Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [38]
Right inside the door of the side tower a wrought-iron staircase led up every bit as steeply as the dwarven stairs, spiraling round and past all four floors of the small and wedge-shaped chambers belonging to various of the gwerbret’s honored servitors. On the fifth and final floor was an open area for storing sacks of charcoal to one side and one last chamber to the other. Rhodry stood for a moment catching his breath, then knocked. A woman’s voice called for him to enter. He hesitated ever so slightly before he opened the door and strode in.
Dressed in pale gray brigga and a heavily embroidered white shirt, Jill was sitting on a curved, three-legged chair with a large leather-bound book on the table in front of her. Her hair, cropped off like a lad’s, was perfectly white, and her face was thin, too thin, really, so that her blue eyes seemed enormous, dominating her face the way a child’s do. Overall, in fact, she was shockingly thin, and quite pale, yet she hardly seemed weak, her eyes snapping with life when she smiled, her voice strong and vibrant as well.
“Well?” she said. “Success?”
“Just that. We followed your directions and found them just about where you said they’d be, one human lad, one Gel da’Thae. I’ve stowed them in the dungeon keep.”
Jill made a face.
“Oddly enough, they’re safer there than anywhere,” Rhodry went on. “Feeling in the town’s running high. A lot of townsfolk lost kin to those raiders, and the word’s gone round that their leader was a hairy creature straight out of the third hell. How are they going to feel about having another of the same lot right within reach? Here, an odd thing. That Gel da’Thae I killed was this bard’s brother.”
“Odd, indeed. How do you know the prisoner’s a bard?”
“His servant told me. And here’s the oddest thing of all. They speak the same tongue as Deverry men do. I’ve never been so surprised in my life, Jill. The lad just spoke right up, and I could understand him. Not easily at first, mind. His way of speaking’s a fair bit different, all flat and watery, like, and he uses a lot of words that I’d say were very old. The kind of thing you find in my esteemed ancestor’s books—words that haven’t been spoken round here in two hundred years.”
“No doubt they haven’t, and no doubt he was as surprised as you were. If I’m guessing a-right, his forefathers were escaped bondmen. The bondfolk came from many different tribes, you see, before our ancestors conquered the lot. And each of those, or so the lore runs, had its own language, a hundred of them all told, or so the priests say.” She tapped the book before her with reed-slender fingers. “The only tongue that they all had in common was the language of their old masters, and they were forced to use it to survive.”
“I’ll wager it griped their souls. It would have mine.”
“No doubt.” She smiled briefly, then glanced at the book. “It must be a strange place, the Rhiddaer. I haven’t been able to learn much about it, which is why this pair of prisoners is so important. But there’s no High King, and no lords nor gwerbrets, either, to keep order or form alliances—not that I can truly blame the people for wanting to leave all that behind forever. The High King’s justice never did apply to them, did it? But as for the lad and the bard, I hate to do this, but I’d say leave them where they are for a while, at least, until they’re scared enough to consider talking to me and the townsfolk find somewhat else to gossip about.”
“Done, then.”
“Tell me, was your ride quiet enough?”
“It was. No signs of trouble, no sign of more of those raiders, but we might have ridden right past them, and they past us, with no one being the wiser. It’s wild country out that way.”
“It’s wild country all round here. That’s the problem with Cengarn, isn’t it? Ye gods, we’re isolated! Tell me somewhat, Rhoddo. How many men do you think Cadmar could field, if things came to some sort of war?”
“Not all that many. Let me think. Matyc’s his only vassal to the north, and then Gwinardd is his richest vassal, which should tell you