is serious. Here, let’s go somewhere warm, where we can sit and talk.’
They climbed down the ladder and picked their way across the mucky ward. As they passed, the various servants and riders out and about fell silent, turned to stare, and even, every now and then, crossed their fingers in the sign of warding against witchcraft. Dallandra ducked into a side door of the broch and out of sight of the crowded ward.
‘Safe,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ Rhodry said. ‘Do you feel danger coming our way?’
‘My apologies. It’s the way everyone looks at me. I’m not used to being hated and feared.’
‘Oh well, now, they don’t do that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Why would they?’
‘All the dweomer they’ve seen lately. Etheric battles, shapechangers, the way Alshandra would appear in the sky like a goddess – too many strange things, too many things they never should have seen. The Guardians live by their own laws, not those of the dweomer.’
Rhodry considered.
‘True enough,’ he said at last. ‘We’ve all seen more than we can explain away.’
Her chamber lay at the very top of a side tower; her door shared a landing with heaps of bundled arrows and piles of stones, ammunition stored against another siege like the one so recently lifted. The chamber itself was a slice of the round floor plan set off from the storage area by wickerwork partitions. Straw covered the plank floor, and wooden shutters hung closed over the single window.
Rhodry perched on the wide windowsill and let her have the only chair. Before she sat down she heaped chunks and sticks of charcoal into a brass brazier, then snapped her fingers to summon the Wildfolk of Fire. When the charcoal glowed, she held her hands over the warmth.
‘Aren’t you cold there in the draughts?’ Dallandra said.
‘Not so I notice.’
She was always amazed at how little cold and other discomforts, even pain itself, bothered him; his dangerous life had turned his entire body into a weapon, hard as forged steel. Matters of magic, however, lay beyond his strength.
‘These cursed dreams!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’m half-afraid to sleep at night. You wouldn’t have a talisman, would you, to drive them away?’
‘Nothing so simple. Tell me about them.’
‘I’ve been thinking a good bit about them. They have a sameness to them. I’ll be walking somewhere I know well, this dun, say, or the town, or even Aberwyn. And all of a sudden, the air around me will turn thick, like, and a bluish colour, like looking into deep water, and there the bitch will be, stark naked and taunting me. She keeps saying she’ll have my head on a pike one fine day and other little pleasantries.’
Dallandra swore at hearing her worst fear confirmed.
‘You think it’s dweomer, don’t you?’ He was grinning his twisted smile.
‘I do. Whatever you do, don’t go chasing after her. She’s trying to draw your soul out of your body, you see.’
‘And what then?’
‘I don’t know. If she were a master of the dark dweomer, she’d be able to kill you, but she’s nothing of the sort. A poor little beginner, more like, who knows a few tricks and naught more.’
‘A few tricks? Ye gods! She can turn herself into a blasted bird and fly, she can visit men in their dreams, and you call that tricks?’
‘I do, because I’ve seen just enough of her to know that she doesn’t understand how she does it. Her power is all Alshandra’s doing, or it was. Now it’s Evandar’s wretched brother who’s causing all the trouble.’
Rhodry laughed, a high-pitched chortle that made her wince.
‘Tricks,’ he said again. ‘Well, if that’s all they are, you wouldn’t happen to have a few you could teach me, would you?’
‘I don’t, but I’ve got a few of my own. I’ll scribe wards around you every night before you go to sleep.’
‘Not so easy with me sleeping out in the barracks.’
‘What? Is that where the chamberlain’s put you? After all you did this summer in the gwerbret’s service?’
‘A silver dagger’s welcome is a short one and his honour shorter still.’
‘That’s ridiculous! I’ll speak with the chamberlain for you.’ Dallandra hesitated, glancing around. ‘Here, if you don’t mind a bit of gossip, there’s room enough in this chamber for both of us.’
‘And why would a silver dagger mind gossip?’ His smile had changed to something open and soft. ‘It’s your woman’s honour that’s at stake. But if there’s no one up here to know –’
‘No one wants to live next to a sorcerer. Which has its uses. No one’s going to argue with me either, come to think of it. Why don’t you just fetch your gear and suchlike?’
‘I’ll find young Jahdo and have him do it. He’s been earning his keep as my page.’
‘It’s good of you to take the lad on like that.’
‘Someone had to.’ Rhodry stood up with a shrug. ‘He’s no trouble. I’m teaching him to read.’
‘I keep forgetting you know how.’
‘It comes as a surprise to most people, truly. But Jill made him a promise before she was killed, that she’d teach him, and so, well, I’ve taken on that promise with her other one, that she’d get him home again in the spring.’
Later that afternoon, with the chamberlain spoken to and Jahdo found, Rhodry’s gear got moved into a chamber next to Dallandra’s own. With the job done, Jahdo himself, a skinny dark-haired lad, brought Dallandra a message.
‘My lady, the Princess Carra did ask me to come fetch you, if it be that you can come.’
‘Is somewhat wrong?’
‘It be the child, my lady, little Elessi.’
‘Oh ye gods! Is she ill?’
‘I know not. The princess, though, she be sore troubled.’
Dallandra found Carra – Princess Carramaena of the Westlands, to give her proper title – in the women’s hall, where she was sitting close to the hearth with her baby in her arms. Out in the centre of the half-round room, Lady Ocradda, the gwerbret’s wife and the mistress of Dun Cengarn, sat with her serving women around a wooden frame and stitched on a vast embroidery in the elven style, all looping vines and flowers. The women glanced at Dallandra, then devoted themselves to their work as assiduously as if they feared the evil eye. Carra, however, greeted her with a smile. She was a pretty lass, with blonde hair and big blue eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face, and
