"Kerr, Katharine - Westlands 02 - A Time Of War v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

‘Now mind your manners in here,’ he whispered. ‘We’re going to sec Jill, and she holds your fate in her hands.’
Jahdo immediately pictured some great queen out of the ancient tales. He was not, therefore, prepared for the reality when Jill flung open the door. The chamber behind her glowed with a peculiar silver light that clung to the ceiling and sheeted down the walls as if it were water, and backlit as she was, he honestly thought her a skeleton or corpse. He screamed, making Meer grab his shoulder hard.
‘What is it?’ the bard snapped. ‘What is it?’
Jahdo tried to speak but could only stammer. When Rhodry howled with his usual crazed laughter, the boy burst into tears.
‘What are you doing to him?’ Meer bellowed with full bardic voice. ‘He’s done no harm to aught of you.’
‘It’s all right,’ Yraen broke in. ‘Jahdo, stop snivelling.’
‘Ye gods,’ Jill snarled. ‘Will you all hold your wretched tongues? Do you want halt the dun running up here to see what the commotion is?’
That sensible question silenced everyone.
‘Much better,’ Jill said. ‘Come in, come in, and my apologies for frightening you, lad.’
With new courage Jahdo led Meer straight into the chamber. Now that he could see that she was a perfectly normal woman, though certainly not an ordinary one, he was expecting to find the peculiar glow just some trick of moonlight or torches. Unfortunately, it was nothing of the sort.
‘Meer, there be magic at work here,’ he whispered. The light does shine all over everything, like dust or suchlike. I mean, if moonlight were dust it would look like this, and she’s got books, great big books. There must be twenty of them.’
Jill grinned at that. The Gel da’Thae was turning his huge head this way and that, listening to every sound he could register, and his nostrils flared, too, as if he were sniffing the air like a horse. Since his hand lay on Meer’s arm, Jahdo could feel him trembling. All at once Jahdo remembered hearing Rhodry and Yraen speak of this woman during the long ride back to Cengarn.
‘You be the mazrak!’ he burst out. ‘The falcon I did see following us.’
Meer clutched his staff hard between both hands and growled under his breath.
‘I have no idea what a mazrak may be,’ Jill said mildly. ‘So how could I be one?’
‘But the falcon. We did see it, and then Rhodry and Yraen did come with the squad, and they knew right where we’d be, didn’t they? They did speak of you and said your name, and I could tell they were following your orders.’
Jill glanced at Rhodry.
‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘This child’s much too bright to be locked in a stinking dungeon.’
She was admitting he’d guessed right that indeed he was facing a real sorcerer. Jahdo clutched the talismans at his neck.
‘I understand that you’re a bard,’ Jill said to Meer. ‘So you shall have the only chair I’ve got. Rhodry, Yraen, if you’ll just stand by the door? In fact, Yraen, if you wouldn’t mind standing on the other side of it to keep the curious away, I’d be grateful. Jahdo, get your master settled, and then, I think, it’s time for some plain talk.’
Jahdo helped Meer sit, then knelt beside him on the floor, which was covered with braided rush mats and reasonably comfortable. The room itself seemed ordinary, except for the presence of books, containing only a small table, a chair, a charcoal brazier, an alcove with a narrow bed, a pair of carved storage chests. Jahdo realized that he’d been expecting sorcerers to live somewhere grand and cluttered, with demons standing round in attendance, not in an everyday sort of room like this. There was, however, no explaining away the silver light. When Jill leaned against the wall facing him and Meer, the drape of light parted, as if dodging her.
‘Well,’ good bard,’ she said. ‘My apologies for the rough treatment you’ve received, but your people are not so well-liked round here, thanks to the raiders.’
‘So I’ve noticed.’ Meer’s voice was stiff and cold. ‘Wait. What do you mean, raiders?’
‘A band of men, led by one of the Horsekin, have been raiding hereabouts, burning farms, killing the men and any pregnant women, enslaving the rest.’
‘What?’ Meer tried to speak, sputtered, caught his breath at last. ‘Lies! Disgusting, demon-spawned lies! No man of the Horsekin would ever harm a pregnant female, no matter whether she were kin or utter stranger, horse or Horsekin, human or hound, and he’d kill any man under his command in an instant for doing the same. Never! The gods would send down vengeance on him and strike him dead.’
‘Well, in a way they did,’ Rhodry said, rubbing his chin with one hand. ‘But Meer, I’ll swear to you it’s true. I saw one victim myself, a woman not far from giving birth, lying dead in the road from a sword-slash, and her babe butchered inside her.’
Meer turned toward the sound of the silver dagger’s voice, then hesitated, his mouth working. Jill stood utterly still, watching all of this with her blue eyes as cold and sharp as thorns, as if she could bore through the faces of the men into their very souls.
‘Do you believe me?’ Rhodry said, ‘I can bring you other witnesses, Yraen for one.’
Meer shook his head in a baffled gesture that might have meant either yes or no.
‘One thing,’ the Gel da’Thae said at last. "Are you sure that the raiders you fought were indeed the same band that committed these heinous sins?’
‘We are. The men they’d taken for slaves? After we rescued them, they gave evidence against the raiders, and they all swore that the man of the Gel da’Thae was the leader, ordering the murders.’
Meer grunted, his hands clasping and twining round his staff, then loosening again, over and over.
‘I’ll bring you witnesses,’ Jill said.
‘No need,’ Meer’s voice rasped in a whisper. ‘Are we prisoners of war, then, or slaves?’
‘Never slaves,’ Rhodry broke in. ‘Never would I lend my hand and sword to the enslaving of anyone good sir, and I’ll swear that on anything you like.’
Jahdo goggled, desperate and afraid both to believe him.
‘Did Rhodry and the men treat you decently?’ Jill asked.
‘Better than prisoners of war can usually expect,’ Meer said. ‘I have no complaint to lay before you.’
‘Good.’
Jill leaned back against the wall, waiting, letting the silence grow.
‘Answer me one thing, Meer,’ Rhodry said at length, ‘if you can without dishonouring yourself, anyway. Are there going to be more of these raiding swine coming our way?’
‘How would I know?’ Meer snarled. "ITiis first lot should never have been here in the first place. To send more would be infamy compounded, outrage and abomination writ large, if they’ve come to break every law of god and Gel da’Thae by killing females in foal! Who am I to say what men like that will do or not do next?’
Jill nodded, considering his outburst carefully.
‘It sounds to me, then,’ Rhodry said, ‘like this was no ordinary raid.’
Meer glowered with his lips tight-clenched.
‘It were the false gods,’ Jahdo burst out. "The false goddess must be making them do that.’
‘False goddess?’ Jill swung her head round fast. ‘What false goddess?’
‘Her name be Alshandra, and she’s only a demon or suchlike, but some people do worship her, just as if she were a true god from the Death wo rid.’
Never before had a mere bard’s servant got such a profound reaction with a tale as Jahdo did with that blurt. Rhodry went dead-white, then swore a long string of foul curses while Jill laughed, a nervous giggle and much too high.
‘Alshandra a goddess!’ she said at last. ‘Oh by all the ice in all the hells!’