cullyn shot him a murderous glance and devoted himself to his ale until Tevylla had left the hall again.

As they sat together in a comfortable silence, Nevyn began to feel profoundly nervous about having Perryn brought to Aberwyn. If Cullyn ever found out what the young lord had done to his daughter, Perryn would die in a very unpleasant way no matter what Nevyn said about illnesses of the soul or suchlike. Yet lying about such a grave matter was beyond even him. For all that he didn’t mind bending the truth on occasion, he refused to spin himself a web of half-truths that would choke him in the end. Since it would be a long while before Perryn arrived, he dismissed the problem in a fit of irritation. There were too many other troubles weighing on his mind for him to worry over that one.

“So you’ll not be going to Cerrmor, then?” Cullyn said abruptly.

“I won’t. I simply can’t leave. Here’s the gwerbret’s life hanging by a thread and greedy lords circling round the rhan like hounds around a joint of meat on the table.”

“But what of Rhodry?”

“That’s the wound in our hearts, isn’t it? What of Rhodry? I’m afraid we’ll have to trust your daughter to pull him out of this particular trap. I think me she can do it, too, at least with Salamander there to help her. You trained her well, Cullyn.”

“Did I, now? Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“So we will, so we will. I only hope it’s soon.”

There was something else that he could never tell Cullyn. Deep in his mind, he knew that he was meant to stay in Aberwyn, not to nurse the gwerbret and aid Lovyan, but because staying where he was would undermine his enemies in a way that he could not foresee.

There was a silversmith in Cerrmor who did business with the silver daggers. Even though he couldn’t make the daggers themselves, he was known for giving a fair price for battle loot and making decent repairs to ordinary weapons. His shop was the smallest and shabbiest on the street of the silversmiths, which ran down by the river but a good ways north of the Bilge; yet for all the squalor of the peeling wooden sign and filthy whitewash of the walls, when Jill pushed open the door, a string of beautifully crafted silver bells rang a sweet warning. She found herself in a narrow slice of the round house and faced with another door in a stout wooden wall. In a few moments, a stork-skinny bent-shouldered youngish man came out through it.

“And what can I do for you, silver dagger? Got somewhat to sell?”

“I don’t, but I might be in the market to buy—information, that is. Have the gwerbret’s men been in here, asking you about a man named Rhodry of Aberwyn?”

“They have, and of course I’ve told them I never laid eyes on him.”

“You were lying, I take it.”

“Of course. He was in here not more than two nights ago, asking me about herbmen. I recommended a good one that I know, and he slipped out the back way. He knew that the wardens were on the prowl after him.”

Jill swore under her breath.

“Here, good smith, if you see Rhodry again, for the love of the gods, tell him to go to the gwerbret. He’s not been accused of any crime, no matter what he thinks. Tell him that the woman he’s looking for is under Ladoic’s protection.”

It was the smith’s turn for oaths.

“I would’ve told His Grace’s men if I’d known that! But Rhodry tells me that he’s been accused of taking someone’s head, and cursed if he’ll lose his own over it, so of course I lied for him.”

“Honorable of you.” Jill meant it quite sincerely. “But that’s torn it, then. Here, don’t you think it’s passing strange that every man in the rhan is looking for him and he hasn’t turned up?”

“He must have left, I suppose.”

“Maybe. Suppose you wanted to hire a couple of lads to get someone out of the way. Where would you go in the Bilge?”

“I see what you mean.” The smith sucked his teeth for a few moments while he thought. “How come you’re so interested in all of this?”

“He’s a friend of mine. We rode on a couple of hires together. If somewhat’s happened to him, I’ll want vengeance for it—any silver dagger would.” She took two silver pieces out of the pouch hanging from her belt. “I’ll pay for the information.”

“I won’t take your coin, because I don’t know anything for certain, but I’ve heard that there’s a tavern in the Bilge called the Red Man. Supposedly if you ask the right questions there, you can hire anyone for anything.”

“And if you ask the wrong ones?”

The smith smiled and pantomimed running a knife across his throat.

After she left the shop, Jill spent some time wandering the streets while she planned out her visit to the Bilge. Even without the smith’s warning, she knew quite well that no one simply barged into the Bilge and started asking questions. She found a little open space around a public well and sat down on a wooden bench to think. Even the denizens of the Bilge were afraid of silver daggers, who avenged any murdered member of their band. On the other hand, if they thought her set to avenge Rhodry, they might well eliminate her first and worry about other silver daggers later. But of course Rhodry wasn’t dead. Suddenly she realized that she had a move in this ugly game of gwyddbwcl: since he wasn’t dead, the Bilge knew it, too. Once she let them know she knew, the rules would change.

When she started for the Bilge, she took a detour to a leatherworker’s shop that she’d noticed earlier. She found the owner sitting cross-legged on a table, pieces of a saddlebag around him as he stitched. In the corner of the room a dirty child of three played with a pair of puppies, and from the back room came the smell of cooking and the sound of a crying baby. The craftsman glanced up.

“Ah, can I be of help to you, lad?”

“No doubt. I want to buy a jerkin.”

“Very well. I’ll measure you, and it’ll be about three days.”

“I need it now.”

The craftsman laid aside the piece he was working on; then slowly, carefully, as if he were afraid she would draw and swing at any moment, he got down from the table.

“I’ve no time to wait, hidesman.”

“Er, well and good, then, if you don’t demand a perfect fit. I’ve got one I was making for the miller’s son, and he’s about your size.”

“Bring it out.”

When the craftsman went to the back, he swept up the child and the puppies with him. In a few minutes he came back with the heavy leather vest, which had metal studs all down the sides. When she tried it on over her shirt, it was a little tight, but it would do. She threw six silver coins, about twice what it was worth, onto the table and strode out, leaving the craftsman shaking behind her. She took the jerkin to a public privy and put it on under her shirt, this time, lacing it tight to flatten her breasts. Although it chafed, it would also protect her ribs against a casual knife. It was the best protection she could get, since the gwerbret’s men frowned on civilians wearing mail in the city streets. Then she went on to the Bilge.

In the sunny morning the narrow, filthy streets were nearly deserted. A gaggle of ragged children played at hurley with a bent stick and a torn leather ball; a couple of women with market baskets hurried past her on, their way to the fishmonger’s down at the wharves. She saw one man, a white-haired beggar with no hands, sunning himself in a doorway. She strolled over to the ex-thief and dropped a silver piece in the wooden bowl beside him.

“Where’s the Red Man tavern?”

“That’s not a pleasant place, lad.”

“Do I look like a pleasant sort of man?”

He laughed, revealing brown stumps of broken teeth.

“Well, then, keep going along this here street until you come to a tannery yard. The stink’ll guide you. Then go around the tannery. You’ll see the Red Man’s sign down an alley to the left.”

As she walked on, Jill kept on a close guard. Here and there she saw a leather drape move at a window, or a figure appear briefly at an open door. She suspected that already the old thief had pressed some child into service as a messenger and sent it to the tavern with the news that a silver dagger was on his way, Even though she was sweating under the heavy jerkin, she appreciated it more than ever. If their enemies wanted to, they could murder her here in the street without anyone bothering to interfere. She wondered about Rhodry, if perhaps the gwerbret’s men had merely been led right past some place where he’d been hidden. In this tight-lipped little world, anything seemed possible.

To her surprise, the Red Man was clean, with newly white-ashed walls and a well-swept cobbled yard around it. The sign hanging out front showed a bright red giant wearing naught but enormous erection as he stood on top of a hill with an uprooted tree in each hand. The image was somehow annoying, a bawdry gone sour. When she went inside, she found that the half-round tavern room was also clean, with fresh straw on the floor and scrubbed tables. All the shutters were closed, leaving the room dark except for the firelight from the hearth, where a spitful of chickens were being turned by a ragged scullery lad. Half a dozen men sat at one table; the rest were empty. Near the hearth one fellow snored loudly in the straw with a pair of dogs cuddled at his back.

The tavernman who came to greet her was Bardekian, a fleshy black man whose face and arms were covered with old scars, all of them long, thin cuts from some sort of sharp knife.

“We don’t get many silver daggers in here, lad.”

“I suppose you’re too good to be serving the likes of me.”

“Not too good, too cautious. You’re welcome to drink, but only a little. Listen, silver dagger, I know your kind. Two tankards, three—all is fine, no trouble. Then one more or suchlike, and somewhat snaps. There is the fight, there is the blood on my nice walls, there is the corpse on my clean floor. I serve you two tankards, no more. Done?”

Jill noticed the men at the table listening, and their hands were near their sword hilts. She gave them an insolent stare, then turned back to the tavernman.

“Done. Give me a tankard of dark.”

Jill found a table where she could sit with her back to the wall and made a mental note of the position of every window and door. When the tavernman gave her the ale, she held up a silver piece.

“I’m looking for someone, someone who seems to have disappeared.”

The tavernman’s eyes flicked this way and that. The men at the other table leaned forward, listening.

“Someone else is looking for him, too,” she went on. “I’ll wager you can guess who I mean.”

“Rhodry of Aberwyn?”

“Just that. I’ve got a score to settle with that lying little bastard. I don’t give a pig’s fart why the gwerbret wants him. His Grace can hang what’s left after I’m done with him, for all I care.”

The tavernman considered her shrewdly, then nodded, accepting her tale.

“I am glad I am not this Rhodry with the likes of you after me. What makes you think I know somewhat about him?”

“I’ll wager you know naught but the name of a man who knows more.”

“Here, they look for this Rhodry everywhere and never find him. I say he is dead. Forget him. You can’t bring a man back from the dead to kill him a second time.”

“Dead?” Here was the moment she’d been counting on, and she paused, giving him a twisted, ugly smile. “Come now, my friend. We both know better than that. Word gets around.”

He hesitated, his dark face going a bit ashy in honest fear. A burly brown-haired fellow at the other table got up, swinging himself free of the bench, and strolled over, his narrowed eyes revealing nothing of what he might have been thinking. He had the biggest hands that Jill had ever seen on a man, enormous bear paws like clubs.

“Just how much is your hatred worth, silver dagger?”

“Hard coin.”

Smiling a little, he sat down and took the silver piece she offered him.

“I had naught to do with getting him away, but I had a chance at the job, and I saw who was doing the hiring.”

“I like a man who doesn’t mince words.” She got out two more coins and flipped him one. “You’ll get the other at the end of the tale.”

“Well and good, then. Now here, you’re right enough. There never was any question of killing him, far as I could tell. I’ve got a friend who’s made somewhat of himself, risen in the world, like. He’s a footman for one of the rich merchants up on the cliffs, see, a man who doesn’t fancy being jumped in the street one dark night, so my friend, he goes around with him. And his master’s rich friends know that my friend is always useful for a bit or rough work, like convincing a man who owes them coin to pay up. So my friend comes in here, oh, three nights ago, it was, and saying that he’s maybe got a job for us. A business acquaintance of his master’s wants a word with a certain silver dagger, and he’ll pay if we take this lad on the road and bring him somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, because we never did it.” He leaned closer in garlic-breathed sincerity. “If you’d have seen this Briddyn, you wouldn’t have taken a copper from him, either. He was this big man, not paunchy, but all porky-like, and he had this smooth little face like a lad’s, and this slick black hair and beard, like it was greased with lard, it was that slick.”

“Indeed? Did you notice whether his hands were smooth, too?”

“I did, and they were. I can still see him, like, in my mind.” He shuddered slightly. “In his beard he had this clip like lasses put in their hair, but it was a silver lizard with a butterfly in its mouth. There was somewhat about him that creeped my flesh, and it wasn’t just his taste in jewelry, neither.”

“Was he a Bardek man?”

“He might have been, but then again, he might have been a Deverry man with some Bardek blood in his clan. He was brownish, sort of, but it might have been just a lot of sun. So anyway, this Briddyn offers us a lot of coin, but it wasn’t near half enough, not for meddling with a silver dagger. When we turned him down, I was blasted close to fouling my brigga. What if he takes it amiss, like? think I. I could tell my friend was thinking the same. Now, I don’t know what he could’ve done to us, but he just took us that way. Creeped my flesh, he did.”

Jill considered him and his story both over a sip of ale. Although she was inclined to think every inhabitant of the Bilge a liar, she doubted very much that a man like him had the imagination to think up so detailed and strange a description of this Briddyn fellow. When she looked at the other men, listening carefully at their table, she realized that her informant’s little tale had made them uneasy, too. Yet, something simply smelled wrong. She slid over the last silver piece.

“My thanks. Now, this Briddyn was staying at the Golden Dragon Inn, but I’ll wager he’s long gone by now.”

“No doubt.”

In one fluid motion she drew her dagger with her right hand and grabbed his shirt with the left, dragging him half onto the table. Except for one slight shudder, he went perfectly still, staring into her eyes like a rat mesmerized by a ferret. He apparently could tell that she wanted to kill him just for the satisfaction of seeing blood run.

“Listen to me carefully, or you die. The first thing you said to me was this: ‘I had naught to do with getting him away.’ Getting him away where? You know more than you’re telling.”

He whimpered then, and threw a desperate look to the others sitting at their table. None of them moved; one even made an ostentatious show of drinking from his tankard, as if naught in the world troubled him at that moment.

“You whoreson scum,” she went on. “I came here willing to pay good coin for what you know, and you hold out on me. Has the Bilge fallen on evil times? A man used to be able to buy what he wanted here.” She laughed, a little mutter that was utterly crazed, and let him go with a shove that had him reeling in his chair. “Answer me. Get him away where?”

“I don’t truly know.” The fellow was whining like a child. “I don’t. Please believe me. All I know is that Briddyn said that once we had him, he’d be taken away. So we didn’t have to worry, like, about having to kill him or suchlike.”

There was more—she knew it—but the others were beginning to get restless, and there were, after all, five of them as well as her informant. Jill rose, keeping the dagger in hand.

“You in the blue brigga! Get your hand away from that throwing dagger, or I’ll nail you with mine.”

With an oddly good-natured grin he complied, settling down again on the bench. The tavernman stepped forward.

