The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [155]
It took all day and well into the night for the Old One to recover. As he lay gasping and wheezing on his bed, he realized that his body was reaching the end of its unnaturally prolonged endurance, that even if he could kill all his enemies, Nevyn and the Hawks both, he would die soon anyway. At first he raged and swore; then he wept and trembled; finally he lay still, his feelings spent, and considered the situation. The Clawed Ones were deserting him, he supposed; they always did desert a master of his craft, sooner or later, as one last test to see if that master could stand without them. Only then could he pass into the life that was death.
Regret it though he did, it was time for him to die. No doubt his enemies thought that his death would mean the end of him and his power; no doubt they thought that they’d be rid of him forever once they killed this loathsome husk that weighed him down. He knew that he was only going to another place, where he would live on and find unlimited power to take his revenge.
“Fools!” he whispered. “Someday soon I’ll suck their souls dry.”
“Nevyn?” Jill said. “You seem to know exactly where we’re going.”
“I do. I’m afraid I was being a stiff-necked dolt, trying to do everything in exactly my way and in my own time. Fortunately, I had the wit to accept help when it was offered.”
“From the Wildfolk?”
“From their kings and their lords. Those are beings with a full consciousness—a very different sort than ours, but a true consciousness all the same. They stand in the same relationship to the Wildfolk as the Great Ones do to us.”
“I don’t know why, but whenever you talk about the Great Ones, I feel terrified.”
“Why? Because you’re a sensible sort of person, that’s why. They’re not all cozy and comfortable, you know.”
They were riding at the head of the line, a little ahead of the others so they could talk privately. That morning when they broke camp, Nevyn had led them off the road with the remark that he didn’t see any reason to give Ganjalo the scare of its life and then taken them straight through the wild hills. Now they were following a stream, running full and wild from the floods, that would—or so Nevyn said—take them right to the Old One’s estate.
“Why isn’t the Old One trying to stop us?”
“I don’t know, but I suspect that he’s getting ready to run for his life. Or, truly, that’s not quite the right way to put it. Listen, Jill, you’ll find out soon enough. I only ask one thing from you: whatever I tell you to do, do it. I don’t care how badly it aches your heart—do what I say.”
“Of course. I promised, and I will.”
Toward noon Nevyn called a halt. While Jill fretted, pacing back and forth and wondering what he was up to, he went alone to the top of a nearby hill and sat in the grass for close to an hour. When he returned, he announced that the Old One’s compound lay just ahead. As they rode that last few miles, Jill noticed how quiet Nevyn was, slumped a little in his saddle as if he were lost in thought. At that moment he reminded her of her father; he looked every bit as bored and distant as Cullyn did when he was about to charge into a battle against bad odds. At the crest of one last hill they paused their sweaty, blowing horses, and Nevyn rose in the stirrups to shade his eyes and look out.
“There it is.”
Like a piece of jewelry in the palm of a hand, the villa lay in a green valley. White stucco walls set off the gardens and the buildings—a main longhouse, a stables, a scatter of square sheds—which were all roofed with the usual Bardekian shakes of reddish wood. From their vantage point Jill could see nothing moving, not so much as an animal.
“Nevyn?” Jill said. “Are there wards over the compound?”
“You have been studying, haven’t you? There are indeed, but I’ll just do somewhat about that now.”
Nevyn clutched his saddle peak with both hands, shut his eyes, and went limp, bowing toward his horse’s neck. For some minutes nothing seemed to happen; then his head jerked up—though his eyes stayed shut—and his whole body twitched and shuddered.
“There.” All at once,