Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [72]
Tudvulc tried to speak, then merely nodded his consent.
“Swear it then.” Laughing, Mallona held the dagger close to Babryan’s throat. “Swear on your honor, oh, your ever-so-sacred men’s honor! Swear on your swords, swear on your very clans that neither you nor your men nor your servants will do one single thing to impede my escape.”
“So I swear,” Elyc said.
“And I,” Tudvulc growled out. “Someday the gods will take my vengeance for me.”
“Oh, I’m prepared to deal with the gods when my time comes. It’s your oaths I want now. Jill, swear the same, or I’ll kill your pretty little Baba.”
“I swear on my silver dagger that I’ll do exactly what you’ve described.”
“Done, then! Shut that door while I make my preparations.”
Elyc reached in with one fist and slammed the door shut. Tudvulc went on shaking; Elyc looked as if he would weep; Dwaen crossed his arms over his chest and prayed softly to his god for vengeance, his eyes shut, his face raised toward Bel’s heaven. All at once, Jill heard a shriek, then a crash and thump from the chamber. Thinking that Mallona had stabbed Babryan after all, she sprang forward and flung the door open. Babryan moaned unharmed, but Mallona lay on the floor with a vial clutched in her hand and a silver dagger in her back. Laughing like a fiend, Rhodry climbed in the window and knelt down beside her.
“You never asked me to take a vow. I’m not sworn man nor servant, am I? Only a silver dagger. And you should have held your ugly tongue while you were fetching that vial.”
Rhodry grabbed her wrist and pulled the vial free. Mallona raised her head, struggled to turn over, but when she gasped, blood broke on her lips in bubbles.
“You’ll have one wish,” Jill said, striding in. “You won’t hang.”
Gasping, choking, Mallona pushed herself up, her hands paddling in her own blood, and raised her head to stare at Rhodry.
“Aranrhodda,” she whispered. “Aranrhodda rica rica, crissi bregan crissi …”
She coughed and writhed, her bowels emptying in a reflexive gush, so that like Bavydd of Cerrmor, she fell to lie dead in her own excrement. Jill shoved her fist in her mouth just in time to stifle a scream, because she saw, as clearly as a winter’s mist though no more, a dark woman’s form, with long hair that streamed out all round her face, come to tower over her worshipper’s corpse. Mallona’s soul, a naked woman made of pale blue light, rose from her dead body like smoke rising from a fire. Jill saw it throw itself into Aranrhodda’s arms, which folded round it like wings. The vision lasted but a few beats of a heart, but Jill could have sworn that the Goddess’s eyes turned Rhodry’s way and marked him.
• • •
“Well, here, Your Grace,” Rhodry said. “It wasn’t truly that much of a thing, and I feel dishonorable for stabbing a woman in the back. All I did was go into the next chamber, then climb out the window and go along the wall. The stones were so rough, they were as good as a ledge to stand on. I could hear her taunting poor little Baba, too, and I saw her holding up the right vial and telling the lass to pray that she lived to drink it. So I braced myself in the window and threw the dagger, and you know the rest.”
“So I do,” Tudvulc said. “And I hold you honorable, because that was no woman, but a fiend from Hell. I’m going to see that you’re well rewarded for this bit of work.”
“My thanks. Because the coin means more than the honor to a silver dagger.”
“Ye gods, man! Will you stop berating yourself for your brother’s stubbornness? Here, what about that post in my court? I can’t let the man who saved my blood kin’s life just ride away. Even Rhys should be able to see that.”
Rhodry merely shook his head in a no. He refused to weaken, no matter how tempted he might be.
“Well, you know your own mind, I suppose,” Tudvulc said with a sigh. “One thing, though. Will you ride our way for the wedding?”
“We might at that, Your Grace. Jill would like to, I know.”
“Huh.” Tudvulc suddenly smiled. “By the by, meant to tell you. I do understand