The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [155]
It was later in the morning that Ylla, the lady Ocradda’s maidservant, asked Dallandra to come up to the women’s hall. Dalla found the gwerbret’s wife sitting by the hearth in a carved chair with sewing in her lap. Dallandra sat on a footstool near her ladyship.
“Thank you for coming up,” Ocradda said. “I trust I’ve not interrupted some um, er, well, important work?”
“None, my lady. What troubles your heart?”
“Well, it’s the servants. They do worry so dreadfully about sorcery, and with winter here, there’s not truly enough work to keep them busy.” She forced out a brittle little laugh. “Silly of them, of course.”
“I wouldn’t call it silly. They’ve seen enough evil dweomer to trouble anyone’s heart.”
Ocradda let her forced smile disappear.
“This Evandar,” Ocradda said. “He’s little Elessi’s grandfather, or so Princess Carra tells me?”
“That’s true, my lady.”
“Well, then, he’s welcome in our dun whenever he wants to see the child, but couldn’t he ride up like an ordinary man? The way he just appears—it frightens everyone.”
“So I’ve noticed. I’ll have a word with him the next time he comes.”
“My thanks.” Ocradda leaned back in her chair. “We’ve all seen too many strange things. But ah ye gods, dweomer saved us all! I hope you don’t think me ungrateful.”
“I don’t. Now you know why the dweomer prefers to work in secret. Life’s much easier for people if they can pretend magic simply doesn’t exist.”
“So it is. I’m just so glad all that’s over now.”
As she was leaving, Dallandra remembered a trifle she’d been meaning to attend to.
“My lady? Might I trouble the chamberlain for some soap?”
“Soap?” Lady Ocradda raised an eyebrow. “At this time of year?”
“Just a little bit would do,” Dalla said. “For the occasional wash.”
“Well, perhaps the chamberlain might be able to find you a scrap, though I doubt me it would be more than that. It’s because of the siege, you see. We always make soap in the fall, with the fats and tallow from the slaughtering, but this year every scrap of fat got itself eaten, not that there was much with the poor beasts half-starved.”
“Of course.” Dalla felt ashamed of herself. “My apologies. I’ll make do with water, then.”
“If you don’t mind?” Ocradda looked faintly desperate, as if wondering whether Dallandra would set fire to the dun over its lack of soap.
“Not in the least, not at all.”
What Ocradda didn’t know, and a good thing, too, was that Dallandra worked dweomer in the dun every night. For some while now she’d been placing wards around the bed she and Rhodry shared to keep Raena out of his dreams. Although she’d carved elvish runes on strips of wood for a physical focus, the true wards burned on the etheric and astral as images of flaming stars.
“They’re working nicely, too,” Rhodry said that evening. “I’ve had naught but pleasant dreams since you started doing this.”
“Good. I think it’s time to spring my trap, then. By now Raena should be good and angry. I wanted to make her frustrated, you see, so she won’t think clearly.”
“I think I do see. Then one night you won’t put up the wards?”
“Just that, and I think I’ll try it tonight. You just go to sleep as usual—”
“—knowing a crazed sorceress is out for my blood. Just a trifle. I’ll not let it trouble my heart.”
“Well, you went riding with the prince today, didn’t you? You should be nice and tired.”
Involuntarily Rhodry yawned.
“So I am,” he said. “This cold weather takes it out of a man.”
That night when she slept, Dallandra went to the Gatelands, an “area,” if you wish to use that metaphor, at the “edge” of the astral plane. During sleep the average person’s soul drifts close enough to the astral to receive true dreams as well as the mundane images from their own minds. A dweomer-master, or a strange case like Raena, can therefore track down a dreaming person and make some sort of contact with them. Conversely, another master can meet and confront the dream-meddler as well.
Long years of practice had made Dallandra adept at true dreaming;