The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [25]
Baruma’s heart pounded once. The Hawkmaster already knew a great deal more than he’d realized.
“I agree, of course,” Baruma said. “I suppose it’ll be easy enough for your men to take Rhodry alive. The Old One was adamant: we had to leave him alive.”
“Oh, was he? That’s an interesting piece of news. Very well, kidnapping it is. I’ll put Gwin and some of my men on the trail on the morrow. We can probably learn a great deal simply by asking this Rhodry the right questions. He might be unwilling to answer, but then, we have ways of dealing with the recalcitrant.”
“You certainly do, yes.” Baruma was by now thoroughly frightened, but he knew that he had to speak the truth now rather than let the master find it out on his own later. “But Rhodry can tell you nothing. The Old One ordered me to crush his mind.”
The master spun around and stared straight at him. The lamplight struck the hood at an angle, allowing Baruma to get an impression of narrow eyes and a sneering mouth. Showing fear or groveling now would be fatal.
“I followed my orders, of course. I wish you’d come forward earlier with this proposal.”
“So do I.” The master’s tone was ironic rather than angry, and Baruma could breathe more easily. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to restore his memory?”
“None. No human being could possibly break the ensorcelment I put upon him. No matter how long he lives, he’ll never remember so much as his own true name.”
“That’s a pity, but well, we’ll have to work round it.”
“Let me see, the man who was calling himself Merryc is still in Eldidd, isn’t he?”
“Yes, and working out very nicely, too, judging from his last letter.”
“And we at least know that Rhodry originally came from Aberwyn.”
“You know, my friend, you and I might be able to work very well together. You think, and I like that. Curse this winter weather! There won’t be another ship across in months now, and that means no news from Merryc till spring. But at any rate, what do you think of my bargain?”
Since answering too quickly would be suspicious, Baruma made a show of considering. After all, he reminded himself, gaining the Old One’s backing was only hypothetical, while the Hawkmaster’s offer was very real indeed—for better or for worse.
“I think that it’s a crucial turning of my fate, and that I’d be a fool to refuse it.” Also a dead man if I refuse it, he added to himself. “How shall we seal it?”
“The way these things are always sealed, my friend: in blood.”
“Very well.” Although he went ice-cold, he managed to keep his voice calm. “Whenever you wish to begin.”
Zandar’s caravan was working its way through hill country as they headed southwest along the spine of the island. On either side of the dusty road, field after field of dark-green vegetables nestled in the valleys, crisscrossed with tiny irrigation ditches, sparkling with water. When the caravan rode by, the bent-back farmers would look up, stretch, and stare at the long string of pack mules and horses. Riding at the dusty end of the line, Taliaesyn would stare back and envy them: farmers or not, they were free men. Toward noon, the caravan came to a river, or more precisely, to a broad gulch, littered with rocks and small shrubs, where water ran down the middle in a small, mucky stream. Out in what current there was stood a huge wooden water wheel with buckets all along the rim. As, sweating in the sun, two slaves turned a crank under an overseer’s whip, the buckets dipped down, brought up the precious water, and emptied it into a wooden culvert that ran on stilts to the main irrigation ditch at the lip of the gulch. Seeing the scars on the slaves’ backs reminded Taliaesyn that he was lucky.
When Kryblano, a free man working as a caravan guard, dropped back beside him, Taliaesyn asked him the river’s name.
“The En-ghidal. It’s dry now, all right, but soon the rains will start, and the flash floods with them. We’ll be home by then, though.”
That night the caravan