“Get out, silver dagger. Get out of my tavern now. You have what answer you get. No one knows what happened to Rhodry. Briddyn must have gotten him, and after that, no one knows. Now get out.”

“Well and good, then. I will. Oh, I believe you well enough. Who knows where the hawks fly, huh?”

She’d said it just as an idle chance, a random bit of bait, but the trap sprung closed fast. As the blood drained from his face, his dark skin turned as gray and sickly as dirty snow.

“I said get out.” He could barely whisper. “Get out before you die.”

The Deverry men watched in sincere puzzlement at his terror. Jill stepped closer, raising the dagger, and let herself laugh, that same crazed chortle, wailing higher and higher until he sank to his knees in the straw.

“Here!” One of the others rose to his feet. “What are you doing to our Araelo?”

“Leave him alone!” The tavernman was screaming now. “Leave him alone! Get out! All of you!” Then he burst into tears, dropping his face into his hands.

The men sat as if turned to stone. Jill stopped laughing cold, sheathed the dagger, and walked out. It took all her will, but she left slowly, calmly, and strolled down the middle of the street for about a hundred yards. When she glanced back, she saw that the door of the Red Man was closed—and bolted on the inside, too, she’d wager. She let out her breath in a long sigh and felt a fear-cold sweat running down her back and breasts under the leather jerkin. It was time to get out of the Bilge. Luck had brought her some important information, and she wanted to live long enough to tell Salamander.

Although her flesh creeped with nerves the whole way, Jill left the Bilge without incident and asked one of the town wardens the way to the Golden Dragon Inn. It turned out to be near the west gate, on the far side of the river, not far from the gwerbret’s dun. Bold as brass, they are, she thought to herself. As she crossed the white stone bridge that arched over the river, she felt Salamander’s mind tug at hers. She paused to lean over the rail and look down at the swift-flowing river. Although she failed to see his image, she could hear his thoughts in her mind and answer back.

“Jill, by the gods! I was trying to scry you out, and I saw you in the Bilge! You shouldn’t have gone there alone.”

“I did, and I lived, didn’t I? I’ve got some horrible news, but I doubt me if I should tell you this way.”

“It’s time for me to ‘hire’ you anyway. I’ve moved into the Golden Dragon Inn.”

“I’ll be round straightaway.”

As she went on, she was thinking that Briddyn must have a goodly amount of coin, if he shared Salamander’s taste in inns. She turned out to be right, because the Golden Dragon was a splendid three-story building in the Bardekian style—that is, a long rectangular plan with a curved roof like a ship turned upside down. At either end, set into the curving roof beams, were enormous wooden statues of some god or other with his hands raised in blessing. Before she went in, Jill circled the place, noticing how the lovely garden in the front became a mucky innyard in back, the dung heap and the well too close together for such an expensive place. As she loitered there, a young lass in a dirty apron came out the back with a pair of water buckets. When Jill went over, the lass wrinkled her nose.

“Get along, silver dagger. I’m not the kind of lass that would be interested in the likes of you.”

“You’re not to my taste anyway,” Jill said, suppressing a smile. “All I want is a bit of information about one of the guests here and I’ll pay for it.”

The lass considered, torn between greed and fear of her employer. When Jill held up a silver piece, the greed won.

“Who was this guest?”

“A merchant named Briddyn.”

“Oh, him!” She wrinkled her nose again. “I remember him well enough, my thanks, and a nasty lot he was. Always complaining, naught suited him, not the sheets, not the ale, not the wretched pot to piss in, I swear it. Thanks be to the gods that he left! I’d have gone daft if I’d had to wait upon him any longer.”

“I see.” Jill handed over the coin. “Do you know what he trafficked in?”

“Cloth. He rode in with a big caravan, and I heard the stablemen talking, saying that it’s a good thing his bales were light and easy to unload, because the bastard didn’t tip. And he had one special bale of cloth in his chamber. He told me that if I touched it, he’d slap me about, as if I’d be interested in his nasty cloth.”

“Did he have any visitors?”

“I never saw a one, but who would go visiting a nasty swine like that? When he left, he said he was going north to Dun Deverry. Huh—as if swine like that belonged in the king’s own city!”

Quite puzzled, Jill went on her way. It was the most peculiar turn so far, she decided; mysterious strangers bent on doing harm to someone normally don’t make such nuisances of themselves that every servant remembers them. As soon as she opened the front door of the inn, the innkeep and a beefy young man ran across the tavern room to bar her way.

“No silver daggers in my inn! Try the Capstan, lad.”

“One of your guests summoned me here, pork gut. Salamander the gerthddyn said he had a hire for me.”

When the innkeep snarled under his breath, she laid her hand on her sword hilt. He stepped back sharply.

“I’ll send a lad up to ask, silver dagger.” His voice shook badly. “But you’d best be telling the truth, or I’ll have the wardens on you.”

Jill crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at him until the lad returned with the news that Salamander did indeed want a silver dagger for a bodyguard. Muttering under his breath about possible thievery, the innkeep took her up himself to the chamber, which was on the top floor, far above the stink of the streets. When Salamander opened the door, he was resplendent in a brigga of soft blue wool, a shirt stiff with floral embroidery, and a tooled belt of red leather.

“Ah, my thanks, good innkeep. You have brought me a most highly recommended silver dagger, who, though young, is known for deeds of derring-do and blood and guts, such as eating the livers out of bandits and the hearts out of thieves.”

“You do go on so, sir! Will you be honoring us with a tale this evening?”

“Mayhap, mayhap. Come in, Gilyn. Let us discuss this hire.”

It turned out that he’d rented not a chamber but an entire suite, paneled in dark wood and furnished with a cushioned chair, a carved table, and a long purple Bardek divan as well as a bed in a separate room.

“You don’t stint yourself, do you?” Jill said.

“And why should I?” Salamander poured her a goblet of pale mead from a glass flagon. “Now, I’ll wager that you can guess that the gwerbret hasn’t found Rhodry.”

“He’s never going to.”

Salamander glanced up, the mead glass still in his hand, his lips half parted as he stared at her in sudden fear.

“Rhodry’s in the hands of the Hawks of the Brotherhood.”

For a long moment the gerthddyn never moved or spoke. It seemed, indeed, that he’d stopped breathing until at last he whispered out his words.

“Oh ye gods, not that! Are you certain?”

“The man who was hunting for him had handled so much arsenic that his skin and hair were turned slick. When I just barely mentioned the work ‘hawk’ the man I was talking to went all hysterical on me.” She slammed her fist on the table so hard that toe flagon jiggled and spilled. “I know what the Hawks do to men they get their hands on. If they’ve put Rhodry to torture, they’re going to die. One man for every mark they give him. I swear it. I’ll them down like ferrets after rats. One man for every mark.”

The she began to laugh, a maddened chuckle that took over her voice.

“Jill! Stop it! By the gods!”

She tossed her head and went on laughing. He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her, yelled at her, then finally slammed her against the wall. The laughter stopped. When she saw the grief in his smoky-gray eyes, she wondered at herself for not being able to weep. She shook free of his hands and went to the window to look down at the narrow garden. It seemed painfully unjust that the sun should be so bright when her Rhodry was in the hands of darkness. Then she heard Salamander sob and spun around to see tears running down his face as he stood there limply, his hands at his sides. The contrast between his elegant clothing and his helpless pain made him look like a child in his father’s finery. Unsure of what to say, she went over and laid a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“You forget he’s my brother.”

“I do, at that. Forgive me?”

He nodded, looked away, still weeping, his shoulders shaking, and yet he made no sound. Jill realized that she could say naught to him that would be a right thing.

“I’m going to the Capstan to get my gear.”

He nodded to show that he’d heard, but he never looked at her.

During the long walk back to the Capstan, Jill felt as exhausted as if she’d fought a long battle, as drained as if she’d found Rhodry dead. She realized, then, that she was indeed thinking of him as being as good as dead, and that she could never mourn until she avenged him. If they did torture him to death, she swore that her vengeance would be a long thing, a slow, patient hunt with many a kill to its credit. So the Hawks had dweomer, did they? So did she, and she would use it to the full if she had to. When she looked up at the sky, it was a brilliant, swelling blue; the cobbles on the street seemed to glow from within. It was the power rising within her along the channel that Perryn’s unwitting dweomer had carved out by accident, and she knew then that she could summon it when she needed it. Yet it would be dangerous: she was as untrained and unknowing as Perryn was; like him, she would be risking madness or even some slow death. She no longer cared. All that counted now was vengeance.

Once she collected her horse and gear, as a precaution she took the long way back to the Golden Dragon, sticking to the wider boulevards where she could ride rather than leading her horse down narrow streets. She took a turn by the harbor, where the merchantmen were drawn up at pier after pier to load the last of the summer’s goods. In another month or so, the seas would be impassable, and already the water was a darker, colder blue. Here and there she saw Bardek men engrossed in conversations with the foremen of the longshore crews, while great bales of cargo marched down the gangplanks on the backs of men. You can get a cursed lot in one of those ships, she idly thought to herself.

“Gods!”

She kicked her horse to a jog and rushed back to the inn, caution forgotten.

She found Salamander perfectly calm, or rather, a little too calm, just as she was, his eye more steel than smoke, his voice brittle. He waved at a pair of full goblets on the table.

“We never drank the mead I poured. I suggest we do so. A pledge, I was thinking.”

“Splendid idea. Tell me the elven word for vengeance, will you? We should swear in both our tongues.”

“Anadelonbrin. Swift-striking hatred.”

“Done, then. Anadelonbrin!”

“Vengeance!” And he tossed back his head and howled like a wolf on the coldest night in winter. “That’s to summon the death wolves, my turtledove, the vengeance wolves of the goddess of the Dark Sun. Do you know Her? I think me you do, but by another name, because I can see Her eyes look out of yours at times. The elven seers teach that there are two suns, a pair of twin sisters. One is the bright sun that we see in the sky; the other is on the other side of the world. The bright sister gives life, and the dark, need I say, death.”

“Then may Her wolves ever run before us.”

They touched goblets and drank the mead together.

Salamander had, of course, contacted Nevyn through the fire and told him of Jill’s discovery. For some hours that afternoon, Nevyn could do little but pace back and forth in the sickroom and let his rioting emotions spend themselves. Loathing, grief, fury—they all ran together and made him feel like screaming out curses on the gods and the Great Ones alike, that they would let such a thing happen. That Rhodry would die was horrible enough; that he would die slowly at the hands of perverted men was heart-wrenching. As always, he berated himself as well. Surely there must have been some warning he’d overlooked, something he could have done? Every time he looked at Rhys, fighting for his life, gasping for every painful breath he drew, his highly trained imagination would threaten him with pictures of Rhodry in the hands of the Hawks. Over and over again he banished those thoughts by stamping them with the image of a flaming pentagram until at last his mind was still.

Then, finally, he could think. Although his first impulse was to rush to Cerrmor, not only did he have pressing reasons to stay where he was, but also the journey would simply take too much time. By the time he reached Cerrmor, Jill and Salamander might well be a hundred miles away. Besides, if the enemy had left by water, as certainly seemed the case, they and their victim were doubtless already long gone. It made perfect sense: although they could never get an unconscious man past the harbor guards and customs officers in Cerrmor itself, nothing would be easier than to get him out of the city in a wagon, load him onto a coastal vessel, and take him to some less heavily guarded port, where . . . where what? That ‘what’ puzzled Nevyn mightily. If the Hawks had simply wanted to torture him to death or even kill him quickly, why hadn’t they taken him on the long road down to Cerrmor or even stayed in the Bilge, where torturing a man to death was considered light entertainment and no matter for the gwerbret’s men? Why all this business with ships and this slow game of gwyddbwcl that offered them chances to lose at every turn? And above all, who under the god-cursed sky had hired them in the first place?

As baffled as a cornered bear, he shook his head and growled aloud, then resumed his pacing. At least this water journey explained why scrying could find no trace of Rhodry. If they were far enough from land, the dark masters had no need of setting seals over their victim, because not even the greatest master of dweomer can scry over a large body of water, and especially not the ocean. The vast outpourings and upheavals of etheric force disrupt the images, as well as shielding whoever is trying to hide, rather as if someone were trying to use normal sight to peer through thick fog or smoke. As long as the Hawks kept Rhodry some miles out to sea, no dweomer in the world could find him.

“I suppose they’re somehow toying with us,” he remarked to the fat yellow gnome.

The gnome frowned in thought, then hopped up onto a wooden chest and began to pick its toes.

“We do have one hope,” Nevyn went on. “They may be planning on ransoming him or suchlike. If that’s true, then they’ll keep their foul hands off him, at least until they open the negotiations.”

The gnome turned its head, looked at him, and nodded to show it understood. Since this particular little creature had hung around him for many years, it was beginning to develop the rudiments of a mind. All at once it stiffened, then jumped to its feet and pointed at the door. Just as Nevyn turned there was a knock, and a page came in.

“My lady Lovyan wishes to know if you’re free, sir. Talidd of Belglaedd has just turned up at our door.”

“Then fetch the gwerbret’s lady to keep watch on her husband, and I’ll go down as soon as she arrives.”

Nevyn muttered a few choice curses under his breath, then steeled himself to face the scheming lord.

When he came into the great hall, he saw, much to his relief, that Talidd wasn’t the only guest at the table of honor. Lord Sligyn was there, sitting at the tieryn’s right hand, swilling ale and glaring at Talidd over the tankard. A stout, red-faced man in his mid-thirties, with a thick pair of blond mustaches, Sligyn rose with a bellow in Nevyn’s general direction.

“There you are, herbman! Come and talk some sense into this pigheaded fool of a noble lord.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord.” Talidd was on his feet in an instant.

“You blasted well should, eh? Spreading all this nonsense about our Rhodry.”

Talidd opened his mouth, glanced at Lovyan, and shut it again. Nevyn went cold, wondering if Talidd had somehow discovered the secret of Rhodry’s parentage. Dimly he was aware that across the hall, Cullyn had gotten up and taken a few steps their way.

“Will you both please sit down?” Lovyan said, and there was steel in her voice. “What nonsense, Sligyn?”

