The Gold Falcon (39 page)

“You scared poor Meranaldar today,” Dalla said. “He actually thought you were going to hit him.”

“I had thoughts that way.” Cal tossed his head in a defiant gesture. “He gripes my soul, with all his fancy talk about kings and the like. I—” He paused for a smile. “I suppose I’m just turning into a crabby old man.”

“Oh, come now, you’re not old.”

“Of course I am, or getting that way. We were born under the same moon, Dalla, but while you were off with Evandar, I was still here in this world. I must be well over five hundred years old by now, even if you’re practically still a girl.”

“Hardly a girl! But you’re right about the flow of Time.”

He nodded, looking a little away, out to the grasslands where everything they’d known was changing, their old ways slipping away as fast as Time itself. Dalla felt such an odd tangle of emotion that at first she couldn’t put a name to any of it. Sympathy for him, perhaps, and sorrow, a melancholy to match his—but among them, half-hidden by her love of solitude, lay something finer.

“Ah, well,” Cal said at last. “I’d best be getting back.”

“Must you?” Dalla said.

He turned his head sharply to look at her. Unsmiling, for she felt as solemn as a priestess, Dalla held out her hand. When he clasped it, the comfort of his warmth, the touch of another hand on hers, gave her such an intense pleasure that she couldn’t speak. How lonely had she grown, she wondered, that a simple touch could move her so? When he leaned forward to kiss her, she slipped her arms around his neck with a sigh of profound relief.

Yet much later, when she woke in her tent to find him still asleep beside her, she wondered what she’d done.
There’s going to be a war
, she thought.
You fool! Why do you always fall in love with men who are likely to get themselves killed?
She could wonder all she wanted, but it was too late to turn aside her feelings for him now.

The Westfolk camps usually woke right at dawn, and since the prince’s alar had a long journey ahead of it, most of its members got up at the first sign of gray light in the east. Salamander woke a fair bit later to find everyone bustling around, cooking breakfast, loading horses, sorting out who would ride with Daralanteriel and who would stay under Princess Carra’s command. The sun still touched the eastern horizon, but already a windless heat lay over the grasslands.

Salamander cadged some griddle bread and honey from his father, then stood to eat it while he contemplated poverty. His escape from Zakh Gral had left him his life but little else, not a horse, not a blanket, none of his usual traveling gear.

“I suppose,” Devaberiel said, “you’ll need a horse since you’re going to Cengarn.”

“I was thinking of asking the prince for one,” Salamander said. “And a saddle and bridle.”

“And some tether ropes and saddlebags and a blanket for you, and so on and so forth.”

“That, too, alas.”

“Well, fortunately I have enough to spare. Let’s see. You’ve always liked that roan gelding. You can take him. And yesternight I sorted out some gear for you.” Devaberiel waved one hand at a neat stack beside his tent.

Salamander nearly choked on the last remnant of bread. He’d been expecting a long lecture before he got so much as a rope halter out of his father. Devaberiel was grinning, well aware of the effect he was having.

“What did you think?” Dev went on. “That I was going to berate you after you risked your life to save us all?” The grin disappeared, replaced by mournful eyes and a hand to his brow. “I know I’ve been a terrible father to you, but not so bad as all that.”

“Da, please, I don’t want to listen to you berate either yourself or me.” Salamander managed a smile. “Not first thing in the morning.”

“Agreed. Besides, no doubt you’ll be able to tell a few tales in the Cengarn market and end up burdened with more gear than before.”

“I have hopes that way, truly, though my sleight-of-hand tricks will have to wait for a new performing shirt. A thousand thanks for the horse and everything else.”

While he sorted out his new possessions, Salamander was thinking of Zakh Gral. He would have to tell his story to the gwerbret with the utmost care, he knew, both to convince Ridvar of what he’d seen and to protect Rocca. He wondered if she were really going to keep his shirt on the altar along with those other holy relics. Odd lot that they were, no doubt the shirt wouldn’t look out of place among them. And if he convinced the gwerbret to attack Zakh Gral, what would happen to Rocca then? That he might be responsible for her death—the thought turned him sick and cold.
You’ll think of something then,
he told himself.
You always do.

Although her father’s dun stood no more than twenty miles from Cengarn, Branna had never seen the city before. Tieryn Gwivyr was not the sort of man to take a daughter traveling with him, no matter how hard she begged to go. She’d had to be content with descriptions of the place from the servants who did accompany their lord when he paid his duty visits to the gwerbret. From those she’d built up a good many mental images of the city—not that she expected them to be accurate.

“It gladdens my heart,” she remarked to Neb. “Finally I get to see what Cengarn really looks like.”

Yet once the Red Wolf contingent rode up to Cengarn, perched so high on its cliffs, Branna was shocked to find that her imaginings did indeed match the reality. As they rode in the south gate, she kept looking around her, goggling like a peasant with her mouth half-open. Ahead rose the green market hill she’d seen in her mind; cut into the hillside stood the entrance to the dwarven inn, exactly as she’d imagined it. Near the gates to the dun itself stood the little hill with the spring on top, bubbling away so abundantly despite its location that everyone assumed it drew on magic as well as underground water.
I’ve been here before.
The thought intruded itself on her consciousness and would not go away, no matter how many times she told herself that such was impossible.

