Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [153]
By then it was late, and Rhodry was more than a bit drunk and much more tired than he cared to admit. While he struggled to pull off his boots, Jill opened the shutters at the window and leaned out, looking at the stars. Candlelight danced shadows around her and made her hair gleam like fine-spun gold.
“By every god and his wife,” Rhodry said, “I wish you’d left that cursed bit of jewelry in the grass when you saw it there.”
“And a fine lot of good that would have done. What if the dark master had found it?” “Well, true spoken. I guess.”
“Oh, I know, my love.” She turned from the window. “All this talk of dweomer aches my heart, too.”
“Does it, now? Truly?”
“Of course. What do you think I’m going to do? Leave you for the dweomer road?”
“Uh, well.” All at once he realized that he’d been afraid of just that. “Ah, horseshit, it sounds stupid now that I hear you say it aloud.”
She looked at him, her mouth slack as if she were debating what to say next, then suddenly smiled. She bent down and held out her hands to something, then picked up what he assumed was her gray gnome and cradled it in her arms.
“Is somewhat wrong?” she said. “No? Good. Did you just come to see us, then? That’s sweet, little creature.”
Seeing her speak to something that he couldn’t see yet knew existed was eerie, troubling him further. As he watched her in the candlelight, he was remembering being a tiny lad, and thinking that maybe the Wildfolk were real, and that maybe he could see them. At times, when he was out in his father’s hunting preserve, it would seem that maybe there was an odd creature peering at him from under a bush or up in a tree. Yet even as a very small child, Rhodry had dismissed the Wildfolk as only something his nurse spoke about to amuse him. His hard-bitten father had made sure that his son had no trace of whimsy about him.
“Here’s Rhoddo,” she said. “Say ‘good eve’ to him.”
Rhodry felt a little hand clasp his finger.
“Good eve,” he said, smiling. “And how does our good gnome fare?”
All at once he saw it, a dusty sort of gray, with its long limbs and warty nose. It was grinning at him while it held his fingertip in one spiky hand. Rhodry caught his breath in a gulp.
“You see him, don’t you?” Jill whispered.
“I do, at that. Ye gods!”
Jill and the gnome exchanged a smile of triumph; then the creature disappeared. Rhodry stared openmouthed at her.
“I asked Nevyn this afternoon why you couldn’t see the Wildfolk,” she said, as calmly as if she were discussing what to serve her man for dinner. “And he told me that you probably could, with that trace of elven blood and all. Being around the dweomer will open his eyes, he said.”
“And right he was.” He sat quietly, remembering. “Over the past week, you know? I’ve seen—well, not them, exactly—but things.”
“There’s been dweomer all around us for weeks.”
“True spoken. But why is it so important to you that I see the Wildfolk?”
“Well, it could come in handy.” She looked away, suddenly troubled. “They’ll take messages and suchlike, if we get separated again.”
There it was again, the truth that he didn’t want to face: there was dark dweomer stalking them. He drew her tight into his arms and kissed her passionately, just to drive his fear away.
After their lovemaking Rhodry slept like a dead man for most of the night, but toward dawn he had a dream so troubling that he woke abruptly, sitting bolt upright in the bed. The chamber was gray with dawn, and Jill was still asleep beside him. He got up and put on his brigga, then went over to look out the window, just to chase the feeling of the dream away. When someone tapped on the door, he yelped aloud, but it was only Nevyn, slipping into the chamber.
“Here, lad, I was wondering if you had any strange dreams last night.”
“By the great god Tarn himself! I did, at that.”