The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [84]
“Well and good, then. When will you arrive?”
“Not for weeks, I’m afraid. We’re a long way to the west at the moment, but I’ll leave with the morrow dawn.”
For several weeks the Great Krysello, King of the Cryptic, and his Mind-Boggling Brace of Bizarre Barbarians had traveled along the northeast coast of Surtinna, giving single shows in the villages and staying for a couple of nights in the towns, until at last they reached the city of-Pardidion, lying on a narrow strip of plain between the ocean and the mountains. Since it was one of the richest merchant states on the east side of the island, they had a splendid run of three nights in the marketplace as well as a performance at a private party given by the archon himself.
“But all splendors must fade, and all suns sink in the west, alas and more’s the pity,” Salamander said. “I think we’ve played the fool enough for now. It’s time to turn our faces toward the beauteous Pastedion.”
“Cursed well about time if you ask me,” Jill snapped. “How do we get there?”
“There’s a caravan road, actually, which is why we came here in the first place. Colonists from Pardidion settled Pastedion, you see, some years back, and they trade all the time. There are some smaller towns along the road, too, which should come in handy for the sheltering of wizards.”
As soon as the city gates opened that morning, they rode out, heading roughly northwest toward the town of Albara. Since she’d gotten used to the irrigated lowlands, the Bardekian foothills came as a real surprise to Jill. Although they were covered with wild grasses, they were dead-brown, so dry and bleached that at times in strong sunlight it seemed as if they rode through hills of beaten gold. In the coombs, where there was ground water all year long, grew holm oaks, their leathery leaves a green so dark that they looked like black bubbles caught in the golden dales. In some of the canyons and gulches, a thick choking tangle of shrubs and spiky things of all kinds spilled down to the flat road below, but the rest of the terrain was utterly treeless. It was hot there, too, a dry and breathless heat that set the roads to shimmering and danced on the huge sandstone boulders that poked up through the thin soil.
They stopped for the noon meal in a tiny valley, where a trickle of water, just clean enough for the horses, ran down the middle of a rocky stream bed. The humans drank watered wine from a skin bought back in Pardidion.
“I think we’d better skip the usual nap,” Salamander remarked. “I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s following us.”
“Nor more can I,” Jill said. “And I don’t want them to catch us out here with no one else around.”
“Truly. Well, we’ll be safe in Albara. If we’re very lucky, we might even And one last caravan heading north and join up with it, but I doubt it. It’s too close to the flood season now, hard though it is to believe at this moment.”
“Are there any silver daggers in the islands?” Jill said. “I mean, the same sort of man, someone you can hire for a bodyguard.”
“None that I’ve ever heard of, alas and alack. We might have to … Wait! Silver dagger. Why do those words tug at my mind … ye gods, I almost forgot the wretched ring!”
“The what?”
“A silver ring, a present for you, younger brother, from our most esteemed father.” Salamander took out the leather pouch he kept hidden inside his tunic and dumped a handful of small coins and lint into his lap. “Here we are.”
He handed Rhodry a flat silver band, about a third of an inch wide, engraved with some design.
“Roses.” Rhodry held it up. “Now that’s a peculiar omen. What’s this inside?”
“Elven writing. If you sound the letters out, it says ‘arr-ssos-ah soth-ee lorr-ess-oh-ahz.’ As to what that may mean, no one knows, not elven loremaster nor dweomerwoman nor bard, and no more the human priests of Wmm, because I asked them myself and thus should know.”
With a shrug Rhodry slipped the ring on the third finger of his right hand: a perfect fit.
“Why are roses a peculiar omen?” Jill said.
“Well, my lady