The Gold Falcon (32 page)

“Do be careful,” he said. “I keep being afraid you’ll fall.”

“Oh, heights don’t bother me. They never have. I used to love to climb the walls of my father’s dun, too.” And in her dreams, Branna suddenly remembered, she could fly like a falcon, indeed, as a falcon.

“Is somewhat wrong?” Neb said.

“There’s not. Why?”

“You went a bit pale.”

“Did I? Oh, it’s of no importance. I was just remembering a thing that Salamander told me once.” Branna was afraid that Neb would ask more, but he apparently had a more pressing matter on his mind.

“Um, well, did you ask your aunt yet?” he said. “About our marriage, I mean.”

“I’ve not had the chance. Omaena and Pedrys didn’t leave till late in the morning, and my aunt’s been going over accounts with Lord Veddyn, to see how much food and suchlike the tourney used up.”

Neb looked as disappointed as a child when rain spoils a promised excursion. Branna turned slightly and gazed out over the long view, the green fields and tidy farmsteads, the sparkling little river. In one of the river’s bends a herd of white cows had lined up to drink, looking like a drift of snow from her distance. She remembered, as she watched them, her dreams of swooping over the countryside on a pair of strong wings, and how the view had looked from high in the air.

“You still want to marry me, don’t you?” Neb’s voice turned urgent. “You’re not too frightened, are you?”

“Frightened? Of course not!” Branna turned back to look at him. “Besides, whether I marry you or not, I’m going to have to make some kind of peace with the dweomer.”

“You look frightened.” Neb tilted his head to one side to study her face.

“Beast!” She nearly stuck out her tongue at him, then decided that the gesture lacked dignity. “Oh, very well, I’ll admit it. Last night was frightening.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked the Wildfolk for that golden ball.”

“Nah nah nah! That wasn’t it. It’s the other lass. The one that seems to live inside my mind. I was so aware of her last night, and I want to be me, not her.”

“Oh.” Neb considered this seriously for a moment. “Well, I feel that other man inside me, too, but—let me think, how to say this—but he seems to be me, or another me, or suchlike. I’m not frightened because I know he’s part of me. What about that lass? Isn’t she just part of you?”

“I suppose. But there’s sort of a gap between us. Oh, that doesn’t make any sense!”

“In a way it does. I just don’t know enough to help you.”

For a moment Branna came close to weeping. Why had she been so sure that Neb could help, that he would somehow solve the problem and banish her fear?

“Here, here,” Neb said, and he held out his hand. “Come down, my love.”

She nodded and jumped the little way down to the wooden catwalk. He caught her hand and drew her close, kissed her, brushed the tears away. In his arms she felt suddenly safe.

“Well, one of us will find the answer,” she said. “If not, there’s Salamander, and if not him, then maybe we’ll find someone who knows.” She looked up at him and smiled. “And I’ll talk with my aunt as soon as ever I can.”

“That will gladden my heart. I—” Neb abruptly paused and looked up. “That’s odd.”

“What?” Branna let go of him and looked up.

In the sky a single raven wheeled over the dun, a large bird, too large, really, for his kind. She shivered, watching it dip and circle in utter silence.

“It’s the only one I’ve seen around here,” Neb said. “I wonder if it’s scared the others off?”

“I’ve seen this one before. When was—that’s right. I saw it the first day I came here.”

“Was it just circling like this?”

“It was.”

Neb climbed to the top of the wall and knelt between two merlons. Suddenly the raven squawked in alarm. With the dip of a wing it turned and flew off fast, heading north.

“It knew we were watching it,” Neb said. “I don’t like this, not in the least.”

“No more do I. Let’s hope it’s not an ill omen.”

“True spoken.” Neb smiled at her, a forced gesture as if he were trying to lighten the mood. “Especially not about our marriage.”

“Especially not that. Let’s go down to the great hall, shall we? I don’t want to be up here, all of a sudden. I hope that beastly thing doesn’t come back.”

