Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [157]
Rhodry merely smiled. Oh, indeed? Nevyn thought, it must be the same dark master, then! But why did he want Rhodry alive? He’d wanted Jill, most likely, to bribe Nevyn to let him go, but why Rhodry?
“So anyway, Your Grace,” the bandit said, “we couldn’t get her. So we elected a new captain and went to meet the old man. We were thinking of killing him, see, for vengeance, but he gave us so much coin that we let him be.”
“What was he like?” Nevyn stepped forward. “Was he a Bardek man?”
“He wasn’t, but one from Deverry. He dressed like a merchant, and mostly he looked as if he came from Cerrmor way. He had this oily little voice that rubbed my nerves raw. One of his men called him Alastyr. He had a servant, see, and one fellow, a swordsman, that fair creeped my flesh. He looked us over like he’d like to slit our throats just to watch us die.”
“He probably would have enjoyed it, at that. Did they have a prisoner with them?”
“They did, this brown-haired fellow tied to a horse. His face was all bruised up real bad, and he wouldn’t look at nobody. He was a slender kind of lad, the sort who remind you a bit of a lass, like.”
“Camdel, sure enough,” Blaen broke in.
“I’m afraid so,” Nevyn said. “Very well, Your Grace.
I’m afraid there’s no more ale to be squeezed out of this turnip.”
“Hang this vermin publicly at noon tomorrow.” Blaen turned to the executioner. “But make sure he dies an easy death.”
With a sudden stink of urine the bandit fainted.
As they left the tower, Nevyn mulled over the bandit’s information. He remembered the shipmaster in Cerrmor, saying that the passenger he’d taken to Bardek also had an oily voice and looked like a typical Cerrmor man. It was quite unlikely that there were two dark dweomer-masters so similar. And this Alastyr had had only one apprentice. The battle odds seemed more and more in his favor.
Nevyn realized, too, that he’d been thinking that he knew his opponent, only to find out that he was wrong. He had an old enemy, a dark master with whom he’d crossed swords several times in the last hundred years, a Bardekian who was particularly skilled in reading omens of future events. The war last year in Eldidd, the attempt on the dweomer-opal, even leaving Rhodry alive as a kind of experiment—it would all have fit Tondalo perfectly. Of course, he reminded himself, Tondalo might be behind it from a distance. By now the Bardekian would be some hundred fifty years old, and likely too weak to travel far. Although dark dweomermen can keep themselves alive by unnatural means, they have no way of remaining healthy, especially toward the end. Nature herself tries to thwart them, simply because they go counter to her principles, like water trying to flow uphill.
Caught in Alastyr’s strong grasp, the brown-and-white rabbit struggled, trying to work its hind feet free to rake him, but he knocked its head against the kitchen table until it went limp. He slit its throat with his knife, then leaned over to suck the hot blood directly from the wound. Even though he’d done it for years, the procedure always disgusted him, but unfortunately it was the only way to ensure that he got all of the blood’s magnetic effluent. He could never understand why other masters of the craft left killing their meat to their servants. As he drank, he felt the magnetic strength flow into him in a small rejuvenation. He wiped his mouth carefully on a rag, then set about skinning the rabbit and cutting it up.
As he worked, he felt his fear like a pounding in his blood. Although he wanted to flee, he was afraid to return to the Brotherhood with another failure on his hands. The Old One might well forgive him, especially since he’d know that Rhodry’s elven blood was the factor that had ruined his calculations, but the other masters of the dark path would see him as weak. Once a man weakened,