Part 22 (1/2)

Mic was studying the painted hide. When Rhodry craned his neck for a look, the young dwarf slewed it round so he could see, but the alphabet was utterly foreign to him.

'My apologies, but I don't know how to read that,' Rhodry said. 'What is it?'

'An omcnbook, or part of one, I should say,' Mic answered. 'It's a chart, like, of the basic meanings of the figures. Otho knows it off by heart.'

'I do when no one's flapping their lips,' Otho snapped. 'Now. Let me think. Hah! Just as I suspected.

Here's the Head of the Dragon, all right, falling into the first house again.' Deftly he poked a figure into the waiting sand, two dots close together and below them three dots vertically for the dragon's body.

'Again?' Mic said.

'I did a reading a fortnight or so past, and that same figure fell into that same place.' Otho paused for a profound sigh. 'You can be certain it's a true reading, when a thing comes up twice, and so we're stuck with this wretched wyrm whether we want it or no.'

Otho brooded over the lines of dots for a few moments more, then poked figures into the map, one each for each land. When he came to the twelfth he hesitated.

'Last time I had a bit of luck fall in here,' he announced. 'I hate to think what lies in store, this time around.' With a sigh he turned back to his lines, then howled. 'The Red One! I knew it was going to be bad, I just knew it.' He poked some savage dots into the Land of Salt, 'Never do business with an elf, my father said, and I should have listened to him.'

'According to this, Uncle Otho,' Mic flapped the hide in his direction, 'the Red One's not as bad as it might be if it falls into the twelfth.'

'Hah! That's all I have to say to that, young Mic. Hah!' Otho snorted so hard that his beard fluttered.

'Look at that! The Road lies in the Land of Tin.'

'And?' Rhodry said.

'Well, tin usually means the G.o.ds, but this time I think me it means long journeys.'

'G.o.ds!' Rhodry snapped. 'I've been a dolt!'

'It's good to see you realize the truth about your essential nature.'

'Hold your tongue! I've got to go talk with Jill.'

'She told you to stay here,' Mic broke in. 'Can't I take her a message?'

'Well.' Rhodry considered. 'Truly, it would be best. Do you have a thing a man could write on, and a pen and ink?'

'Don't tell me you can read and write!' Mic sounded honestly awed.

'I can indeed.'

'There's more to this wretched elf than one might suppose,' Otho said. 'Not much, but more than one might suppose.'

Rhodry ignored him and called over the innkeep, who'd been shamelessly eavesdropping nearby. The writing materials available turned out to be a pair of wooden tablets, hinged with leather on one side and covered thickly with wax. In the frugal dwarven way, the writing could be smoothed off once a message was read, and the tablets used many times over. Rhodry found he could write well enough with the thin bone stylus the innkeep gave him. Once he was finished, he tied the tablets together with a thong.

'Want to put a seal on that knot?' the innkeep said.

'I don't. If someone steals it, they'll break it anyway, and I trust Mic.'

The young dwarf smiled with a bob of his head and took the tablets. As he watched Mic hurry out, Rhodry felt profoundly relieved. He'd had every right to kill Matyc after all, or so it seemed to him.

When Mic arrived in the great hall, Jill had a servant fetch him a tankard of ale for his trouble, then took the pair of tablets just outside the door, where she could read them in relative privacy. As much as it griped her soul to admit it, she was pleased that she no longer had to worry about Matyc popping up like a witch's curse every time she was trying to keep something secret. The message was brief enough, anyway.

'Matyc's last word was Alshandra's name.'

Jill whistled under breath and shut the tablets fast. For a moment she considered sending a message back, then decided that she needed to talk to Rhodry outright. While Mic finished his ale, she told Yraen where she was going, then accompanied the young dwarf back to the inn.

In the common room Rhodry was sitting on his bedroll on the floor with his back against the wall and his long legs stretched out in front of him. At the table Otho brooded over his geomancy figure while the innkeep consulted the painted cowhide.

'So,' Rhodry called out. 'You thought that message important, did you?'

'You knew I would. I'm glad you finally remembered this.' She waved the tablets vaguely in his direction. 'We need to talk in private.'

They went down to his tiny chamber, With a snap of her fingers Jill summoned Wildfolk of Aethyr to spread their silvery light. Rhodry tossed his bedroll down in a corner and sat upon it again, but though tall for a woman Jill was still short enough to be comfortable sitting on the bed. She opened the tablets and laid her hand upon the message, letting the wax warm.

'You're certain of this?' she said.

'As sure as sure. He looked right up at me, coughed out her name, and died.'

'Well, and grim news that is. I've had a singularly unpleasant thought, and this one's got naught to do with dweomer. If you're right about Matyc being a traitor, and it certainly looks like you are, who's to say that his brother isn't one too?'

It was Rhodry's turn for the surprised whistle under his breath.

'I was asking the Lady Labanna about Lord Tren - that's Matyc's brother, you see - earlier. She tells me that their entire clan tends toward brooding, them being all alone up there on their ancestral lands.

Their nearest neighbour's some fifteen miles away.'

'A bit far for a casual ride over of an afternoon, truly. Huh, sounds like they're the most northerly dun in the entire kingdom.'

'They are. The most northerly one that claims allegiance to the High King, anyway. But Matyc's dun and his brother's manse would have been good places for some of these prophets that Meer tells me about to fetch up.'

'I suppose so.' Rhodry paused for a long moment, thinking something through. 'I don't understand this business of new G.o.ds. What good would wors.h.i.+pping someone do you, if it weren't a G.o.d of your own people and your ancestral lands? I mean, you'd need to propitiate a foreign G.o.d, but wors.h.i.+p it?'

'Well, I don't know, but I suspect that Alshandra's become a G.o.ddess that men can see and touch, no doubt the first one ever in their lives. And from what Meer says, she performs mighty dweomers in front of her wors.h.i.+ppers and promises things to them.'

'Promises? What sort of things?'

Jill smiled thinly.

'New land and new slaves, Rhoddo. Us, in short. The lands and people of Deverry.'

Rhodry swore in a mix of several languages.

'Just so,' Jill said. 'Now, Alshandra has no idea of the extent of the kingdom. I doubt me if she even knows the High King exists, much less how large an army he can command in times of need. But then, neither do her followers, do they? If she raises enough of them in holy war, things are going to go very badly for those of us on the border, before the king marches west to put a stop to it.'

'Badly indeed. Now here, Cadmar's going to need every sword he can find. This is no time for me to run off hunting some beast.'

'Very clever, Rhoddo, but you're not slipping out of this noose as easy as all that,'

When he made a sour face at her, Jill laughed. Under her hand the wax moved as it turned soft enough for her to efface the writing. She rubbed it smooth with the heel of her hand.