A Time of War. Katharine Kerr
‘You know what I really hate, Meer? They did take my grandfather’s knife, and it were the only thing of his I ever did have that were just mine.’
Meer moaned as he passed the cup back.
‘If only I’d never brought you on this fool’s errand!’
‘It’s what the gods did decide for us. I guess.’ Jahdo heard his voice break as he wished from the bottom of his heart that he’d never come, either. ‘You couldn’t know Thavrae was going to be killed.’ He swallowed hard, concentrating on pouring himself water. ‘Oh. You know what? I do have somewhat to give you, and I never did remember it till this moment.’ He gulped the water, set the cup down, and began fishing in his pocket. ‘Here they are. It’s the stuff Thavrae wore, the amulets and things. I did cut them off for you.’
When Jahdo laid them in Meer’s palm, the bard tightened his fingers over them for a moment, then muttered a curse and flung them hard against the wall.
‘I have done what our mother asked. I will do no more. If it weren’t for him and his foul demons, his false gods, his blasphemy and his heresy, then our clan would still have the hope of life, and neither you nor I would be caged here in this loathsome dungeon. Is it not one of the seven worst things in all of life, to fall into the hands of one’s enemies?’
Jahdo tried to find some comforting thing to say and failed. He broke the bread up into chunks and gave Meer a big one, but the bard handed it back.
‘Eat it all, lad, the whole loaf. You are young, and you have hope. Many a faithful slave’s been rewarded with freedom.’
‘But bain’t you hungry?’
Meer shook his head no.
‘Meer, you must be – oh Meer, don’t. Don’t starve yourself to death. You mayn’t, you mayn’t! You’re all I’ve got, Meer. Please eat some of this bread. Please.’
Meer folded his arms over his chest and turned his head away. No matter how Jahdo begged and wept, he spoke not one word. In the end Jahdo gave up. His own stomach was growling from the scent of food. He wiped his face as best he could on his filthy sleeve and began to eat. Meer must have heard, because he allowed himself a brief smile.
Jahdo finished one chunk and started on another. He was wondering if they’d be fed more later in the day, or if he should be saving half the loaf, when he heard a slight sound without the door, or so he thought until he looked up to find someone inside the cell with them.
In the dim light she seemed to glow, a beautiful woman, tall and slender with long ash-blonde hair that cascaded down her back, deep-set eyes the colour of storm clouds but slit vertically like a cat’s, and the strangely long and curled ears he’d seen on the god by the stream. She was dressed in clothes of silvery grey, a full shirt, belted at the waist, a pair of doeskin trousers, and boots of the same.
‘Evandar wouldn’t come himself, but I can’t bear to leave you this way, child. Fear not: things aren’t as dark as they must seem. I promise you that.’
She seemed to swirl like a trail of smoke above a campfire; then she was gone.
‘What was that voice?’ Meer snapped. ‘Who was that?’
‘It were a goddess.’ Jahdo had never been so sure of anything in his life. ‘A goddess did come to us, Meer. It’s needful for you to eat now, bain’t it? She came and did say that all be well.’
When Jahdo handed him the bread, he began to eat, slowly, savouring each bite in something like awe, while Jahdo poured himself more water and drank it the same way.
After he made his final threats to the jailor, the man who preferred to be known only as Rhodry from Aberwyn stood in the ward for a moment, considering how badly he wanted a bath and some clean clothes after a fortnight in the saddle. He knew, however, that he’d best make his report to those who’d sent him on this hunt. He headed across the ward to the broch complex, aiming for one of the smaller towers that were joined to the flanks of the main broch. Although he was planning on slipping in quietly, he found waiting for him a man he couldn’t ignore. A tall, hard-muscled fellow with moonlight-pale blond hair and grey eyes, Lord Matyc of Dun Mawrvelin was leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. Since he had no choice, Rhodry made him a bow.
‘Good morrow, my lord. Somewhat I can do for you?’
‘Just a word, silver dagger. Those two prisoners you just brought in? By whose order did you take them?’
‘The gwerbret’s himself, my lord. He sent me and Yraen out with a few of his own men.’
‘I see.’
His lordship peeled himself off the door and walked away without so much as a fare thee well. And since it was the gwerbret, Rhodry thought, there’s not one wretched thing you can do about it, is there? He would have disliked so arrogant a man as Matyc on principle alone, but recently an incident or two had left Rhodry wondering just how loyal the lord was to his overlord, Gwerbret Cadmar of Cengarn. What interested him about this latest brush with his lordship was not that Matyc had asked him a question – simple curiosity would have explained that – but the lack of further questions, such as a wondering about who Meer might be or how he’d been found, the normal sort of things you’d expect a man to ask. Rhodry watched Matyc until the lord had gone into the main broch, then went on his own way.
Right inside the door of the side tower a wrought iron staircase led up every bit as steeply as the dwarven stairs, spiralling round and past all four floors of the small and wedge-shaped chambers belonging to various of the gwerbret’s honoured servitors. On the fifth and final floor was an open area for storing sacks of charcoal to one side and one last chamber to the other. Rhodry stood for a moment catching his breath, then knocked. A woman’s voice called for him to enter. He hesitated ever so slightly before he opened the door and strode in.
Dressed in pale grey brigga and a heavily embroidered white shirt, Jill was sitting on a curved, three-legged chair with a large leather-bound book on the table in front of her. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s, was perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, so that her blue eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, in fact, she was shockingly thin, and quite pale, yet she hardly seemed weak, her eyes snapping with life when she smiled, her voice strong and vibrant as well.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Success?’
‘Just that. We followed your directions and found them just about where you said they’d be, one human lad, one Gel da’Thae. I’ve stowed them in the dungeon keep.’
Jill made a face.
‘Oddly enough, they’re safer there than anywhere,’ Rhodry went on. ‘Feeling in the town’s running high. A lot of townsfolk lost kin to those raiders, and the word’s gone round that their leader was a hairy creature straight out of the third Hell. How are they going to feel about having another of the same lot right within reach? Here, an odd thing. That Gel da’Thae I killed was this bard’s brother.’
‘Odd, indeed. How do you know the prisoner’s a bard?’
‘His servant told me. And here’s the oddest thing of all. They speak the same tongue as Deverry men do. I’ve never been so surprised in my life, Jill. The lad just spoke right up, and I could understand him. Not easily at first, mind. His way of speaking’s a fair bit different, all flat and watery, like, and he uses a lot of words that I’d say were very old. The kind of thing you find in my esteemed ancestor’s books – words that haven’t been spoken round here in two hundred years.’
‘No doubt they haven’t, and no doubt he was as surprised as you were. If I’m guessing a-right, his forefathers were escaped bondsmen. The bondfolk came from many different tribes, you see, before our ancestors conquered the lot. And each of those, or so the lore runs, had its own language, a hundred of them all told, or so the priests say.’ She tapped the book before her with reed-slender fingers. ‘The only tongue that they all had in common was the language of their old masters, and they were forced