Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [43]
“What is it?” the bard snapped. “What is it?”
Jahdo tried to speak but could only stammer. When Rhodry howled with his usual crazed laughter, the boy burst into tears.
“What are you doing to him?” Meer bellowed with full bardic voice. “He’s done no harm to aught of you.”
“It’s all right,” Yraen broke in. “Jahdo, stop sniveling.”
“Ye gods,” Jill snarled. “Will you all hold your wretched tongues? Do you want half the dun running up here to see what the commotion is?”
That sensible question silenced everyone.
“Much better,” Jill said. “Come in, come in, and my apologies for frightening you, lad.”
With new courage Jahdo led Meer straight into the chamber. Now that he could see that she was a perfectly normal woman, though certainly not an ordinary one, he was expecting to find the peculiar glow just some trick of moonlight or torches. Unfortunately, it was nothing of the sort,
“Meer, there be magic at work here,” he whispered. “The light does shine all over everything, like dust or suchlike, I mean, if moonlight were dust it would look like this, and she’s got books, great big books. There must be twenty of them.”
Jill grinned at that. The Gel da’Thae was turning his huge head this way and that, listening to every sound he could register, and his nostrils flared, too, as if he were sniffing the air like a horse. Since his hand lay on Meer’s arm, Jahdo could feel him trembling. All at once Jahdo remembered hearing Rhodry and Yraen speak of this woman during the long ride back to Cengarn.
“You be the mazrak!” he burst out. “The falcon I did see following us.”
Meer clutched his staff hard between both hands and growled under his breath.
“I have no idea what a mazrak may be,” Jill said mildly. “So how could I be one?”
“But the falcon. We did see it, and then Rhodry and Yraen did come with the squad, and they knew right where we’d be, didn’t they? They did speak of you and said your name, and I could tell they were following your orders.”
Jill glanced at Rhodry.
“I agree with you,” she said. “This child’s much too bright to be locked in a stinking dungeon.”
She was admitting he’d guessed right, that indeed, he was facing a real sorcerer. Jahdo clutched the talismans at his neck.
“I understand that you’re a bard,” Jill said to Meer. “So you shall have the only chair I’ve got. Rhodry, Yraen, if you’ll just stand by the door? In fact, Yraen, if you wouldn’t mind standing on the other side of it to keep the curious away, I’d be grateful. Jahdo, get your master settled, and then, I think, it’s time for some plain talk.”
Jahdo helped Meer sit, then knelt beside him on the floor, which was covered with braided rush mats and reasonably comfortable. The room itself seemed ordinary, except for the presence of books, containing only a small table, a chair, a charcoal brazier, an alcove with a narrow bed, a pair of carved storage chests. Jahdo realized that he’d been expecting sorcerers to live somewhere grand and cluttered, with demons standing round in attendance, not in an everyday sort of room like this. There was, however, no explaining away the silver light. When Jill leaned against the wall facing him and Meer, the drape of light parted, as if dodging her.
“Well, good bard,” she said. “My apologies for the rough treatment you’ve received, but your people are not so well liked round here, thanks to the raiders.”
“So I’ve noticed.” Meer’s voice was stiff and cold. “Wait. What do you mean, raiders?”
“A band of men, led by one of the Horsekin, have been raiding hereabouts, burning farms, killing the men and any pregnant women, enslaving the rest.”
“What?” Meer tried to speak, sputtered, caught his breath at last. “Lies! Disgusting, demon-spawned lies! No man of the Horsekin would ever harm a pregnant female, no matter whether she were kin or utter stranger, horse or Horsekin, human or hound, and he’d kill any man