The Gold Falcon (51 page)

“Your aunt’s very fond of you, isn’t she?”

“She is. You see, over the years she gave birth to four daughters and two sons. One son died when he was but a fortnight old. The other one’s Mirryn. One daughter died of the choking fever when she was but a little lass, another grew up but died in childbirth, and the third married a lord who inherited a demesne down in Pyrdon, too far away for visits. Oh, and then there was the miscarriage Galla had, too. I think there was only the one, anyway, and I don’t remember if it was a lass or a lad that she lost. But all of that trouble means that Adranna’s the only daughter she’s got left. When I was born, I filled a gap in her heart.”

Branna spoke so calmly about Galla’s domestic tragedies that Dallandra was taken aback. She had to remind herself just how common it was in Deverry for a woman to bear a good many children and then lose most of them.

“That’s very sad,” Dallandra said. “No wonder she’s so concerned about Adranna.”

“Truly.” Branna paused, glancing around her as if she were looking for an escape route. She swallowed heavily before she spoke. “I had another one of those dreams last night, but I couldn’t tell you about it in front of Neb.” Her voice turned to a whisper. “Would it be tedious of me to ask you about it now?”

“Not at all. Here, let’s sit down. I’ll get some cushions from the tent.”

Dallandra ducked into the tent, grabbed the first cushions she saw, and hurried out again, before Branna’s nerve failed and she ran off. When they sat down, Branna drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them to her, as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible. For a long while Branna stayed silent, staring off into the distance. Dallandra had to force herself to be patient and let her speak first.

“Well,” Branna said finally. “In the dream—wait! I’d best start admitting the truth. I remembered last night when I was asleep that before he died, Nevyn had lost much of his memory. He’d lived so long and seen so much that everything was jumbled together. At times he even had trouble remembering where we were or why we’d gone there. I was wondering if that might be why Neb doesn’t remember things as vividly as I do.”

“I’d say that it’s entirely possible, even likely.”

“But is there somewhat of Nevyn left in him?”

“There is, rather a lot of him, in fact. Neb stands like him, strides along like him, even at times says things that Nevyn always said. And then there’s his dweomer talent. The Wildfolk always recognize it in someone, you know. They flock around him.”

“True spoken. You Westfolk live so long, how do you keep your memories safe?”

“We have very different minds from Deverry folk, I suppose.”

“It’s like carrying things in sacks, then, like you told us.” Branna smiled, but faintly. “Yours must be larger.”

“Well, we also live simple lives, but truly, before the Horsekin came, we did live complex ones, in the lost cities, that is.” Dallandra paused, struck by a sudden thought. “But they were very rigid lives, from what Meranaldar’s told me. Very ritualized lives, truly—every day of the year had some meaning and some sort of religious rite that had to be performed. I wonder if that came about just because we live so long.”

“How would that help remember things?”

“It would be like a skeleton, all those rituals, for us to hang the meat of our lives upon.”

“Ah. I can see that, truly.”

“And besides, we could read and write. Writing is really frozen memory, after all. Once you’ve written a thing down, you don’t have to remember it perfectly.”

“So it is! I’d not thought of it that way before.”

Branna smiled, then let the smile fade and returned to staring off at the meadow. The sun had sunk low in the sky, and long shadows stretched across the grass and the grazing horses. In the east the twilight was beginning to velvet the sky.

“Branna?” Dallandra could stand the silence no longer. “Why are you so frightened?”

Branna hesitated, and for a moment it seemed that she might weep. She arranged an utterly insincere smile instead, a gesture that forcibly reminded Dallandra of her age, a bare fifteen summers, which by elven reckoning meant she was but a little child still.

“I want to be me,” she said at last. “Jill was so strong, so powerful, that I feel like she’s another woman entirely. She’s living inside me or suchlike—I mean, I don’t know how to say this well—but sometimes I feel her trying to take me over. Branna will be the dead one, then, and I don’t want to die.”

