The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [9]
“You see pictures in the coals now, don’t you, lad?” Nevyn whispered. “Tell me what you see. Tell me everything you see.”
“Just a fire. A leaping fire.” Perryn sounded as if he were drunk. “Big logs. It must be winter.”
“Who’s nearby? Who’s sitting at the hearth?”
“Mam and Da. Mam looks so pale. She’s not going to die, is she?”
“How old are you?”
“Four. She is going to die. I heard Uncle Benoic yelling at the herbman last night. I don’t want to go live with him.”
“Then go back, go back to the fall of the year. Do you see your Mam? Is she better?”
“She is.”
“Then go back, go back further, to the spring.”
“I see the meadow, and the deer. The hunters are coming. I’ve got to help them, warn them.”
“The hunters?”
“The stag. He’s my friend.”
In his trance Perryn twitched, his mouth working, as he went running into that meadow of memory and chased the deer away before the hunters came. Nevyn supposed that his childish mercy had cost the little lad a good beating, too. He took him back farther, to the winter before, and back again until Perryn saw the face of his wet nurse as she held him to her breast for the first time. And back further, to the pain of his birth, and back yet more, as his soul was swept into the unborn body that grew into the one he now wore, and back and back, until all at once he cried out, twisting in pain, speaking, half-choked, in some language that Nevyn had never heard before.
“By every god!” Elaeno hissed. “What is that tongue?”
Nevyn held up his hand for silence. Perryn talked on, his voice gasping as he relived his last death. Even though his facial features had changed not a jot, he no longer looked like the weasely lad he had moments before—stronger, somehow, his eyes blazing in an ancient hatred as he spat out angry words. At the end his body jerked, half-rising from the chair, then falling back as his voice broke off. Nevyn caught him by the shoulders and shook him, but gently, calling out his name until he awakened.
“My apologies,” Perryn stammered. “I must have fallen asleep or suchlike, looking at the fire. Ye gods, that was a miserable dream.”
“Indeed? Tell me about it.”
“I was skewered. A spear, you see, right through me, pinning me to the ground, and there were enemies, mocking me. Horrible horrible enemies, like goblins or suchlike.” He let his voice fade to a whisper. “They had these big noses and bushy eyebrows, all black and bristly.” Suddenly he shook himself. “I must have been remembering one of those tales my Mam used to tell me.”
“Most like, most like. Here, lad, I must have pushed you too hard. You go back to bed now and rest. We’ll try sitting up again tomorrow.”
Once they had Perryn settled and the guard back at the door, Nevyn and Elaeno returned to the old man’s chamber in the main broch. They sat down with a tankard of mulled ale each to discuss what they’d witnessed.
“I suppose his killers looked ugly to him now because he’s grown used to human beings,” Elaeno said.
“Oho! You’re assuming that those beings were his own kind of people.”
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m tempted, truly, but I also think that it’s very unwise to make any assumptions about Perryn at all.”
“Now there I’d most certainly agree with you. Huh. Big noses and bristling black eyebrows. I suppose they could be the goblins or ogres of many an old tale, either from the islands or your kingdom. Odd, how our folk stories do seem to be pretty much alike, with sorcerers, dragons, and some sort of evil ugly being.”
“Except this isn’t a tale, but a memory.”
“True.” Elaeno had a thoughtful sip of his ale from the tankard cradled in his enormous hands. “Well, if they weren’t his people, then he’s from some race or other that lives near our big-nosed friends.”
“What is clear is that he died violently and in anger and hatred. It might be enough to make