Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [98]
“That’s true spoken,” he said, “and for more reasons than one. It was all very well down in Eldidd to assume that no one would ever believe me to be as old as I am. Look how young he seems—he couldn’t be the old gwerbret, they’d say. But up here in Cengarn they know how long an elven half-breed lives, and thanks to the malover, they know my father’s name. If someone were to accuse me, if it ever came out that I was once Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, but yet: no true Maelwaedd at all—well, then. Will my son have a claim to the gwerbretal chair any longer?”
“He won’t, truly, and it would be a pity to see him deposed. He’s been a splendid ruler, you know. You raised him well.”
“My thanks. I tried to.”
She considered for a moment.
“Tell me somewhat,” she said finally. “Do you miss your kin and clan?”
“Miss them? You mean long to see them or suchlike? I don’t, truly, not after this lapse of years. News of them is welcome, though, and it gladdens my heart to hear that they’re doing well. And it would ache that heart bitterly if I were the cause of doing them harm.”
“Nicely put. Then I think, my friend, you’d best take yourself out of Cengarn, whether you want to go or no.”
“So it would seem.” He got up, wincing as he moved his wounded arm.
“I should have a look at that while I’m here. I’m not sending you off anywhere till it heals.”
“It feels a fair bit better today than it did yesterday, I tell you.”
With his good hand he picked his sword belt up from the chest and slung it onto the bed next to her, then raised the lid to rummage round.
“I’ve got somewhat to show you,” he said. “Ah, I think it’s in this one.”
He brought out a leather saddlebag, set it on the floor, then closed the chest so he could sit on top of it. Jill had to untie the toggle on the bag, but once she had, he reached in himself and brought out something wrapped in a bit of old rag. This lump proved to be a leather sheath carrying a knife of sorts, a crude wedge of bronze stuck into a wooden handle, bound round with thongs to keep the blade in place.
“What do you think of that?” Rhodry said.
“I hardly know what to think. It’s no ordinary knife. It looks like it was made long before the Dawntime, and I feel dweomer upon it.” Jill took it, hefting it cautiously. “Where did you get it?”
“From Evandar. Do you remember me telling you about the whistle and the badger-headed creature?”
“Of course.”
“Well, this is the blade that killed it. I doubt me if an ordinary one would have done the job.”
“I see.” She held the knife in one hand, looked absently away, and let its impressions flood her mind. “I don’t think this blade is really here, you see — It exists on another plane of being, and this, the thing you feel, is more of an image of it, though an image made of matter, just as that badger creature probably was only an image of his real existence — So when you stabbed him with this, you were stabbing his real body, back on its own plane — An ordinary blade would only have stabbed his image to no lasting ill effect.”
Rhodry tried to speak and failed.
“I know that doesn’t make much sense,” she went on. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to explain it. Consider this knife a shadow, like, thrown by the real one, which has its true home elsewhere.”
Still he said nothing, merely shook his head, half-angry, half-baffled. When she handed the knife back, he started to wrap it up, then hesitated.
“Do me a favor, since you’ve got two good hands. Put this on my sword belt for me, near the silver dagger. I think me I’m going to need it,”
After she’d taken care of the knife, Jill took a look at his wound, which was healing cleanly and far faster, of course, than a cut would have on a full-blooded human being. Even so, she made him promise to be careful of it for some days yet. As he was walking her back to the inn’s door, she paused for a moment to glance at Otho’s earthen omens.
“It looks clear as clear,” Otho said, sighing. “There’s no way out of going to fetch the dragon.”
“I could have told you that,” Jill said,