Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [134]
“My thanks.” Rhodry took a sip for politeness’s sake. “It’s very good.”
“Of course. Do you think I’d be serving less than the old vintage to the man who did save my son? Ah, my eldest he is, at that, and always a wayward lad, but if a mother love not her son, then who will, I always say. Eh?”
“Indeed.”
She nodded, turning her head in a gesture that reminded him of Meer, glancing round as she remembered what it was like to see.
“We do sit deep inside the earth, Rori. Is that distressing to you?”
“Only at moments, my lady. My people are creatures of the grasslands and forest, and at times, the dark here does touch my heart.”
“No doubt. It aches the heart of most men, even our men, who long to wander in the light above. Never have I seen the sun, Rori. Never did I want to. What do you think of that, eh?”
“I’m surprised, truly.”
She smiled, pleased with the effect.
“I have heard of the high world from my sons. Does that not be one of the things a son does for his mother, to tell her of the world above? But I be a woman and a mother, six times a mother, twenty-two times a grandmother, and now and already seven times a great-grandmother, and the earth I do know. I did earn my place, here in the heart of the earth, six times over. In the heart of the earth women be born, and we do rest in her heart, our mother’s heart, and we do hear her tales, long tales of fire and rock, and in the end, we do die upon her breast.” She smiled again, nodding a little as if she heard distant music.
Lopa came forward with a cup of steaming water that smelled of herbs and helped the ancient dwarf take a sip.
“Ah, well brewed, my dear,” Othara said. “Very well brewed. Does our guest need more drink?”
“I don’t, but my thanks,” Rhodry said hastily. This “old vintage” was turning out to be quite strong, and he did have the long stairs to climb back to the upper world. “It’s truly good.”
She smiled, nodded, glanced round the room with milky eyes.
“They tell me, Rori, that you do travel north, hunting an ancient wyrm among the fire mountains.”
“I do, my lady.”
“Ah, the north, the dragon north, the country of the Great Rift. We women call it the land of blood and fire, the earth’s blood, that do be, that do run red and gold through all the black veins round the rift. A land of splendor in the way we women think, but the men, they do fear it, the blood of fire. Do you know, Rori, why the earth does bleed so, there in the northland?”
“I don’t. Will you tell me, my lady?”
“I will, for be it not a woman’s work to tell the men tales of the deep earth? We live and we listen in the deep earth, and we do hear her tales, and we pass those tales on, mother to daughter to granddaughter, so the sons may know.” She paused, motioning for another sip of herbed brew. “The northland and the southland, they do be joined along the high mountains, the Roof of the World, or so the sons call it, but I tell you that it be no roof, no sheltering there, but the Great Rift.” For a long moment she rested, her mouth working. “The northland and the southland, they do go their own ways, Rori, like a wife who grows to hate her husband and does send him back to the high city. The earth splits and tears along the high mountains, and she bleeds, she bleeds. Some fine day the tear will run so deep that it will reach the sea, and in will rush the water, cold and salt, to soothe that burning.”
Rhodry caught his breath. Othara laughed, a low mutter like gravel sliding downhill.
“Be you frightened at this thought, the earth rifting and splitting?”
“I see no shame in admitting it, my lady. I am. What of the folk who live there?”
She laughed, then coughed. Lopa slipped an arm under her, helped her sit upright, and held the cup. Othara drank more of her medicinal, then lay back, resting before she spoke again.
“Oh, they have a few more years before they’ll feel the danger, thousands upon thousands of years, Rori, a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, no doubt. The earth runs deep, but she runs slow.”
“Well and good,