The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [64]
“They have their birthright at last,” she said aloud. “They ride the wheel of Time now.”
“And they’ll not fade away when they die?”
“Never. They’ll have life again and again, round and round. But what of you, my love? Won’t you—”
“Hush!” He held up one hand flat for silence. “I’ll not discuss it anymore.”
Dallandra set her hands on her hips and glared at him, while he considered her with all traces of feeling stripped from his face. All at once it seemed to her that someone was standing behind her. She spun round to find no one there, but the feeling of a presence remained.
“Is Shaetano nearby?” she said.
“What? He isn’t, no. I always know when he’s around.”
“But someone’s watching us.”
From high up in a leafless tree she heard a faint wail, a ghost of a cry rather than a real sound. She glanced up and saw, clinging to the branches, a withered little creature with a face like bark and hands like twigs. With huge dark eyes it stared at her, then vanished.
“One of Alshandra’s pack,” Evandar said. “Naught more. There’s nothing there to worry us.”
“Isn’t there? I gather you left them behind.”
“Quite right. They’re too ugly to bother with.” He hesitated briefly. “Oh now here! You’re not expecting me to help them, are you?”
“I’m not expecting you to do anything.” All at once Dallandra felt profoundly tired. “No doubt I’d best just try to do it myself.”
With a toss of her long hair she strode off, fuming. What had she expected, she asked herself? Some glorious moment of victory, she supposed, when she could look back at all her efforts to give Evandar’s people life and think how worthwhile the trouble had been. Somehow in her fancy for this moment there had been an admiring crowd, too, all marvelling at what she’d done. Instead, she had a flawed triumph, an irritating success, and not one shred of honest gloating to enjoy.
“Ah well,” she muttered. “That’s what life is like, here beneath the moon! Why am I even surprised?”
And then and only then did she hear, in some deep recess of her soul, an echo of those three great knocks and know that the Great Ones were pleased. She burst out laughing and strode off to the dun, smiling to herself. Trouble there would be, no doubt, for those souls so suddenly brought into life, but she would deal with it when it happened and not worry herself till then.
Although she eventually recovered, Raena’s illness—a deep rheum of the chest, a fever that burned in her face—lasted weeks. In the boredom of winter, Cerr Cawnen gossiped endlessly. Why had she been out, wandering round in the snows? Some said that Verrarc’s new wife probably had some other man; after all, a woman who’d betray one man would doubtless cheat on the next. Others whispered of things more sinister, black witchcraft and evil spirits. The spirits had come to Raena twice now, had they not? And why would they do such a thing unless she were attracting them?
Niffa, of course, knew perfectly well that the latter tale was the true one, but she refused to cause her mother grief by telling that truth. Dera, in her loyalty to Councilman Verrarc, had decided that the third theory going round was the correct one, that Raena was subject to sudden fits of madness and thus deserved pity, not censure.
“She never had a child, poor thing,” Dera would say. “And truly, it be not likely now that she will. It must have been preying on her mind, like, her just married and all.”
Niffa would hold her tongue and smile, but in her heart she hated Raena as much as ever, even though she knew now that the woman hadn’t killed Demet herself. She would wonder, though, in softer moments, just where her hatred sprang from. Little could she know that this poisoned tree had its roots back in a time when the evil dweomers