Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“And right he was.” He sat quietly, remembering. “Over the past week, you know? I’ve seen—well, not them, exactly—but things.”

“There’s been dweomer all around us for weeks.”

“True spoken. But why is it so important to you that I see the Wildfolk?”

“Well, it could come in handy.” She looked away, suddenly troubled. “They’ll take messages and suchlike, if we get separated again.”

There it was again, the truth that he didn’t want to face: there was dark dweomer stalking them. He drew her tight into his arms and kissed her passionately, just to drive his fear away.

After their lovemaking Rhodry slept like a dead man for most of the night, but toward dawn he had a dream so troubling that he woke abruptly, sitting bolt upright in the bed. The chamber was gray with dawn, and Jill was still asleep beside him. He got up and put on his brigga, then went over to look out the window, just to chase the feeling of the dream away. When someone tapped on the door, he yelped aloud, but it was only Nevyn, slipping into the chamber.

“Here, lad, I was wondering if you had any strange dreams last night.”

“By the great god Tarn himself! I did, at that.”

With a drowsy yawn Jill sat up and looked blearily at them.

“Tell me about the dream,” Nevyn said.

“Well, I was standing a night watch at the gates of some small dun. Jill was inside, and I had to guard her. Then this swordsman came up to the gates, and he wouldn’t answer me when I called for the password. He was taunting me, calling me every low name I ever heard and throwing my exile in my face. I’ve never been so cursed furious in my life. So I drew, and I was going to challenge the bastard, but then I remembered that I was on guard, so I held my place at the gate. Finally I thought to call for the captain. Here’s the cursed strange part. When the captain came running, it was you, with a sword in your hand.”

“So it was.”

“Oh, now, here!” Jill chimed in. “Did Rhodry have a true dream?”

“More true than most,” Nevyn said. “You know, Rhodry, you’ve got a lot of honor in your heart if you’ll hold to it even in your sleep. The dream was showing you a true thing by using a fancy like in a bard’s song. The dun was your body, and the man you felt yourself to be was your soul. That swordsman was one of our enemies. He was trying to lure your soul away from your body, because when a man’s asleep, his soul can slip out into the Inner Lands. But if you’d gone after him, you would have been fighting on his ground, and a very strange place it is. He would have won.”

“And what then? Would I have been dead?”

“I doubt it.” Nevyn thought for a moment. “Most likely he would have trapped your soul and taken your body over for himself. You would have felt like you were dreaming the whole time, you see, while he had it under his control. Humph, I wonder who he wanted to kill: me or Jill? Maybe both. Either way, eventually you would have woken up to find yourself with a bloody sword in your hand and one of us lying dead at your feet.”

Rhodry felt as sick as if he’d bitten into rotten meat.

“Fortunately, I keep a strict guard,” the dweomerman went on. “But from now on, if you have a dream or even an idle fancy that troubles you, tell me straightaway. Never be in the least embarrassed about it.”

“Done, then.”

“Good.” The old man began pacing back and forth. “Well, I’ve just learned an important thing. Our enemies aren’t retreating. That dream was a challenge, Rhodry. They’re going to stand and fight me over this.”

After his unsuccessful attempt to take over Rhodry’s body, Alastyr’s exhaustion muddled his mind like drink. He had never expected the silver dagger to have such strength of will, though, as he thought about it, a hardened warrior would have to develop a certain power of concentration to survive in battle. The most puzzling thing, however, was the simple feel of Rhodry’s mind and the way his dream-self looked on the astral plane. Given Rhodry’s mental strength, however untrained it was, his dream-projection should have been unusually solid, but it had flickered constantly, at times looking more like a man-shaped flame than a body. Somewhere in his stock of lore was the explanation for that. He sat quietly, letting his mind wander as it would from one flickering thought to another tenuous connection.

“By the dark power itself!” he said abruptly.

Startled, Sarcyn looked up and turned to him.

“I just realized somewhat,” Alastyr went on. “I’m willing to wager that Rhodry’s father was no more Tingyr Maelwaedd than he was me. I swear that lad is half one of the Westfolk.”

“Indeed? Then it’s no wonder that all the Old One’s predictions and star craft were wrong.”

“Just so. Well, he’s going to be interested to hear that.”

“If we live to tell him.”

Alastyr started to make some reply, then merely shrugged. Yet once again he wondered if they should simply kill Camdel and flee for their lives. But there was the stone. If only he had the Great Stone of the West, he could subjugate its spirits and tap untold power for his own use and to further the plans of the dark powers. From years of study he knew that the Great Stone had a direct link to the mind of the High King, a link that could be used to drive him slowly mad and plunge the kingdom into chaos. Then could the dark masters work as they pleased in Deverry. Sarcyn was watching him with dark, unreadable eyes.

“Are you thinking of escaping on your own, lad?” Alastyr growled. “I have ways of finding you if you try.”

“Naught of the sort, master.”

Alastyr’s dweomer told him that the apprentice was speaking the truth, but still he felt some other thought, hiding below the surface of his mind. It was time, he decided, to put his apprentice in his place a bit.

“Take care of the horses and your pet,” he said. “I need to be alone to do a working.”

Sarcyn went out to the stable of the isolated farm they’d appropriated by the simple means of killing the old farmer who owned it. Crouched in the straw of an empty stall was the farmhand, whom they’d left alive because he looked useful. A solid, middle-aged man of about forty, he was so thoroughly ensorcelled that he rose to his feet obediently the moment Sarcyn snapped his fingers.

“Feed and water the horses,” the apprentice said. “Then come into the kitchen for my next order.”

He nodded agreement, swaying as if he were drunk.

The kitchen was a big quarter-round room, set off from the rest of the house by wickerwork partitions. It was an old-style house, with one hearth in the middle under a smoke hole in the thatched roof. In the straw on the floor Camdel lay curled up like a baby. When they were rummaging through the farm, Sarcyn had found an iron chain with a cuff that had been doubtless used at one point for restraining an ox. Now it coupled Camdel’s ankle to an iron ring for hanging a pot by the hearth. When Sarcyn unlatched it, Camdel moaned and sat up.

“Want some breakfast, my noble sir? There’s proper barley porridge.”

Unshaven and filthy, the lordling nodded. Later, Sarcyn decided, he would let the creature bathe.

“The worst is almost over,” he said with bravado he didn’t feel. “Once we’re back in Bardek, we’ll have a good place to live and get you some decent clothes and suchlike.”

Camdel forced out a tremulous smile. It was odd, Sarcyn thought, how men differed. Some fought his domination to the very end; others found they had a taste for the strange sexual pleasures that he introduced them to. In a very satisfying way Camdel was one of the latter. As he watched the lord eat his breakfast, Sarcyn realized that he was glad of Camdel’s tastes. He felt an odd emotion gnawing and nagging at him, so unfamiliar that it took him a long time to identify it: guilt. All at once he remembered being a small child and weeping over Alastyr’s rape. It was worth it, he told himself, because he brought me to the warrior’s path. The reassurance rang hollow even to him.