A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [105]
They rode into Deverry up Pyrdon way, crossing the border on a day still and cold under a lowering sky. The horses were restless, feeling thunder coming, dancing and snorting as their hooves hit the unfamiliar surface of a log-paved road. By a stone pillar carved with the rearing stallion of the gwerbrets of Pyrdon, Calonderiel called a halt.
“There’s no use you coming farther in,” Rhodry said.
“True spoken. Bitter partings are best over fast.”
Yet they lingered, sitting on horseback together and idly looking at the pillar. Since Rhodry could read, he translated the inscription into Elvish: a claim-stone, mostly, for the gwerbrets, though it did deign to tell them that Drw Loc, chief city of the rhan, lay some forty miles on.
“Two days riding,” Calonderiel said. “Will you be safe tonight?”
“There’s a town just ten miles down the road, or there was, anyway, last time I rode this way. I’ll find lodging there. And if the man named Evandar was telling me the truth, I’ll be safe enough with human beings around me.”
“If.”
The other men exchanged grim glances. The silence hung like the heavy air.
“Do you see that device? the Stallion?” Rhodry found himself talking merely to be talking. “Another branch of this clan holds Cwm Peel under its sign. My cousin Blaen used to rule there, but he rode to the Otherlands many a long year ago. Huh. He named his eldest son after me. Maybe I should ride east and see if young Rhodry’s still upon the earth—listen to me! He’s not young anymore, is he? If naught else, I can pour a little milk and honey on Blaen’s grave.”
“Ye gods, you’re in a morbid mood!”
“Well, so I am. It aches my heart to leave you, my friend.”
“And it aches mine to lose you. Whether you come back or no, Rhodry, you’ll always be my friend.”
Rhodry felt a lump forming in his throat and looked away fast.
“Tell my father where I’ve gotten myself to, won’t you?”
“I will. Ye gods, I don’t relish the task, I tell you. No doubt he’ll revile me for days for letting you go off like this. Devaberiel’s the only man I know with a worse temper than mine.”
They both smiled, briefly, and sat for another long moment more, studying the horizon where it darkened with storm.
“Ah, well,” Calonderiel said at last. “For the love of every god, take care of yourself on the long road.”
The silence grew. With a wave of his arm, Calonderiel called out to his men.
“Let’s ride! No need to twist the arrow in the wound.”
Rhodry steadied his horse and kept him still while they gathered in the road and clopped off. He sat, staring out across the empty meadowlands, until he could no longer hear them riding away. He was a silver dagger again, back on the long road, with no more of a name than Rhodry, not Maelwaedd, not ap Devaberiel—no name, no place, no clan to take him in. He started to laugh, his mad berserker’s chortle and howl, and headed off toward the east. It was a long time before he could make himself stop laughing.
Late in the afternoon, when thunderheads were piling and sailing in a crisp sky, Rhodry rode into a village called Tiry, a scatter of some two dozen roundhouses, all nicely whitewashed and newly thatched for the winter and set among now-leafless ash and poplar trees. Down by the banks of a small river stood the local inn and tavern behind a wooden fence. When Rhodry led his horse into the yard, the tavernman bustled out to greet him, a stout fellow with hair as yellow and as messy as the thatch.
“You’ll be wanting lodging, no doubt,” he announced. “And the gods all know that I wouldn’t turn anyone away tonight, not even a silver dagger like you.”
“My thanks, I suppose. Tonight? What—”
“Ye gods, man! It’s Samaen! Now let’s get that horse into the stables.”
Rhodry was shocked at how easily he’d lost track of the markings of Time in the world of men. How could he have forgotten Samaen, when the gates of the Otherlands open wide and the unquiet dead come walking through the lands