The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [51]
After more wine all round, this time at the captain’s expense, Salamander announced that he and his handmaiden had to prepare an evening’s show, invited everyone to come see it, and left on a general wave of good cheer. Jill managed to keep smiling until they reached the street—no longer.
“May this Pommaeo freeze in the third hell!”
“I’ll admit to being vexed, miffed, and in general annoyed with our gallant. Even worse, however, is the captain’s other bit of news.”
“That so-called slave trader who was asking about barbarians?”
“I like that ‘so-called,’ turtledove. It shows you were listening with crafty ears. I don’t like this at all. Of course, it might be some sort of coincidence.”
“Just like it was a coincidence that Brindemo was poisoned the day before we got to Myleton.”
“Entirely too true spoken, alas. You know, when we get back to the inn, I think I’d better have a look around.”
“What? If you want to look around town, why go back to the inn?”
“At times there are better ways of traveling than using one’s feet, my sweet sandpiper. Haven’t you ever seen Nevyn go into trance?”
“Well, so I have. You mean you can do that, too?”
“I can, and soon, no doubt, you’ll be learning how yourself. It’s one of the basic techniques.”
Jill went cold all over, partly in fear, but partly in excitement. She’d been assuming that Nevyn’s ability to work in the trance state was the mark of a highly exalted master, not of a mere journeyman. Yet Salamander’s trance was certainly nothing exciting to watch. With Jill kneeling to one side, and a crowd of curious Wildfolk at the other, he lay on the divan in their inn chamber and crossed his arms over his chest. In a moment he seemed to have fallen asleep, his eyes shut, his mouth a little open, his breathing slow and soft. For some time Jill watched him, then let her mind wander, so much so that she yelped aloud when he abruptly sat up and started talking.
“I don’t like this, Jill. I don’t like it at all.”
“What happened?”
“Naught. But there were … oh, how can I describe them? I can’t, truly. Call them traces or tracks—that will have to do. And I saw one particular spirit that could only be associated with a dark master, a pitiful twisted thing.” His face darkened with rage. “I wanted to help it, but it was so frightened I couldn’t get close to it. It obviously associated human and half-human souls with pain and naught more. Oh ye gods, how I hate these swine!” With a toss of his head he stood up, stretching, then smiled, slipping back under his mask of a sunny-natured idiot. “Is there wine, oh beauteous handmaiden? The wizard’s worked up a powerful sort of thirst.”
“I’ll fetch some, but are you telling me that the dark masters are here in Daradion?”
“Naught of the sort, turtledove. Only that one or two of the lesser slimes oozed through here some days ago. I think me, though, that we’d best be as sly as sly from now on.”
When she went to bed, Jill lay awake for a long while, her mind drifting on the borderlands of sleep. She happened to remember the Dark Sun, the elven goddess whom she and Salamander had called upon to witness their vow of vengeance against Rhodry’s tormentors. It seemed years ago, not a matter of months, when back in Cerrmor they’d pledged death with goblets of mead. The goddess had death wolves, or so Salamander had told her, and the vow invoked those beasts to run ever before them on their bloody hunt. She liked that vow, liked the image it called to mind, of a goddess standing tall, an elven longbow in her hands, quiver at her hip, and at her feet the two crouched black wolves.
In her mind one of the wolves turned its head and looked right at her. With a little yelp she was wide awake, annoyed with herself for letting her mind play tricks. Yet she could remember the picture perfectly, and when it was time to do her exercises with mental images, she chose the wolf—but without, unfortunately, telling Salamander what she was doing. Since it was an ancient nexus of power on the