A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [104]
“How?” Rhodry said. “Did they say?”
“In his sleep. As peaceful as you’d want, or so they heard. Well, he’d lived a full life, after all, not like poor little Oldana, and no doubt he’s gone to join those Great Ones that dweomerfolk speak of.”
“True spoken.” Without thinking, Rhodry slipped into Deverrian. “But it aches my heart all the same. Will his apprentice succeed him?”
“He will, but he’s up north somewhere. Shall we ride after him? The gods only know when We’d catch up with him, and I think you’re in too much danger for us to wander aimlessly about, my friend.”
“So do I. I think me that I’ve been given an omen as well as sad news.”
“You’re going to leave us?”
Rhodry hesitated, staring off at the horizon and the endless sea of green, rippling in a rising wind. For years his entire life had been bounded by grass and grazing, the herds and the seasons of the year, the vast freedom of following the herds and the grass. To go back to the lands of men, to cities and to farms—what would he do there?
“Staying here would put you all in danger,” he said aloud. “Evandar—I suppose that’s the Guardian who spoke to me that night—Evandar seemed to think that leaving was my only choice. And without Aderyn…” He let his voice trail away. “Well, I sold my sword once before. I can do it again.”
“Ye gods! Not that!”
“What choice do I have?”
“I don’t know. But let’s shelter here tonight anyway. Don’t go rushing into some decision you’ll regret.”
“Good advice. Done, then.”
But that evening, as they sat around a fire with their hosts, Rhodry barely listened to the talk and the music round him. As much as he hated to leave the Westlands, he felt Deverry pulling at him, the memories of his native land rising in his mind as easily and as vividly as his native language had come back. All at once he realized that he was thinking of his ride east as “going home.” He looked up and found Calonderiel watching him in some concern.
“You look like a man with a bad case of boils,” the banadar remarked. “Or are you brooding about that female?”
“Neither. I’ve made up my mind. It’s east that I’ll be heading.”
Calonderiel sighed in a long puff of breath.
“I’ll hate to see you go, but it’s probably for the best. I suppose you’ll be safe there. At least the spirit won’t trouble you, but what about the Round-ears?”
“If I stay out of Eldidd, no one’s going to recognize me.”
“Even if they did, they’d never believe you were Rhodry Maelwaedd anyway. How strange, they’d say, that silver dagger looks a fair bit like the old gwerbret, the one who drowned so mysterious like all those years ago.”
Rhodry smiled, but there was no humor in it.
“No doubt. Will you ride with me to the border?”
“Of course. It’s too cursed dangerous to let you go alone. Humph. I’ve got some Deverry coin with me. The handful I got from those merchants a couple of months ago, remember? You’re taking it with you.”
“Now here, I don’t want—”
“Hold your tongue! It won’t do me a cursed bit of good, and it’ll keep you warm this winter. You have the worst ill luck of any man I’ve ever known.” Calonderiel sounded personally aggrieved. “Why couldn’t this stupid bitch of a spirit at least wait until spring?”
Rhodry started laughing. It came boiling out of his very heart, shaking him, choking him, but still he laughed on and on, until Calonderiel grabbed him by the shoulders and made him stop.
In the days that followed, as he rode back east to the lands of men with Calonderiel and their escort, he found himself thinking of Aderyn, remembering all the times they’d spent together, all the favors that the old man had done him, though “favors” was much too mild a word. Ye gods, he would think, what’s going to happen to the kingdoms now? First Nevyn gone in Deverry, and now Aderyn dead in the Westlands! Although he knew that there were other dweomerworkers in both lands to protect their peoples, still it troubled his heart, this feeling that some great and dreadful thing was coming toward them all on a dark wind. The two deaths—Oldana so young,