Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [26]
Jahdo quite simply didn’t know what to say. While they’d been traveling, Meer had been teaching him lore, just as he’d promised. The bard’s tales had introduced him to an entirely new world, one where the gods moved among men and demons fought them, where spirits roamed the earth and caused mischief, where magic was a necessary part of life, as well, to fend all these presences off or to bend the weaker ones to your will. Automatically Jahdo’s hand went to his throat to touch the thongful of talismans that hung there. He would have laughed all the tales away if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes the being called Evandar disappear. As it was, he was prepared to believe almost anything.
“Well, it were an awful huge hawk,” he said.
“Of course it was. Mazrakir can’t shrink themselves or suchlike. They can only change the flesh they have into another form. It’s only logical that their totem animal, the one they change into, I mean, would be about the same size they are.”
“There be other ones than birds?”
“Some are bears, some wolves, some horses. All kinds of animals, depending on the nature of the mazrak.” Meer turned his head and spat on the ground for luck. “But it’s bad geas to even talk about such things. Let’s move on, lad. And we’d best travel ready to duck into the forest, where spying hawks can’t follow or see.”
“All right. And can we sleep in the woods, too?”
“We’d best do just that, indeed.”
The very next morning Jahdo became a believer in the power of mazrakir to bring bad luck. Just at dawn he woke, sitting bolt upright and straining to hear again the sound that had wakened him. From far above it came again, the shriek of a raven, and a huge one, judging from how loud it squawked. In his blankets nearby, Meer rolled over and sat up.
“Jahdo, what?”
Jahdo rose to a kneel, peering through the tree leaves overhead. He could just see a black shape flapping off, a bird as large as a wolfhound at the least, thwacking the air with huge wings.
“It be another one,” he burst out. “Meer, another mazrak.”
Meer whimpered under his breath.
“It be gone now,” Jahdo went on; “I hope it doesn’t come back.”
“Never have I echoed a hope so fervently!” Meer considered for a moment, then pushed his blankets back with a huge yawn. “I’m tempted to try traveling through the forest edge, out of sight, like, but the footing will be too hard on the horses. Besides, if we lose the river, we’re doomed.”
“Well, I was kind of thinking the same thing, about the river, I mean.”
“We will pray to the thirteen gods who protect travelers before we set out today. But first, let’s lead the horses to their drink, and break our own night’s fast.”
After the horses were watered and tethered out on the grassy bank to graze, Jahdo knelt by the gear, took out a few small pieces of flatbread and some chewy dried apples, a scant handful each for him and Meer, and laid them on a clean rock while he repacked the saddlebags to balance. Behind him Meer was strolling back and forth, singing under his breath and rehearsing phrasing, as he always did with a particularly important prayer. All at once the bard fell silent. Jahdo slewed round to find him standing frozen, his mouth slack, his head tilted as if he listened for some tiny sound.
“What is it?” Jahdo got to his feet. “What be wrong?”
Meer tossed back his head and howled. Never had Jahdo heard such a sound, a vast vibrating ululation of grief, all the world’s mourning, or so it seemed, gathered and rolled into this long wail, wavering and shrieking up and down the bard’s entire register.
“Meer!” Jahdo ran to him and grabbed his arm. “Meer! Tell me. What be so wrong?”
Another howl answered him, then another, long cascading waves of grief and agony, while Jahdo shook his arm and begged and shouted and, in the end, wept aloud in sheer frustration. The sound of his tears cut through the bard’s wrapped anguish.
“Forgive me, lad,” Meer gasped. “But my brother, my brother! I think he’s dead.”
“What?” Shock wiped the tears away. “Dead? When? I mean, how can you know?”
“Just now, and the