“Never have I been this happy before,” Niffa said. “Not in my whole life.”
“No more I.” Demet slipped his arm around her waist and squeezed. “I be truly glad we didn’t have to wait till the dark time of the year.”
“Oh, I knew I could bring Mam round.”
He laughed and kissed her. She started to put her arms around his neck, but she saw someone coming down the side path: Verrarc, but alone.
“And a good eve to you, Mistress Niffa,” Verrarc said. “I did think I’d stop by and have a word with your mother, if that sit well with you.”
All at once Niffa felt like that miser indeed, begrudging him and his woman when she felt so rich with happiness.
“Of course, Councilman! And where be Raena?”
“Ah well, she did feel a bit poorly and did decide to stop at home.”
“But you come in, then, man,” Demet said. “And I thank you, too, for that barrel of ale.”
Verrarc smiled at him in an oddly grateful manner, as if Demet were the one who was rich and powerful, and slipped into the party. Niffa watched him as he stayed close to the wall and worked his way round to Dera, standing on the far side of the room.
“It mayhap were a bit sour-minded of Werda,” Demet muttered, “to shame him and his woman that way.”
“She deserved it,” Niffa snapped. “Sleeping ’twixt two pairs of blankets like that.”
“Well, it gladdens my heart to hear that you don’t approve of such carrying on.”
They laughed and kissed each other.
The laughter and the talk went on until the ale barrel stood empty and the table clean of food. While Dera wiped the table down with a rag, Lael went into the other room and brought out a new wool blanket. He laid it over the table, and one thing at a time Niffa placed her dowry upon it: two dresses, a nightshirt, a long-handled cooking knife, an iron griddle of Dwarven workmanship, and four copper pieces in a leather pouch. Her cloak she kept out to wear. When Lael tied the corners of the blanket together to form a proper bundle, Niffa could see his eyes glistening with tears. Dera wept openly, snuffling into a large rag. Emla flung a long arm around her shoulders.
“I do keep thinking of our Jahdo,” Dera said. “I do wish with all my heart that he’d be here seeing his sister marry.”
Councilman Verrarc looked abruptly at the floor and started studying the planks.
“He’ll come home, sister,” Emla said. “Come the spring we’ll bring the god of the roads a sacrifice to see him safely home.”
Lael handed the bundle to Cronin, Demet’s father, who took it in both long, calloused hands.
“Come along, daughter,” Cronin said. “It be time to go home.”
Cronin and Emla led the way as Niffa, Demet, and the wedding guests left the house and her old family behind. When Niffa glanced back, she saw that Verrarc stayed, talking with Dera in the pool of firelight; then her father shut the door. Laughing and singing, the wedding procession wound its way down Citadel to the jetty at the lake shore, where much to everyone’s surprise, they found the Council barge waiting, all decked out with lanterns so that it glowed in the misty night.
“Councilman Verrarc’s orders,” the barge captain said. “Congratulations, young Niffa! Now come you all aboard, and we’ll set to poling you across.”
More laughter and a lot of cheers—Verrarc’s generosity had just spared the wedding party a long drunken row. As the barge pushed off, the men in the party began to sing, trading off verses of songs bawdy enough to make Niffa blush.
Demet’s family lived in a rambling compound built partly on stilts, partly on solid ground, over by the south city gate. In the big common room a fire lay ready in the hearth. As custom demanded, Demet knelt down to light it fresh while the guests threw off cloaks and headed for the second feast of the night, spread out on a pair of tables at the far side of the room.
“Come along, daughter,” Emla said. “And I’ll bestow upon you a chamber of your own.”
Since they were the youngest married couple in the compound, they received a plank room out over the lake. Although it stood the farthest from the central hearth, the warmth from the water filtered up through cracks in the floor. Niffa could hear the lake splashing against the pilings underneath, and the room sighed like a ship in the wind. The room held a wooden chest, where Niffa unpacked her dowry goods, and a big square bed. Emla hung the candle lantern from a long brass hook on the wall.
“There be no one to either side of you here,” she said with a wink. “You’d best be making yourself comfortable. Demet will be finishing that fire about now.”