“That the lad’s dead.” Sligyn took his place on the bench again. Don’t you try to deny it, either, Talidd. Heard you myself, eh? Nattering away at that tourney Peredyr gave. Pile of . . . uh, nonsense.”

Talidd winced and sat down fast, scrupulously avoiding Lovyan’s eye.

“Your Grace, forgive me if I distress you. I had a bit much ale that day, and I was only wondering why the king’s riders couldn’t find the lad if he were still alive.”

Sligyn started to blurt out an angry contradiction, but Nevyn laid a heavy hand on his shoulder to make him hold his tongue.

“I take no offense, my lord.” Lovyan sounded a bit weary and nothing more. “I’ve often wondered the same thing myself. Nevyn, do sit down! I can’t stand having you all hovering about.”

“My apologies, Your Grace.” He took a seat next to Sligyn. “As far as anyone can tell, Rhodry’s actively hiding from the king’s guard. I have no idea why.”

An odd look flickered on Talidd’s face, a hint of contempt, hastily stifled. Sligyn slammed his tankard down on the table and leaned forward.

“Out with it, man,” Sligyn snarled. “I’ve had enough of your foul sneers and mincing words. Out with it!”

Talidd’s face reddened.

“I was merely wondering, Lord Sligyn, just why he doesn’t want to be found. He’s been a silver dagger for years now, hasn’t he? Makes you wonder what he’s done.”

Slowly and deliberately Sligyn got to his feet.

“Are you insulting my lady’s son and her right here to see it?”

“I’m not.” Talidd rose to face him. “I’m merely speaking a wondering.”

Before Lovyan could intervene Cullyn was there, striding over and stepping between the lords with respectful bobs of bows to both of them.

“My lord Sligyn, my apologies, but if anyone’s going to be taking umbrage at insults for my lady’s sake, I will. That’s my duty as her captain, after all.”

Talidd went white and sat down rather fast.

“If Your Grace will forgive me, I fear me I forgot myself. The unsettled state of the rhan is beginning to wear on us all.”

“So it is.” Lovyan favored him with a small nod. “I promise you that as soon as we receive news of Rhodry, the Council of Electors shall have it, too.”

“My humble thanks, Your Grace.”

Although Talidd kept his speech pleasant and his visit very brief, Nevyn found himself wondering about the lord. Why was he so sure that Rhodry was dead? Could it be that he’d had something to do with his kidnapping?

“Curse them all!” Salamander said. “May their teeth rot first, then their noses. May their eyes fill with phlegm, and their ears with a ringing. May their breathing slacken, and their hearts tremble within them. May their testicles harden, and their manhood soften.”

“And is that what you’ve been brooding with your breakfast?” Jill said. “I thought a curse was a wrong thing for a dweomerman to work.”

“It would be if it had any power behind it. Alas, my curses are but words, idle, empty, and most meaningless, except as a way to relieve my most overwrought and troubled heart.” He got up from the table and stalked over to the window. “Curse this fog, too! May it shrivel, may it vanish, may it turn to naught but air!”

Jill looked up from her porridge to see the fog swirling dark outside the window, as if defying Salamander’s curse.

“What’s so wrong about the fog?” she said.

“None of the coasters will sail in it, and we need a ship.”

“We do?”

“We do. While you were sleeping, my turtledove, I was considering wiles and schemes. Your success in the Bilge gave me an idea, or to be precise and thorough, many ideas, of which I have rejected most.” He turned, perching on the sill. “Obviously we are meant to chase after this Briddyn. If the Hawks truly wanted to hide from us, we would’ve discovered naught, no matter how badly you terrified the entire Bilge. Instead they’ve left clues so plain that even the gwerbret’s men could have followed them. So, now, we are left with two choices, to wit, one: Briddyn is a false trail, meant to throw us off the scent; or two: he is the bait to lure us into a trap. Instinct tells me it’s the latter.”

“Oho! But what if we follow the trail, then avoid the trap?”

“My thoughts exactly. I suspect that they’re underestimating us. For all I know, they could well realize that I have dweomer, but I’ll wager my last copper that they don’t know you do. I’m also sure they don’t know how well you can swing that sword.”

“Good. It’ll gladden my heart to show them.”

“No doubt. I . . . ” He broke off at a knock at the chamber door.

When Jill opened it, she found a sleepy lad of about six.

“My apologies, sir, but there’s a man outside, and he says he wants to talk with you, and Da wouldn’t let him just come up, so he sent me, and I’m supposed to ask you if he can come up.”

“Indeed? What’s he like?”

“He’s a Bardek man, and he’s all covered with scars, and he smells funny.”

Smells funny? she thought to herself; what, by the hells? She gave the lad a copper and told him to bring the fellow up. In a few minutes the tavernman from the Red Man arrived at the door. He did indeed smell, but of fear, not of dirt or perfume, the particular reeking sharpness that seeps into a man’s sweat when he’s terrified. As soon as the door closed behind him, he threw himself at Jill’s feet.

“Kill me now! Do not make we wait any more, I beg you. All night I wait, and the waiting drives me mad.”

Utterly confused, Jill hooked her thumbs in her sword belt and arranged a cruel smile in an attempt to play for time, but Salamander seemed to understand. He strolled over from the window and stared into the taverner’s eyes, while the man gasped for breath out of sheer anxiety.

“I might enjoy killing you,” the gerthddyn said in an offhand way. “But perhaps there’s no need.”

“But I told! I let out Briddyn’s name. Never did I realize that you were testing me.”

When Salamander chuckled, an unpleasant sort of laugh, Jill suddenly understood: the tavernman thought they were Hawks.

“Naught of the sort,” she broke in. “The Brotherhood is just that, a band of brothers. Have you even known brothers who weren’t all rivals in their hearts? Have you ever met an elder brother who willingly shared his sweetmeats with a younger? If you did, you knew a rare and holy man in the making.”

Color ebbed back into the tavernman’s face.

“I see. So you truly do want this Rhodry . . . ”

“For reasons of our own, dog!” Salamander kicked him in the stomach hard enough to make him grunt. “But you didn’t tell him everything you knew, did you? Tell me now, or I’ll ensorcel you and make you jump off a pier and drown yourself.”

Wiping his mouth repeatedly on the back of his hand, he nodded his agreement, then swallowed heavily and finally spoke.

“They are taking him to Slaith. I don’t know why. But I heard Briddyn mention somewhat about Slaith to his two companions.”

Although the name meant nothing to Jill, Salamander grunted in surprised recognition.

“I should have guessed that,” he said. “Well and good, dog. Slink back to your kennel. But if you mention us to anyone . . . ”

“Never! I swear it on the gods of both our peoples!”

Trembling, sweating in great drops, he scrambled to his feet and shamelessly ran for the door. As Jill shut it after him, she heard him pounding down the corridor.

“Slaith, is it?” Salamander said in a grim voice. “A bad omen, little pigeon, a wretched bad omen indeed.”

“Where is it? I’ve never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised, seeing as few ever have. But I must say, you’ve certainly put the fear of demonhood into that fellow’s craven heart. What am I traveling with, a poisonous snake?”

“Let’s hope so. They always say that vipers are immune to venom themselves.” She paused, struck by a sudden thought. “But I wonder if that fellow sees Hawks everywhere because he fell foul of them once. Those scars . . . ”

“Oh, not that. I forget you don’t know much about Bardek. He was no doubt a knife fighter. It’s a sport there, you see. You have the knife in one hand, and around the other arm is this padded sleeve you use like a shield. The man who scores the first cut wins. The rich folk there have their favorites, and they shower them with gifts and suchlike. That’s doubtless how our friend got the coin for his tavern, but seeing as it’s in the Bilge, he must not have been truly successful, or—”

“Oh ye gods, I don’t give a pig’s fart! Do you have to babble on about everything?”

“Well, actually, I do, because it relieves my feelings and makes me sound like a fool, which is exactly what I want our enemies to think me. Who’ll take a fool and a viper seriously?”

“Done, then. You babble, and I’ll hiss.”

“And it’s time I did some babbling down in the harbor. We want to book a passage to Dun Mannanan. It’s faster than riding the whole way, and we can buy horses there for the final journey.”

“But where are we going?”

“Slaith, of course. Ah, my pretty little turtledove, a most peculiar surprise lies in store for you.”

Since sending one lone prisoner on remand to Aberwyn was low in the royal priorities, Perryn rotted in the king’s jail for several days, each one more tedious than the last. With nothing to do but sleep and plait bits of straw into little patterns, he was almost glad when Madoc came one morning and announced that he’d be leaving that very afternoon.

“There’s a galley going down to Cerrmor with dispatches, and they have room for a horse thief. From there I’m farming you out on a merchant vessel. I wouldn’t advise trying to escape. The master of the ship is a formidable man.”

“Oh, er, ah, I wouldn’t worry about that. I can’t swim.”

“Good. Now, when you get to Aberwyn, you be honest with my uncle, and he’ll see what he can do about saving your neck.”

“I suppose I should thank you, but somehow I can’t find it in my heart.”

Much to his surprise, Madoc laughed at that with genuine good humor, then took his leave.

The trip downriver was fast and smooth, the galley reaching Cerrmor just as Jill and Salamander were leaving it. While they were handing him over to the gwerbret’s men, Perryn felt her presence, then lost the track almost immediately. He was hustled up to Gwerbret Ladoic’s dun, where he spent a miserable night in a tiny cell turned cold and damp by the thick Cerrmor fog. In the morning, two of the gwerbret’s riders came for him, tied his hands behind his back, and marched him lockstep down to the harbor while his every joint ached and complained. Down at the end of a long pier was a big Bardek merchantman, lateen-rigged and riding low in the water. Waiting at the gangplank was one of the biggest men Perryn had ever seen.

Close to seven feet tall, he had enormously muscled arms and shoulders, and his skin was so dark that it seemed pitch-black with bluish highlights. His presence, too, was as formidable as Madoc had called him; in fact, the cold, calm look in his eyes reminded Perryn of the equerry.

“This is the royal prisoner?” His voice was so dark and deep that it seemed to rumble across the pier like a rolled barrel.

“He is, Master Elaeno,” said one of the guards. “Not much to look at, is he?”

“Well, if Lord Madoc wants to buy a passage to Aberwyn for a stoat, I shan’t argue. Let’s have him aboard.”

Elaeno grabbed Perryn’s shirt with one massive hand and lifted him a few feet off the ground.

“You give me any trouble, and I’ll have you flogged. Understand?”

Perryn squeaked out an answer that passed for “I do.” Elaeno lifted him right up over the side and dumped him onto the deck, then signaled to a pair of sailors as dark and huge as he was.

“Put him down in the hold, but see that he’s properly fed and gets clean water on the trip.”

Although it was decent of the ship’s master to be concerned about feeding his prisoner, it was also a waste of time. As soon as the ship left the harbor and hit the open sea, Perryn’s stomach decided to turn itself inside out. As the seasickness washed over him in rhythmic waves, he lay on his straw pallet, moaned, and wished he were dead. Every now and then one of the sailors would come see how he fared, but for the entire thirty-hour journey, the answer was always the same. He would look at them with rheumy eyes and beg them to hang him and have done with it. When the ship finally made port in Aberwyn, they had to carry him off.

Lying on the pier was like reaching paradise. Perryn clung to the rough, dirty wood with both arms and considered kissing it as the nippy sea air cleared his head of the last of the nausea. By the time men came down from the gwerbret’s dun with a cart, Perryn felt almost cheerful. Even being shut in another cell couldn’t spoil his good humor. The straw may have been dirty, but it covered a floor of real dirt on solid land.

Yet his good mood evaporated when he realized that he was cold and getting colder. The day was gray with high fog, and a brisk wind blew in the barred window. He had no blanket, not even a cloak. Although he huddled into a corner and spread some straw over his legs, he was shivering uncontrollably in a few minutes. By the time he heard someone coming to his door, about half an hour later, he was sneezing as well. The door swung back to reveal an old man, tall, white-haired, and dressed in plain gray brigga and a shirt embroidered with red lions at the yokes. Just as the fellow started to speak, Perryn had a fit of cramps, or so he thought of it. He felt as if a number of invisible cats had leapt upon him and were clawing at him, so deeply and painfully that he yelped and squirmed.

“Stop that!” the old man said. “All of you—stop that right now!”

When Perryn obediently went still, the pains stopped, leaving to wonder why the old man had addressed him as “all of you.”

“My apologies, lad. My name is Nevyn, and I’m Madoc’s uncle.”

“Are you a sorcerer, too?”

“I am, and you’d best do exactly what I say, or . . . or I’ll turn into a frog! Now come along. I can see by looking at you that you’re very ill, and I have the regent’s permission to keep you in a chamber under guard rather than out here.”

Perryn sneezed, wiped his nose on his sleeve, then got up, brushing away the straw and wondering what it would be like to hop through a marsh all his life. When he happened to catch Nevyn’s eye, the old man’s glance struck through his very soul, pinning him to some invisible wall while the dweomerman rummaged through his mind at leisure. At last Nevyn released him with a toss of his head.

“You’re a puzzle and a half, truly. I can see why Madoc sent you along to me. You’re also close to death. Do you realize that?”

“It’s just a chill, my lord. I must’ve gotten it on that beastly ship.”

“I don’t mean the chill. Well, come along.”

As they crossed the ward, Perryn glanced up at the tall broch complex and noticed that the towers seemed to be swaying back and forth. Only then did he realize that he was burning with fever. Nevyn had to help him climb up the staircase to a small chamber in one of the half-brochs. Perryn was shocked at the old man’s strength as he hauled him through the door and lifted him bodily onto the narrow bed.

“Get those boots off, lad, while I light a fire.”

The effort was so tiring that he barely had the strength to get under the blankets. He was just drifting off to sleep when Elaeno, the shipmaster, came into the room, but tired as he was, no amount of talk could keep him awake.

“He isn’t much, is he?” Nevyn said.

“That’s what I said when I first saw him.” Elaeno shook his head in a mild bafflement. “Of course, being seasick for days never helped a man’s good looks.”

“He was badly beaten recently, too. You can see the missing tooth and the fresh scars and suchlike. Salamander tells me that our Rhodry caught him on the road.”

