The Gold Falcon

‘I’m glad, too,’ Carra told Dallandra. ‘She won’t get teased about her ears the way poor Perra was. Children can be so awfully cruel.’

‘Well,’ Dalla said, ‘they do cruel things, but they do them out of ignorance. They don’t know how much pain they’re causing.’

‘I suppose. At least Rori’s learned to fight back. The last time someone teased him, he knocked him down with one good punch.’

‘He seems to have something in common with the man you named him for.’

They shared a laugh at Rhodry Maelwaedd’s expense.

‘It’s so odd, Dalla,’ Carra went on. ‘Here you never wanted children of your own, but you’ve ended up the honorary aunt of so many. Every mother who has a changeling in her care turns to you for advice.’

‘You’re right, aren’t you? It goes to show, that you never know what your wyrd is going to bring you. But I did have a child once, a son – I must have told you that story.’

‘You did, yes. I’m sorry, I’d just forgotten him.’

I tend to do that myself, Dallandra thought. Poor little Loddlaen! Aloud, she said, ‘Well, it was all a very long time ago now.’

Carra let the subject drop.

And of course, there were more worries than those about children for the alarli to discuss. When she told the men in Perra’s alar about Salamander’s fears of a Horsekin incursion, they had information for her, a few scraps only, but better than nothing. She contacted Salamander that very evening. In the vision she could dimly see a stone wall behind him and a faint silver light.

‘Where are you?’ Dallandra thought to him. ‘I’m at the festival, and I’ve heard something about the Horsekin.’

‘Up on the catwalks of our good tieryn’s wall. I came up to watch the moon rise, actually, though I had thoughts of contacting you once it had. Tell me what you’ve learned, oh mistress of magicks mysterious. I hang upon your every thought.’

‘Well, it’s rather short on hard fact. One of the alarli here told me about an escaped Horsekin slave. They helped her get back to her people in Deverry, late last autumn, that was. As far as they can remember, she’d escaped from somewhere not all that far from the Westlands, up north and west somewhere. Either she didn’t know, or they didn’t remember just how far she’d travelled after she got away.’

‘Of course. But alas, alack, and welladay anyway.’

‘Now, they did ask her what Horsekin were doing, travelling so far south of their own country. She said she’d been brought along to cook for a group of important officials, whatever that may mean, travelling with a large armed escort. They were looking for something, she said, a good place to build something. She didn’t know what. They wouldn’t have told the likes of her any details.’

‘My worst fear begins to materialize before me, but you have my thanks.’

‘Your worst fear? It ranks high among mine, and Cal’s, too.’

‘No doubt.’ His image turned thoughtful. ‘Have you seen Zandro yet?’

‘Yes, indeed I have, and here’s some good news. He can call some people by name now. He knows his own, and mine, and of course your father’s and a few of your father’s friends.’

‘Splendid!’

‘And he’s become quite protective of the younger changelings. He and Elessi lead the little ones like a pack of wolves. They run through the camp together and laugh at everything. Zan’s not hit anyone or pulled hair or any such nasty trick, not since we’ve been here.’

‘Wonderful! That gives me some hope he’ll find happiness of a sort.’

‘Me too.’ Dalla felt suddenly weary. ‘When I worked so hard at getting those souls born, I didn’t stop to think of what they’d be like in their very first incarnation. Poor little spirits! They should have taken flesh when the world was new.’

‘Indeed. In time they’ll grow full minds.’

‘So we can hope. I honestly don’t know how many lives it will take them. But Zan at least has become very nicely behaved. Dev has the most amazing patience.’

‘Now. He certainly never showed any with me.’

‘Well, he was much younger then. He didn’t know how to treat a small child.’

‘I suppose he did the best he could, given that my mother didn’t want me.’

Dalla could feel the bitterness in his thoughts – still, after nearly two hundred years. ‘She didn’t have much choice,’ she said. ‘The fault lies in the way Deverry men treat their women, or so your father told me.’

‘Perhaps. I don’t truly remember her, anyway, except that she was pink and soft and warm, and her name was Morri.’

‘That wasn’t your mother. That was your nursemaid. Dev did tell me that much, but you know, it’s odd. He truly didn’t want to tell me more.’

In the image of his face she could see confusion, and his thoughts swirled round like autumn leaves, picked up and blown in circles by the wind, until, like leaves the wind has dropped, his mind steadied again. ‘Well, it hardly matters now,’ Salamander thought to her. ‘But sometime when we have a moment to spare for talking about things long past, I’d like to hear the story.’

‘Your father would most likely tell you more than he’d tell me.’

Salamander’s image looked profoundly sad.

‘But we could always ask him for the tale together,’ Dallandra said hurriedly. ‘I’m surprised you’ve not heard it already.’