With another wink Emla took herself off to her guests. Niffa laid her new blanket over the old ones, then hung her cloak on another hook near the door. Since the room turned out warmer than she’d been expecting, she took off her dresses as well and tossed them into the chest. With a little shiver for the cold sheets she slid into bed and found a nice warm hollow in the old mattress.
Distantly she heard the singing in the common room and more immediately the water sounds. They threatened to turn into omen-voices, whispering of secrets and danger, but Demet opened the door and slipped into the room.
“You do look so beautiful in my bed like that,” he said, smiling. “I’ll treasure this night forever.”
“And so will I. Come get warm.”
He hung his cloak over hers, then stripped off his tunic and threw it into the wood chest. When he sat down on the bed to unlace his boots, she ran a hand down his bare back and felt him tremble. At last he pulled the boots off and dropped them onto the floor, then stood to strip off his leggings. She held up the blankets and let him roll into bed.
“Cold!” he whispered. “Ah well, we’ll be warm soon enough.”
He engulfed her in his embrace so fiercely that for a moment she was frightened, but his familiar kisses soothed her. In the past month or so, knowing that their marriage was arranged past breaking, they’d touched each other often, at first shyly, then more boldly when they’d discovered the pleasure it brought them. Now, when she felt his hand sliding up her thigh, she let her legs ease apart and whimpered at his touch.
“Now,” she whispered. “Please?”
“I be afraid to hurt you.”
“If it does hurt, it’ll be but that once. Do let’s put that behind us.”
Yet he kissed and caressed her a while longer, so that when he finally did take her, she felt no pain at all, just a sharp thrust into her desire, and then pleasure.
It was four nights past Samaen, the turning of the new year, when the first snow fell over Cengarn, far south of the Rhiddaer. Dallandra woke one morning to the smell of snow in the air and a fanged chill in her tower room. Near her bed stood the bronze brazier, stacked ready with twigs and lumps of charcoal. She stuck a cautious arm out from under the covers and pointed, summoning Wildfolk to light the fuel, then drew her arm back in fast.
“It must be snowing,” she remarked to Rhodry.
He mumbled something foul and pulled the blankets over his head. She snuggled down next to him and watched the Wildfolk, mostly grey gnomes, who lounged at the foot of the bed like cats. The next time she woke, the air in the chamber seemed just bearable. Since she kept her clothes over the chair back and next to the brazier, they were warmer than the air, at least. She struggled into her leggings under the blankets, then grabbed her tunic and, like a trout breaking water to catch a fly, sat up fast and just long enough to pull it on.
“You’re determined to get up, aren’t you?” Rhodry said.
“I am. I’m hungry, and the chamberpot is almost full.”
“Ah. If you’re going down to the great hall, bring me some bread back, will you?”
“Lazy sot.”
With a long martyred sigh, Dallandra sat up and grabbed her boots from the floor. Not until she had them on did she get out of bed. When she opened a shutter a crack, she could see grey light and indeed, snow falling in long ropes let down from the heavens. At
least the worst of the stinks would freeze, but she swore an oath to herself that this would be the very last winter she would spend among humans in their stone tents.
“It is snowing,” she said.
Rhodry had fallen asleep again.
Down in Dun Cengarn’s great hall, the gwerbret’s warband clustered around the lesser hearth to get warm after their night in the barracks. At the table of honor Gwerbret Cadmar was sharing a loaf of bread with his guest, Prince Daralanteriel, Carra’s husband. The gwerbret had once been an imposing man, well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, broad in the hands, but the summer’s fighting had left him exhausted and somehow shrunken. As an herb-woman and the only real physician in the dun, Dallandra frankly worried about him. His slate-grey hair was thinning, and his moustaches were turning white; he sat slumped in his chair with his twisted right leg stuck out in front of him to soak up the fire’s warmth. The prince, however, was a young man and as handsome and vital as most of his kind, with raven-dark hair but pale grey eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s to reveal lavender pupils. Although his hair had grown shaggy, there was no hiding his ears, long and tightly furled like seashells, as elven as Dallandra’s own.