The great hall also looked exactly as she’d imagined it, though soot lay thick on the grand dragon sculpture embracing the honor hearth. Another baffling thought invaded her mind:
it must have been new when I saw it before.
The stairs and halls were so familiar that when servants led her and Galla up to their guest chambers, Branna could have told them the way had they asked her.

The tieryn and the noble-born in his party had been given chambers on the floor directly above the women’s hall, a spacious, beautifully appointed room for Cadryc and Galla and a pleasant if small chamber for Branna. The faded bed hangings seemed familiar, as if perhaps she’d seen a scrap of the design in a peddler’s pattern book.

“Have you seen that pattern of suns and dragons before?” Branna asked her maid. “Somewhere we visited, say.”

“I’ve not,” Midda said. “No one but the gwerbret’s closest kin could use it, I should think. It’s too much like his heraldry.”

Branna sat on the window seat out of the way while Midda made up the bed with the sheets and blankets they’d brought with them. Out on the western border not even a gwerbret could afford to furnish every room in his dun.

“We’re going to have an exciting time of it,” Midda pronounced. “The cook’s lass told me that a pack of Westfolk are coming.”

“I’m not surprised,” Branna said. “They’re sort of vassals to His Grace—well, not vassals, I suppose. Allies.”

“Their prince sent a message ahead of them. He won’t have his wife with him, though. He probably left her behind in his tent or whatever it is they live in. A human woman she is, if you can imagine such a thing!”

“I can. The Westfolk men are awfully handsome.”

“I don’t want to see you flirting with any of them, mind.”

“What? Right in front of Neb? Of course I wouldn’t.”

Midda snorted and scowled. Though she’d never said one word against him, Branna knew from her maid’s dark looks that she considered Neb beneath her lady. Once she finished the bed, Midda trotted off to the servants’ quarters to find a place to sleep and to catch up on the rest of the gwerbretal gossip. Branna went to the window and looked out on a view that seemed entirely too familiar. A thin trickle of fear ran down her back, though she couldn’t have told anyone why.

 

Neb had more standing than a maidservant, but he was still a common-born servitor, which meant he’d been given a bunk in the barracks along with the Red Wolf riders rather than a chamber in the complex of broch towers. As a peacemaking gesture, Gerran gave him the bunk directly under one of the two small windows, where the fresh air thinned the stink of sweat and horses. Neb thanked him in a way that told Gerran that the gesture had been accepted.

Once everyone was settled, Gerran led his men out, heading for the great hall and, hopefully, a tankard of ale. Neb walked alongside him. As they crossed the ward, they saw Lady Solla coming out of the cookhouse. She paused, waved, and smiled. Since Gerran believed she must be waving at someone behind him, he didn’t respond, but the scribe nudged him with a sharp elbow.

“You could at least greet her,” Neb said.

“How?”

“Smile, you dolt, and wave!”

Gerran followed orders. His reward was another smile from Solla, but just as he considered going over to speak to her, Lord Oth emerged from the cookhouse and began talking to her urgently. As they walked off together, Gerran caught a snatch of their conversation, “better slaughter another hog, then.”

“This wedding seems to be running the poor lass ragged,” Neb remarked.

Gerran grunted to show he’d heard.

“Ye gods, man!” Neb went on. “Surely you’ve noticed how lovely Lady Solla is.”

“I’ve also noticed how much higher than mine her birth is.”

“Oh, come along, Gerro! I’ll wager you’re the only person in Cengarn who cares about your rank.”

“Huh! And I’ll wager that her brother makes two of us. Besides, ye gods, I’ve better things to do with my time than stand around gossiping like a woman.”

“Womanish, is it? Well, I say that only a fool would turn his back on a lovely lass like her. Especially since she’s so well-disposed to you.”

“How she feels isn’t worth a pig’s fart if her brother’s ill-disposed. He can gain an alliance by marrying Solla to the right lord. Women like her marry to please their clan, not themselves.”

Neb started to reply, then paused, his mouth half-open, his eyes narrow, as if something had startled him. Gerran caught his mood—he assumed, at least, that he’d been affected by Neb’s mood. That old proverb, so common, suddenly seemed to hold a grave meaning, to resonate in the warm summer air like an omen of wyrd. Neb shrugged with a twitch like a fly-stung horse, and the moment passed.

“If Ridvar were so eager to gain an alliance,” Neb continued, “he’d have made her a good match years ago. There’s ill feeling between the pair of them. Why else does he treat her like a servant in her father’s dun? I’ve no idea what caused it, but you can see it between them, and her with no one to lean on or to protect her.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. Why else, or so Branna tells me,” Neb went on, “would Solla appeal to our lady Galla to give her a place as a servingwoman? It doesn’t sound to me like she’s got some grand match in the offing.”

“Huh. It doesn’t to me either.”

“Why, just the other day I saw her working in the dun garden, down on her knees like a servant.”

“What? You mean the kitchen garden?”

“Well, nearly that bad. She’s planted some roses, and she was tending them. But still, it’s a sad thing to see such a lovely lass so unhappy!”

“It is, truly. Huh. Well, scribe, you know, I’ll have to think about all of this.”

Neb smiled, well-pleased and a bit sly. With a wave of his hand he hurried off, heading to the broch, which he entered by the door on the honor side.
He’s bold as brass!
Gerran thought. Gerran followed more slowly, and he went in by the commoners’ door. He still came face-to-face with Lady Solla, however, over by the servants’ hearth, where she was giving a pair of kitchen lasses complicated orders about a barrel of dark ale.