The Gold Falcon. Katharine Kerr
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now and then over his faulty memory, so that the scribe could write them down. At each lapse, Galla would stand up and shout corrections Veddyn’s way. Once in a while, as casually as she could manage, Branna would steal a look at Neb. Often enough she found him looking back. They would both blush and look away again.
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 back 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 honour 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 grey 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 honour table, where Tieryn Cadryc waited for him.
After the meal, Salamander went up to the little room in the broch that Lady Galla had given him, a wedge of the circular floor plan defined by woven wicker partitions, but private nonetheless, because the compartments to either side held stacks of curing firewood. He spread his blankets out on the mattress on the floor, then strolled over to the unshuttered window. He could see over the dun walls to the meadows off to the east, where a quarter moon was just rising out of mist. When he boosted himself up to sit on the wide stone windowsill, the Wildfolk came to join him, a flock of sprites in the air, a gaggle of gnomes on the floor and the sill.
‘Well, this is a pretty predicament, isn’t it?’ Salamander said to them. ‘I’ve seen my brother now, and I can’t say I cared for the sight.’
The Wildfolk all nodded in sad sympathy. Beyond the window the mist in front of the rising moon glowed and seemed to swirl in the distant light. Salamander focused upon it and let his mind fill with the memory of the silver wyrm, flying overhead on huge wings. In but an instant the memory turned into a vision. The silver dragon lay curled on a flat outcrop of rock among high mountains, his scales gleaming in the moonlight. He was perhaps eating something he held nestled against his side; Salamander could see the enormous head moving in a regular rhythm, licking something – licking a wound. The dragon moved restlessly, tossing his head, and Salamander could finally distinguish a dark streak on his side, oozing what appeared to be blood. In a moment the dragon went back to cleaning the wound with the only tool he had, his own tongue, a gesture so like that of a dog that Salamander felt profoundly nauseated.
His brother was living like an animal. No, his brother was an animal now, albeit a sapient creature who could speak, and in several languages at that. But he had no hands, no tools to ease his life, nothing but what his dragon form gave him. Salamander broke the vision. As if they felt his distress, the Wildfolk crowded closer.
‘Ye gods, I feel sick and twice so,’ Salamander said. ‘I think me I’d best talk to my master in the dweomer.’
This time, when he gazed into the moon-mist he thought of Dallandra, his teacher and saviour. At first he remembered her face; then he thought he might be seeing her face; all of a sudden he did see it. Her steel-grey eyes were narrow with concentration, and wisps of her ash-blonde hair hung untidily across her forehead and stuck to her cheeks. Yet, although the vision enlarged, the mist only thickened, swirling around her and threatening to hide her entirely.
‘Dalla,’ he thought-spoke to her in Elvish. ‘Dalla, it’s Ebañy. Is something wrong?’
He saw her flinch in surprise, then smile. She sat back on her heels and appeared to be looking straight at him. Through the mist he could see flickering light. Smoke and a fire?
‘What do you mean, is something wrong?’ she thought her answer back to him.
‘I can barely see you for the smoke.’
‘It’s not smoke. We’re still on the coast. It’s high tide, and the ocean’s etheric veil is running high with it. Let me sharpen the image.’
With that he could see her clearly. She was kneeling in front of the flickering light, which proved to be a small campfire.
‘That’s much better,’ he said. ‘You haven’t left? I thought you’d have all started north by now.’
‘We had to wait for Carra to get back from Wmmglaedd. She and Meranaldar went there to talk history with the priests. We’ll