Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [123]
Nevyn shot up through the door in the seal and closed it behind him, then flew back as fast as he could, following the silver cord that inexorably led to his body. He was about halfway along when the Wildfolk appeared, a frightened crowd, swelling, shining, and beating about him. He stopped his flight and tried to understand what they were trying to tell him. Since they had no words, only waves of feeling, all he could sort out was that something had frightened them while he was in the dome. He thanked them for the warning—for warning it seemed to be—then went on his way. At last he saw Aderyn’s clear golden aura and his own body, a lump of dead-looking matter. He slid down the silver cord till he hovered just above, then relaxed and let his mind follow the pull of the flesh. He heard another sharp click, and then he was looking out of his physical eyes at Aderyn, standing above him. Nevyn absorbed the body of light back into himself, slapped his hand thrice on the ground as a sign that the operation was over, and sat up.
“Did you find him?” Aderyn said.
“I did.” Nevyn hesitated, but there was no easy way to break the news. “You’re right, my friend. Loddlaen is mad, stark, raving mad.”
Aderyn wept, sobbing aloud like an elf. Nevyn patted him on the shoulder and tried to think of something comforting to say. There wasn’t. Loddlaen, after all, was Aderyn’s only son.
While he swilled a wooden cup of ale, Lord Corbyn watched Loddlaen with all the devotion of a well-trained dog. Raven-haired, blue-eyed, Corbyn had once been a good-looking man, but now his eyes were puffy and his cheeks mottled with fine red lines. Loddlaen hated him, but he was a necessary tool, since he had reasons of his own to want Rhodry Maelwaedd dead. The darkness voice had promised Loddlaen that if Rhodry died, soon men and elves would kill each other all down the border. Loddlaen gloated over the promise like a jewel.
“As soon as the men finish the noon meal,” Corbyn was saying, “we’ll be on our way and after him. They’ll be moving slower now that they have their supply train.”
Loddlaen started to reply, but the darkness swirled out of nowhere and enveloped his mind. It was the first time that it had come unbidden, and Loddlaen was terrified.
“Fear not. I’m your friend, and I’ve come to warn you. Someone has been spying on you. Someone breached your astral seal. Beware. Stay on guard.”
The voice and the darkness disappeared so fast that Corbyn apparently had noticed nothing.
“Does that plan suit you, councillor?” he said.
“It does.” Abruptly Loddlaen rose and shoved his hands into his brigga pockets to hide their shaking. “I know I can always trust you in matters of war.”
Without another word he stalked off, leaving Corbyn puzzled behind him, and walked to the edge of the area covered by the astral dome. Yet he was too shaken to check his various seals. For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder just who it was who spoke to him in the darkness.
Sitting packed in together, standing along the walls, drinking ale and talking in a sea roar of laughter and jests, a hundred and eighty-seven men crammed into Dun Cannobaen’s great hall. Fifty of them were the fort guard that Sligyn had left behind, but the rest rode for the three lords sitting with Lovyan at the honor table—Edar, Comerr, and Gwryn. Lovyan had never doubted Edar’s loyalty for a minute, but she’d been pleasantly surprised when the other two had shown up at her gates. The servants bustled around to clear away the food from the noon meal and serve mead all round. Edar, a blond, beaky man in his twenties, finally said aloud what they’d all been thinking.
“If Cenydd isn’t here by now, Your Grace, then he isn’t joining the muster, and that goes for Dromyc and Cinvan, too.”
“So it does,” Lovyan said. “Well, Cinvan has the smallest warband in the rhan. Let him go over,