The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [165]
“Very well,” Rhodry said. “I’ll call a halt.”
Rhodry jerked his horse’s head around and rode back along the line, shouting orders as he went, until he reached Jill, who was riding next to Salamander. For a moment Rhodry felt so jealous of his brother that he wanted to slap him across the face; then he realized that it wasn’t Salamander who was making him suspicious, but Nevyn. He nearly laughed aloud. Don’t be a dolt! he told himself. Why, the old man must be eighty if he’s a day! Yet later that evening, when he saw Nevyn and Jill sitting at a campfire and talking in whispers, their heads bent together and the Wildfolk all around them, his jealousy bit as deep as if she’d been flirting with the handsomest man in all Deverry. He went over, sat down next to her, and took her hand in his. Nevyn smiled at him so warmly and openly that he suddenly felt like a fool, especially when Jill moved close to him and leaned her head on his shoulder with the ease of a long intimacy. Of course I’m the one she loves, he reminded himself, and he wondered all over again why he had to keep doing that reminding.
“Is somewhat wrong?” the old man said. “Or truly, that was a stupid question, after everything we’ve been through!”
“All this magic gets on a man’s nerves, sure enough,” Rhodry said. “Though I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore at one single thing you do.”
“It does take some getting used to.” Nevyn sounded comfortably smug, like a house-proud wife. “Even for a man who’s traveled the kingdom the way you have.”
All at once Rhodry remembered something that had been obscurely nagging at his mind all day, waiting for him to have the leisure to attend to it.
“Oh by the hells! My silver dagger!”
“What of it?” Jill raised her head and looked at him.
“I never found it, and here it was your father’s. I swore I’d get it back.”
“Well, my love, if it was in that house, it’s naught but a puddle of silver by now.”
Rhodry swore so foully that most of the Wildfolk vanished.
“Don’t ache your heart,” Nevyn said. “Cullyn wouldn’t care. To him it was only a mark of shame.”
“Mayhap, but I swore a vow I’d get it back.”
Nevyn glanced at Jill’s gray gnome.
“Do you know where it is?”
The gnome shrugged a no and began scratching its armpit. “Did it melt?” Jill said. “Wait, I can see you don’t understand that. Did the silver turn into water and spill?”
This time the no was definite.
“Then what, by the hells and horseshit, did they do with it?” Rhodry growled.
The gnome shrugged, then disappeared.
“Do you think he’s gone to look for it?” Rhodry said.
“I doubt it, my love. I don’t think he has the wits.” Jill considered, thinking hard. “If you’re meant to have it back, it’ll find its way home.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. Just what I said, I suppose.” She yawned with a little shudder. “I’ve got to lie down. Right now. I’ve never been so tired in my life.”
All that night Jill had strange dreams. Although she could never remember them clearly afterwards, she did recall walking down jeweled corridors into enormous rooms that blazed with colored light as palpable as gems, while she talked with splendid beings, clothed with gold and wreathed with silver fire, who may have been either spirits or men and women—she was never sure which, just as she could never consciously recall the amazing secrets they told her. She would always remember, however, waking up suddenly to find the sun shining in her eyes and a soldier squatting beside her, a tall black man, wearing a cuirbolli breastplate and leather skirts over his tunic and dangling a plumed helmet in one hand. With the other he was steadying himself by leaning on a long spear whose businesslike steel point winked in the sun. When she bit back a scream, he grinned at her.
“Forgive me for startling you, girl, but you’re safe now. As far as I can tell, we’re rescuing you from something or somebody.”
“Oh? Well, then, thank you and all that, but ye gods!” Yawning and rubbing her eyes she sat up, looked around,