They climbed down, but as they walked across the ward, Branna kept glancing at the sky. All that day the image of the raven circling above the dun returned to her, as troubling as rumors of war.

 

As the summer afternoon stretched out long shadows, and the smell of cooking filled the ward, the warband and servitors, the servants and the noble-born all began to gather in the great hall. Neb took his usual place at Lord Veddyn’s table, though the old man had yet to appear.

At the other end the head groom’s wife was cutting up peaches and handing out the pieces to her brood of five children. Long streaks of sunlight, turned gold with dust, poured in through the west-facing windows. At the honor table Branna and Lord Mirryn were playing Carnoic while Tieryn Cadryc leaned back in his chair and watched, a tankard of ale in his hand. The dun’s dogs ambled in to flop into the straw on the floor near the warband—the messiest eaters and the most likely to toss them a bone or two. Serving lasses wandered around, handing out baskets of bread and tankards of ale.

Neb sipped his ale and considered how the raven, flying so silently over the dun, had ruined the peaceful ease of a summer’s day. Ravens, the largest of the carrion crows, were generally birds of ill omen, but this particular bird seemed something more. Neb remembered bits of Salamander’s fanciful tales, which often included sorcerers who could turn themselves into birds. Neb could imagine his mother heaping scorn on the very idea. She would have been right, too, he decided, but the image of the raven kept hovering around his mind as the bird itself had hovered over the dun.

Still, Neb refused to let it spoil his happiness. Branna had agreed to marry him. Neb smiled out at nothing while he wondered what it would be like to spend the rest of his life in this dun. Pleasant in the spring and summer, no doubt, and cramped and vexing in the winter, but bearable if Branna were his wife.
Where else could we live?
he asked himself.
She’ll not want to travel the roads as the wife of a wandering letter-writer or suchlike.
Perhaps they could go back to Trev Hael, where he might set up shop as his father had, a scribe and dealer in parchments and inks. He decided that worrying about this decision now was a waste of time. Everything depended on winning approval for their marriage.

And that approval depended on Lady Galla. By the time she and Lord Veddyn finally came in to take their usual places, the serving lasses were beginning to bring platters of cold pork, left from yesterday’s feast, and still more fresh-picked peaches to go with it. Branna wouldn’t be able to discuss the matter with her aunt at table. The evening passed in a slow agony. First Lady Galla and Branna lingered over their meal; then they retreated to the women’s hall. Were they talking about him? Neb could only wait and see.

By the time that Branna came back down, Neb was half-asleep and alone at the table. Cadryc and Mirryn had retired upstairs, and most of the warband had left the great hall as well, including—thankfully—Gerran. As Branna walked downstairs, she looked so solemn that Neb feared the worst, but she sat down next to him, a gesture she’d not have made if her aunt was refusing to consider such a marriage.

“We’ve had quite the clan parley,” Branna said, “out in the corridor in front of the women’s hall.”

“And?” Neb said.

“It’s my father. The problem, I mean. Aunt Galla’s all in favor of my marrying you, and Uncle Cadryc doesn’t object. He was surprised, and so was Mirryn, that I wouldn’t choose Gerran, but Uncle said, well, I’m not the one marrying the lad, so it’s up to you.” She paused, her eyes troubled. “But we’ll have to ask Da, and the gods only know what he’ll say.”

“Here, if he didn’t even want you in his dun, why would he object?”

“Oh, it’s not me. It’s the honor of thing. His daughter, marrying a commoner—he might start breathing fire and swearing at the very thought. We honestly don’t know how he’ll take it.”

Neb groaned aloud. Branna reached over and patted his arm.

“Well, if worse comes to worst,” she said, “we can run away together, and even if they catch us, I’ll be dishonored and they’ll have to let us marry.”

“If he doesn’t beat you—”

“Do you think the Wildfolk would let him?”

Neb grinned in slow satisfaction. “They wouldn’t, and it would be a sight worth seeing if he tried. But what shall we do next? Write him a letter?”

