Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [88]
On a day when the rain melted off the last of the snows and left the world brown mud as far as Dallandra could see from her perch, she decided that it was time to consider exactly when and how she and the souls in her care would leave Cengarn. Wildfolk, a gaggle of gnomes and a sprite or two, sat on the sill with her and pretended to take the sun. Dallandra picked up the leader of their little pack and set him in her lap.
“I need you to run an errand for me,” she said. “Find Evandar and bring him here.”
The gnome nodded.
“Are you sure you'll remember? Evandar, and bring him here.”
The gnome hopped off her lap and crooked a finger at his fellows, as if he were the cook summoning kitchen boys. They clustered around him, pushing and shoving each other.
“Evandar. Here,” Dallandra said for the last time.
In an eddy of breeze they disappeared.
Although Dallandra waited till dark, Evandar never arrived that day, nor on the next, not that she found this alarming. The Wildfolk always took their time about following orders.
“I'm just impatient,” she remarked one morning. “I want to be out of here and gone.”
“I couldn't agree more,” Rhodry said. “But I don't want to leave until Arzosah returns.”
“Do you truly think she'll come back? Dragons aren't known for keeping their promises.”
“She will. I know it in my heart.”
They were sitting together in the tower room, Dallandra in the window, Rhodry in the only chair. He leaned back, his long legs stretched out in front of him. In the morning light she could see that grey brushed his raven-dark hair at the temples, an omen that troubled her. Rhodry was half-elven, and among the elves, signs of age meant a person's death hovered close by, ready to swoop down. And yet, as she reminded herself, he was only a half-breed, and perhaps would age in the human way.
“I've been meaning to ask you,” Rhodry said. “Have you had any news of my brother?”
“None, but I'm hoping Evandar will bring some. He promised me that he'd look in on Ebañy now and again.”
“Good. I'll admit to being worried. He's the only kinsman I have left.” He smiled, but briefly. “Well, the only one that knows I'm still alive.”
“Just so. He never should have dropped his dweomer studies the way he did. I can't be certain, but I'd wager high that it caused his madness. You can't just walk away from the dweomer after you've opened your mind to it.”
“So you've said.” Rhodry shuddered like a wet dog. “Cursed dangerous stuff, dweomer.”
“Not dangerous at all if you go about it properly.”
“Every time it's touched my life it's brought me sorrow.”
“Oh come now! It brought you Jill.”
“And took her away again. And it gave me Aberwyn and snatched that from me as well. Oh, I could turn bard and sing you a pretty triad—the three worst sorrows of Rhodry Maelwaedd.” He paused for a lopsided grin. “It seems like dweomer's ruled and ruined my whole cursed life, ever since I was a lad in Cannobaen. Long before I met Jill, that was.”
“Truly?”
“It was all Nevyn's doing. I fell ill, and my mother summoned him to heal me—I think. I remember naught but waking from a fever dream and seeing the old man at my bedside. When I got well, he told me he'd received an omen, somehow or other. It ran ‘Rhodry's Wyrd is Eldidd's Wyrd.’ I thought of it often, after Rhys died and I inherited the gwerbretrhyn.”
“No doubt.”
“And so old Nevyn stayed at my mother's court as one of her servitors until the Wyrd was fulfilled.”
Dallandra felt a sudden cold, as if a north wind had suddenly blown through the window. She moved uneasily, as if she could physically shake the omen-warning off.
“What's so wrong?” Rhodry said. “You've gone as white as milk.”
“If I knew I'd tell you, but I don't. It probably means something grim.”
Rhodry laughed, his high-pitched berserker's chortle. “Let's hope it is,” he said at last, and his dark blue eyes looked more than half-mad. “I can't tell you how much I long for