“I’m surprised he’s still alive.”

“So am I. Salamander had no idea why Rhodry didn’t kill him, and neither do I. Ah well, he is alive and our puzzle to untangle as well. Take a look at his aura.”

Cocking his head to one side, Elaeno let his eyes go slightly out of focus as he examined the area around the sleeping Perryn.

“That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” the Bardekian said at last. “The color’s all wrong, and all the inner Stars are out of balance, too. Do you truly think he’s a human being?”

“What? What else would he be?”

“I have no idea. It’s just that I’ve never seen a human with an aura like that in my life, nor an elf or dwarf either.”

“Now that’s true-spoken, and well worth a little thought. If he’s some sort of alien soul trapped in a human body, it would explain a great many things. Unfortunately, we may never find out the truth. He’s very ill.”

“Do you think you can save him?”

“I don’t know. I feel duty-bound to try, in spite of what he did to Jill. He’s suffering, after all, and besides, it strikes me that we should find out what we can about this strange being. But ye gods, all I need now is another burden.”

“I was thinking about that. We could winter over here if you need my help. I can send messages to my wife on another ship.”

Nevyn started to speak, then paused, wondering what was wrong with his voice. All at once he realized that he was very near tears. A startled Elaeno laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I’d appreciate that,” Nevyn stammered at last. “Ah ye gods, I’m so tired.”

“My lord Madoc, I hardly know what the king thinks anymore,” Blaen said. “And I’ll admit that it aches my heart. I wonder if I pressed him too hard or suchlike.”

“You might have. Our liege is a touchy man, and jealous of his strong will.” Madoc hesitated, swirling the mead around in his goblet. “On the other hand, I think Gwerbret Savyl has more to do with our liege’s coldness than your lack of tact.”

Blaen winced. Although he knew perfectly well that he was no polished courtier, he didn’t care to have it pointed out. They were sitting in Madoc’s comfortable chambers high up in one of the auxiliary brochs of the palace complex. As well as a pair of cushioned chairs, the usual table, and a large charcoal brazier, glowing at the moment against the night chill, the main room sported a wall shelf with twenty-two books on it. Blaen had counted them in amazement; never in his life had he seen so many volumes together outside of a temple of Wmm.

“Well, that was tactless of me in turn, Your Grace,” Madoc said with a self-deprecating smile. “My apologies, but this matter of cousin is beginning to vex me. He belongs in Aberwyn, but if the king won’t recall him . . . ” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“Just so. I’m afraid to request another audience. If I have annoyed our liege, I don’t want to make things worse. I must say I appreciate all you’ve done in my service. You can count on me for aid whenever you need it.”

“My thanks, but the dweomer has a great interest of its own in our Rhodry.”

“So it would seem.” Blaen had a sip of mead, then put the goblet down on the table. When he was at court he preferred to stay sober and on his guard. “I don’t suppose I can ask why.”

“Certainly. It’s no true secret. When Rhodry was a lad Nevyn received an omen about him. Eldidd’s Wyrd is Rhodry’s Wyrd, or so it ran.”

“Oh.” Blaen was too staggered to say more. “Oh.”

Madoc smiled, then got up to pace restlessly to the window and look out at the night sky, stippled with clouds in the light of a half-moon. At that moment he reminded Blaen strikingly of Nevyn, just in the warrior-straight way he stood and in the look in his eyes, as if he were seeing a much wider view than that from the physical window. The gwerbret wondered all over again if Madoc truly were the old man’s blood kin. Although he’d doubted it before, the relationship was beginning to seem plausible.

“So,” the equerry said, “I’ll see if I can have a word with our liege myself. Never in all the time that I’ve been here have I asked for a private audience, so perhaps I can get one now. We’ll see on the morrow.”

When the coaster put into Dun Mannanan, early on a clear day whose crisp wind proclaimed the coming autumn, Jill was profoundly glad to get onto dry land again. In her joy at feeling solid ground under her feet, she barely registered Salamander’s stream of chatter as they unpacked their gear and piled it up at the end of the pier. Finally, though, some of his words caught her attention.

“ . . . can’t stay in an inn, it’s too dangerous.”

“Probably so,” Jill said. “I’ve got a friend here in town, but I don’t think he’ll put you up.”

“What? How ungracious, my turtledove. Why not?”

She leaned close to whisper.

“Because he’s a dwarf, and he thinks all elves are thieves.”

“And I consider his people to be dullards and sots, and bad cess to him. But you’re right enough. We’d best acquire some horses and get on our way.”

“We might stop in at Otho’s, though.” Jill was looking forward to seeing the silversmith again. “He’ll be able to tell us the best place to buy stock.”

Otho’s house was at the edge of town, down by the river. Over the door hung three silver bells that rang in a gentle cascade when Jill pushed it open. They went into the antechamber, a narrow slice of the round house, set off from the rest by a wickerwork partition. In the partition hung a dirty green blanket for want of a proper door.

“Who’s there?” Otho called out.

“Jill the silver dagger, and a friend.”

Wiping his hands on a rag, the smith pushed aside the blanket and came out. He glared at Salamander in exaggerated suspicion.

“So, young Jill, your taste in men gets worse and worse. You’ve left one misbegotten elf for another, but this one’s a fop to boot!”

Salamander’s mouth dropped open, but Jill hurriedly started talking before he could recover from his surprise.

“I haven’t left Rhodry at all, Otho! This is his brother, not some lover of mine.”

“Humph. Fine family you’ve married into.” He paused, looking the gerthddyn over carefully. “You must be cursed clever with your fingers, lad, to have such fine clothing. I’m not letting you into my workshop, that’s for sure.”

“Now here! I’m not a thief!”

“Hah! That’s all I have to say to that: hah! Now, what do you want with me today, Jill?”

“Just some advice. Is there an honest horse trader in town?”

“Not in town, but there’s one about a mile north of here. Bevydd’s his name, and he’s somewhat of a friend of mine. I’ve made him many a fancy piece of tack over the years. Tell him I sent you. You take the river road straight out of town to the north, and then turn left at the lane edged with beech trees.”

“A mile?” Salamander said with a groan. “Walk a whole mile?”

Otho rolled his eyes up so far it looked like he was going to lose them.

“And doesn’t her ladyship have soft feet today? Ye gods, Jill, I’d find some other clan to marry into if I were you.”

“They grow on you once you get to know them.”

“Like moss, no doubt, or mildew.”

“I beg your pardon,” Salamander snapped. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted.”

“No doubt you could be insulted anywhere you went.”

When Salamander opened his mouth for a retort, Jill elbowed him sharply.

“Please forgive him, Otho. I was wondering if you had a map of the Auddglyn I could look at. One that shows what lies to the east.”

“Well.” He paused to scratch his head with one gnarled finger. “I might have somewhat like that, and for old times’ sake I’ll go look for it. You keep an eye on this fancy lad out here for me.”

Otho pushed his way back through the blanket, and in a moment or two they heard the unmistakable sound of heaps of objects being rummaged through, a rustling, a banging, and the occasional oath.

“May the gods shorten his beard for him!” Salamander hissed. “The gall, calling me a thief.”

“Now, now, it’s not like it were personal or suchlike.”

“Humph! And you’ve got gall of your own, asking him to forgive me.”

“Well, I was just trying to smooth things over. Hush—here he comes.”

Otho made a triumphant return with a yellowed and cracking scroll in one hand. He took it to the window and unrolled it carefully while Jill and Salamander crowded round for a look. It mostly showed the Auddglyn coast, and Jill got the distinct impression that it had been drawn long before the province was truly settled. To the east beyond Dun Mannanan it showed the island group known as the Pig and Piglets, but the village of Brigvetyn just to the north of them was missing. Even farther on, the eastern side of the parchment was blank, except for a small banner bearing the words “Here there be dragons.”

“Dragons?” Jill said. “That must be some scribe’s whimsy and naught more.”

“Just so,” Salamander said. “Deverry dragons all live in the northern mountains.”

“What?!”

“Oh, just a jest.” Yet he spoke so hurriedly that she knew he was covering something over. “A tale for another time. Now see that little river here, my turtledove? The Tabaver? That estuary is where we’re going.”

“I never heard that there was any town out there.”

“Of course. That’s why I said you were in for a surprise.”

Salamander was speaking naught but the truth for a change. After they bought new stock, a sturdy gray for Salamander, a battle-steady chestnut for Jill, and a pack mule, they headed east, following the coast road to Cinglyn, about four days’ ride away. For this part of the journey, the gravel and packed-earth road was well kept up, and it ran through good farmlands, where the farmers were beginning to harvest the golden summer wheat. Cinglyn itself was on the verge of growing into a small town from a large village; they had no trouble buying provisions there. When it came to knowledge of the road ahead, however, all they got was blank stares or outright mockery.

“There’s naught out there,” the blacksmith said. “Naught but grass, that is.”

“Perhaps so,” Salamander said. “But hasn’t anyone ever been curious, like? Surely someone’s ridden out just for a look.”

“Why?” He paused to spit in the dirt. “Naught out there.”

For the first couple of days, Jill had to agree with him, and she began to wonder if Salamander were daft. The road dwindled first to a dirt track, then to a deer trail, then petered out entirely some fifteen miles from Cinglyn. Salamander led the way down to the beach itself, and for the rest of the day and on into the next they rode on the hard-packed sand by the water’s edge. Wildfolk appeared in swarms and mobbed them, riding on their saddles and horses’ rumps, running alongside, swirling thick in the air, rising up from the silver waves that crashed and boomed close at hand. When they made their evening camp, the spirits sat around in orderly rows, as if they were waiting for something. Jill found out what when Salamander obliged them with a song. They listened, fascinated, then vanished the moment he was done.

On the fourth day, though, she was in for a surprise. They left the water’s edge and turned inland to find another road. Long disused, it was only a narrow track through the sea meadows of grass, but it ran straight and purposefully. Just at noon, they came to an orchard gone wild, where under the tangle of unpruned trees apples lay rotting. Just beyond was a circular grassy mound that looked like the remains of a village wall; inside it Jill could pick out dimpled circles on the earth where houses had once stood. As soon as they came close to the ruins, the Wildfolk vanished.

“What happened to this place?” Jill said. “Do you know?”

“It was burned by pirates.”

“Pirates? What would they want with a farming village? I’ll wager there wasn’t any fabulous plunder here.”

“No gold nor jewels, truly, but wealth all the same. Slaves, my innocent turtledove, slaves for the Bardek trade. The raiders would kill all the men as being more trouble than they’re worth, and take the women and children over in the carracks. Deverry slaves are rare in the islands, you see, exotic and therefore expensive, like Western Hunters in the Eldidd horse trade. There used to be a lot of small villages out here, scattered up the river into the Auddglyn. All gone now.”

“By all the ice in all the hells! Didn’t the local gwerbret put a stop to it? Why did it take him so long?”

“The local gwerbret is about a hundred and forty miles away, my sweet. The pirates finally ended it themselves. They’d overhunted the place, and there weren’t any villages left that were safe to raid.”

“Oh. You’d think that blacksmith in Cinglyn would’ve know about this.”

“Of course he did. He refused to mention it, that’s all. That whole town must live in fear that one day the scum will be bold enough to come take them.”

The biggest surprise of all lay two more days along. Here the coastal cliffs became lower and lower, finally fading out into a long stretch of dunes, scattered with coarse grass. As they rode east, the grass grew thicker; tiny streams appeared; the ground grew damp, and here and there trees stood beside ponds and rivulets. Quite suddenly they found a road made of logs laid down in the muck. Whenever Jill tried to get some information out of Salamander, he would only grin and tell her to wait After a couple of hours more, the road brought them to a straggle of fishermen’s huts in a sandy cove at one side of a broad, shallow estuary. Drawn up in the harbor were ships, a few tattered fishing boats, and then three sleek carracks and two galleys, all with suspicious-looking accouterments on their prows.

“By the Lord of Hell himself,” Jill said. “Those look like corvos and ballistas.”

“Thats exactly what they are. Remember those pirates I told you about? This is where they winter. They’ve got a whole town here they do, just upriver, and farther on farms to feed it. This, my dearest turtledove, is Slaith.”

For a few minutes Jill sat on her horse in something like shock stared at the peaceful harbor. Through the scattered trees along the riverbank she could see other buildings, and far beyond what appeared to be the roofs of a sizable town. Finally she found her voice again.

“Since you know so much about this place, why haven’t you told one of the gwerbrets in the Auddglyn about it?”

“I tried. They wouldn’t listen. You see, the only way to take Slaith is to have a fleet of warships. None of the gwerbrets out here do.”

“They could petition the king.”

“Of course—and surrender part of their independence to our liege. No gwerbret in his right mind asks the king for help unless his proverbial back is to the wall. The king’s aid brings with it the king’s obligations, my little pigeon.”

“Are you telling me that the misbegotten gwerbrets are willing to let these swine breed here just so they don’t have to ask the king a favor?”

“Just that. Now come along, and leave the talking to me. Saying the wrong thing is a good way to get your throat cut in Slaith.”

As they rode down to the harbor, Jill noticed that all along the sand were wooden racks covered with fish drying for the winter. She could also smell a thick reek of rotting fish entrails, heads, and tails, the thinner smell of the fish themselves, and an undertone of swamp stench.

“One forgets about Slaith,” Salamander said in a strangled voice. “We should have brought pomanders.”

The town proper was about a mile north on the riverbank. The road picked a precarious way through swampland up to an open gate in a palisade of whole logs thickly covered with bitumen to keep the rot away. To Jill that protective covering showed utter arrogance; those walls would burn from a couple of thrown torches if ever the place came to a siege. Although the gate had a pair of iron-bound doors just like a dun, there was no one standing guard at them.

“Getting into Slaith is easy,” Salamander said. “Getting out again is another matter altogether.”

“And what were you doing here before, anyway?”

“That, my little nightingale, is another tale for another day. My lips for now are sealed.”

