A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [111]
Rhodry gave him a sharp and searching look, but he’d never seen anyone so sincere. In fact, the lad blushed, and that very embarrassment stood as witness to the truth of his tale.
“I’ll wager you think it’s daft or womanish or both.”
“Not in the least. Well, ride with me a while, then, and we’ll see what the long road brings us. I’m not promising anything, mind. I’m just not sending you away. There’s a difference.”
“There is, at that, but you have my thanks, anyway.”
As he thought about the story, with its talk of serving women and fetes, Rhodry realized why Yraen looked like a man of twenty but at times acted like a boy. He must have been raised in a very wealthy clan indeed, sheltered down in Deverry by their power and position from the hard times that aged a man fast on the border. Grudgingly he admitted that he rather admired the boy for wanting to leave all that comfort behind and ride looking for adventure. He’ll learn soon enough, he thought. One good rough time of it, and I’ll wager I can send him home—if he lives through whatever the gods choose to send us.
At the moment it seemed that the gods were planning on sending them a storm. Slate-gray swirled with black, the sky hung low in the cold morning, though the rain held off for a few miles. They rode through farmland at first; then a twist in the road brought them to a thin stand of pines and an overlook, where they halted their horses. Some thirty feet below them lay Loc Drw, dark and wrinkled in the wind, stretching off to the north where, in a haze of distance, they could just pick out the stone towers of the gwerbret’s dun.
“I’ve heard that it stands on a little island,” Rhodry remarked. “You reach it by a long causeway. A splendid defensive position.”
“Ah. Well, maybe if this feud in the hills has come to naught, we can find shelter there.”
Rhodry merely nodded. Seeing the lake was affecting him in a way that he couldn’t understand. Although he’d never been in Pyrdon, not once in his life, the long sweep of water looked so achingly familiar that he wasn’t even surprised to hear someone calling his name.
“Rhodry! Hold a moment!”
When Rhodry turned in the saddle, he saw Evandar riding up on a milk-white horse with rusty-red ears. The Guardian was wrapped in a pale gray cloak with the hood shoved back to reveal his daffodil-yellow hair.
“You took my advice, did you?” He smiled in a way meant to be pleasant, but Rhodry noticed his teeth, as sharp and pointed as a cat’s. “Good, good.”
“I had little choice in the matter, but truly, good advice it seems to be. She hasn’t followed me here.”
“I doubt me if she will.” Evandar paused, rummaging in a little leather bag he wore at his belt. “A question for you. Have you ever seen a thing like this before?”
“A whistle, is it?” Rhodry automatically held out his hand and caught it when Evandar tossed it over. “Ych! It looks like it’s made of human bone!”
“Or elven, truly, except it’s too long. I thought at first that two finger joints had somehow been joined into one, but look at it, close like.”
Rhodry did so, holding it up and twisting it this way and that. All at once he remembered Yraen. The lad was clutching his saddle peak with both hands, leaning forward and staring, his mouth slacked open like a half-wit’s.
“I told you that you should ride back to your father’s dun,” Rhodry said, grinning. “It’s not too late.”
Yraen shook his head in a stubborn no. Evandar looked him over with a thoughtful tilt of his head.
“And you are?”
“My name’s Yraen,