Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [125]
“Then what?” Garin snapped. “You’ll be able to count your gemstones in the Otherworld rather than paying them over here? But truly, I suppose you’re right enough about getting that postponement. With a life debt to be paid, and a geas laid on by a dweomermaster as well, the judges might listen to reason.”
As they walked on, Rhodry noticed a group of figures down by the river near the cliffs. They were kneeling on the bank, and all round them on the grass, like pale flowers clothing lay spread out to dry. Women doing laundry, he assumed, but he was surprised to find that while they were washing clothes, all right, the launderers were all young men and boys. When they recognized Garin, they rose and came running, damp and soapy as they were, to cluster round the leader and all talk at once in Dwarvish. Otho tossed Mic the mule’s lead rope and hurried over to join them. Since Rhodry was part elven and the son of a bard as well, he had a good ear for languages; he’d already picked up a word or two of Dwarvish merely from listening to his companions on this journey.
“While I’m here?” he said to Mic. “I should try to learn somewhat of your speech. Think I could find someone with the leisure to teach me?”
“I doubt that.” Mic turned guarded; looking away. “Um, well, it’s not likely.”
“Oh. Is it against your people’s custom to teach others your tongue?”
“Couldn’t say.” Mic began studying the grass. “You might ask Garin.”
Rhodry let the subject drop. He was remembering Otho’s remark, “everybody hates you,” and he wondered if the dwarven folk had left some splendid city behind when the invasions forced them to build Lin Serr. He became aware, too, that the men clustered round Garin and Otho kept turning to look at him, blank-eyed, carefully neutral, never offensive, but never friendly, either. Garin seemed to be making hard points, stabbing the air with one finger while he spoke.
“He’s telling them how you saved Uncle Otho,” Mic said. “And that you’re our guest. That means a lot, you see.”
“No doubt. Here, if they don’t want me inside, the mule and I can just camp out here.”
Mic grinned and called that information out to Garin, who nodded to acknowledge he’d heard and went on talking.
“You’ll never get that mule up those stairs, anyway,” Rhodry said.
“True enough. We’d have to tether him out here till I get the chance to sell him for Uncle Otho.” Mic waved vaguely to the north and beyond the cliff tops. “Some of our people are farmers, of course, out on the plateau.”
Carved from living rock, the stairs in question zigzagged up the side of the cliff, heading first left, then right, then left again with about twenty stairs to a flight, over and over. Although they weren’t as steep as the flights in Cengarn, they were much longer, leading up to the main entrance, that a good hundred feet above the ground. From where Rhodry stood the stairs seemed to debouch onto a landing under an overhang of raw rock. In the shadows he could just pick out the form of massive doors.
“Rhodry?” Mic said suddenly. “I owe you an apology. You saved my uncle’s life, and here everyone’s treating you like you’re carrying plague.”
“Well, I appreciate it, lad, but don’t vex yourself. I’ve always heard that the Mountain People stick to their own, and now I know they’ve got good reason to. Certainly the fellows down in the inn in Cengarn treated me decently enough.”
“True. It’s easy to be friendly and suchlike in Cengarn or one of the other towns where we know we’re welcome. When you get near home you get protective, like. But I don’t know. Most of the men won’t even go to a human town, anyway. That’s why Garin’s so important. He can get along with anyone.”
“Even a wretched elf like me?”
“Oh, that’s just Uncle Otho! Most of us young men have never even seen an el£ I mean, there’s some old story about during the invasions. A band of dwarves tried to take shelter in some elven city or some such thing like that, and the elves wouldn’t open the gates because they were afraid of Horsekin,