“No wonder you’re frightened! You know, this is another reason why so few people remember anything of their past lives.”

“It’s truly terrifying.” She was whispering. “Will I have to give myself up and turn into Jill again?”

“I intend to make sure you don’t.” Dallandra put all the calm reassurance she could summon into her voice. “You can have Jill’s memories without being Jill. Think of them as tales you heard a bard tell, or for that matter, as dreams, just as they’ve come to you. There’s valuable knowledge in them, but tales and dreams is all they are.”

“But you’ll help me?” Branna turned to her with a genuine smile. “I thought you’d—well, it seems truly silly now that I think of it.”

“I doubt very much if it’s silly, whatever it is.”

Branna hesitated, but only briefly. “I thought you’d want me to turn back into Jill. I thought maybe I’d have to if I wanted to know what she used to know.”

“Nah, nah, nah, never think that! Jill was a woman of great power, truly, but she had her faults and blind spots just as we all do. I suspect—and I hope—that she learned enough about them so you won’t need to repeat them. You need to study dweomer as Branna, not as her.”

“Thank the gods!” Branna began to say more, but tears welled and ran. She wiped them roughly away on the sleeve of her dress—a gesture that reminded Dallandra of Jill, not that she would have mentioned it.

“We’ll work through this together,” Dallandra said. “You and Neb both are going to have to come study with me and with another dweomermaster I know, Niffa of Cerr Cawnen. She’s a human being like you, and a former apprentice of mine.”

“Apprentice.” Branna grinned at her. “I like that word. I’ve found my craft and the guild I belong to.” The grin vanished. “But Aunt Galla will miss me.”

“She’ll have Lady Solla for company and, I hope, Adranna as well. We intend to do everything we can to get Adranna and her daughter safely out of that siege.”

“My thanks. There’s poor little Matto, too, but you may not be able to save him. I doubt me if Honelg will let him go, and I’m terrified that our gwerbret will have him killed even if he does leave the dun with the women.”

“What? Whatever for?”

“So he doesn’t grow up to swear vengeance. That’s just the way things go out here on the border.”

“But he’s only—” Dallandra stopped herself from launching into a diatribe against Deverry ways. “That’s very sad. I’ll see what we can do to rescue him.”

“A thousand thanks! I—” Branna broke off speaking and shuddered. “Dalla, someone’s spying on us.”

Dallandra felt the cold then as well, a thin line of ice drawn down her back. She got up and stood staring into the sky. Far above them in the gathering twilight a winged creature flew in lazy circles. For a moment she could hope that it was Arzosah, but it suddenly dipped into a turn and flew off with a flurry of wings. Since she was seeing it against a darkening sky, Dallandra could only make out a bird shape that may have been a raven—a very large raven.

“Mazrak,” Dallandra whispered. “I’d wager high that you’re no ordinary bird.” She raised her voice to a normal tone. “Why is Salamander always off somewhere when I need him? I suspect he knows who that is. Here, hold a moment.” When she concentrated on Ebañy, she could feel his mind, but it was so muddled with mead and food that she couldn’t catch his attention. “How like him!”

Branna had been listening to all of this gape-mouthed.

“That raven’s evil, isn’t it?” she said. “It must be the same one that was spying on us at home, and now the beastly thing’s followed us here.”

“It was doing what? Tell me what you know about it!”

“Well, it looks like a raven, but it’s far too big for that. It kept appearing over the dun, and it gave me a nasty cold feeling, truly, though I can’t explain why.”

“I know why. Do you know what a mazrak is?”

“I don’t.”

Dallandra sat back down. “Well, I think I’d best tell you, and right now.”

“There’sonething I must say about these Deverry lords,” Calonderiel said. “They set a good table.”

“They do at that.” Salamander belched profoundly. “Uh, sorry! Mayhap I shouldn’t have had that last goblet of mead.”

