Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [73]
“Well, then,” she said. “I must be a howling savage myself, because I fell in love with you long before you took the gwerbret’s lessons.”
“Good.” He sat back on his heels and looked away, his eyes pools of shadow. “By the Dark Sun herself I wish we could just get out of here.”
“Why can’t we? What’s so wrong?”
“A very great deal, my love. The Wise One talked with me when we returned.”
“The who?”
“Jill. My apologies. Wise One is what we call dweomermasters, out on the grass. She didn’t tell me very much, or I should say, she wouldn’t tell me any details, wouldn’t answer any whys and hows and wherefores, but she said over and over that some great danger’s brewing, whether raiders were riding for Cengarn or not.”
“She said somewhat about a war to me, too, but naught that was clear.”
“They deal in omens and strange speaking, the Wise Ones.” Dar sighed profoundly. “I wanted to take you along the next time we hunt, you see, but she absolutely forbade it.”
“Oh, I wish she hadn’t! I used to love to ride to the hunt. Why did she say I couldn’t go?”
“Because of the danger. Carra, I don’t understand all of this, but someone’s trying to kill our baby.”
She clasped both hands hard over her mouth to stifle a scream.
“Jill said I shouldn’t tell you, as if you were a child yourself, but you have to know.”
Carra shuddered, turning in her chair to see if the drape over the window had blown back in some cold wind, turning back again, feeling sick and frozen and furious all at once.
“I do have to, truly.” Her voice sounded so thin and high that she was shocked. “Why? Who?”
“I don’t know. An enemy with the dweomer, Jill said, and that’s all she’d tell me. But that’s why we’ve got to stay near a dweomermaster. Right now she can’t travel with us to the Westlands, because of the danger here to everyone else, and so here we are, stuck where she can watch over us. Eventually, she said, she’ll help us get home again and find another Wise One to protect us. But for now, well.”
She nodded her understanding, feeling her heart pounding hard in her chest. All she could think of was weapons and killing. She wanted to find that enemy and rend it, stab it, send it screaming to the Otherlands to freeze in the third hell for ever and ever. What happened to her seemed unimportant, but her child—that they would threaten her child!
“What’s wrong?” Dar snapped. “You’re dead-pale. Do you need to lie down?”
“I don’t. Dar, I’m so glad you told me this. I understand a lot of things now, like why I have to be so careful.” Unconsciously she laid her hands on her stomach. “For both of us.”
“Good.” He kissed her, then a second time. “Shall we go down to the great hall together? The Gel da’Thae bard is singing again.”
“Let’s. I do hate sitting up here in the same old room, and it’s going to be worse now, wondering what this enemy’s plotting and all of that.”
“Well, as long as we’re under Jill’s protection, we’ll be safe enough, I suspect. She seemed to think so, anyway, and after all, there are soldiers all round you, the gwerbret’s men as well as mine.”
“Oh, I know. I wish I knew how to use a sword, though, just in case.”
He laughed, kissing her on the forehead.
“I don’t think that’s truly necessary, my love. You have me to do the fighting for you.”
For a moment Carra felt like kicking him. There were some ways in which the men of the Westfolk and the men of Deverry were much alike.
Apparently rumors of her escapade spread into the town, for the very next morning Otho the dwarf came up to the dun to visit, just to see for himself, or so he said, that the princess was safe and sound. He brought along with him a young, dark-haired fellow, as short and stocky as he was but beardless except for some bushy sideburns, whom he introduced as Mic, his nephew.
“Do you remember the letters I sent off weeks ago?” Otho said. “To my kin, like, telling them I was here in Cengarn? Well, turns out that some of ‘em are glad enough to see me again. My cousin Jorn was already lodging in Cengarn on business, and now young Mic here shows up with