Inside the walls were about five hundred buildings, set on curving, nicely cobbled streets. Although most of the houses were well made and recently whitewashed, the swamp stench lay thick over everything. Jill supposed that after a while, one got used to it, just as one got used to the stench of the streets in a large city. In the center was a crowded market square that looked just like any market day in the rest of the kingdom, with peddlers and craftsmen displaying their wares in wooden booths, while farmers spread out produce on blankets or displayed rabbits in wicker cages and chickens tied by their feet to long poles. Not so ordinary, however, were the customers, men with the rolling walk of sailors, but all carrying swords, and women whose faces were heavily painted with Bardek cosmetics. As Jill and Salamander led their horses past the market, people looked up, gave them a glance, then carefully looked away again with no sign of curiosity. Apparently no one asked questions in Slaith.

All around the market square were inns and taverns, far more than a town of this size would normally have. They all seemed to be enjoying good custom, too. At one prosperous-looking place there were four horses tied up off to the side in the cobbled yard. With a hiss of breath, Jill grabbed Salamander’s arm.

“See that bay gelding? That used to belong to a man we know.”

Muttering an oath, Salamander slowed down, but he kept moving, looking at the horse out of the corner of his eyes. The gelding was no longer carrying Rhodry’s gear; instead of his obvious warrior’s saddle, it had a lightweight saddle that was little more than a pad with stirrups, such as a messenger or pleasure rider would use.

“It has a new owner, sure enough,” Salamander said. “Don’t stare so, my turtledove. Very rude.”

Jill turned away and casually looked over the various inns, but inside she was burning with rage. Everyone on these streets, everyone in this stinking town was her enemy now. She wanted to burn their walls, burn their ships, fall upon them and kill everyone as they ran screaming from the blazing death. Salamander interrupted this pleasant fantasy.

“We’re coming to our inn. I’m picking it because it’s likely to be empty except for us, but still, watch every word you say.”

Down a narrow alley stood a small inn, built along Bardek lines, with peeling shakes on the roof and water stains on the walls. Out in the muddy innyard was a sagging stable, a broken-down wagon, and a pigsty. As they dismounted near the watering trough, a stout man in his fifties or so came out of the main building and looked Salamander over with something like alarm.

“Don’t tell me you’re back in town, gerthddyn.”

“I am, good Dumryc. How could I live without another sight of your handsome face, another view of glorious Slaith, another breath of its rich and wine-sweet air?”

“Still gabble as much as always, don’t you? Who’s this with you?”

“My bodyguard. Allow me to introduce Gilyn, a true silver dagger, who’s killed at least one man for each of his sixteen years.”

“Huh. Cursed likely.”

Jill drew, swung, and slit his leather apron from collar to paunch with the point of her blade. With a yelp, Dumryc flung himself back and clutched at the flapping halves.

“Next time it’s your fat throat,” Jill said.

“Well and good, lad. Now put that thing away and come in for a nice, peaceable tankard, like.”

Salamander chose them a chamber on the second-floor corner of the inn with windows that overlooked the stable yard in both directions, because it was always a good idea to have a clear view of trouble coming in Slaith. They stowed their gear, locked the door with a stout padlock, then went down to the tavern room. A small boy was stirring an iron kettle of greasy stew at the hearth while Dumryc was chopping turnips with a dagger at the end of a table. Jill and Salamander helped themselves to ale from an open barrel, picked out a fly or two, then sat down nearby.

“And what brings you to Slaith this time?” Dumryc said. “If you don’t mind my asking, like.”

“I don’t, though I’m not yet ready to answer. Gilyn, here, however, is looking for an old friend of his, the sharer of many a campfire and grievous battle. The lad seems to have headed east from Cerrmor, so I thought. Well, mayhap we’ll pick up news of him in Slaith, because he’s an Eldidd man, as good on a boat as he is with a sword.”

“There’s always work for a lad like that here.”

“Just so. His name’s Rhodry of Aberwyn.”

“Hum.” Dumryc was concentrating on his chopping. “Never heard of him.”

“He might not be using that name. He’s a good-looking fellow, tall, dark hair, Eldidd eyes, and a silver dagger in his belt.”

“Never ran across him.” Dumryc grabbed another turnip and chopped it, the dagger moving fast and nervously. “But that doesn’t mean anything. He might have found a berth as soon as he got here and shipped out.”

“Could be, could be. He’s a useful sort of man.”

Dumryc smiled tightly at the turnip and said nothing. Salamander gave Jill a smile and raised one eyebrow as if to say that she shouldn’t believe a word the innkeep said. He needn’t have worried; she didn’t need mighty dweomer or suchlike to tell when a man was lying to her face.

After they finished the ale they went out for a stroll around town. The market fair was beginning to break up; the farmers and tradesmen packed what was left of their wares back into wagons while exhausted children whined and fussed, and wives carefully counted over their earnings for the day. A few drunks snored in the strewn straw; dogs nosed about; gaudy whores strolled around, looking over the pirates who were heading for one tavern or another. When Jill and Salamander went to look for it, they found Rhodry’s horse gone.

“There’s no use in asking around for its new owner,” Salamander remarked with a certain gloom. “No one would tell us the truth.”

“No doubt. What should we do now? Sit around a tavern and see if we can overhear somewhat of interest?”

“I’m not sure. I—”

“Gerthddyn! Salamander! By the hells, hold and stand!”

A dark-haired man, quite stout, with his long black beard tied up in six neat braids, was hurrying over to them.

“Snilyn, oh, most beauteous of the bilge rats! Still alive, are you?”

“I am, and glad enough to see you, lad. Got some more good tales for us?”

“I do, but this time I brought a bodyguard along.”

With a roar of laughter, Snilyn slapped Jill on the back.

“He’s a cautious sort, your hire.” He grinned, revealing several missing teeth. “But he’s right enough, eh? You never know what the lads’ll do when they’re drunk. Sober, they’ve got plenty of respect for a man who can tell a good tale, but drunk, well . . . ” He shrugged massive shoulders. “Come have a tankard at my expense, Salamander, and your silver dagger, too.”

Although they went to Snilyn’s favorite tavern, Salamander picked the table, one where he could keep his back to the wall and have a good view of the street out the window. A blowsy blond lass brought tankards of dark ale, then lingered, looking Salamander over wistfully, until Snilyn sent her away with a slap on the behind.

“It’s not your tongue she wants to see wag, gerthddyn.” The pirate paused to laugh at his own jest. “So, when did you ride in?”

“Just today. We’re staying over at Dumryc’s inn, because I like an out-of-the-way spot when I’m in Slaith.”

“Good idea, truly. What brings you here, if I can ask?”

“Well, now, that’s a strange thing. I’d most treasure your advice about somewhat. We’re looking for another silver dagger, and when I asked Dumryc about him, he put me off. Let me ask you, and you don’t have to answer, but you can tell whether or not I should just forget this lad and never ask again.”

“Done.”

“His name’s Rhodry of Aberwyn.”

“Hold your tongue. Don’t even ask why.”

“Then hold it I will.” Salamander gave Jill a warning jab in the ribs. “My thanks.”

Salamander began chatting with Snilyn, but Jill sat steaming and silent over her tankard. She wanted to draw, threaten cold steel, and stab and slash the truth out of this scruffy lot. Only the simple fact that she was outnumbered several hundred to one kept her silent. Salamander ordered and paid for another round of ale, took the third that Snilyn pressed upon him, too, gulping it down but staying as sober as only an elf can. He told jest after jest, got Snilyn laughing until the tears came, ordered more ale yet, and soon had an appreciative crowd around him to hear an involved but anatomically impossible story about a blacksmith and a miller’s daughter.

“And so his hammer went up and down,” Salamander ended up. “And straightened her horseshoe right out.”

Howling with laughter, Snilyn slapped Salamander on the back so hard that he nearly knocked the gerthddyn off the bench, then with a muttered apology grabbed Salamander by the shoulders and hauled him back. The gerthddyn threw a companionable arm around him and whispered something in his ear. Although Jill saw Snilyn first flinch, then whisper an answer, she could hear nothing over the noise of pirates yelling for more tales. Salamander let go of Snilyn and obliged with a story even more bawdy than the one before.

It was another hour before Salamander could extricate himself from his admirers, who pressed pieces of ill-gotten silver into his hands as he left. Her hand on her sword hilt, Jill walked a little behind him and kept watch for pickpockets as they headed back to the inn. Once they were off the main street, though, Salamander motioned her up beside him.

“Well, I’ve got a bit of bad news.”

“Indeed? What did you ask Snilyn?”

“Clever Gilyn of the sharp eye.” Salamander gave her a grin, “Never underestimate the power of good fellowship, bawdy cheer, and all the rest of it. I also drew upon the power of surprise and let him know that I knew more than he thought I did. The question was, to wit, whether anyone stood to make a profit off our Rhodry, and the answer was, they did, about twenty gold pieces.”

“Twenty? That’s an enormous lwdd for a silver dagger. They must know he’s heir to Aberwyn.”

“Lwdd? Ah, you fail to understand. Not a blood price, my beauteous meadowlark, just a price. I see you have led a sheltered and happy life, Gillo, far from the evils and troubles that cruel men visit upon—”

“Cut the horse crap, or I’ll slit your throat.”

“How indelicate, but very well. Less horse crap; more horse meat. They’ve taken Rhodry to Bardek to sell him as a slave.”

Jill opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come.

“I was afraid of somewhat like this,” Salamander went on. “Which is why we’re in beauteous Slaith in the first place. Whoever has Rhodry seems to be a most unpleasant sort of person. You saw Snilyn wince at the very thought of him, and I assure you that Snilyn doesn’t wince easily. Although he has many a strangely perverted flaw, cowardice is not among them.”

“Bardek! Oh, by all the ice in all the hells, how are we going to get there? The last ships across are leaving Cerrmor by now. By the time we get back there—”

“Cruel winter will be whipping the Southern Sea to a frenzy, I know, I know. We need a ship. We can, walk, trot, run, and even dance, but we can, alas, do none of these upon the water. It is too far to swim. Therefore, ships are the order of the day. We are in a place with ships all nicely drawn up down, at the harbor. What, my little turtledove, does this suggest to you?”

“Now here, these are pirates! If we get out alone on the water with this lot, they could take us and sell us as slaves, too. I can’t fight off twenty men all by myself.”

“Ah, what becoming modesty! You’re right, of course: never trust pirate. I’ve impressed said pirates, but that’s not enough. When it comes to these lads, only one thing works: terror. Now let’s go get somewhat to eat while I think up a plan.”

After a meal of griddle cakes with cheese and fried onions, they went back to the center of town. By then the sun was setting, a time when the streets in most towns would be growing quiet and empty, but here there were plenty of people on the prowl, some carryring lanterns or torches and going briskly about their businesss, others merely standing around on street corners or in alleyways as if waiting for something. A number of people were leading gray donkeys with pack saddles and bridles trimmed with little bells that jingled musically. In the gathering twilight, with a cool sea breeze wiping away most of the stink, Slaith was oddly cheerful, like a town getting ready for a festival, yet all Jill could think of was murder. These innocent-seeming folk had helped ship her Rhodry off to some horrible Wyrd, and all she wanted was to see them dead. Everything became preternaturally bright, sharp: the bells striking like gongs, the torches flaring up like enormous fires, the sweaty faces around her looming and swelling, the ordinary sunset burning like a sea of blood. Abruptly Salamander grabbed her arm, shook it hard, and dragged her into the semi-privacy of a narrow alley.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. “You look like death itself.”

“Do I? Ye gods.” Jill ran shaking hands down her face and breathed deeply, gulping the cooler air. “I don’t know what I did. I . . . I was brooding, like, over things, and all at once the world turned strange, like when I was with Perryn. I must have tapped into the power without knowing it.”

Salamander groaned under his breath.

“That’s as dangerous as summoning a demon! We can’t talk about it here, so try to control yourself.”

Jill merely nodded, suddenly very tired. The world around her seemed painted with brighter colors than normal, but otherwise her vision had settled down. They went to a tavern at one corner of the market square, a big place that was one round stone room with an unusually high ceiling. When the serving wench brought them ale. Salamander asked her about the height of the room.

“Oh, the lads just had a bit of a brawl, and they knocked over a lantern into the straw. Whoosh—up everything went, and the floor upstairs along with it”

“Must have been a splendid show,” Salamander said. “Excuse me a moment, Gillo. Just have to go out back.”

As soon as Salamander was out the back door, the lass sat down next to Jill on the bench. She was a pretty thing, no more than sixteen under the Bardek kohl that rimmed her blue eyes. Her hair was blond, and done up in elaborate curls and set with little shell combs in the Bardek fashion, but she was wearing a pair of ordinary Deverry dresses.

“You must have been ever so lonely on the road with that chattering gerthddyn,” she said. “How about a bit of company, Gillo?”

Jill was too stunned to speak. Here was a woman actually taken in by her ruse! Although she was used to fooling men, most women saw through her acting at once. When the lass laid a hand on her thigh, she shrank away.

“Oho, shy, aren’t you? His bodyguard, the gerthddyn calls you, but I’ll wager it’s a bit more than that. Oh well, no offense, mind. There’s men like that, and they don’t go bothering me, so it’s up to their fancy, I always say.” She took Jill’s tankard and had an absentminded sip. “I always did wonder why the gerthddyn was so coy and shy like with us lasses,” She paused for a wicked little smile. “But you so young and all. Don’t you think you should try a slice off a different cut of meat, just once, like?”

Too flustered to speak, Jill looked desperately around and saw that they’d gathered an audience, a grinning ring of pirates and wenches. Someone suddenly whispered an alarm: Salamander was stalking in the back door.

“And what’s all this?” In a fine show of furious indignation, the gerthddyn shoved his way through the crowd. “You little bitch! Hunting on my preserve, are you?”

Slowly and dramatically, Salamander raised his hand and pointed at the tankard, which the lass was still cradling in her hands. Blue fire shot from his fingers, struck the tankard, and flared, making the ale steam and boil. With a scream, the lass threw the tankard onto the table and leapt up, tangling her dresses in the bench and tripping. The rest of the audience jumped back with oaths and shouts.

“You little slut,” Salamander said to Jill. “Bad as a lass, I swear it.”