“And didn’t I try to tell you just that? We’ll be mustering at dawn for the ride north. No sleeping till noon for you, gerthddyn.”

“Oh, ye gods, have pity on this poor fool!” Salamander looked up at the stars and raised his hands to implore them. “Let the dawn come later than usual!”

“The gods have better things to do. It’s too bad about the tourney, though. They had to cancel it, of course, but I’d have liked to have seen that.”

They were walking across Dun Cengarn’s ward on their way out. Behind them the noise from the great hall still roared and murmured like a stormy sea. The feasting and the bard songs would go on for hours, no doubt, but Calonderiel, his mind on the coming war, had insisted they leave early. He’d already ordered the Westfolk archers to go down to the camp ahead of them. Salamander had seen Gerran do the same with the Red Wolf men. Prince Daralanteriel, however, had found himself bound by protocol to remain at the gwerbret’s table until the proceedings were over. Meranaldar had volunteered to stay with his prince—to lick Dar’s boots clean afterward, according to Calonderiel.

As they crossed the empty ward, their footsteps seemed to echo on the cobbles—their footsteps and someone else’s, running after them.

“Salamander! Banadar! Wait!”

It was Clae, panting for breath when he caught up to them.

“What’s all this?” Salamander said, smiling. “Now, don’t tell me you can see in the dark. How did you know it was us?”

“I saw you leaving, and I followed as fast as I could. Can I come with you? I’ve got to talk to the captain. Neb told me to find you and see if you’d help me find him.”

“He’s down at the meadow camp. Come along, then.”

They found Gerran sitting with Dallandra and, surprisingly enough, Branna at a campfire, burning for its light. With the Red Wolf men sharing the meadow, Dallandra wouldn’t have dared to make a dweomerlight, no matter how warm the evening. Clae bowed to both women in turn, but it was a clumsy gesture, since he kept glancing Gerran’s way as if for approval.

“Forgive me, my ladies,” the lad said, “but somewhat’s happened, and I have to tell the captain.”

“Then tell away,” Dallandra said, smiling. “We don’t bite.”

Clae managed a smile, then bowed again, this time to Gerran. “Well, uh,” he began, “a groom stole two horses and left the dun.”

“If they were in the dun, they couldn’t be our horses, lad,” Gerran said. “You should be telling Lord Blethry this.”

“Lord Blethry left this noontide to take some messages to some allies in the mountains. He won’t be back for ever so long. And I didn’t want to tell just anyone in case they believed in Alshandra.”

“What? Why would that matter?”

“Because I think the thief’s going to Lord Honelg to warn him.”

Gerran swore and rose to his feet, as supple as a cat and twice as fast. “Why do you think that?”

“You know how we’ve all been helping tend the horses? Me and Coryn and the other lords’ pages, and all the grooms, I mean.”

“I do. Go on.”

“So I heard things, the grooms talking and suchlike, and some of the other servants, too, when they’d come out to the stables to fetch a horse for some lord. And a couple of them worship Alshandra—well, maybe. They never come right out and say it, but then, they wouldn’t, would they?”

“Cursed right, they wouldn’t, not if they had half a wit between them, anyway.” Gerran sounded more weary than angry. “Ah, by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell!”

“And so, this groom named Raldd, he took a pair of horses out of the dun to exercise them. I saw him go, and he had a couple of saddlebags and what looked like a rolled-up blanket tied to the saddle. And then he never came back. They were two of Prince Voran’s horses, so they’d been put in proper stalls in the stables. That’s how I know where they should have been. I kept looking for them, but it got dark, and they were never there. And so just now I looked all over the dun, and when I couldn’t find him or the horses, I decided I’d best tell you.”

“Good job, lad.” Calonderiel nodded at Clae. “You have good eyes and the wits to match them.”

“My thanks, sir,” Clae said.

“The banadar’s right.” Gerran’s mouth flickered in one of his rare smiles. “You’ve done truly well.”