Tisala stayed beside me. As I had noticed once before, she was as at home in feminine frippery as in hunting leathers. The dress she wore was one that Oreg had made her - I recognized the embroidery style. Oreg liked to embroider bright-colored animals on sleeves or shoulders. The making of clothes was a hobby of his, and he shared the results with only a few of us. The colorful tigers that ran up the black silk sleeves suited her, fierce and strong. The dress clung to her curves and celebrated the strength of her body, but I was too smart to tell her so.
Over the past few weeks she'd been pleasant and helpful, but any hint of passion sent her scurrying away. So I didn't tell her that I loved the way the firelight touched her hair, or that I dreamed of her naked in my bed. But I thought it a lot, and made certain she knew it. I'd learned from my sister, who'd been mute until a few years ago, that there were other ways than speech to convey information.
"Impressive," said Garranon quietly on my other side.
"What?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Dragons and legends ... It would have been difficult for any man not to want to fight beside a dragon."
"I'd have rather kept him secret," I said. "But if Orvidin had walked out, we'd have lost most of the rest. However, it was Kellen who took them and made them his."
Garranon gave me an odd smile. "Ah, yes. They are Kellen's men. As long as you are - " he broke off as magic flared wildly, and I drew my short ceremonial sword in reflex to the attack on Hurog. It was the sword that cut off Garranon's words, not the magic, for the gates that were torn apart were on the curtain wall, too far away to hear.
The crowd, most of whom felt nothing at all, looked at me and fell silent - I think they thought I was going to attack Garranon. Even Tosten stilled the strings of his harp.
"Away from the door," I said. When I opened my senses to Hurog, I knew the curtain gates were wide open, and the bars that held them closed were splintered.
The man my Hurog magic had warned me of earlier was even now approaching the keep while the guardsmen on duty tried to reclose the gates. Magic, Stala'd told them, was best dealt with by mages, not soldiers. They were to stay at their post and let Oreg and me deal with it.
I could detect no sign of the power that had opened the outer gates of the walls surrounding the keep, nothing but the residue of ill-magic and the remnants of the spell that had thrown open the outer defenses.
I felt the man touch the keep doors lightly, and they sprang away from his skin as if they had been hit with a battering ram. They hit the walls hard, knocking dust from the stones. If anyone had been standing next to the door, they would have been crushed.
I could see the man quite clearly as he stepped into the room. I don't know what I expected, Jade Eyes, or Arten, or even one of the lesser court wizards - not Jakoven, surely. But it was none of them.
Instead I saw a man, neither large nor short, clad in rags and boots that were more hole than leather. The air that blew in was chill, but he seemed not to feel the cold. He walked hunched over and he moved strangely: not loose-limbed like a drunkard, nor with the clumsiness of exhaustion, but near to both. His skin, where it showed through the rags, was mottled dark with bruises, frostbite, or maybe dirt; but the dark patches seemed to grow as he drew closer. For he looked neither right nor left as he shuffled down the aisle toward me.
I didn't recognize him.
"Can I help you?" I said at the same time Garranon pushed around me and took several steps forward.
"Valsilva? What are you doing here?"
Once Garranon used his name, I could see that the shuffling figure was indeed Jakoven's stable master, but so changed from the jolly man I'd met that he could have been a different species. Abruptly I remembered dreaming of Jakoven calling for the stable master who had let Garranon ride out of the castle with my brother.
I caught Garranon's shoulder when he would have continued