A Time of Omens (33 page)

Since she saw no elves in the hall, and no one with the golden aura of a dweomermaster, either, Dallandra focused the vision down a level, till it seemed to her that she stood in the great hall at Rhodry’s side. From this stance she could see him a good bit more clearly and pick out his companion as well, the young blond fellow that Evandar had called “Yraen,” the Deverrian word for iron and thus doubtless only a nickname. The bard, an elderly fellow, set his harp down on the floor and took the whistle, turning it this way and that to study it.

As she hovered there, looking round within the room of her vision, a flash of blue etheric light caught her eye. Over by the hearth something man-shaped and man-sized appeared, swinging its head this way and that, but judging from the shape of that head, flat and snouted like a badger’s, and its skin, covered with short blue-gray fur, there was nothing human in its nature. It was dressed in human clothes, but of a peculiar cut: brown wool brigga that came only to its knees, a linen shirt as full as those Deverry men wore, but lacking sleeves and collar. Round its neck it wore a gold tore. Slowly it stood and began ambling over to Rhodry’s side, but no one in the room seemed to see it at all. At times, in fact, one of the men might have walked right into it if the creature hadn’t jumped out of their way.

All at once Rhodry spun round and yelped aloud, pointing straight at the snouted beast. Dallandra had forgotten that he was half-elven, with that race’s inherent ability to see etheric forms, so long, that is, as the forms are imposed into the physical plane. It seemed that the creature hadn’t known it, either. It shrieked and disappeared, leaving behind a puff of evil-looking etheric substance like black smoke. Apparently the shriek was a thing of thought only, because none of the men, not even Rhodry, reacted to it. What did happen was that a cluster of men formed round
the silver dagger, all of them looking puzzled and asking questions. Talking a flood of explanations, Yraen grabbed the bone whistle with one hand and Rhodry’s arm with the other and dragged him out of the hall.

Dallandra followed, hovering round them until she was sure that the badger-thing was gone for good, then broke the vision cold and flew up the planes. She found Evandar waiting where she’d left him on the riverbank. When she told him the story, his mood turned as dark as a summer storm.

“Then it’s as I thought, my love,” he snarled. “Curse them all! Sniffing and snouting round my country, threatening harm to a man under my protection!”

“Who?”

“The dark court. Those who dwell farther in.” He rose, snapping his fingers and snatching from midair a silver horn. “This could well mean war.”

“Now wait! If I simply go and fetch the whistle back—”

“That won’t matter. This is a question of boundaries, and those are the most important questions of all.”

With a toss of his head he raised the horn and blew, a long note that was both sweet and terrifying. In a clang of bronze and silver and a storm of shouting, the Host came rushing to ring him round.

“Our borders! They’ve breached our borders!” Evandar called out. “To horse!”

With a roar of approval the Host raised their spears and yelled for horses. Servants swarmed out of nowhere to bring them, and these steeds were every one white with rusty-red ears. Evandar helped Dallandra mount, then swung up onto his own horse, gathered the reins in one hand, and rode up beside her.

“If things go against us, my love, flee for your life back to the Westlands, but I’d beg you to remember me for a little while.”

“Never could I forget you.” She felt cold horror choking her throat. “But what do you think might happen?”

“I don’t know.” He laughed, suddenly as gleeful as a child. “I don’t have the least idea.”

The Host howled laughter with him. Holding the silver horn above his head in one hand, Evandar led them out at a jog upstream along the riverbank. Over the mutter of
water and the jingling of armor and tack Dallandra found it impossible to ask him questions—not, she supposed, that he would have answered them. There was nothing for her to do but ride and picture horrible imaginings of war.

Once, hundreds of years past as men and elves reckoned time, though it seemed but a few years ago to her, she’d done what she could with herbs and bandages after a battle, when wounded man after wounded man was dragged to her and dumped bleeding or dying onto the wagon bed she was using for a surgery. Hour after hour it went on, till she was so exhausted that she could barely stand, though no more could she bear to stop tending such need. It seemed to her that she could smell all over again the lumps and streaks of gore clotting black on her hands and arms. With a moan of real pain she tossed her head and forced the memories away. Evandar, riding a bit ahead of her, never heard.