At the honor hearth, where a great stone dragon embraced the fire, a clot of boys sat as near as they could get without singeing, Jahdo among them. Two of the older boys played a game of carnoic while the others watched or fended off the dogs, who kept threatening to sweep the stones off the board with their tails. Since Jahdo was attending upon Rhodry as his page, Dallandra decided that he could take up the bread Rhodry wanted and empty the pot as well. She was just walking over when she heard first one woman scream, then another join in. She spun around in time to see Evandar walking through the dun wall some ten feet from her. The dogs leapt up and started barking.
“My pardons,” Evandar said. “I just wanted to see little Elessi.”
“She’s upstairs in the women’s hall,” Dallandra said. “And I wish you’d remember to use the door.”
With a laugh Evandar disappeared, leaving a whole gaggle of maidservants screaming and pointing while the men pretended they’d seen nothing and the boys stared goggle-eyed. Dalla kicked the nearest boar hound and bellowed at the dogs to shut up. They obeyed, lying back down with a few quiet growls.
It was later in the morning that Ylla, the lady Ocradda’s maidservant, asked Dallandra to come up to the women’s hall. Dalla found the gwerbret’s wife sitting by the hearth in a carved chair with sewing in her lap. Dallandra sat on a footstool near her ladyship.
“Thank you for coming up,” Ocradda said. “I trust I’ve not interrupted some um, er, well, important work?”
“None, my lady. What troubles your heart?”
“Well, it’s the servants. They do worry so dreadfully about sorcery, and with winter here, there’s not truly enough work to keep them busy.” She forced out a brittle little laugh. “Silly of them, of course.”
“I wouldn’t call it silly. They’ve seen enough evil dweomer to trouble anyone’s heart.”
Ocradda let her forced smile disappear.
“This Evandar,” Ocradda said. “He’s little Elessi’s grandfather, or so Princess Carra tells me?”
“That’s true, my lady.”
“Well, then, he’s welcome in our dun whenever he wants to see the child, but couldn’t he ride up like an ordinary man? The way he just appears—it frightens everyone.”
“So I’ve noticed. I’ll have a word with him the next time he comes.”
“My thanks.” Ocradda leaned back in her chair. “We’ve all seen too many strange things. But ah ye gods, dweomer saved us all! I hope you don’t think me ungrateful.”
“I don’t. Now you know why the dweomer prefers to work in secret. Life’s much easier for people if they can pretend magic simply doesn’t exist.”
“So it is. I’m just so glad all that’s over now.”
As she was leaving, Dallandra remembered a trifle she’d been meaning to attend to.
“My lady? Might I trouble the chamberlain for some soap?”
“Soap?” Lady Ocradda raised an eyebrow. “At this time of year?”
“Just a little bit would do,” Dalla said. “For the occasional wash.”
“Well, perhaps the chamberlain might be able to find you a scrap, though I doubt me it would be more than that. It’s because of the siege, you see. We always make soap in the fall, with the fats and tallow from the slaughtering, but this year every scrap of fat got itself eaten, not that there was much with the poor beasts half-starved.”
“Of course.” Dalla felt ashamed of herself. “My apologies. I’ll make do with water, then.”
“If you don’t mind?” Ocradda looked faintly desperate, as if wondering whether Dallandra would set fire to the dun over its lack of soap.
“Not in the least, not at all.”
What Ocradda didn’t know, and a good thing, too, was that Dallandra worked dweomer in the dun every night. For some while now she’d been placing wards around the bed she and Rhodry shared to keep Raena out of his dreams. Although she’d carved elvish runes on strips of wood for a physical focus, the true wards burned on the etheric and astral as images of flaming stars.
“They’re working nicely, too,” Rhodry said that evening. “I’ve had naught but pleasant dreams since you started doing this.”
“Good. I think it’s time to spring my trap, then. By now Raena should be good and angry. I wanted to make her frustrated, you see, so she won’t think clearly.”
“I think I do see. Then one night you won’t put up the wards?”