“I don’t know. Aunt Galla wants to think about it before we do anything. She knows him better than anyone, after all. She’s his sister.”

“Very well, then. I’ll be guided by our lady’s advice.”

“I truly do think that’s best.” Branna frowned down at the table. “I wonder if there’s going to be a war soon. I’ve been having the oddest sort of—well, they’re not dreams, because I’m awake when they happen, but they’re sort of pictures and the like, about our men fighting the Horsekin.”

“Do we win?”

“They don’t go that far.” Branna looked up, her face pale. “You believe that I’ve seen omens, don’t you?”

“I do. Why would I doubt you?”

Branna laid her hand at her throat and looked away for a long silence. Finally she said, “I wish Salamander would get back here! That’s all. He’ll either have news of the Horsekin or he won’t, and he’ll either know what’s happening to us or he won’t, and ye gods, I’m sick of waiting to find out.”

Salamander himself was wishing that he were back in the tieryn’s dun. Rocca had been leading him west by an improbably round-about route. Certain rock formations, she told him, were cursed and had to be avoided, just as certain ancient trees held evil spirits. A particular stream held water so heavily enchanted, or so she believed, that they followed it upstream for miles until it became narrow enough for them to jump across it. In the virgin forest, where bracken and shrubs grew thick between the trees, Salamander was forced to walk and lead his pair of horses along narrow trails.

“You know,” he said one evening, “if we turned south, we could travel across grassland, and it would be faster.”

“What? Never!” Rocca said. “This stretch of the journey, it be terrible dangerous enough as it is. The open land, it be worse.”

“It is?” Salamander said. “Why?”

“Because of Vandar’s spawn.”

“Who?”

“The Lord of Evil, Vandar, did father children on beasts.” Rocca glanced around and lowered her voice, as if she feared spies lurking in the wild forest around them. “They do look somewhat like men and Horsekin, but their eyes do give them away, all slit like cats and bestial. And their ears! It be a custom amongst them, that they do torture their children as babies, you see, to fill them with hate and bile. They do pull upon the child’s ears and cut them with sharp knives. Betimes even do they touch them with hot irons.” She shuddered dramatically. “Mayhap some knowledge of them has come your way. Men call them the Westfolk.”

Salamander was so shocked that he could do nothing but gape at her.

“It be a horrible thing, bain’t?” Rocca continued. “But fear not! The Children of Alshandra shall prevail in the end. It be our wyrd to kill every single one of the Spawn and make the plains clean and pure again. And then our people, they may graze their horses on the abundance of Alshandra’s good grass.”

“I see.” Salamander managed to find his voice. “And what then? Once we have enough horses, are we going to conquer Deverry as well?”

“Nah, nah, nah, naught as horrid as that! With the Spawn destroyed, we shall live in peace on the grasslands, and we shall set about sending missionaries to Deverry. That be the dearest hope of every priest and priestess.”

“What about your warleaders? Rakzanir, I think they’re called. Do they want to live in peace?”

Rocca bit her lower lip and looked sharply away. “Well,” she said after a moment, “it be true that they be a stubborn lot. Not always do they see eye to eye with our priestesses.”

“I rather thought they wouldn’t.”

“But in the end, the holy council will win. Alshandra the Wise does help us, and she will melt their hearts and teach them mercy and mild ways. I do ken it in my heart, and so does Lakanza. She be the high priestess, Her Holiness Lakanza, and she be ever so old and wise. She prays every day that she may live to see the truth spreading among Deverry men. In my heart I ken that it be wyrd. Look at Honelg and his blessed kin and clan! Their faith be strong and pure, bain’t? And you, too, for that matter—you did recognize the truth the moment you heard it.”

“Well, so I did.”

“We do call it waking up. Most people, Horsekin and Deverry folk alike, they do live their lives asleep. They do believe in their false gods and dream the years away. But Alshandra’s truth be a silver horn, calling out the signal to wake and rise.”