A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [147]
“A sad thing, that.”
She knew that he felt no honest compassion, but that he would mimic it for her sake was comfort enough.
“Rhodry still has the whistle,” she said. “He wouldn’t give it up. He says he wants to have a talk with you, and that you’ll have to come fetch it back yourself.”
Evandar laughed with a flash of his sharp white teeth.
“Then a talk he shall have. I like a man with mettle, I do. Imph, I suppose I’d best stay here in this world. If I go back with you, I might miss him entirely.”
“True spoken. Here, where were you? I called for you—well, last night it would have been here, whatever that might have been in your country.”
For a moment he looked puzzled.
“Ah! I’d gone to the islands to see how Jill fares. She’s been ill, it turns out, but now she’s well again and learning much new dweomer lore. She’ll be growing wings like one of us next, if she keeps on this way.”
“That’s a dangerous thing for a human being to try to learn. I wonder how skilled her teachers are, and if they know the differences from soul to soul.”
Evandar laughed aloud.
“I’d wager a great deal that they do, my love, but you look like a mother cat chasing her kittens away from danger! Get on your way back, then. I’ll take your horse and follow our Rhodry down. I doubt me if I’ll tell him what he wants to know, but maybe he’ll have a riddle or two to trade.”
“Well and good, then.” She paused to kiss him on the mouth. “And you promised me you’d return that stolen mule and all its goods, didn’t you now?”
“So I did, so I did. I’ll summon one of my people straightaway, I promise you.”
“My thanks. Meet me by our river.”
With him so close beside her, she could use his particular dweomer to breach the planes. She floated onto the surface of the stream and dashed along the rippled road, saw the fog of the Gatelands opening out, and stepped up and through. She had just time to turn and wave to Evandar, standing on the streamside, before the fog shut her round. At her neck hung again the amethyst figurine. She kept walking through the misty landscape beyond the gate until she could be sure that Evandar and the lands of men lay far behind her. Then she sat down on a cold, damp hillside and wept for Rhodry Maelwaedd, whom most likely she’d never see again.
The neutral ground turned out to be a day and a half’s ride from Lord Comerr’s and down in the plains on the Deverry side of the Pyrdon hills. Out in front of the walled dun of a certain Tieryn Magryn, whose chief distinction lay in his lack of ties to either Comerr or Adry, the gwerbret’s warband had set up camp in a meadow lush with spring grass. As soon as Lord Erddyr and his escort dismounted, a hundred men surrounded them—all in the friendliest possible way, but Yraen knew that they were being taken under arrest to keep them away from Lord Nomyr and his riders. Some of the gwerbret’s men took their horses; others escorted them on a strict path through canvas tents. At the far end, a few hundred yards from the hill of the dun, stood a long canvas pavilion, draped with the green and blue banners of the gwerbrets of Dun Trebyc to cover the rips and weather stains. A tall blond man in his thirties, Gwerbret Drwmyc sat in a chair carved with the eagle blazon of his clan. Behind him stood two councillors, and a scribe sat at a tiny table nearby.
Kneeling at the gwerbret’s right side, Lord Nomyr was already present; his honor guard sat in orderly rows behind him. With a wave at his men to settle themselves, Erddyr knelt at the gwerbret’s left. The gwerbret’s men stood round the scene with their hands on their sword hilts, ready for the first sign of trouble.
“It gladdens my heart to see you both arrive so promptly,” Drwmyc said. “Now. Lord Erddyr, by whose authority do you come?”
“Comerr’s himself, Your Grace. He gave me his seal and swore in front of witnesses to abide by the settlement I make in his name.”
“Well and good. Lord Nomyr?”
“By the authority of Lady Talyan, regent for her son, Lord Gwandyc,