Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [96]
Mic was studying the painted hide. When Rhodry craned his neck for a look, the young dwarf slewed it round so he could see, but the alphabet was utterly foreign to him.
“My apologies, but I don’t know how to read that,” Rhodry said. “What is it?”
“An omenbook, or part of one, I should say,” Mic answered. “It’s a chart, like, of the basic meanings of the figures. Otho knows it off by heart.”
“I do when no one’s flapping their lips,” Otho snapped. “Now. Let me think. Hah! Just as I suspected. Here’s the Head of the Dragon, all right, falling into the first house again.” Deftly he poked a figure into the waiting sand, two dots close together and below them three dots vertically for the dragon’s body.
“Again?” Mic said.
“I did a reading a fortnight or so past, and that same figure fell into that same place.” Otho paused for a profound sigh. “You can be certain it’s a true reading, when a thing comes up twice, and so we’re stuck with this wretched wyrm whether we want it or no.”
Otho brooded over the lines of dots for a few moments more, then poked figures into the map, one each for each land. When he came to the twelfth he hesitated.
“Last time I had a bit of luck fall in here,” he announced. “I hate to think what lies in store, this time around.” With a sigh he turned back to his lines, then howled. “The Red One! I knew it was going to be bad, I just knew it.” He poked some savage dots into the Land of Salt. “Never do business with an elf, my father said, and I should have listened to him.”
“According to this, Uncle Otho”—Mic flapped the hide in his direction—“the Red One’s not as bad as it might be if it falls into the twelfth.”
“Hah! That’s all I have to say to that, young Mic. Hah!” Otho snorted so hard that his beard fluttered. “Look at that! The Road lies in the Land of Tin.”
“And?” Rhodry said.
“Well, tin usually means the gods, but this time I think me it means long journeys.”
“Gods!” Rhodry snapped. “I’ve been a dolt!”
“It’s good to see you realize the truth about your essential nature.”
“Hold your tongue! I’ve got to go talk with Jill.”
“She told you to stay here,” Mic broke in. “Can’t I take her a message?”
“Well.” Rhodry considered. “Truly, it would be best. Do you have a thing a man could write on, and a pen and ink?”
“Don’t tell me you can read and write!” Mic sounded honestly awed.
“I can indeed.”
“There’s more to this wretched elf than one might suppose,” Otho said. “Not much, but more than one might suppose.”
Rhodry ignored him and called over the innkeep, who’d been shamelessly eavesdropping nearby. The writing materials available turned out to be a pair of wooden tablets, hinged with leather on one side and covered thickly with wax. In the frugal dwarven way, the writing could be smoothed off once a message was read, and the tablets used many times over. Rhodry found he could write well enough with the thin bone stylus the innkeep gave him. Once he was finished, he tied the tablets together with a thong.
“Want to put a seal on that knot?” the innkeep said.
“I don’t. If someone steals it, they’ll break it anyway, and I trust Mic.”
The young dwarf smiled with a bob of his head and took the tablets. As he watched Mic hurry out, Rhodry felt profoundly relieved. He’d had every right to kill Matyc after all, or so it seemed to him.
When Mic arrived in the great hall, Jill had a servant fetch him a tankard of ale for his trouble, then took the pair of tablets just outside the door, where she could read them in relative privacy. As much as it griped her soul to admit it, she was pleased that she no longer had to worry about Matyc popping up like a witch’s curse every time she was trying to keep something secret. The message was brief enough, anyway.
“Matyc’s last word was Alshandra’s name.”
Jill whistled under her breath and shut the tablets fast. For a moment she considered sending a message back, then decided that