"Kerr, Katharine - Westlands 04 - A Time Of Justice v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

'Well, I can tell you the one Bavydd used in the gwerbret's palace - just a raw dose of belladonna.'
'Bavydd? Oh, of course, it must have been him who gave that serving-lass the mead. So if he had the belladonna, he must have brought her the other poison, too.'
'He just never dreamt she'd use it on him.'
It made perfect sense, yet they exchanged an uneasy glance. With a toss of his head Rhodry rose, catching the door jamb in one hand and staring out across the ward, where the gwerbrefs men were beginning to ready their horses.
'Jill? Do you think there's sorcery mixed up in this somehow?'
'I do, but I couldn't tell you why.'
A cold stripe of fear ran down his back. Just the summer before, dweomer had swept into his life like a storm wave, bringing Jill with it and leaving her behind like some long-buried treasure brought up from the sea. Yet he was always aware that sorcery threatened to sweep her away again. He kept remembering a man named Aderyn, who had magical powers beyond what Rhodry had ever believed possible, telling him that Jill was marked for the dweomer herself. He refused to believe it. She loved him, she belonged to him, and that's all there was to that. But when he turned to look at her, sitting on their dirty blankets amid sacks of mouldy flour, he found her staring off into one of those private spaces that only she could see.
'Let's ride,’ he snapped. 'Mallona has, I'll wager, and she's getting farther away all the time.’
'No doubt.' Jill scrambled up. 'Which way shall we go?'
'I was hoping you could tell me that.'
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. There it was again: dweomer. As if she knew what he was thinking, she smiled in a wry sort of way.
'Well, let's go south for a little ways. That's what I would do if I were her. Lay a false trail toward Cerrmor, and then go somewhere else.'
'Sounds reasonable. Oh. Ye gods, I nearly forgot.' He reached into his brigga pocket and pulled the by now ill-used feather on its chain. 'What do you think about this? I found it in Beryn's lodge.'
Jill took the chain and considered it with the same look she'd give maggoty meat.
'I've seen one of these before, when I was still travelling with my Da,' she said at last. They'd hanged the woman who was wearing it. I don't know why. Da wouldn't let me look at the corpse for more than a moment, and he wouldn't let me ask the townfolk, either.’
She started to toss it away, then reconsidered, kneeling down to put it in a saddlebag.
'You should give that to the gwerbret,' Rhodry said.
'Well, sooner or later. But I want to show it to someone else first. I'm starting to get another idea. You know, I heard some rather strange things about Lady Mallona when I was up in the women's hall of Coryc's dun.'
'Obviously. Ye gods, I'll never forget the look on poor old Cadlew's face.'
'Not just that, dolt. There were rumours that Mallona studied the Old Lore. Lady Ganydda swore she didn't believe it, but she was awfully eager to repeat it. She was supposed to have been fond of a strange old woman near her brother's dun when she was a child —'
'And of course the poor old woman was a witch,' Rhodry finished this all-too-familiar bit of gossip for her. 'Any old woman who lives alone is always supposed to be a witch.'
‘True spoken, but consider this. Mallona had that lover for a couple of years, and she only had the one child by Beryn. Now, whether that was Beryn's trouble, who knows, but if that lover was a cold stick, she wouldn't have bothered with him, and she wasn't interested in Cadlew for fine conversation. Why doesn't she have a couple of bastard children to palm off as her husband's?'
‘They always say the Old Lore can remove that kind of nuisance from a woman's life, don't they?'
'Just that.' Jill thought for a moment. 'Lord Beryn's cook told me that every now and then, the Lady had weak spells, when she'd take to her bed for days and look terrible-ill.'
'Ye gods! I never realized that the servants in a dun know about every blasted thing their masters do.'
'Oh, doubtless the cooks and suchlike in Aberwyn could tell plenty of fine tales about you, Rhodry Maelwaedd.'
Rhodry had the unpleasant feeling that he was blushing.
