The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [85]
“And the moon might well turn purple, too.”
“Oh, don’t be so stubborn! There’s nothing in their essential natures that keeps the Horsekin from changing their ways. They’re not animals, like wolves or bears, driven to be what they are from within with no hope of learning better.”
“So? Who’s to teach them? I don’t want them to do their learning over a pile of our corpses.”
“Do you think I do?”
“No.” Cal suddenly smiled. “The prince was right, you know. Our tempers have been rubbed raw by the news. Let me apologize again for snapping at you.”
“And I’ll apologize to you, too.”
For a few moments they said nothing, lingering side by side in the soothing wind. Above them the River of Stars, where the elven gods sailed at their leisure in jew eled ships, flowed and glittered from horizon to horizon.
“Ah, well,” Cal said at last. “I suppose I’d better be getting back.”
She could hear his longing for her under the studied indifference of his voice. For a moment she was tempted to let him stay the night, just because she felt so lonely under the high arc of the stars, but that reason would have been profoundly unfair to him, or so it seemed to her.
“Yes,” Dalla said, “you should. We’ll all have to be up at dawn tomorrow.”
“True enough.” He raised one hand in a gesture somewhere between a wave farewell and a slap at the air. “Good night.”
As Dallandra watched him stride away, she felt tempted to call him back. You’re just lonely, she told herself. Don’t be a fool! With a shake of her head, she went into her tent. Hot, stuffy air met her like an unwelcome embrace. She grabbed her blankets and took them outside to sleep in the grass.
Yet for a while she lay awake, watching the River of Stars and thinking of the Horsekin, moving inexorably east like another river. At least she could take comfort in knowing that help was on its way—not only military help, but that of the dweomer. She could depend upon Grallezar among the Gel da’Thae and Niffa in the Rhiddaer to guard their respective homelands. Beyond them, even, two of the greatest dweomermasters the world had ever known had been reborn, and now they were old enough to begin their training. They’ll learn fast, Dallandra thought. With them, it will be more like remembering.
Or so, at least, she could hope.
With all the taxes received and stored, life in Cadryc’s dun settled into a quiet routine, or it would have been quiet if Tieryn Cadryc hadn’t been so jumpy. He snarled and snapped at everyone, servant and noble-born alike, then apologized, even to the servants. In between bouts of temper he paced around the ward, led the warband out for long aimless rides, or sat brooding in his chair in the great hall. The men picked up their lord’s mood. Fights broke out over next to nothing beyond Gerran’s ability to prevent them, though he broke them up fast enough. He’d get in between the fighters and start swinging the flat of his sword while he cursed them impartially.
The weather added its own measure of unease. The days were unusually hot, and every summer shower left the air so humid that it might as well have still been raining. In the damp afternoons insects swarmed around men and horses both. Cadryc took to drinking earlier in the day.
“It’s the insult to his honor, I suppose,” Branna said. “Uncle Cadryc, I mean. Somewhat’s aching his heart.”
“The insult does vex him,” Galla said. “But he still has hope, you see, that the gwerbret will give in eventually. It’s up to that gerthddyn now, he told me.”
“Salamander? How could he possibly change the gwerbret’s mind?”
“I don’t know, dear, but Salamander said somewhat about finding a Horsekin fortress. If he does, it’ll make a difference. Cadryc’s not told me more than that. But hope can vex a man, too, just from the waiting to see if he’s going to get what he’s hoping for.”
The two women were sewing up in their hall, their refuge against the general ill temper downstairs. They’d finished the first panel of Branna’s bed hangings a few days earlier, and now the second lay stretched in the