In the crowd a couple of pirates were reaching for swords. Salamander let out a howl of laughter and waved his hand again. Thunder cracked and boomed in the tavern; smoke billowed; blue light shot through the sudden darkness. All the wenches screamed and ran for the door; the men fell back, shouting and cursing. Salamander swirled and tossed a convincing if tiny lightning bolt at the doorway. Screaming hysterically, the wenches ran back into the crowd.

“No one leave,” Salamander called out. “You foul-minded fools! You odiferous and fly-swarmed lumps of swine offal! Whom do you think to insult so boldly?”

With a graceful fling of one arm Salamander jumped up onto the table in the midst of a sudden swirl of purple smoke and began to laugh, the deep, musical ripple of delight that only someone with elven blood can summon. Gasping, white-faced, the pirates and wenches clung together in the curve of the wall. The lass wbo’d started all the trouble crawled away on her hands and knees to join them.

“So.” Salamander drawled the word portentously. “Swine! Turds! You thought me a babbling fool, did you? A mere plaything, beneath you in your sordid lusts and bloodshed! Hah! Would a weak man dare walk the evil streets of Slaith?” He paused for a dramatic glare at the crowd. “If I wanted, I could burn this stinking hellhole to the ground, and you bastard-born lice would crisp and fry along with it.”

In illustration, he shot a bolt at a barrel of ale, which burst into superficial flames. The wenches screamed again; the men surged forward; but as the fire burned through the wood, the ale rushed out and doused it with the acrid stink of singed hops.

“Does anyone doubt my powers?” Salamander went on.

In unison heads shook a no like grain bowing in the winds. With a cold, cruel smile, Salamander set his hands on his hips.

“Well and good, swine. Return to your paltry amusements, but remember what I am, and treat me with the deference I deserve.”

He jumped down from the table and sat down next to Jill. For a long moment the silence hung in the room like the last of the smoke; then slowly, one at a time, the pirates began whispering, turning back to their ale, or, in the case of the weaker souls, slipping out the door. Once the noise returned to a normal level, Salamander put his arm around Jill’s shoulders and pulled her close to whisper.

“This should infuse them with a deep if short-lived piety, huh?” He raised his voice again. “Wench! Come take this charred and stinking tankard away and bring me fresh drink!”

Bowing and trembling, the servant lass sidled over and grabbed the still-steaming tankard with a wadded cloth. When she brought back the fresh, she curtsied like a court lady, then shamelessly ran away. Salamander raised the tankard in salute and drank a good bit right off.

“So, my unfaithful Gilyn, you’ve learned your lesson, have you?”

“I have, at that.” Jill had thoughts of strangling him for all the blather. “But I’m not sure which one.”

The news spread almost as fast as Salamander’s dweomer fire. In little clots, pirates and townsfolk appeared at the door or the windows, stuck their heads in for a look at Salamander, then withdrew them fast and moved on. Finally Snilyn came striding in and shook the gerthddyn’s hand with a hearty bellow of laughter. As Salamander had remarked, cowardice was certainly not one of his vices.

“I’m cursing myself for missing the sight,” Snilyn said, sitting down unasked. “I would have enjoyed seeing the bastard swine running from you, sorcerer.”

“You’ll have your chance if anyone gives me any more trouble.”

“And a wretched small chance that is, unless, of course, you’re staying here long.”

“I’m not, truly. In fact, my friend, maybe you can help me. I’m minded to go to Bardek before the winter sets in. Do you know of anyone making one last run that way? I’ll pay good coin for our passage.”

Snilyn signaled for ale while he considered the question.

“Well, I don’t, at that,” he said finally. “But you might talk Buthvyn into taking you over. Whether he winters here or in Pastur is all the same to him, and he had a lean summer of it. Depends on how much coin you’re willing to spend.”

“No doubt an adequate sum. I have a great and burning desire to see Bardek again, the beauteous palms, the shining sands, the rich merchants with their sacks of gold and jewels.”

“Must be a tidy profit there, truly, for a man like you. Why, by the Lord of Hell’s hairy balls! You could take one of them caravans all on your own!”

“I prefer to charm the gold out of merchants’ paws, but you’re right enough about the profit. The way I like to live does not come cheap, and this little minx of mine is developing a decided taste for luxury. It’s a pity how easily young lads are corrupted.”

When Snilyn snorted with laughter, Jill wondered whose throat she wanted to slit more, his or Salamander’s.

“But this Buthvyn had best not give us one whit of trouble,” the gerthddyn went on. “I can set wood on fire with a flick of a finger, you see. Ships, as you well know, are made of wood.”

Snilyn went both silent and decidedly green.

“I see you understand.” Salamander smiled gently. “Fear not, I shall make sure that the glorious Buthvyn understands as well. Where can we find this prince of the oceans, this ferocious sea lion?”

“Down at the Green Parrot, but I wouldn’t call him all of that, truly.”

Buthvyn was one of the tallest men Jill had ever met and also one of the skinniest, his shoulders as narrow as his narrow hips, his long arms like ropes and scarred at that, his face all sharp edges and long, pinched nose. From the eagerness with which he greeted Salamander’s proposal, it was clear that he was not a successful pirate. He had a ragged but seaworthy cog, he said, and fifteen lads to sail it, all of whom, or so he swore, were loyal men with closed mouths. Salamander made sure of this loyalty by lighting the wood in the tavern hearth with one flick of his hand. As the flames sprang up and spread on the heavy logs, Buthvyn went pale.

“Straight to Bardek and no shilly-shallying around,” the pirate said, swallowing heavily. “As fast and straight as the winds will take us.”

“Splendid!” Salamander said. “Can you carry horses, or should I sell our glorious steeds?”

“I would if I was you. Hard trip across for stock, and this isn’t no big merchantman. You can get good horses in Bardek, anyway.”

“So you can. When do we sail? I detest waiting.”

“Tomorrow dawn when the tie goes out. That be fast enough?”

“It is. We shall meet you at the harbor while it’s still dark.”

When they returned to Dumryc’s inn, Jill and Salamander found the tale gone before them. A newly servile Dumryc gave them a candle lantern and bowed repeatedly, like a crow drinking water, as they went upstairs to their chamber. As soon as the door was safely barred, Salamander collapsed onto the mattress and howled with laughter until he choked. Jill hung the lantern on a nail in the wall and glared at him.

“Ah ye gods,” Salamander gasped when he could speak again. “That was truly one of the best jests in my life, and I’ve perpetrated a lot of them, Jill, my turtledove.”

“No doubt.” Jill put ice in her voice.

“Ah.” Salamander sat up, wrapping his long arms around his knees, and let his grin fade away. “I think me you’re vexed with this whole ruse, the portentous words, the flaming fires, and so forth, but unless the lads think us as evil as they—and as dangerous—they won’t respect us, no matter how many hints we drop about dark dweomer. I’ve no desire to be drugged and tossed overboard one fine night when we’re out to sea.”

“Well, true-spoken, but ye gods, why all the show? Why not just set somewhat on fire and threaten them?”

“Jill.” Salamander stared at her with reproachful eyes. “That wouldn’t have been any fun.”

“They’re doing what?” Elaeno was so furious that his thunder of a voice made the wooden shutters rattle at the windows.

“Going to Bardek on a pirate ship.” Nevyn still could hardly believe his own words. “That chattering idiot of an elf is taking Jill to Bardek on a pirate ship.”

Elaeno opened his mouth and shut it several times.

“Have some mead,” Nevyn said. “Normally I don’t drink the stuff, but tonight, for some strange reason, I feel the need.”

For some nights Blaen had had trouble sleeping, Generally he would dress, then prowl the long mazelike corridors of the king’s palace and wonder why he was wasting his time staying in Dun Deverry. Soon he would have to start the long journey back to Cwm Pecl, before the winter snows came to trap him in the king’s city far from home. On that particular night, he wandered half-purposely over to Lord Madoc’s chambers and found, as he’d somehow been expecting, a crack of light showing under the sorcerer’s door. As he hesitated, wondering whether or not to knock, the door opened to reveal Madoc wearing a nightshirt over a pair of brigga.

“Ah, there you are, Blaen. I couldn’t sleep either, and the spirits told me you were on your way. Come in for a nightcap.”

Although Blaen looked hastily around, he saw no spirits and decided that it was safe enough to go in. Madoc poured them both dark ale sweetened with Bardek cinnamon and cloves.

“Want this heated?”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself. I don’t mind it cool.”

“Here, then.” Madoc handed him a tankard. “Have a chair.”

They settled themselves by the brazier, glowing cherry red in the drafty chamber. Blaen took an approving sip of the strong, dark ale.

“I was planning on coming to see you first thing in the morning,” Madoc said. “I have some news. The king has finally deigned to tell me that he’s sending a herald to Aberwyn tomorrow at dawn.”

“By the Lord of Hell himself! Why?”

“No one knows. His liege is apparently vexed with Savyl more than he is with you, and he’s saying not a word to anyone about it. All I know is that the herald is carrying some grave and serious proclamation. It could be recalling Rhodry, or it could be summoning the Council of Electors to choose a new heir. By the gods, it could merely be raising taxes, for all that I know.”

Blaen groaned under his breath and had a long swallow of ale.

“I’ve sent word to Nevyn already, of course,” Madoc said.

“Splendid. Here, may I put a blunt question? Where is Rhodry? I think me you know.”

Madoc considered for a moment, studying Blaen’s face as if he were reading a message there.

“I do, at that,” he said at last. “Will you swear to me to keep this to yourself?”

“On the honor of my clan.”

“Done, then. Rhodry’s in Bardek. His enemies took him there and sold him as a slave.”

“They what? By every god, I’ll have them hanged for this! I’ll have them spitted and drawn! The gall! Selling my kin for a blasted slave!”

“Your Grace? May I suggest you sit down?”

Blaen was quite surprised to find himself standing. He took a deep breath and sat down again.

“After all, Your Grace, at least he’s alive.”

“Just so.” Blaen took another deep breath and reminded himself that he couldn’t do anything at all in the middle of the night. “I wonder if I can possibly get a ship for Bardek this time of year, one that can carry a good part of my warband.”

“You can’t, Your Grace, and truly, it would be unwise for you to go after him. I think me you’ll be needed more here in the spring, when he returns. Well,” Madoc’s face turned haunted. “If we can pull him out of this, at any rate.”

“I have great faith in the dweomer’s power, my lord.”

“My thanks. Let us hope it’s justified.”

By the gentle rocking of the hull, the prisoner knew that they were lying at anchor in one harbor or another. For a while he merely lay on his pallet and looked round the nearly empty hold. When he’d started this voyage, the hold had been full of boxes and bales. How long ago now? Weeks. He wasn’t sure how many. When he rose to his knees, the ankle chain clanked and clattered, but it was long enough to let him reach the porthole and pull up the oiled-leather covering. The blinding dazzle of sun on water made his eyes blink and tear, but in a few minutes he could make out a long white beach and a steep cliff face beyond a forest of masts. All the harbors had looked much like this. For all he knew, they’d been shuttling back and forth between a pair of towns. He did know, however, that they were in the Bardekian archipelago. His captors had told him that several times, as if it were important that he knew. He repeated it to himself now, saying it aloud: “I’m in Bardek.” It was one of the few things he did know about himself.

He held up his right arm and looked at the pale skin that marked him as a Deverry man. Although he knew where and what Deverry was, he couldn’t remember ever having been there personally, but his captors assured him that he’d been born there, in the province off Pyrdon, to be exact. He also remembered both his native tongue and the small amount of Bardekian he’d known before his capture. In fact, one of his few solid memories was of studying that language when he’d been a child. He had a clear image of his tutor, a dark-skinned man with gray hair and a kindly, ready smile, telling him that he needed to study hard because of his position in life. What that position was he didn’t remember. Perhaps he’d been the son of a merchant; it was a reasonable supposition. At any rate, although he was far from fluent in Bardekian, that early training was making it possible for him to pick up bits and pieces of the conversations he overheard and to ask simple questions. Sometimes his questions were answered; more often, not.

When he heard noises behind him, the prisoner turned away and let the porthole cover fall. The man called Gwin was coming down the ladder, and he carried a small cloth sack under one arm.

“Clothes for you.” Gwin tossed the sack over. “A tunic, sandals. Bardek clothes. You leave here today. Glad?”

“I don’t know. What happens next?”

“You’ll be sold.”

The prisoner nodded, thinking things over. Since they’d already told him he was a slave, the news was no surprise. He’d even overheard someone saying that he’d fetch a good price, because he was an exotic commodity like a rare breed of dog. While he dressed, Gwin poked among the remaining boxes and bales, but only idly, as if he were making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.

“Gwin? Do you know my name?”

“Yes. Hasn’t anyone told you? It’s Taliaesyn.”

“Thanks. I wondered.”

“No doubt.” He paused, looking at the prisoner with an odd expression, a certain very thin, very fragile sympathy. “Someone will fetch you soon. Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

After Gwin left, Taliaesyn sat down on his pallet and wondered why a man like that would wish him good luck, then shrugged the problem away as being as unsolvable as most of the mysteries around him. He said his name over several times in the hopes that it would bring memories with it. Nothing came—nothing at all, not an image, not a sound, not a single word from the life he must have had before that morning, weeks ago, when he’d woken up in the hold of this ship. He could still remember his absolute panic when he’d realized that he knew nothing about himself, nothing about how he’d come to be chained there. For a few minutes he’d felt like a hysterical animal, throwing itself this way and that against the bars of a cage, biting even those who try to soothe it. But the fit had gone quickly, long before his captors had come down to gloat over him. He’d found the knowledge he needed, that morning: memory or not, he was still a man, he had speech, he had thought, and he would fight to keep that sense of selfhood.

Over the weeks that followed, he dredged up a few bits of memory from his past, and he’d woven them into a story that defined what he knew of his self. Now he had a bit more to add.

“I am Taliaesyn of Pyrdon, a merchant’s son once, now a slave—but a valuable slave, mind. They tell me I ran up gambling debts here in Bardek. I remember that Deverry law can’t save a free man when he’s this far from home, so I was arrested and sold to pay the debts. I must be the son of an important merchant; why else would a Deverry man be in Bardek?”

