The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [30]
Since she was tired from her journey, Branna went to bed early. Unlike her old bed in her father’s dun, her new mattress was soft and comfortable, and the down pillows smelled fresh, not sour. She lay down, then turned on her side to look at the sliver of starry sky visible through her window. Earlier, she’d resolved to give up her strange dreams of dweomer, but as soon as she fell asleep, a dream took her over.
She was standing at another window, looking at the sky. A full moon drifted in the field of stars. As she watched, the moon began to shrink until it turned into a gem, an opal, she thought, but it gleamed just as brightly as before. Suddenly she stood inside a chamber, and an old man, dressed in the brown tattered clothes of a poor farmer, was holding the opal out to her.
Branna woke and sat up. Judging from the wheel of stars outside her window, dawn lay a long way off. Her gnome appeared and flopped down on the bed beside her.
“Another odd dream,” she told it. “Twice odd, really, because it wasn’t the sort of dream I used to weave into a story, but it truly did seem more important than the usual sort of dream.”
The gnome yawned, then left its mouth half-open and began to pick its teeth with one skinny fingernail.
“And of no interest to you, obviously. Humph!”
Branna lay down again, and fell back asleep almost immediately. She had no more dreams that night, or at least, none that she remembered when she woke with the dawn.
On the day after Branna’s arrival, the tieryn and his warband rode back to the dun. From the window of his tower room Neb watched them file through the gates—the horses weary, the men covered with dust from the roads. A provision cart and a couple of mules with empty packsaddles followed them, but no villagers walked behind, not a single man, woman, or child. Neb’s eyes filled with tears as his last shred of hope blew away like the dust in the wind. He and Clae alone had escaped the Horsekin.
In his grief Neb decided against going down to the bustle and confusion of the great hall. He could wait to hear the grim report of what the warbands had found. When the sun had sunk low in the sky, however, Salamander came to his chamber. The gerthddyn had bathed and put on fresh clothes, including a shirt so heavily embroidered that it draped as stiffly as leather.
“I’ll wager you can guess my news,” Salamander said. “No one was left alive. We buried your uncle. I fear me your aunt’s been taken by the Horsekin.”
“And the other women, too?”
“Just that. I’m sorry.”
Neb stared into empty air and fought the memories down.
“We’d best get ourselves to the great hall,” Salamander went on. “They’re serving the evening meal, and the tieryn wants you to write an important letter.”
A spiral staircase wound down to the great hall, dim with the shadows of twilight. Near the door the men of the warband were drinking at their tables while they waited for their dinner. Across from them, near the nobles’ hearth, Tieryn Cadryc sat at the head of the table of honor with his wife at his right hand. Branna was sitting next to Lady Galla. She wore a pair of clean dresses, the outer a pale blue, cut short in front and slashed at the sleeves to reveal a gray underdress. An embroidered band of interlace ran around the neck, and like a pendant hanging from a chain an embroidered dragon lay just over her collarbone. Neb felt himself blush for no particular reason, then noticed the gerthddyn staring at her, his lips half-parted as if in surprise. Or was it sexual interest? Neb wanted to slap him across the face, but the emotion shocked him so much that he managed to suppress it.
“Have you met Lady Branna before?” Neb said.
“The ice in your voice, lad, would freeze most men’s blood.”
Neb raised one eyebrow and considered him.
“Ye gods,” Salamander said, “the look in your eyes just might do the same.”
“Have you met her before?”
“I’ve not.”
“Then you’d best mind your manners around her.”
Salamander opened his mouth, then shut it again. Neb turned on his heel and strode off to the honor