The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [150]
“I’ll take that risk, if I have to. And it may come to that.”
“Let us devoutly hope it won’t. You know, they say here in the islands that anyone who makes a pact with the Clawed Ones always gets betrayed in the end. Maybe they’ll lead us right to their ancient servant. Or—sorry. I can see by your face that my feeble attempt at a jest wasn’t funny in the least.”
“It’s just my mood. I was thinking of somewhat that Gwin said earlier. He was afraid that the Old One was making us come to him by some magical means.”
“He’s not, then?”
“Oh of course not! Don’t be a superstitious lackwit! Now, wait a moment. That’s an interesting thought. Suppose he wanted to draw me here for some reason—to kill me, most like, knowing him. Wouldn’t our Rhodry be the perfect bait?”
“He got you here, sure enough.”
“Huh. I’ll have to think about this. I’ve been racking my brains, wondering where Rhodry’s political enemies could have found a guild of Hawks to hire, and here I may have maligned them. I never could make sense of this whole thing. I’ll talk to Gwin again later and see what his exact orders were.”
“You know, oh exalted master of our mutual craft, there’s somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you. Here’s Gwin, who’s probably murdered dozens of men and women too for all we know, and yet he strikes me as pathetic. Then there’s Perryn, who did indeed rape Jill, but unwittingly, at enormous cost to his own health, and without so much as bruising her—yet he strikes me as utterly repellent. Is it because Jill’s my beloved friend, while Gwin’s victims remain hypothetical and abstract in the extreme?”
“Partly, but mostly it’s because you share Gwin’s humanity, for all that you’re half an elf, and while Perryn may have a human body, his soul isn’t human in the least.”
For the first time in all the years he’d known him, Nevyn had the satisfaction of seeing Salamander speechless. He left him alone to think and guided his horse up to the head of the line, where Gwin and Jill were riding on either side of Rhodry.
“Gwin, come with me a moment, will you? There’s somewhat I want to ask you.”
Gwin did indeed remember the orders he’d been given when he and the man called Merryc had been sent to Deverry. It was clear from the beginning, as far as he could tell, that the Old One had sent Baruma to hire the guild, not that anyone knew exactly why. More and more Nevyn was sure that he could guess. He sent Gwin back to Rhodry’s side and rode on alone, getting about half a mile ahead of the line of march but never out of sight of the dust cloud that told him where they were. If the Old One wanted a strike at him, he was willing to let him try. Before they’d left Pastedion he’d set astral seals over the entire party to hide them from the Old One’s scrying, but there was always the possibility that their enemy would risk traveling on the etheric in the body of light in order to track them down. Although he couldn’t be sure that they were being watched in this way without going into a full trance, he could open himself up to the slight whispers and warnings of danger that the Old One’s presence would induce.
For the rest of that morning the road wound through an endless roll of greening hills and the dark slashes of the tree-choked valleys. Every now and then a gaggle of sylphs or mob of gnomes would pop into manifestation and point frantically to the east, then disappear again. It was well into the afternoon, however, before anything untoward happened. When he crested a particularly high hill, he realized that he’d put a dangerous distance between himself and the others—dangerous to them. What if the Old One chose to attack those least capable of defending themselves! Cursing himself for a shortsighted fool, he turned his horse and trotted back to fall into place beside Jill at the head of the line.
“Has anything untoward happened while I’ve been gone?”
“Naught. Or, well, I suppose this isn’t truly anything.”
“Out with it.”
“I just keep feeling like we’re being watched.”
“No doubt someone’s trying to scry us out. I’ve set seals that should frustrate