The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [159]
“There he is! Can you see him?”
“Not one thing,” Salamander was panting for breath. “And I’m the elf.”
Only then did Nevyn realize that he’d already slipped into a light trance, that he was seeing the small group of men, carrying some large and lurching thing up a hill, only in his mind.
“It’s Tondalo in a litter. This hideous chalice is practically throbbing in my hands, it’s so linked to him. Well and good, then. You guard my body while I go into full trance. If this wretched fool thinks he can escape me as easily as he fooled the Hawks, then he’s stupid as well as evil to the core.”
Panting and gasping under the weight of the Utter, the slaves staggered up the hill. Inside, thrown this way and that, grabbing at window frame and curtains indiscriminately to steady himself, the Old One was already making his mental preparations. Across from him Pachela moaned as she clutched a padded box with one hand and the litter frame with the other. Her gray hair was slipping from her coiffure in big wisps. Suddenly the motion of the litter eased somewhat as the slaves reached the crest of the hill.
“Stop here!” the Old One called. “Put me down here.”
The litter jerked to the ground, and the door flung open of its own accord. Pachela scrambled out first, then helped the Old One haul his bulk free and stand up. Far down below him the smoke from the burning villa rose in an oily plume. The Old One turned and found the slaves huddled together by the tipped litter.
“As of now you’re all free, for all the good it will do you. Pachela, get out the bottle of the poison. I brought a wineglass, too. If it hasn’t broken, I might as well die in proper style. The rest of you, run away now! Fast! Head to town and tell everyone that brigands have fired the villa. If you’re lucky, they’ll believe you before the Hawks get you.”
Half-slinking, half-scrambling they hurried off downhill. The Old One lowered himself to the grass and patted the ground with one hand. It was such a distasteful feeling, the ground hard, the grass slick and somehow oily on his parchment-dry skin, that he realized with some surprise that he hadn’t been outdoors inside his own body in over fifty years. Shaking with fear, Pachela opened the prepared poison, dissolved in wine, and poured it out. The Old One held up the glass goblet and swirled the dark red wine, a Myleton vintage, raw and brash enough to cover the acrid tinge. Far below the greasy plume of burning had climbed to the sky.
“Pachela, you may go now. I see that Nevyn’s worked my revenge for me.” He took the first long swallow of wine. “The Hawkmaster is—was—a very stupid man, good with knives, no doubt, but not with his wits.”
As he sipped the second dose, he looked round to note the details of this early spring day: the view of the mountain peaks far away, pure and shining in the warm sun, Pachela herself, once a beautiful girl with ensnaring dark eyes instead of this thick-waisted matron with gray hair, who was walking slowly, with dignity, down the hill toward the burning ruin of the only life she’d ever known. No doubt she was glad that he was dying. Here in the soft sun, with the wind picking up cool and flower-scented, he couldn’t begrudge it to her.
“Everything changes,” he mumbled. “It’s the curse of the world: everything changes. But I—I go beyond all that.”
Although his hand responded slowly and trembled all the way, he got the goblet to his mouth and gulped down the last of the wine. A dribble ran from the corner of his mouth, but when he automatically tried to wipe it away, his hand spasmed, tossing the glass against the earth to shatter there.
“It is time.”
His eyes shut of their