The Gold Falcon. Katharine Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ is Cullyn reborn?’

      ‘Yes. Sorry, I wasn’t being clear. The other names –’

      ‘I could guess them, yes. Tell me about them. How did you find them?’

      ‘It was more like they found me.’

      Dallandra listened intently to his tale, breaking her concentration only to feed a few sticks of wood into her little fire.

      ‘Do Neb and Branna remember who they are?’ Dalla said when he’d finished. ‘Or were, I should say.’

      ‘No. They do both see the Wildfolk.’

      ‘Odd. I would have thought that Neb at least would have memories of working dweomer.’

      ‘So would I. Of course, he may have them but be keeping them to himself.’

      ‘That’s quite true.’ Dallandra paused briefly. ‘What about Neb’s little brother?’

      ‘I don’t recognize him at all.’

      ‘That’s interesting in itself. If you need me, I can gather an escort and ride your way.’

      ‘My thanks. I just might take you up on that. There’s another thing, oh mighty mistress of magicks. The Horsekin. They’ve been raiding in the Melyn river valley.’

      ‘Again?’

      ‘Again. It’s most peculiar, too. They sent a sizeable warband of heavy cavalry to burn two villages. For their trouble they got maybe thirty slave women and girls and two small boys. They didn’t even bother harvesting the wheat in the fields. Does that make sense to you?’

      ‘No, it certainly doesn’t.’

      ‘I’ve been talking with the tieryn and his captain – Gerran, that is – about the raids. Their history is peculiar as well. Imagine in your mind the western flank of Deverry. Now imagine a line running from Cengarn down straight south to the sea. The Horsekin only attack settlements to the west of that line.’

      ‘I suppose the settlements farther east are too well guarded.’

      ‘Not on your life, oh princess of powers perilous. I suspect – and as of now it’s a mere suspicion only – that the Horsekin are trying to stop human settlement from spreading.’

      ‘To protect their borders?’

      ‘Their borders are too far north for that. No, I wonder if there’s something they want to hide out to the west of here.’

      ‘Hide? Such as what?’

      ‘Such as a permanent camp set up to outflank the men of the Rhiddaer. It’s the only thing I can think of, anyway.’

      Salamander could feel her shock as if it rode on a wave of mist, breaking over him. When her thoughts reached him, he could feel their venom as well.

      ‘That would be just like them, wouldn’t it?’ Dallandra thought-spoke. ‘They’ve had forty years to lick their wounds from the last war, and now they’re ready for more trouble.’ She paused, and her image flickered and grew thin as she withdrew her attention from scrying. In a few moments it clarified and grew bright again. ‘They can’t attack the Rhiddaer directly – yet. I’d guess they’re trying to cut it off from any possible help from Deverry.’

      ‘Perhaps that. Perhaps to cut it off from our folk, as well, or to cut us off from Deverry, or Deverry off from us. I know not, but I surmise much, none of it pleasant. I was wondering if any of our people have stumbled across this whatever it is, if indeed it exists, or if they’ve heard rumours, hints, clues, or even suspicions.’

      ‘I’ll find out. We’re on our way to the alardan for the summer festival. I’m riding with the prince’s alar, and of course Calonderiel and his archers are, too.’

      ‘Excellent! Cal’s just the man we need. I’d hoped to come west for the festival, but I think I’d better keep an eye on things here.’

      ‘Yes, do. How have you been faring? Your mind feels steady to me, but after what you’ve been through –’

      ‘No sign of a recurrence, I assure you, oh princess of powers perilous.’

      ‘Good. Let me know at the first sign of any trouble.’ With a smile for a farewell, Dallandra broke the link between them.

      Salamander stayed in the window and considered the view without truly registering it. I used to call Jill the princess of powers perilous, he thought. Back before I went mad, back before I lost everything I loved, there in Bardek.

      No matter how carefully he thought about his return to Deverry from the southern islands, some forty years ago, he could never remember it. There had been a ship, of course – how else could he have crossed the ocean between Bardek and Deverry? How he had boarded that ship, and why he’d left his wife and children behind, had fallen out of his memory like apples falling through a rotted sack. The madness, he thought. With my mind all to pieces like that, it’s a wonder I can remember anything. He could bring up a few memory-images of landing in Eldidd, where Dallandra had been waiting to take him into her care.

      Curing his madness had given Dallandra a hard ten years’ work. Once his mind began healing, Salamander had devoted several years to his youngest son, who suffered from mysterious troubles, before he’d returned to Bardek. Once there, he had searched all over the islands for a good long while before he finally found the troupe of travelling acrobats led by his eldest son, a grown man by then with children of his own. Kwinto had given his truant father a cold enough welcome, too.

      ‘Too late,’ Salamander said aloud. ‘Too late to see Marka again, too late to prove to her that I kept my promise. I did come back, my love, truly I did.’

      He could see her in his mind so clearly, and as always, he remembered her as a slender young woman, laughing, smiling, tossing her head of curls as she ran to greet him – so clearly that it seemed he could reach out and take her hand, but only empty air returned his grasp. She’s dead, he reminded himself. She died before you found them. He leaned his head back against the cold stone and wept.

      Dallandra smothered her little fire, then left her tent, which stood on the edge of the encampment. When she turned towards the sea, she could see the tidy whitewashed buildings of the new town, Linalavenmandra, a name that meant ‘sorrow but new hope’, though most often its inhabitants merely called it Mandra, ‘hope’. From her vantage point, its whitewashed square buildings seemed as pale as ghosts against the night-time sea. Even though returning refugees from the Southern Isles had built the town over twenty years ago, it still amazed her every time she saw it: a proper town, sheltering not Deverry men but her own folk, with a town square and straight streets, trees and gardens, a town fountain and a holy spring. Beyond it, out of her immediate sight, lay farms. All her long life she’d known only wild sea grass in this spot, sea grass and rock and the winter waves that crashed and boomed on the long pale beach. The waves still crashed, but onto a rocky sea wall now, jutting out into a new harbour, where a wooden pier offered docking for elven longships.

      With a shake of her head, Dalla turned away and strode through the camp. Despite the new town, most of the People, as the elven folk called themselves, still spent every spring and summer travelling in small groups, or alarli, following their herds of horses and СКАЧАТЬ