By then the river had sunk and dwindled to a white-water stream, cutting a canyon some twenty feet below and to the left of the road. The sun hung red and swollen off to their right, as if they saw it through the smoke of some enormous fire. Ahead lay plains, as flat and seemingly infinite as those in the Westlands, stretching on and on to a horizon where clouds—or was it smoke—billowed like a frozen wave, all bloody red from the bloated sun. Ahead out in the grasslands this hideous light winked and gleamed on spears and armor. Evandar blew three sharp notes on the silver horn. The Host behind him howled, and a dusty wind blew back in answer the sound of another horn and the shouting of the enemy.

“Peel off!” Evandar yelled at Dallandra. “Stay in safety and prepare to flee!”

Sick-cold and shaking, she followed his orders, turning her horse out of line and heading off to the right, where she could lag behind the warband. Yet both her caution and her fear went for naught that day. As they rode closer to the assembled army, waiting out in the plain, a herald broke ranks and came trotting out, carrying a staff wound with colored ribands in the Deverry manner. When Evandar began screaming orders, the Host clattered to a stop behind him and reined their horses up into a rough semicircle, spread out by the river. Clad in glittering black
helms and mail, their opponents wheeled round to face them, but they kept their distance. In a muddle of curiosity and fear for her lover’s life, Dallandra kicked her horse to a trot and rejoined Evandar as he jogged out to meet the herald. As if in answer to her gesture, one of the enemy warriors broke ranks and trailed after the herald, but he tucked his helm under one arm and held his spear loosely couched and pointed at the ground.

When out between the armies the two sides met, Dallandra nearly lost all her courtesy; with great difficulty she stifled a noise that would have been partly an oath, partly a scream. Although both the herald and the warrior facing them were shaped like men, and both were wearing human-style clothes and armor, their faces were grotesquely distorted, the herald all swollen and pouched, his skin hanging in great folds of warty flesh round his neck, while the warrior was more than a little vulpine, with pointed ears tufted with red for and a roach of red hair running from his forehead over his skull and down to the back of his neck, while his beady black eyes glittered above a long, sharp nose. The herald was bald and hunchbacked as well, though he did speak perfect Elvish with a musical voice.

“What brings you to the battle plain, Evandar? My lord has committed no fault against you or yours.”

“A fault he has done, good herald, against a man marked as mine, and all for the sake of a trinket dropped in my country and thus mine by treaty.”

When the herald swung his head round in appeal to the warrior behind him, the swags and wattles of skin grated with a sound like dry twigs scraping over one another. The warrior acknowledged his gesture with a nod, then spurred his horse to the herald’s side. For a moment he and Evandar considered each other in silence, while the herald turned dead-pale and began to edge his mount backward. Dallandra noticed then that the ancient creature’s eyes were pink and rheumy.

“Not one word of what you say makes the least sense,” the leader of the Dark Host said at last. “What trinket?”

“A whistle made of some kind of bone,” Evandar said. “And dropped by one of your spies, I’ll wager. I gave it to a human man named Rhodry, and now one of your folk’s come sniffing round him to fetch it back.”

“I know naught of what you say. Never have I owned or seen a bone whistle.”

Evandar studied him with narrowed eyes while the herald fidgeted in his saddle.

“Tell me this,” Evandar said at last. “Have ever you seen or accepted service from a man with a head and snout as flat and blunt as a badger’s, and him all hairy with gray far, who dresses as the Deverry men dressed when first they came into their new country?”

“And what name does -he answer to?”

“I don’t know, but he wears a twisted rod of gold round his neck.”

“Then I know him, yes, but he’s no longer one of mine. Some of my people have broken from my rule and command, Evandar, just as, or so I hear, some have from yours.” All at once he grinned, pulling dark lips back from sharp white teeth. “Even your wife, or so the minors say,”

“My liege!” With a little shriek the herald rode in between them. “If we’re here to prevent a battle, perhaps the harsh ways of speaking had best be laid aside,”

“Go away, old man,” the fox warrior snarled. “My brother and I will solve this thing between us.”

