Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [131]
In between dreams he would often wonder how Cengarn fared. What might be happening to Yraen, Carra, Prince Daralanteriel, and all the rest galled him, because he was being forced to do nothing while they might well have been in danger. Although he never worried about Jill’s safety—he was quite confident that she could take good care of herself—he did often think of her. At times, when her memory rose as he watched the white mountains, he would find himself coming dangerously close to that secret he refused to uncover, that insight threatening his entire view of the world. Perhaps, just maybe, and what if, anyway, just what if a man’s soul moved on when he died, rather than dying with him, to take up some new life somewhere, some-when else? Whenever the question crept up on him, he would shove it away with a physical shake of his head.
Late on the fourth afternoon, he was sitting in the window as usual when he saw Mic, trotting across die basin and heading for the spire, most likely coming to fetch him. Rhodry got up and left, hurrying down the long ramp to meet him halfway. Mic was grinning in sheer excitement.
“We can go!” he called out. “The council of judges met today, and they gave Uncle Otho his postponement.”
“Splendid!”
But Rhodry paused, looking back at the spire rising above with a certain regret. Most likely he would never sit there again, most likely he would never see Lin Serr again, once he left it.
“What’s wrong?” Mic said.
“I’ll miss this place, that’s all.”
“Why? It’s not your home city.”
“Well, true spoken. Where’s Garin, by the by?”
“Waiting in your quarters. He’s got some kind of news, too, bur he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”
They found the envoy sitting at the table in Rhodry’s chamber with a pair of wax-covered tablets in front of him. When they came in, he made a notation and laid his stylus down.
“Just figuring out what we’ll need to take with us,” Garin remarked. “We’ll have the mule at first, but we’ll have to leave him off at one of the last farms or suchlike. No doubt the farmers will board him for the use of him.”
“No doubt,” Rhodry said. “Mic told me you had news?”
“I do, and a very strange thing it is. Mic, go find your father and your uncle.”
Mic opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and left the chamber. Garin waited a few moments.
“The thing is,” the envoy said, “this is totally unprecedented, so I’d just as soon as few people know of it as possible. Otho’s mother wants to see you.”
“Otho’s mother?”
“Just that. She’s very, very old, Rhodry, and so sick she’s bedridden, but she’s been clinging to life for years in the hopes that Otho would return so that she could bid him farewell. Now thanks to you he is back, and she wants to meet the man who saved her eldest son’s life.”
“I see. I take it that your womenfolk don’t allow strangers to see them very often.”
“Just so.” Garin hesitated for a long moment. “And here’s the hard thing. Will you travel blindfolded into the deep city? Once we’re down, we’ll take the hood off, but for you to walk down sighted is against every law we have.”
Rhodry hesitated, but he was always aware that his success in finding the dragon, to say naught of staying alive, depended on Garin’s good favor.
“Well and good, then. Blind it is.”
“My thanks. I would truly hate to disappoint the old woman. She’s not got long left now.”
“Then far be it from me to cause her anguish. When do we go?”
“Soon. One of her servants—her youngest great-grandson, in fact—will come to fetch us when she