A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [75]
A feeling that, it turned out, was well justified. Hand in hand they drifted down from the hilltop to find the Host feasting in the meadowlands. It seemed a huge pavilion of cloth-of-gold, hung with blue banners, sheltered rows of long tables, set with candles in silver candelabra, but once inside Dallandra realized that she could look through the roof and see stars, spread in the long drift of the Snowy Road. Music floated over the talk and laughter as they made their way through the tables and asked for his child. None had seen her. All at once the pavilion changed, grew stone inside the cloth, the meadow crisping into straw, the banners transmuting to faded tapestries. Out of the corner of her eye Dallandra thought she saw fire leaping in a huge stone hearth, yet when she looked straight at it, she saw only the moon, rising through a mullioned window.
“Come with me.” Evandar tugged her hand so hard that he nearly dragged her away. “I don’t like this.”
At the back door they found Elessario, dressed in a long tunic of blue, kirtled at the waist with a silver, white, and green plaid. In her hands she carried a loaf of bread, which she offered to an old beggar woman, all gnarled hands and brown rags, leaning on a bit of stick.
“Mother, Mother,” the child was saying. “Why won’t you come in and feast?”
“No more am I welcome in your father’s hall. Child, can’t you see that they plot your death? Come away, come with me to safety. Better the life of a beggar on the roads than this murderous luxury.”
“Mother, no, they mean to give us life, true life, the like of which we’ve never had before.”
The old woman spat onto the ground.
“Touching, Alshandra, very touching,” Evandar said suddenly. “Truly, you should go be born into Deverry and grow into a bard.”
With a howl of rage the beggar woman rose up, shedding her rags like water dripping, dressed now in a deerskin tunic and boots; her stick became a hunting bow, and her hair flowed gold over her shoulders. Dimly, at the margins of her sight, Dallandra realized that the stone broch behind them had disappeared, and that the cloth-of-gold pavilion glimmered in the moonlight in its stead.
“My curse upon you, Evandar!” Alshandra snarled. “A mother’s curse upon you and your elven whore both!”
With a gust of wind and a swirl of dry leaves from some distant forest’s floor, she disappeared. Evandar rubbed his chin and sighed.
“She always could be a bit tiresome,” he remarked. “Elli, come with us. I’ve a lesson to give Dallandra, and I’m not leaving you here alone.”
As Bardekian merchantmen go, the ship was a good one, soundly built and deep, with room enough in the hold for the troupe’s gear and room enough on deck twixt single mast and stern for them to camp under improvised tents. The troupe’s horses had a comfortable place up on the deck tethered by the bow rather than in the stinking hold. During the crossing Jill spent most of her time in their equine company. Even in normal circumstances the troupe lived in a welter of spats and jests, gossip and sentiment, outright fights and professions of undying loyalty, and now that they were sailing off to unknown country, they as tightly strung as the wela-wela. Tucked in between the horses and the bow rail, Jill could have privacy for her meditations. Every now and then Keeta joined her, for a bit of a rest, as the juggler put it.
“I don’t know how you stand this lot sometimes,” Jill remarked to her one morning.
“Neither do I.” Keeta flashed a grin. “Oh, they’re all good people, really, and the only family I’ve ever had or am likely to have. But they do carry on so. It’s Marka’s marriage, you see. She started out as nothing, the apprentice, the waif we all pitied, and now here she is, the leader’s wife. Everyone’s all stirred up and jockeying for position.”
“And Salamander’s really become the leader, hasn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. No doubt about that, my dear, none at all.”
At that moment Jill realized why she’d objected to Salamander’s marriage. He’d so loaded himself up with responsibility