Dallandra caught her breath in a little gasp. Was this then her lover’s true kin and his true form? Sitting easily on his horse Evandar merely smiled at his rival, and he looked so truly elven at that moment, except perhaps for his impossibly yellow hair, that she found it hard—no, she refused—to think of him as anything but a man of her own people. Whimpering, the herald pulled back,

“Women tire of men all the time.” Evandar remarked, still smiling. “Tend to your rebels, and I’ll tend to mine. Are you telling me that you hold no command over our snouted friend?”

“I am. Just that. Some few have left my host, claiming they’ve found more powerful protectors elsewhere. At first I thought they’d gone over to you.”

“No such thing, not in the least, The woman you spoke of told me about new and powerful friends as well”

For a long moment they stared at each other, each man, if such you could call them, leaning a bit forward over his horse’s neck, their eyes locked as if they could read truth from each other in some secret way. Then the fox warrior
grunted under his breath and sat back, shifting his weight and bringing up his spear to the vertical.

“This is no time for feuding between us. I’ll give you a weapon against this rebel of mine.”

“And I’ll offer you my thanks in return, but give it to this woman who rides with me, for she’s the one who’ll need it.”

The warrior turned, pausing to look Dallandra over as if he’d just noticed her presence, then with another grunt tossed her the spear. She caught it in one hand, surprised at the length and the heft of it: good oak with a leaf-shaped bronze head, set by its tang into the wood and bound round with bronze bands.

“Make that as short or as long as you please,” he remarked, then turned back to his brother. “Farewell, Evandar, and let there be peace between us until we settle this other matter.”

“Farewell, brother, but I’d wish for peace between us always and forever.”

The fox warrior merely sneered. With a wave of one hand, each finger tipped with a black claw instead of a nail, he wheeled his horse and headed back toward his army. With a roar like a flood racing down a dry ditch they all swung round and galloped off, raising a cloud of dust, shouting, screaming over the clatter of horse gear, till silence fell so hard that it rang louder than the shouts, and the dust settled to reveal an empty field, though the grass lay trampled and torn. Behind Evandar the bright host gathered, muttering their disappointment.

“We ride for home,” he announced. “Dalla, that spear’s too large for you to carry into the lands of men.”

He flicked his hand in its direction, then wheeled his horse round to lead his army away. Dallandra felt the spear quiver in her hand like a live thing. It shrank so fast that she nearly dropped it. She twisted it round and laid it across her saddle in the little space behind the peak, then fought to hold it down as it writhed and shriveled till at last she held a dagger and naught more. A strange thing it was, too, with a leaf-shaped blade of bronze stuck into a crude wood hilt. As she studied it she saw that the bronze band clasping the wood closed round the tang sported a graved line of tiny dragons.

“Dalla, come along!” Evandar called out. “It’s too dangerous to linger here.”

She slipped the dagger into her belt, then turned her horse and followed, galloping to catch up, dropping to a jog as they led their troops home to the meadowlands. All the way she rode just a little behind Evandar, and she found herself studying his slender back, his yellow mop of hair, all, in fact, of his so accurately portrayed elven form, and wondering just what he really did look like when no glamours lay upon him.

“Tell me somewhat honestly, young Yraen,” Lord Erddyr said. “Is Rhodry daft?”

“I wouldn’t say that, my lord, but then, I’ve known him less than a year, now.”

“Well, I keep thinking about the way he sees things. Things that aren’t really there. I mean, I suppose they aren’t really there.” Erddyr let his words trail away and began chewing on his thick gray mustaches.

As Time runs in our world, the winter solstice lay months in the past, though it was still some weeks till the spring equinox. Bundled in heavy cloaks against the cold, the lord and his not-quite-a-silver-dagger were walking out in the ward of Dun Gamullyn, where Yraen and Rhodry had spent the winter past as part of the lord’s warband. Although the sun had barely risen, servants were already up and at their work, bringing firewood and food into the kitchen hut or hurrying to the stables to tend the horses. Yawning and shivering, the night watch was just climbing down from the ramparts.

“Ah, well, when the fighting starts, won’t matter if he’s daft or not,” Erddyr said at last. “And I’m willing to wager it’s going to start soon. Snow’s been gone for what? a fortnight now? And down in the valleys the grass is breaking through. Soon, lad, soon. We’ll see if you two can earn your winter’s keep.”