For a moment he considered the question, came up with no answer, and dismissed it. He had three actual memories to fit into the story. The first, of course, was his old tutor in the Bardek tongue, a memory that fit smoothly into the tale. The other two, however, were difficult and troubling. First, there was the beautiful blond lass. Now, although it was logical enough that a merchant’s son would have a wife or mistress (because in the memory she was getting into bed with him), why was she taking off men’s clothing instead of a dress? The second memory made even less sense. He saw a man’s face and shoulders looming in what seemed to be smoke or heavy fog; the man was wearing chain mail and a pot helm, and blood sheeted down his face. With the image came the words: “the first man I ever killed.” Merchants’ sons, however, didn’t kill people—unless perhaps the victim was a bandit?

Taliaesyn smiled in relief. It would make sense if he’d been leading a caravan and that fellow had been a bandit, and as he thought it over, another memory stirred, mules braying in a crisp dawn. Of course. Of course! And if the lass were his wife, traveling with him? Why, it would be hard to ride in long dresses—why not wear men’s clothes? He felt a deep satisfaction at knitting the tale together at last.

Yet the satisfaction was only momentary, because he was always aware that his captors might be lying to him. Although their story was reasonable, and in line with the general knowledge he remembered about the world, he could confirm none of it. There was this business of it being so hard to think. At times, he could barely put two words together or remember a thing he’d been told not a minute before; at others, the whole world seemed strange, far away yet brightly colored, and his mind made odd jumps and lapses. As he thought about it, it occurred to him that he often felt that way after being fed. They were probably putting strange drugs in his food. He knew that somewhere in his mind was a reason for thinking that these people were the sort to drug their prisoners, even though he couldn’t quite put a mental finger on it. Over the past weeks he’d come to think of knowledge, which he’d always taken for granted before, in terms of a very involved metaphor, that each thing a man knew was like a water lily. Each blossom floated in the sun on top of the pool of his mind, but it was dependent upon its long stalk and roots underneath to connect it to the earth and to all the other lilies. He felt as though someone had swung a scythe through his mind, leaving only a few broken flowers to wither on top of the pond, cut off from any connection or possible meaning. Although the conceit was peculiar, it fit in a satisfying way. Something had sliced through his mind. He was certain of that.

In a few minutes he heard a small commotion on deck, and the ship rocked once as voices called out. Someone’s boarding, he thought. It occurred to him that he’d been on ships before, that he knew a certain amount about them, provided they were small ships, like a galley. He remembered, then, being on a war galley, standing near the carved prow and feeling the spray break over him. What was a merchant’s son doing on a war galley? He had no chance to examine that disturbing question any further, because someone threw back the hatch at the bow and light spilled into the hold.

The mute climbed down the ladder and made the gurgling sound in his throat that did him for a greeting. A bent and wizened black crab of a man, he’d had his tongue cut out many years before, or so Gwin had said, without adding why. Behind the mute came the man called Briddyn, with his oily hair and even slicker beard, and behind him a tall, dark brown Bardekian whom Taliaesyn had never seen before. Dressed in a fine white linen tunic with one red sleeve, the fellow carried a pair of wooden tablets, smeared with wax, and a bone stylus. As Briddyn gestured at various bales and crates, the other began jotting down figures and symbols on the wax. Customs officer, Taliaesyn thought.

The mute knelt down and unlocked the ankle chain. Taliaesyn’s relief at having it gone died abruptly when the old man handed him a collar and pointed at his neck. When Taliaesyn hesitated, Briddyn turned to him.

“Put it on. Right now.”

Taliaesyn buckled it round his neck and made no objection when the mute padlocked on the chain. Although he had trouble remembering the details, he knew that Briddyn had caused him pain—intense pain—once before. The not-quite-memory persisted as a gut-wrenching fear whenever Briddyn looked his way with his pale, lashless eyes. The customs officer cleared his throat, then asked a long question, of which Taliaesyn understood nothing.

“Yes.” Briddyn handed over a strip of the thin-beaten bark the Bardekians used instead of parchment. “Here.”

Nodding, lips pursed, the customs officer read it carefully, glancing Taliaesyn’s way every now and then.

“Expensive piece of goods,” he remarked.

“Barbarian slaves are rare these days.”

It was then that Taliaesyn realized that the officer had been examining his bill of sale. His cheeks burned as the shame overwhelmed him: here he was, a Deverrian and a free man, sold like a horse in a foreign land. Yet already Briddyn and the officer had turned their attention elsewhere. To them he was nothing but a routine transaction, worth neither pity nor mockery. When they were done in the hold, the mute led Taliaesyn up onto the deck after them. While Briddyn and the port officials haggled over duties and taxes, the prisoner got his first good look around him in weeks.

The harbor was a narrow inlet about half a mile wide, cut into tall cliffs of pale pink sandstone. Four long wooden piers jutted out from the shallow beach, where a jumble of shacks and sheds stood among beached fishing boats and palm trees. Up above on the cliff tops were what seemed to be more substantial buildings in the long rectangular Bardekian style.

“A city?” Taliaesyn said.

The mute nodded yes, and a nearby sailor glanced their way.

“Myleton. It’s called Myleton.”

Taliaesyn repeated the name and added it to his small store of facts. As he remembered, Myleton was on the island, Bardektinna, that had mistakenly given part of its name to the entire archipelago when Deverry men had first sailed its way. Shading his eyes with one hand, he studied what few of the cliff-top buildings he could see. One in particular interested him, an enormous wooden structure at least a hundred feet long and three stories high, its roof curved and swelling like the overturned hull of a ship. Standing next to it was a wooden statue, some forty feet tall, of a man with a bird on his shoulder.

“Temple?” Taliaesyn asked the sailor.

“Yes. Dalae-oh-contaemo. The albatross guide, the wave father.”

“Ah. So his temple is in the harbor.”

The sailor nodded. With a jerk of the chain, the mute led Taliaesyn away from the fellow as abruptly as if he were dangerous and made him stand near the gangplank. When Taliaesyn happened to glance over the side, he almost cried out. The blue-green water was alive with spirits, faces and hands and manes of hair that formed only to dissolve again, eyes that stared out at him from sun glints, voices that whispered in the foam, long thin fingers that pointed at him, then vanished. Instinctively he knew that he had to keep silent about them. When he glanced furtively around, it was plain that no one else had seen a thing. He felt smug, almost sly; in this, he was superior to his captors, that the Wildfolk knew and recognized him. He only wished that he could remember why. All at once, the deck was full of gnomes, tall blue fellows, brown fat ones, skinny green beings with frog faces and warty fingers, all clustering round in a comforting sort of way. They patted him, smiled at him, then vanished as suddenly as they’d come. He looked up to see Briddyn walking over, studying what seemed to be a bill of lading. Taliaesyn’s heart thudded, then settled when it was obvious that Briddyn hadn’t seen the Wildfolk—or could he even do so? Taliaesyn thought he might, but he couldn’t quite remember why.

“Well, that’s all in order,” Briddyn said to the mute. “Let’s take the slave to the market. No use feeding him any longer.”

The mute winked and grinned with a sly glance for the customs officer striding away down the pier. This gesture was the first confirmation Taliaesyn had for his hunch that something was wrong with these merchants. He was sure now that the bill of sale was not quite legal. Although he had the brief thought of calling to the officer, Briddyn was watching him again. The silver lizard clip in his beard winked in the strong sun.

“At times you remind me of a child,” Briddyn said in Deverrian. “I can read everything on your face. Do you remember what I did to you when I had you tied to the deck?”

“I don’t, truly, not in any detail.” Yet the fear made him swallow heavily and force every word through dry lips.

“It’s doubtless for the best that you don’t, lad. Let me warn you this. You’re a legal slave now. Do you understand what that means? If you try to escape, you’ll be hunted down, and they’ll catch you. No one in this demon-haunted country will life a finger to help a runaway slave. Once they catch you, they’ll kill you—but slowly, one small piece at a time. What I did to you was naught compared to the way an archon’s men treat rebellious slaves. I heard of one poor wretch that took two months to die. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

Briddyn smiled, the lashless eyes blinking once or twice in remembered pleasure. Taliaesyn winced and looked away. The memory was pushing closer and closer to the surface of his mind, a searing pain like fire, and all caused by the pressure of his tormentor’s fingers. When he shuddered, Briddyn laughed under his breath, such a self-satisfied sound that Taliaesyn felt his fear break like an old rope. No matter what pain it cost him, he would have to fight back, or he would never be a man again. He looked Briddyn squarely in the face.

“I’ll make you a promise. Someday I will escape, and when I do. I’ll come for you. Remember that: someday I’ll kill you for this.”

Briddyn laughed again, easily, openly.

“Shall we flog him for that?” he said to the mute, in Bardekian. “No, it would lower his price. Maybe I’ll take a minute to show him who’s master here, though.”

“No.” It was Gwin, stepping in between them. “You’ve done enough to someone who’s twice the man you are.”

Briddyn went dangerously calm, dangerously still, but Gwin stared him down.

“There’s no time, anyway. Take him and sell him, and be done with it.”

Muttering under his breath, Briddyn gestured at the mute, who jerked the chain so hard that Taliaesyn nearly stumbled, but under Gwin’s watchful eye he never jerked it that way again. As they went down the gangplank and across the beach, all of them stumbling a little in the soft sand, Taliaesyn was trying to remember how he’d earned Gwin’s respect, but no memories came. Switchbacking stairs, cut deep into the stone, brought them to the cliff top directly by the temple, but Taliaesyn had no time to inspect it. He got a general impression of a vast arched doorway, carved with rows of human figures and birds, before the mute growled at him and made him hurry on.

The city gates, lay directly across a wide road from the temple. As they went in, Taliaesyn’s first impression was that they were walking into a forest. Everywhere he looked he saw trees lining the wide, straight streets and covering them with a shady canopy of interlaced branches, or planted thick around every house and building. Although he recognized a palm tree here and there, most were varieties he’d never seen before: a shrubby kind with tiny red flowers in clumps; a tall thick-trunked tree with narrow, dust-colored leaves and a spicy scent; yet another with purple flowers as long as a man’s finger. Vines twined around the trees and threatened to take over the various wooden and marble statues he saw scattered in the small public squares or at the intersections of streets. Among the greenery stood the rectangular longhouses with their nautical roofs, some guarded by tall statues of the inhabitants’ ancestors; others, by pairs of what seemed to be wooden oars, but made large enough for a giant, standing crossed on end.

Sauntering down the streets or crossing from house to house was a constant flow of people, all dressed in tunics and sandals, men and women alike. The men, however, had brightly colored designs painted on one cheek, while the women wore broochlike oddments tucked into their elaborately curled and piled hair. He vaguely remembered that both ornament and paint identified the wearer’s “house” or clan.

What surprised Taliaesyn the most, however, were the children, running loose in packs down the streets, playing elaborate games in the public spaces and private gardens alike without anyone saying a cross word to them. They were also mostly naked, boys and girls alike wearing only bright-colored pieces of cloth wrapped around their hips. Watching them made him think that yes, he must be a foreigner here, because back in Deverry children would have been dressed just like their parents and working at their sides in the family craft shop or farm.

As they went along, the houses grew larger and stood farther apart. Some were isolated by high stucco walls, painted with pictures of animals and trees; others, by flowering hedges and vines. All at once they came between two blue walls and out into an open public square, as large as three Deverry tourney grounds. Shallow steps led down to a cobbled plaza, nearly deserted in the shimmering heat. An old man drowsed on a marble bench; three children chased each other around a marble fountain, where dolphins intertwined under splashing water.

“What is this?” Taliaesyn said, “A marketplace?”

“No,” Gwin said. “It’s the place of assembly, where the citizens come to vote.”

“Vote? I don’t know this word.”

“Vote—choose a leader. On the election day, they put urns around the fountain, one for each candidate. Every free man and woman puts a pebble in the urn that belongs to their choice. The man who gets the most pebbles is archon for three years.”

Gwin might have said more, but Briddyn turned and snarled at him to hold his tongue and hurry.

“Over there, little one,” Gwin said to Taliaesyn in a soft whisper. “You’ll soon be rid of him.”

The “there” in question turned out to be a narrow, treeless alley that twisted between back garden walls. As they walked along, the walls grew lower until they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of huts and kitchen gardens. Here and there Taliaesyn saw and smelled pigsties, each holding one or two small, gray-haired pigs. Once, as they passed a ramshackle hut, a vastly pregnant woman came out to slop her hogs. When her gaze fell on the prisoner, her face softened with pity for him. Every other person they met simply ignored him, the same way that they ignored the half-starved dogs in the gutters or the gaudy birds in the trees.

Finally the alley gave a last twist and debouched into an open square where weeds pushed aside sparse cobbles and chickens scratched, squawking every now and then at the small children who shared the space with them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a compound. In the middle was an iron-bound door. Everything made Taliaesyn uneasy: the thick wall, gaudy but practically a fortification; the stout door, as heavily reinforced as a Deverry dun. Briddyn glanced his way and smiled in a peculiarly unpleasant way, then included Gwin in the gesture.

“Here’s where you two say farewell,” he said in Deverrian.

He made a fist and pounded on the door, over and over until they heard a voice scream in Bardekian that its owner was on the way. The door opened a crack, then wider, and a slender, dark boy of about fifteen, wearing a pale blue tunic, made a low bow to Briddyn.

“Baruma, master! How can I serve you?”

“Is your father in? I have someone to sell.”

“The barbarian? Oh, he’ll be very interested.”

They followed the lad down a narrow corridor to a long room with a blue-and-white-tiled floor and dark green walls. At one end was a low dais, strewn with many-colored cushions, where a fat man with pale brown skin and black curly hair sat cross-legged before a low table. When they came in, he looked up from what Taliaesyn took to be a game played on a circular board.

“Baruma!” He heaved, himself to his feet only to make a deep bow. “I am honored, honored.” Yet, as he went on, speaking too fast for Taliaesyn to understand, he seemed far more frightened than overwhelmed at the honor of entertaining Briddyn.