‘So am I. Continually, perennially and eternally surprised, every time the subject comes up between me and the esteemed progenitor.’ His face-image displayed a forced smile. ‘You would doubtless be even more surprised at the speed with which he can leap away from the subject, like a cat when someone empties a bucket of water nearby.’ His image smiled in unconvincing dismissal. ‘But it matters naught. Tomorrow we leave for Cengarn. I’ll keep you informed of what happens there.’

Abruptly Salamander broke the link. She’d touched on an old, deep wound, Dallandra realized, and one that, in time, she would have to help him heal.

I’m surprised you’ve not heard it already. After he broke the scrying-link, Salamander realized that his right hand had clenched into a fist and that he was tempted to throw a hard punch into the stones of the tieryn’s wall. A gaggle of gnomes materialized at his feet and raised little paws, as if signalling caution.

‘Yes, smashing flesh into stone means one thing only,’ Salamander said in Elvish. ‘The stone wins.’

With the Wildfolk trailing after, he climbed down from the wall and headed for the broch. Thinking about his childhood always filled him with melancholy, and he was considering drowning the feeling with some good dark ale. He reached the door of the great hall just as Branna was coming out of it, a candle lantern in her hand. The light coming through the pierced tin dappled her face in a pattern like stars.

‘Good evening to you, my lady,’ Salamander said. ‘Have you come out to enjoy the night air?’

‘I have, truly,’ Branna said. ‘It gets stuffy up in my chamber.’

‘Hum, I find myself wondering if perhaps Neb’s chamber grows just as stuffy. Could it be that he’s out here as well, just by coincidence of course, out in the herb garden, say?’

‘And would it be any of your affair if he was?’

‘None, of course. But if I were you, I’d make sure Gerran didn’t know what you were up to.’

‘Gerran is drinking with his men. They won’t stop till they’re all staggering.’

‘Love can make a man as drunk as ale does.’

‘True spoken, but when he’s drunk on ale he can’t lift his sword.’

‘Nor can he lift much else. I trust Neb is the sober sort?’

‘Oh!’ Branna caught her breath and blushed. ‘Do hold your tongue, you chattering elf!’

‘Now I wonder,’ Salamander said, grinning, ‘where you got that turn of phrase. That I chatter is a point beyond disputing, but someone else used to call me that, and I think me we both knew her well.’

Branna stared at him for a long moment, then turned in a swirl of dresses and rushed across the ward, heading for the herb garden. Salamander stepped inside the hall and saw Gerran and his men clustered around a table, wagering furiously on some game or other. Salamander considered joining them, then climbed the staircase instead. Behind him more Wildfolk materialized to follow in a silvery, translucent parade.

In his little chamber Salamander sat on the wide windowsill and looked out over the night-time dun. Here and there points of light gleamed in a window or bobbed along, a lantern held in someone’s hand. He could distantly hear, like the murmur of a river, the sounds from the great hall. A dog barked out by the stables, then fell silent.

‘This could turn nasty,’ he remarked to the Wildfolk. ‘Neb, Branna, and Gerran, I mean.’

The Wildfolk all nodded their agreement.

‘But yet I have hope. From everything Dalla’s told me, Cullyn well and truly broke that particular chain of wyrd in the last life he shared with Branna. If Gerran remembers – not that he’ll know he’s remembering of course – but if he does remember, deep in his mind somewhere, then mayhap the outcome will be a fair one. And if the outcome is foul, then we’ll know that he doesn’t remember Cullyn of Cerrmor’s wisdom.’

The Wildfolk stared at him and solemnly scratched their heads, miming confusion.

‘I could have put that more clearly, truly,’ Salamander said. ‘Mayhap it’s time for me to get some sleep.’

The Wildfolk all nodded vigorously, then one at a time, disappeared. Yawning, he took off all his clothes but his loin-wrap and lay down on the mattress. He considered a blanket, but the summer night was still hot. Wrapped in its warmth, he fell asleep.

Salamander woke to the sound of furious words outside his chamber and the pink light of a cloudy dawn beyond his window. He sat up and listened till he could place the voices: Gerran and Mirryn, arguing over Cadryc’s predictable orders to his son and heir.

‘You’ve got to rein that temper in,’ Gerran was saying. ‘You cannot challenge your own father to an honour duel, and you know it.’

‘It’s all very well for you to talk, Gerro.’ Mirryn’s voice shook with rage. ‘No one’s going to think you’re a coward. Now get your hands off me! I want to go back and tell Father –’

‘You’re not going to tell him one word more.’

A pause, a long pause that brought Salamander to his feet, ready to intervene if things turned nasty. He took a few barefoot steps towards the door.

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