The hunt should have been easy, A woman travelling alone was such an unusual thing in those days that anyone she passed should have noticed and remembered her. A woman who'd spent most of her life shut up in a dun should have had every possible trouble on the road, too. Although Lady Mallona's life had hardly been pampered and courtly, still she'd doubtless never had to build a campfire, haggle for food, find water for her horse, or do any of those hundred other tasks that fell to travellers on the Deverry roads.
An easy task to find her, stuck somewhere with a lame horse or trying to bargain with suspicious innkeeps - except that after a full day on the south-running road, Rhodry had to admit that she seemed to have disappeared like dweomer. No farmer had remembered seeing her, no tavernman had given her shelter, no noble lord had wondered about a solitary rider travelling across his demesne.
'I'm beginning to think that she didn't go south after all,’ Rhodry said. 'Not even to lay a false trail, May the gods blast me if I give up, though. If any woman ever deserved hanging, she does.’
'I suppose.' Jill thought for a while, staring moodily into the flames of their campfire. 'Now, from the way she was described to us, I can't believe she'd have any luck disguising herself as a man, not during broad daylight.'
'I've been wondering about that myself.'
'And she's never been more than thirty miles from her home in her life. You'd think she'd get lost or suchlike.'
'So you'd think.'
They shared a sigh of frustration and contemplated the fire.
'I wonder if she's dead,' Jill said abruptly. 'Maybe she killed herself somewhere, or ran into a pack of young men who raped and murdered her.'
'It would be a fitting end, so fitting that I doubt the gods would be so kind to us. Well, here, should we go all the way to Cerrmor? If she does end up there, probably she'll be arrested. Coryc made those messages pretty urgent.'
‘True spoken, but if we don't find her first, we don't get the bounty.'
Although it was true, it was also so cold-blooded that Rhodry didn't even know what to say to it.
'Let's ride south for a bit longer,' Jill went on. 'There's a town not far from here, Muir it's called, and there's a temple of the goddess there.'
Rhodry swore under his breath.
'I should have thought of that,' he said. 'Sanctuary. Do you think she'd have the gall to seek it?'
'Why not? Gall seems to be the one thing she's never lacked '
If Mallona had indeed sought refuge with the Holy Ladies, they were going to have a fine time trying to get her out again. Gwerbret Coryc would have to confer with the gwerbret of this rhan, and if that worthy agreed, they would have to set up a judicial council that would meet outside the temple gates and present evidence to the high priestess and the temple council. Only if the high priestess agreed that Mallona was guilty would the Holy Ladies surrender her. Since every gwerbret in the kingdom grumbled that the priestess always sided with the woman in the case, no matter what, it was quite possible that Mallona would convince them with her lies and end up spending the rest of her life in the penitential rites of the temple. Penance was not going to be satisfying. Rhodry wanted to see her dead.
The sun was low and golden in the sky when they reached the rich farms of the temple's lands, worked by free farmers who owed fealty to the high priestess, not a lord. The temple itself rose on a hill behind high stone walls, an enormous complex for the time, spilling half down the hillside and guarded by iron-bound gates trimmed with silver interlace and the holy symbols of the Moon. Above the walls, among the towers of the various brochs inside, Rhodry could see trees growing, the dark green bushy cedars brought all the way from Bardek and coddled to keep them alive in this colder land. Although the gates stood open, Rhodry stopped his horse and dismounted the ritual hundred feet away. Jill would have to go on alone to this place that no man could enter or approach.
Beside the road was a stand of poplars, a water-trough, a rail for tying horses and a pleasantly carved wooden bench.
'At least you'll be provided for, my love,' Jill said. 'It shouldn't take me long, truly, to ask a few questions of the priestesses. By law they have to tell anyone who asks if Mallona's in there. Oh, wait! That silver chain you found? It's in my saddlebags, isn't it, not yours?'
'I saw you put it there. Why?'
'I want to show it to the Holy Ladies, of course. They'll know what it means.'
Rhodry watched as Jill rode the last hundred feet and dismounted at the gates. A small flock of priestesses ran to greet her. He heard one woman shriek; then everyone began to laugh, their high pure voices drifting down the hill. They'd probably thought Jill was a lad, he figured, and he smiled at the jest himself. Surrounded by the priestesses, Jill led her horse inside, and the gates closed behind her.