The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [37]
“Most like she would.” He picked up the blade again and sheathed it before he went on. “But I own too many things already for a silver dagger. Here, I know. I’ll give it to Dar for a wedding gift—a bit late, but then, he’s cursed lucky he’s getting anything from me at all.”
Dallandra laughed.
“So he is,” she said, “and what about the silver dagger?”
Rhodry laid down the sword and picked up the dagger. When he slid it free of its sheath, the silver blade flared with a strange bluish light. Rhodry laughed and held it up while the dagger seemed to burn like an etheric torch.
“What in the name of the gods?” Dallandra took a quick step back.
“It’s a dwarven dweomer working.” Rhodry sheathed the blade again and put it down on the table. “It gives warning when anyone with elven blood touches it. It would do the same for you. The Mountain Folk consider us all thieves, you see.”
“It would scare a thief away, all right, seeing the blade burn like that! Huh, it’s odd. I’ve always heard that the dwarven race shuns dweomer.”
“That’s true. Ah, who knows?” Rhodry shrugged and considered the dagger for a long moment. “That should have been buried with Jill.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Not that it matters to her anymore, I’d wager.” He looked up, his eyes bleak. “I could take it, or wait! Jahdo shall have it, because when we captured him and Meer, he lost a knife that his grandfather had given him, and it’s irked him ever since.”
“It’s rather too grand for him, isn’t it? What if the other boys or one of the servants steals it from him?”
“He can keep it up here.” Rhodry picked up the sheathed dagger and gestured at a heap of saddlebags and bundles stacked in the curve of the wall. “Along with the goods Meer left him.”
“I suppose, but I don’t understand. If it’s important enough that it should have been buried with her, why are you going to just give it away?”
“Because what I’m really doing is throwing it onto the river of Wyrd.” All at once he laughed with a toss of his head. “I lost my silver dagger in Bardek once, you see. But it came back to me, twenty years later, and when it did, it brought change with it. I’ve been thinking, just now and again, about the things you told me, Dalla, last summer, about the way that a man might get reborn—or a woman, since we’re talking about Jill. And I wonder if she’s meant to have this dagger back. If so, it’ll find its way, when the time comes.”
Rhodry laughed again, his high berserk chortle. There were times when Dallandra wondered how she could share her bed with a madman like him. As if he heard her thought, he wiped his daft grin away and looked at her solemnly.
“But you have the last word about this dagger,” Rhodry said. “Give it elsewhere if you’d like.”
“No, do give it to Jahdo. You may be right about it finding Jill again. I’ll keep this book, because I doubt if anyone else here could understand it.”
There remained the bone plaque.
“Shall I give this to Carra?” Dallandra said. “For a wedding gift?”
“Why?” Rhodry smiled briefly. “I doubt if it would mean one thing to her. She’s so wretchedly young.”
Dallandra had to agree, but later that day, when she joined the dun’s womenfolk in their private hall, she had a surprise coming. As usual Carra—or Princess Carramaena of the Westlands, to give her full title—sat near the fire with her infant daughter sleeping in her lap. Instead of being swaddled in tight wrappings, little Elessi wore only diapers and a loose tunic while she slept. At Carra’s feet lay Lightning, her dog, though the animal looked more than half a wolf. Across the room at an uncovered window the gwerbret’s lady, Labanna, and her serving woman, Lady Ocradda, sat wrapped in cloaks at a big table frame. They wore fingerless gloves to embroider upon a bed hanging, stretched out tight between them.
Dallandra sat down opposite Carra and little Elessi. For a few moments they chatted about the child, but when conversation lagged, Dallandra thought of the bone plaque, which she had carried with her, tucked into the coin pouch she wore hidden