Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [87]
“No more can Evandar’s men. They all have silver weapons and suchlike. I haven’t the slightest idea, Jill, not the slightest. He keeps his secrets, even from me, until he feels like telling them.”
At a knock on the door, Jill swung her feet back to the solid floor of the chamber.
“Who’s there?” she called out in Deverrian.
“Yraen, my lady,” a dark voice answered. “The gwerbret’s wife sent me to see if you could come attend upon the princess.”
Jill muttered something foul under her breath, then raised her voice again.
“Come in, will you?”
With a deferential nod of his blond head, Yraen stepped in, shutting the door behind him. Well over six feet tall, and in a warrior’s prime of life, Yraen was, in his way, a good-looking man, though the way was cold and grim enough to scare off most women. His ice-blue eyes glittered with some suppressed rage, and thick blond mustaches hid most of his full mouth. At his belt, the hilt of a silver dagger glittered as coldly as his eyes.
“What’s all this?” Jill said.
“Carra’s worrying about the prince her husband again, my lady. We were all down in the great hall when she started weeping over him. So the gwerbret’s wife took her back to the women’s hall and sent me to fetch you. We were wondering if you had, uh well er you know, news.”
Scrying, of course, was what he meant but refused to name.
“I haven’t had a chance to glean any news today,” Jill said, “about much of anything. Ye gods! Weeping right out in the great hall? She’s got to learn to control herself better than this. We’ve got the men’s morale to think of.”
“Jill, please!” Dallandra spoke in Elvish. “You’re as cold as Evandar at times, really you are.” She switched to Deverrian. “Yraen, Jill’s tired. She has more important things on her mind than young Carra’s temperaments, too. I’ll go the women’s hall and deal with it.”
“My thanks, my lady.” He made her a bow.
When Dallandra left, Yraen lingered in Jill’s chamber. Although he was the Princess Carramaena’s personal bodyguard, he—or any other man, for that matter—was forbidden to follow her into the women’s hall unless the princess’s husband was in attendance there. Unfortunately, the prince, and his warband with him, had been cut off outside the dun when the siege began, leaving them no choice but to return to the Westlands and their people, where they could gather warriors for the relieving army. Jill had scried them last a few days ago, making an un-threatened way south.
“I don’t mean to offend you, my lady,” Yraen said, “but I don’t suppose you’ve any news of Rhodry, either.”
“None. No more have I seen any of Cadmar’s allies riding to relieve us. Ye gods, man! I’ll tell you as soon as I do.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just the cursed siege. You’re right enough about morale. The waiting’s a hard thing for us to bear, us fighting men, I mean.”
“I know.” Jill softened her voice. “I’m not what you’d call fond of it, either. But we can’t sally, not with the numbers against us, and so here we all blasted well are.”
“True, true.”
He nodded, glancing vaguely about him, seemed to be about to speak, choked it back, looked round again.
“Yraen, what’s so wrong?”
“Naught, naught.” He forced out a smile. “Beyond our situation, anyway.”
“You look like you want to ask me somewhat.”
“My apologies, and here the other sorcerer did say you were tired. My apologies.”
Bowing all the way, he backed out of the room, then shut the door so hard the wickerwork trembled. The gnomes began to mock him, lining up, bowing backward, until one bumped another, and a small brawl of pinching and squealing began.
“Stop it!” Jill banished the lot with a wave of her hand. “Ye gods, now what in all the hells could be wrong with Yraen?”
Jill found her answer later in the day, when she went down to the great hall to fetch herself a scant ration