Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [109]
“I’d wondered about that.” He turned in the saddle to look at her. “I assumed you knew your own affairs best.”
“My thanks, but I felt I owed you an explanation. One other thing I wanted to tell you. Rhodry will be leaving Cengarn on the morrow, I’ve sent him on a dangerous errand indeed.”
“I see, He’s not going alone, is he?”
“Some of the Mountain People will be traveling with him. Why?”
“That shape-changer worries me, the raven that he and Carra saw when he was escorting her to Cengarn. Does he have a bow with him?”
“Not that I know of. Does he know how to use one?”
Dar pinned.
“You could say that. Oh, he’ll make light of his skill, and he’s got nowhere near the fine eye that, say, Calonderiel does, but all in all, he’s a man I wouldn’t mind having with me if I needed an archer.”
“Ah. Do you have a spare bow I could take him, then?”
“I do. I’ll bring it to your chamber when we get back, and a quiver of arrows as well.”
It was late that day, close to sunset, when Otho came up to the dun to consult Jill about their plans. Although she’d been hoping that the dwarves had built some sort of hidden exit or tunnel out of Cengarn, no such thing existed —the bedrock was too close to the surface, or so Otho said, and such tunnels were dangerous to a town built to withstand siege if a traitor should betray their existence to any enemy.
“Now, don’t you worry, though. We’ll stay in the wild hills. There’s a road there that only we know.”
“It’ll have to do, then.”
“No one’s going to spy us out, well, not unless they’re using dweomer, that is, and such would find us no matter how deep under the earth we were. There’s one good thing about Rhodry being half an elf. He can see well enough in the dark to travel at night, same as us, and that’s what we’ll do, travel at night and hide ourselves in the day.”
“Splendid! You have my thanks, you know, for what it’s worth.”
“Worth a great deal.” Otho sighed with a shake of his head. “Ah, it’s strange how things turn out! I keep thinking of you as that golden little lass you were when first I met you, years and years ago now, when you were just a silver dagger’s brat, trailing along behind your da. Do you remember the riddle I told you?”
“About how ‘no one’ could tell me what craft I’d learn?” Jill smiled, remembering herself as a child standing in his silversmithy. “I do, at that. Nevyn and I both got a good laugh out of it, once I’d sworn myself over to study the dweomer, because ‘nev yn’ had told me, indeed.”
Otho nodded, looking away with one of his rare smiles. Then he sighed, turning sad.
“I’d best be making my farewell to the Princess Carramaena,” he said. “Doubtless I’ll never—ah well, I’m not going to weave myself a bad omen by saying that aloud. You’ll be down at the inn to see us off?”
“I’ll go down now. I want a word with Rhodry.” She patted the quiver of arrows. “And I’ve got to give him Dar’s gift.”
Jill found Rhodry pacing back and forth in the common room of the dwarven inn, and all alone, as if the innkeep and the other dwarves had fled to leave him to his brooding. By human standards he was a tall man, anyway, and in the midst of dwarven-sized furniture he seemed enormous, looming over everything in the pale, uncertain light, part blue phosphorescence, part fire’s glow, that danced about the stone chamber. He was in a somber mood—she could tell by the way he laughed one of his crazed peals at the sight of her. At times she found herself wondering if he’d been possessed by one of the old gods of war, Gamyl, perhaps, or even Epona, Mistress of Horses. She was afraid to probe his mind and find out.
“What’s that you’re carrying?” Rhodry said. “Looks like a hunting bow.”
“It is, and a present from Prince Dar himself. He says you’ve a fair hand with it.”
“Only fair, I’m afraid, but if we’re going to have shape-changers flapping round us, better to arm me than give us no archer at all.”
Rhodry laid the bundle on the table and began to unwrap it, whistling