Dead reckoning, p.22
Dead Reckoning, page 22
She danced into the fray, her skinny legs amplified by the song, by the Aiemer she wove around herself like armor. She kicked out, sending one of the fighters off balance and tumbling into his friends.
“Fair Dilys I saw smiling, nearby the riverside.”
Four of the fighters dashed away. She felt herself changing as she pulled in the Aiemer. She’d never drawn on this much before, and she wondered if she should stop. But as she began to draw back, it flooded into her more firmly, and she let it seep into her skin.
The remaining fighters were approaching her, looking at her with the same expression of hate she’d felt on them when they’d been striking Llew and the other man. One of them said something, and she thought it was probably crude, but the Aiemer roared in her ears, and the music filled her to the toes, and she could not hear what he said.
“Her beauty was beguiling; for her song, men have died.”
The mist drew around the men like blankets, like pillows, filling their noses and mouths until they choked. She eased back, wanting their slumber but not their end. They dropped, one, two, three.
The fiddler’s bow scraped against the strings. The song wasn’t over, but she could feel his exhaustion. If he continued, he would die.
She knelt down beside Llew, who groaned as she touched his cheek, and she placed one hand on his chest and another hand on the shoulder of the man he had draped himself over.
“‘My mother was a bard,’” she sang. “‘My father was a sage.’”
The Aiemer dripped out of her, touching the beads of life in the beaten man. It glided over Llew’s skin, pausing at each hurt, bunching over bruises and washing them clean.
The last words caught on her breath, and she whispered them. “‘And I shall have my cider, regardless of my age.’”
The tune left her body, and with it, the flood of Aiemer vanished. Her lips tasted like cherry cordial and her fingers tingled. She collapsed, but Llew caught her, holding her in his arms so tightly she thought she might burst. Rhia rushed over to them and put her arms around them both. The pair of them held her together, though she thought she might fly apart without the Aiemer, might shatter into tiny pieces, like leaves and colors and bubbles in the air—like the Aiemer itself. She wondered if the Blue Man felt the same when he touched it, when he’d used it to twist the bridge. She wondered if he was somewhere between the Aiemer and the land, like she was. But the thought broke and fluttered as soon as she had it.
She felt Rhia brush her hair back over her ear, heard her gasp and then murmur words that were meant to be a comfort, but Dilys could not hear them. They were nonsense, not even a language anymore—her brain spoke only in melodies, words long forgotten.
***
They were at the same tavern where Howell had taken Boruin when that crew had needed a guide. It was far enough away from the center of things that the violence hadn’t reached this part of the city. Leading them here had exhausted most of the energy that Howell had left. Rhia and Llew looked at him, as though he’d know the answers, as though he’d be able to help them.
“She shouldn’t have been able to do what she did,” he said finally. He could hear the age in his voice, and he felt every one of his years in his bones.
Rhia shook her head. “I still don’t understand what happened. Not at all.” The young woman brushed her fingers through the Fae girl’s hair, stroking it as the girl slept.
“Magic, that’s certain,” said Llew. He jerked his chin toward Howell, beads in his hair crashing into a jaw that had been broken not an hour before. “You’ve got it, too.”
“I’m Guild,” Howell admitted. “Retired, more or less.”
“More or less?” Rhia echoed.
Howell just shrugged. “It wasn’t bardic. Not in the song she sang, at any rate.” He rubbed his hands together, as though warding off a chill. “If she is what I think she is, it wouldn’t be in the music. Must have been something in the movement. In the way of her dance.”
“Whatever she did, I’m glad of it,” Llew said. “Matho wouldn’t have made it, and I…” He shook the thought away, sending his beads clacking again. “I’m glad of it.”
Rhia looked at Howell, and again he felt as though she was searching him for answers. “What can I do with her now?”
The girl’s fingers had elongated, and her toes poked out through holes in the tips of her shoes. Her head had lengthened into a deeper oval shape, her hair taking on a texture like fine silk, spun so thin it almost floated. Howell had seen this sort of thing before, but not since he danced at the edge of the Dreaming. Not since they took his love through their Gate. Elora had been their blood, and he’d watched as she held their magic inside her, let it change her form. He watched as she left to learn their ways, and though she’d promised to dance with him again, she’d never returned.
“She’ll want to wander, I’ve heard,” Howell admitted. “And some say that wandering’s best for her kind. Half one thing, half another…Stay in one place too long, she might run into trouble.”
Rhia brushed the floating silk of hair off of the girl’s now exaggerated forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
“I’ll go.”
Llew didn’t look up to meet either Howell’s gaze or Rhia’s, but continued staring at the table.
“She saved my life,” he said. “You were right, Rhia. We’ve lost. The war’s done. I’ll go with her where she needs to go.”
“That makes three of us, then,” Rhia said, her tone far lighter than her expression.
“But…”
“Bowens Pont is gone,” she said, and her voice warbled. “Maybe someday I can come back, but now…Mydess isn’t home anymore. Maybe it hasn’t been for a long time.”
Howell sighed. “If we leave tonight, we’re not likely to be stopped. Losa’s men have plenty on their hands. We could be halfway to Ommany by dawn.”
The two young people looked at him in surprise, but he stood, bracing himself on the table because he couldn’t quite trust his knees to hold him. “I have a cart. And a horse. She’s slow, but she’ll get us where we need to go.”
Llew stood, and Howell thought it might have been out of respect. “I don’t…” The younger man sighed. “You hardly know us.”
Howell looked at Llew, wearing his beads openly, just as he had when he was that age. He looked at Rhia, frightened but determined, so protective of the young girl who was the same race as his love had been. He’d been nothing but a musician then, and he had little enough to offer now. But it was enough.
“There’s no reason for me to stay,” he said, reaching down to touch the silk of Dilys’ hair. “I’ll be taking what’s left of Norrington with me.”
Dilys’ eyes opened, her irises blue now, like cornflower, bright as a clear sky.
“Time to go,” she said.
For more stories of Pileaus, read Pileaus: Symphony No. 1, edited by Scott Colby.
Scott Colby, Dead Reckoning
