A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [145]
Afterward, she lay panting and sweaty in his arms and listened to his heart pounding close to hers. The candle threw guttering shadows on the wooden walls as outside the wind rose, whispering in the thatch. Rhodry kissed her eyes, her mouth, then loosened his hold upon her and moved a little away. He looked so sad that she laid her hand alongside his face; he turned his head and kissed her fingers, but he said nothing, merely watched the shadows leaping this way and that. She sat up, running both hands through her hair and sweeping it back from her face.
“Do you really have to ride with Erddyr when he goes?” she said.
He grinned at that and looked her way again.
“I already said we would, Yraen and me.”
“Is it going to be safe? Erddyr said something about Adry’s men wanting to kill you.”
“And the laws will make the gwerbret forbid them any such thing, if I appeal in his court. I want it over and settled before we ride on.” He sat up, stretching and yawning. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a fancy to travel the roads with a silver dagger? You don’t have to answer that, mind, just a wondering. I know you’ve work at hand, and I—ye gods! What’s that?”
She slewed round and saw someone—or something—crouched in the shadows at the curve of the wall. It was too small to be the snouted creature she’d seen before; more doglike, it had tiny red eyes that glowed like coals in a fire and long fangs that glistened wet. When Dallandra flung up one hand and sketched a sigil in the air, it shrieked and disappeared. Rhodry swore under his breath.
“I wish you’d just give me that wretched whistle and be done with it,” she said.
“What? And let you face those creatures instead of me?”
“I happen to know how to deal with them.”
“True spoken. But if I give it to you, what will you do? Go back to that other country?” All at once he grinned. “I’d rather you tarried here a little while longer.”
“Oh, would you now?”
She saw the whistle lying not far away, where it had rolled when he’d taken his shirt off, and made a grab at it. He was too fast, catching her wrists and dragging her back, even though she struggled with him. She found herself laughing, let him pull her close, kissed him until he let her go so they could lie down together again. But before he made love to her, he picked the whistle up and tucked it into the straw under her head, where nothing could steal it away.
This time, when they were finished, he fell asleep, so suddenly, so completely, that it seemed he would sink into the straw and disappear. She slipped free of his arms and stood up. As naked as a country woman worshiping her goddess in the fields, she raised her arms and called down the light. Moving deosil she used her outstretched hand as a weapon to draw a circle of blue light round the hut and seal it at the quarters with the sigils of the kings of the elements. With a flick of her hand she set the circle moving, turning, glowing golden as it formed into a revolving sphere with the sleeping Rhodry safe in its center. No member of any host, whether elemental or astral, could breach this wall.
As silently as she could, she sat down next to him and worked the whistle free from the straw. She could steal it now, slip out into the night, and be gone to Evandar’s country before he even woke for an argument. No doubt Timryc would arrive on the morrow to nurse