Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [75]
“This must seem tedious to you,” she remarked. “It’s beginning to be so for me, I’ll tell you. I wish I knew someone who’s got more lore than I—ye gods! Meer.”
When she banged the book shut, dust puffed, and the Wildfolk disappeared.
After a lot of asking and searching through the dun, she found Meer round back of the stable, sitting on a wagon bed and taking the sun while nearby young Jahdo curried their white horse. The pair spent a lot of time with their horse and mule, or so she’d noticed, and when she found them Meer was holding one of the stable cats in his lap as well, stroking the animal absentmindedly while he chatted with the boy.
“Good morrow, Jill,” Jahdo sang out as she approached. “Meer, it be Jill, come to see us.”
“And a good morrow to you, mazrak,” Meer rumbled. “I assume your coming bodes good, at the least.”
“Probably not,” Jill said, smiling. “It never does these days. I’ve come with a lore question for you, good bard.”
“Indeed? Well, answer me one and I’ll consider answering yours.”
“Fair enough.”
“Jahdo here tells me that Princess Carra is married to a man of a tribe called the Westfolk, and it seems that they’re the horseherders who saved the Rhiddaer people when they fled the Slavers, all those long years ago.”
“That’s quite true.”
“Ah. And, says Jahdo, these people have the same form as the gods.”
Puzzled, Jill glanced Jahdo’s way. He nodded a vigorous yes.
“Well, then, I suppose they do,” Jill said. “I’ve never seen one of your gods, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Huh. I should have thought of that. Of course you wouldn’t. No doubt you have gods of your own, and why would mine appear to you? Well, then. That tears that. No offense to you, lad, but I was hoping for another view, as it were, of the matter.”
“Oh, I know,” Jahdo said cheerfully. “But they be just like the blessed lady who did come to us in our cell.”
“Rhodry told me about that, by the way.” Jill hesitated, wondering if she should tell him the truth, then decided that if it comforted the boy to think Dallandra a god, well and good. Besides, leaving him his belief was a fair bit easier than explaining. “Meer, I don’t know what to think about the resemblance.”
“No doubt these Westfolk were formed in the images of the gods for some divine purpose.”
“It could well be, for all I know. Or wait, Meer. They’re refugees, that’s all, from the Seven Cities. The ones your people hold now.”
Meer tossed his head back, then muttered something in his own tongue that might have been a quick prayer.
“The Children of the Gods, then,” he whispered, awestruck. “Are you telling me, mazrak, that immortals lodge in this very dun?”
“I’m not, because they’re as mortal as you or I, though they do live a very long time.”
“Ah. If they’re not immortal, they can’t have lived in the Seven Cities of the Far West.” Meer’s voice turned tight and hard. “They must just be those horseherders.”
“Well, these elves didn’t live there, truly. Their ancestors did. I assume they made the images of the gods you know to look like themselves.”
Meer growled long and hard.
“What’s so wrong, good bard?” she spoke cautiously. “I meant no offense.”
“Indeed? Then why do you speak sacrilege?” He hesitated, on the edge of saying more, then merely grunted.
All at once Jill realized that she stood to lose his goodwill.
“Well,” she said. “No doubt you’re right about their origins. It was all a long time ago now, anyway.”
For a moment he sat silently, his hands tight on his staff, his massive head inclining toward her; then he made a sound under his