The two men bargained quickly in shrill voices, waving their hands around, making dramatic grimaces, seeming to threaten each other, but always, Taliaesyn noticed, Briddyn won his points. Finally the slave dealer, whose name turned out to be Brindemo, unceremoniously ordered the prisoner to strip, then ran his hands down Taliaesyn’s arms and back, poked his legs like a horse dealer, and even looked into his mouth. By the end of it, Taliaesyn was thinking murder.

“Deverrian, are you?” Brindemo said in a reasonably sound accent. “A dangerous man, then. I speak your ugly tongue. See? One wrong move or word, and I have you whipped.”

Then he turned back to Briddyn, who took the bill of sale out of the pouch at his belt and handed it over. Taliaesyn noticed the dealer’s eyes narrow suspiciously as he looked at it. When they started speaking again, somewhat slower, Taliaesyn could pick out phrases here and there. It seemed that Briddyn was suggesting that the trader sell him to the copper mines in the high mountains of the southwest or perhaps to the archon’s fleet of galleys. His stomach cramped in fear at the thought; he remembered enough to know that slaves sold to those lives died soon—and were glad to. Brindemo gave him one last look, then returned to Briddyn.

“How much opium have you been giving him, honored master?”

“Not much and not for long.” He went on to say something incomprehensible that pleased Brindemo, because the fat trader nodded and smiled.

Coins changed hands, then, close to twenty gold pieces as far as Taliaesyn could see. Brindemo took the bill of sale, tucked it into his own pouch, then escorted Briddyn, Gwin, and the mute to the door while his son held Taliaesyn on a short, tight chain. When the trader came back, he considered his new slave for a long, shrewd moment.

“You cannot run away, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon. If you do, the archon’s men hunt you down—”

“And kill me. I, know that.”

With a little nod, Brindemo unlocked the collar and took it off his neck.

“This will chafe and leave ugly sores. We must have you look pretty.”

“And will that matter in the mines?”

“Oho! You understand some Bardekian, do you? Better and better. The mines? Hah! Baruma leaves on the morrow. He comes through here, oh, once each year, if that. How will he know where I sell you? The mines pay a price fixed by law. Barbarians are much more expensive than that. You behave, show the good manners, and we sell you to honored home. Sit down. I have an armed man just outside, in earshot, by the way.”

“I won’t try to escape. I’m too weary, and I don’t even know where I am.”

Laughing, Brindemo lowered his bulk onto the cushions and motioned for the prisoner to perch on the edge of the dais. He took out the bill of sale and studied it, his lips pursed.

“Your name,” he said at last. “Is it truly Taliaesyn?”

“I suppose so.”

“What? Surely you know your own name.”

“I don’t, at that. I don’t remember one blasted thing about my life until a few weeks ago.”

“What? Were you hit on the head or suchlike?”

“That could be it, couldn’t it? A strong blow to the head makes men lose their memories at times. But I don’t know. No one told me.”

Brindemo tapped a gold-trimmed tooth with one corner of the bill while he looked over his purchase.

“Tell me somewhat. Baruma, did he . . . well, hurt you?”

Taliaesyn winced and looked at the floor.

“I see that he did, then. It will make you easy to manage.” Yet there was a thread of pity under the trader’s cold words. “I do not like to cross Baruma. Do you blame me?”

“Never.”

“But then, I do not like to cross the archon and the holy laws of my city.” He studied the bill of sale again. “If I break the law, it is as painful and perhaps even more expensive than crossing Baruma.”

“That thing is forged, isn’t it?”

“Ah, the opium must be wearing off.” He held the bill up to the light coming in the window. “It is very cleverly done, very, very professional, but then, one expects that from Baruma. May he mistake a candlestick for a cushion and sit upon it! Try to remember who you are. I perhaps can help you. You have kin and clan in Deverry?”

“My father was an important merchant there. That much I remember.”

“Aha! Doubtless, then, he will buy his son back at an honest price if only he can find him. If. Do your best to remember. I cannot keep you too long—what if Baruma comes back and asks for you?”

Taliaesyn shuddered, but this time, he despised himself for doing so.

“I see you understand.” Brindemo gave a shudder of his own. “But I sell you to decent place if all else fails, and then, when the beloved father comes searching, I tell him where. Perhaps he thanks me with hard coin?”

“Of course.” Taliaesyn found it surprisingly easy to lie, considering what was at stake. “He’s always been generous.”

“Good.” He reached up and clapped his hands together. “We give you food, a place to sleep.”

At the signal a black-skinned man came through a door near the dais. Close to seven feet tall, he was also heavily muscled and wearing a short sword in an ostentatiously jeweled scabbard. Even without the sword Taliaesyn wouldn’t have been inclined to argue with someone whose hand was as broad as an ordinary man’s bead.

“Darupo, bring him something to eat. I’ll wager Baruma’s been keeping him half starved.”

The fellow nodded, gave Taliaesyn a sympathetic glance, then disappeared again. While he was gone, Brindemo returned to his game, moving ivory pegs along tracks in the board in response to throws of dice much like the ones in Deverry. In a few minutes Darupo returned with an earthenware bowl of vegetables in a spicy sauce and a basket of very thin bread, almost like rounds of parchment. He showed Taliaesyn how to tear off strips of bread and use it to scoop up the sloppy mixture in the bowl. For all that the stew was difficult to eat, it was delicious, and Taliaesyn dug in in sincere gratitude. It occurred to him that feeding him well was a sound commercial proposition, because buyers would pay more for a healthy slave than a sick one, but he was too hungry to care about the ethics of the thing. At his dicing, Brindemo sighed suddenly and looked up.

“The omens are wrong no matter what I do.” He waved his hands miserably at the board. “I have this dark feeling in my heart, or however you Deverry men say it. I might turn a good profit off you, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon, but I rue the day that the gods brought you to me.”

A thin drizzle sheeted across Aberwyn’s harbor and turned the cobbles as slick as glass. Wrapped in his splendid scarlet cloak, the royal herald scurried across the gangplank to the pier and made the galley rock behind him. The high prow, a rearing wyvern, seemed to be bowing to the assembled crowd. Down at the land end of the pier, Nevyn started forward to greet him, then hesitated, turning to Cullyn, who was there as head of the honor guard.

“Make sure the marines get something hot to drink as soon as they reach the dun, will you?”

“Gladly. Poor bastards, rowing half the way from Cerrmor in this wet.”

Nevyn hurried down to exchange the ritual salutations with the herald, whose self-control was amazing. For all that he was wet, exhausted, and rheumy, his voice boomed out on every syllable, and he bowed with the grace of a dancer.

“I, Orys, come on the king’s business. Who is this who receives me?”

Nevyn hesitated briefly, then decided that he didn’t truly want to explain the jest in his name at a time like this.

“I am called Galrion, councillor to the regent, her grace, Tieryn Lovyan. The king’s justice is ever welcome in Aberwyn.”

“My thanks, good councillor. I see horses have been provided.” He suddenly smiled, the ritual done with. “Shall we get ourselves out of this wretched rain?”

“By all means, Lord Orys.”

In the great hall of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn huge fires roared in both hearths. Standing warrior-straight by the table of honor, Lovyan was waiting for them, with the red, white, and brown plaid of the Clw Coc draped over her chair and the blue, green, and silver plaid of Aberwyn thrown back from her shoulder. When the herald bowed to her, she acknowledged him with a small wave of her hand, but this was no time for a curtsy. She was as much lord here now as ever her son had been.

“Greetings, honored voice of the king. What brings you to me?”

“Grave news, Your Grace.” He reached into his shirt and brought out a silver message tube. “I have with me a proclamation of the most serious import.”

Except for the crackling of the fires the hall went utterly, breathlessly silent. Since the king had kept the contents of that proclamation a secret from everyone at court, not even Nevyn knew what it contained. He glanced around, noting the men of both warbands sitting stock-still at their tables across the hall; the servants practically frozen in their places; Rhys’s wife at the staircase, her face pale; Tevylla and Rhodda, slipping in the back door and hovering there.

“I would be honored, O voice of the king,” Lovyan said, her voice firm and steady, “if you would read it out to this assembly.”

With a flourish Lord Orys slipped the parchment free of the tube, laid the tube on the table, and unrolled the proclamation with a snap.

“Here be it known, in the province of Eldidd as in every province of our kingdom of Deverry, that I, Lallyn the Second, king by right of blood and right of sword, do, with full compliance of the laws and of the priesthood of Holy Bel, take it as my duty to concern myself with the line of succession of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn, being as the gwerbretrhyn is both a well-loved and an important part of our realms. While Rhys Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, still lives, let no man dare convene the Council of Electors to meddle with the lawful passage of the rhan to his possible heirs.”

Nevyn’s heart thudded once.

“Furthermore.” The herald paused to clear his throat. “Let it be known in Eldidd as in all parts of our beloved kingdom that I, Lallyn the Second, acting under the authority granted to me by Great Bel, king of all the gods, do hereby disavow and overrule utterly in all its particulars the pronouncement of the aforesaid Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn, of the ban of clan exile upon his brother, Rhodry Maelwaedd of Dun Gwerbyn.”

There was a great deal more, but no one could hear it over the cheering and shouting of the warbands, wave after wave of approval and laughter. When Nevyn looked through the crowd he found Cullyn standing at the rear door with Tevylla. In the uncertain light it was hard to tell, but he thought he saw tears glinting in the captain’s eyes. Through all the cheers Lovyan stood perfectly still, her face expressing nothing but a mild relief, a certain pleasure at the thought that justice had finally been done. Nevyn had never admired her more.

Much later, when the herald was taking his well-earned rest in the best guest chamber, Nevyo had a chance to talk with the tieryn alone, in the reception chamber of her suite. There she could allow herself a crow of triumph, and she even jigged a few steps of a country dance upon the Bardek carpet.

“So Blaen won, may the gods bless himl Truly, Nevyn, I didn’t know what to expect when Orys unrolled that bit of lamb leather.”

“No more did I. So. We have a year and a day to get Rhodry back here to claim his restoration to the clan.”

Her triumph disappeared, and she sank into a chair like an old woman.

“Ah, my poor little lad! If only we had you home! Nevyn, by the gods, you’re hiding somewhat from me. Where is Rhodry?”

“Your Grace, please, trust me. I don’t want to tell you. I beg you: take my word for it that he lives, and let the matter drop there. I promise you that the dweonier will do its best to bring him home for you.”

“I don’t know if I can accept . . . Well, what is it?”

A frightened page came creeping into the chamber.

“Your Grace? Lady Madronna sent me. His Grace is calling for you.”

Hiking up her skirts like a farm lass, Lovyan ran from the chamber, with Nevyn close behind. They came into the sickroom to find Rhys propped up on pillows. His face was a dangerous sort of scarlet, and his breath rattled in his sunken chest. Over everything hung the stink of diseased urine.

“Mother!” He had to gasp out every word. “I heard the servants talking. The misbegotten king’s recalled Rhodry, hasn’t he? Don’t you lie to me!”

“I see no need to lie to you. Your Grace.” Lovyan came over to the bedside and held out her hand. He caught it in one of his and clasped it hard, as if he were drawing strength from her touch. “Rhys, please, it’s best for Aberwyn. It’s best for the Maelwaedd clan.”

He made a sound halfway between a snarl and a cough. Deeply troubled, Nevyn hurried over.

“His Grace shouldn’t vex himself. He should rest.”

“Rest? When the king’s made a mockery of me?” His breathing was so shallow that it was hard to hear his words, “Why couldn’t he have waited till I died? He could have done that, curse him.”

“He couldn’t, Your Grace. If you should die without an heir, Aberwyn would be naught but a bone for dogs to fight over.”

For a moment that seemed to soothe the gwerbret; then he frowned as if he were thinking something through.

“Where is Rhodry?”

“On his way home, Your Grace.”

“Ah.” He paused a little while, panting, gathering breath, his ribs heaving under the fine wool coverlets. “He’s not back yet, is he now? Cursed young cub. He shan’t have what’s mine, not yet.”

“Rhys, please!” Lovyan’s voice shook with tears. “Can’t you forgive him?”

Rhys turned his head toward her, and the look in his eyes was one of weary contempt, as if he were wondering how she could possibly misunderstand something so obvious. Suddenly he coughed, a choking gurgle, and spasmed, his back arching as he fought for air. Nevyn grabbed him, slid an arm under his shoulders, and supported him until he spat the blood-tinged gobbet of phlegm out. Rhys’s eyes sought out Lovyan’s face.

“But, Mam,” he whispered, “it was mine. Truly it was.”

Then he was gone, with one last ripple of spasming, a cough that never quite came. By the door Madronna threw her head back and howled in agony, keened over and over until Lovyan rushed to her and threw her arms around her to let her sob. Although the tieryn’s face ran with tears, she was silent. Nevyn closed Rhys’s eyes and crossed his arms over his shattered chest.

“May peace be yours in the Otherlands, Your Grace,” he whispered, so softly that the women couldn’t hear him. “But I have the ghastly feeling that your hatred won’t let you rest.”

He left the women to their grief and went down to the great hall. At least he could make the formal announcement and spare Lovyan that grim duty. As he was walking up to the honor table he remembered the herald and sent a page to wake him. Although several of the men called out to Nevyn in a friendly way, no one seemed to notice that he was grim, heartsick not so much for Rhys as for what his death meant to Aberwyn. They were all too busy celebrating Rhodry’s recall. Once the drowsy herald was present, Nevyn climbed up onto the honor table and yelled for silence. The hall went abruptly quiet, the warbands turning, apprehensive at last, as they waited for him to speak. Nevyn was in no mood for fine words.

“Gwerbret Rhys is dead.”

There was a collective suck and gasp of breath.

“Her Grace, Lovyan, Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, is now regent for her younger son: Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn.”

The sound was unmistakable, a would-be cheer cut off out of respect for the dead, laughter that vanished into coughs and mumbles, smiles that disappeared into looks of stricken shame. Poor Rhys, Nevyn thought; I think me I understand you a bit better now. Yet as he looked over the hall, he wondered with bitterness in his heart if Rhodry would ever sit in the gwerbretal chair, if his loyal warbands would ever see again the young lord that they loved.