Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [67]
“And was that vengeance enough?”
“Was it? Ask yourself—was it?” The specter began to laugh. “Was it?”
“It should have been, truly.”
The specter howled with laughter. As if his sobbing chuckle brought the wind, the mist began to swirl and close in over the birch trees.
“Who are you?” Gweran said.
“Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember that name?”
The laughter went on and on, as, no longer solid, the specter whirled, a flickering shadow in the closing mists, a red stain ripping on white, then gone. There was only the mist and the soft rustle of wind. From out of the mist came the voice of his Agwen.
“He was avenged. Take warning.”
As her voice faded, the mist turned thick, swirling, damp and cold, wrapping Gweran round, smothering him, pushing him this way and that like a windblown leaf. He felt himself running, then slipping, falling a long way down.
The shadows were dark on the ceiling of the temple. Obyn sighed, stretching his back, and leaned closer.
“Are you back? It’s two hours before dawn.”
Shaking with cold, his stomach knotted with fear, Gweran sat up and tried to speak. The temple danced around him. Obyn caught his hands hard.
“For the love of Bel,” Gweran whispered. “Get me some water.”
Obyn clapped his hands together twice. Two young priest hurried in, carrying wooden bowls. Obyn draped his cloak around Gweran’s shoulders, then helped him drink, first water, then milk sweetened with honey. The taste of food brought Gweran back to the world better than any act of will could have done.
“Bring him some bread as well.”
Gweran wolfed down the bread, washing it down with long greedy swallows of milk, until he suddenly remembered he was gobbling in the middle of a temple.
“My apologies, but it takes me this way.”
“No apology needed,” Obyn said. “Do you remember the vision?”
The blood-gushing specter rose again in Gweran’s mind.
“I do. How do you read it?”
“It was a true murder, sure enough. It happened when I was a tiny lad, so I remember somewhat of it. You saw Lord—oh, was it Caryl? I can’t remember, but the head of the Boar clan he was, cruelly murdered by the Falcons. But truly, just as your White Lady said, it was avenged, twice over, some would say. The gods had justice, and I see no reason for Great Bel to be displeased.”
“Well, then, there’s no curse on the land, because that’s all my lady could show me.”
“Just so. We will perform the horse sacrifice at the waning of the moon.”
Until the sun rose, Gweran rested at the temple. He was so tired he was yawning, but sleep refused to come to him. His mind raced, reproducing bits of the vision or seeing flecks of the white mist, then simply babbling to itself. The ritual always left him this way. Though some bards develop a lust for the strange white lands and the marvels therein, a madness that eventually takes over their minds, Gweran felt mostly disgust, based on a healthy fear of losing himself forever in the swirling mist. Yet as he thought it over, this particular vision seemed to have a message for him: he knew that murdered lord, knew him like a brother. Was it vengeance enough? he thought. Truly, it should have been. When the sun came in pale shafts through the temple windows, he shook off these incomprehensible thoughts and went to fetch his horse for the ride home.
Gweran slept all morning, or rather, he tried to sleep. It seemed that someone was always coming in: one of the children, chased away by the maidservant; or Lyssa, fetching a bit of her sewing; a page, sent by the lord to make sure the bard was resting. Finally, the maidservant, Cadda, who seemed more than usually dim-witted that morning, crept in to find a clean pair of brigga for one of the lads. When Gweran sat up and swore at her, she cowered back, sniveling, her big blue eyes filling with tears. She was, after all, only fifteen.
“Ah, by the gods, I’m sorry,” Gweran said. “Here, Cadda, run and tell your mistress that her grouchy bear of a husband has given up trying to hibernate. Go fetch me bread and ale, will you?”
Cadda beat a hasty retreat with an awkward curtsy.