“Just that, and I think I’ll try it tonight. You just go to sleep as usual—”
“—knowing a crazed sorceress is out for my blood. Just a trifle. I’ll not let it trouble my heart.”
“Well, you went riding with the prince today, didn’t you? You should be nice and tired.”
Involuntarily Rhodry yawned.
“So I am,” he said. “This cold weather takes it out of a man.”
That night when she slept, Dallandra went to the Gatelands, an “area,” if you wish to use that metaphor, at the “edge” of the astral plane. During sleep the average person’s soul drifts close enough to the astral to receive true dreams as well as the mundane images from their own minds. A dweomer-master, or a strange case like Raena, can therefore track down a dreaming person and make some sort of contact with them. Conversely, another master can meet and confront the dream-meddler as well.
Long years of practice had made Dallandra adept at true dreaming; as she was drifting off to sleep she had merely to tell her mind what she wished to dream in order to dream of it. It seemed she walked through a meadow of wild grasses, strangely pale and silky against her bare legs. Overhead hung a purple moon so huge that it filled half the sky. When she glanced back over her shoulder, she saw the remains of her wards—two dull five-pointed stars on the verge of flickering out. Between them lay the dream-gate leading down to Rhodry, a mark in the grass so clear and hard that Raena must have used it often. Dallandra dreamed herself a coil of rope, then invoked pure force from the etheric and channeled it into the rope, giving it life beyond a mere image. In front of the two stars she laid a snare, hidden in the grass. She angled off a short way and sat down, hiding herself as well, with the rope’s end in her lap. By parting the stalks she could see the fading wards.
Then came the waiting, and since this was the world of dream, it could have been a few moments or several hours while the moon hung motionless in the sky. At length Dallandra heard someone rustling through the grass. When she looked, she saw Raena striding along in her dream-body. Her oily black hair hung down her back, but otherwise she was naked. At the wards she paused, smiling.
“Well met!” Dallandra sprang from cover as fast as a lark. “Thinking of mischief, were you?”
With a scream Raena turned to run, but Dallandra grabbed the rope and pulled. The loop tightened around Raena’s legs and toppled her, fla
iling and shrieking. Hauling on the rope to keep it taut, Dallandra trotted over to find her prize sitting up and struggling to free the loop from her ankles. With a practiced flick of her wrists, Dallandra sent another loop spiralling around her shoulders and yanked. The rope bit before Raena could free herself.
“My people are horse-herders,” Dalla said. “Struggle, and I’ll cover you with rope burns. They’ll hurt, too, even when you wake. I know a thing or two about witch bodies, you see.”
Raena glared up at her, her mouth a little open as she panted for breath.
“Leave Rhodry alone,” Dallandra went on. “You don’t truly understand what you’re doing, and you could hurt yourself if you keep this up.”
Raena slumped, letting her head fall forward.
“I don’t care if you want to listen or not,” Dallandra snapped. “You don’t have any proper training in dweomer. If you trust your would-be god, he’ll lead you into trouble and then leave you there.”
Raena was sitting oddly still. Dallandra suddenly realized what she must be doing and leapt forward to grab her—too late. With a shimmer of blue light and a burst of silver, she disappeared in a flurry of falling rope. For a brief moment a raven hopped in the grass; then with a shriek it hurled itself into the air and flew, flapping hard, back the way Raena had come. Dallandra considered transforming into her own bird-form, but the raven had a long start. Most likely Raena could wake herself up and escape the Gatelands entirely even if Dallandra did manage to catch up to her.
Before she left, Dallandra reset the wards, pouring energy into them until they burned with red and gold. For a moment she watched them, then walked to the dream-gate and let herself drop, gliding down into her body and a normal sleep.
It was no wonder that Evandar’s appearances startled the dun so badly, because he travelled by those secret routes, the mothers of all roads, that lead between the worlds. Since his country existed in no true world at all, the roads met within it. At that time, Evandar knew them better than any other being in the vast universe, but on this trip he found a surprise waiting for him. The entrance to his country lay on a small hill, and when he stepped onto it he saw a world gone strange.