The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [176]
“Your Grace? May I suggest you sit down?”
Blaen was quite surprised to find himself standing. He took a deep breath and sat down again.
“After all, Your Grace, at least he’s alive.”
“Just so.” Blaen took another deep breath and reminded himself that he couldn’t do anything at all in the middle of the night. “I wonder if I can possibly get a ship for Bardek this time of year, one that can carry a good part of my warband.”
“You can’t, Your Grace, and truly, it would be unwise for you to go after him. I think me you’ll be needed more here in the spring, when he returns. Well.” Madoc’s face turned haunted. “If we can pull him out of this, at any rate.”
“I have great faith in the dweomer’s power, my lord.”
“My thanks. Let us hope it’s justified.”
By the gentle rocking of the hull, the prisoner knew that they were lying at anchor in one harbor or another. For a while he merely lay on his pallet and looked round the nearly empty hold. When he’d started this voyage, the hold had been full of boxes and bales. How long ago now? Weeks. He wasn’t sure how many. When he rose to his knees, the ankle chain clanked and clattered, but it was long enough to let him reach the porthole and pull up the oiled-leather covering. The blinding dazzle of sun on water made his eyes blink and tear, but in a few minutes he could make out a long white beach and a steep cliff face beyond a forest of masts. All the harbors had looked much like this. For all he knew, they’d been shuttling back and forth between a pair of towns. He did know, however, that they were in the Bardekian archipelago. His captors had told him that several times, as if it were important that he knew. He repeated it to himself now, saying it aloud: “I’m in Bardek.” It was one of the few things he did know about himself.
He held up his right arm and looked at the pale skin that marked him as a Deverry man. Although he knew where and what Deverry was, he couldn’t remember ever having been there personally, but his captors assured him that he’d been born there, in the province off Pyrdon, to be exact. He also remembered both his native tongue and the small amount of Bardekian he’d known before his capture. In fact, one of his few solid memories was of studying that language when he’d been a child. He had a clear image of his tutor, a dark-skinned man with gray hair and a kindly, ready smile, telling him that he needed to study hard because of his position in life. What that position was he didn’t remember. Perhaps he’d been the son of a merchant; it was a reasonable supposition. At any rate, although he was far from fluent in Bardekian, that early training was making it possible for him to pick up bits and pieces of the conversations he overheard and to ask simple questions. Sometimes his questions were answered; more often, not.
When he heard noises behind him, the prisoner turned away and let the porthole cover fall. The man called Gwin was coming down the ladder, and he carried a small cloth sack under one arm.
“Clothes for you.” Gwin tossed the sack over. “A tunic, sandals. Bardek clothes. You leave here today. Glad?”
“I don’t know. What happens next?”
“You’ll be sold.”
The prisoner nodded, thinking things over. Since they’d already told him he was a slave, the news was no surprise. He’d even overheard someone saying that he’d fetch a good price, because he was an exotic commodity like a rare breed of dog. While he dressed, Gwin poked among the remaining boxes and bales, but only idly, as if he were making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
“Gwin? Do you know my name?”
“Yes. Hasn’t anyone told you? It’s Taliaesyn.”
“Thanks. I wondered.”
“No doubt.” He paused, looking at the prisoner with an odd expression, a certain very thin, very fragile sympathy. “Someone will fetch you soon. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
After Gwin left, Taliaesyn sat down on his pallet and wondered why a man like that would wish him good luck, then shrugged the problem away as being as unsolvable as most of the mysteries around