“Swap-cards, anyone?” asked Corbin, nonchalantly. Jak rolled his eyes to the ceiling then finished his wine with a gulp. His boots came down with a thud. “Okay, but this time you lose,” said Jak. Brand seconded the motion.
Telyn played for three hands, winning two of them. Corbin's eyebrows were comically high as he watched her fingers flutter over the cards and nimbly snatch up the polished sticks and set them in the appropriate patterns with a flourish. Next to his deliberate movements, hers were like lightning. Still, she somehow seemed distracted. After the three hands, she decided to retire early.
Brand watched her go up the creaking steps with concern. The allure of the game was too much to allow for worries, however, and the night wore on quickly. The majority of the betting beads ended up on Jak's side this time. Corbin took the loss with easy confidence. “Every dog has his day.”
Jak slapped his legs and began pulling his waders back on. “Well,” he said, “It's high time we set out lamps for Myrrdin. If he's out there on the river tonight, he'll need them just to avoid capsizing on the shoals.”
Brand made ready to go with him, but Corbin volunteered for the duty, claiming he needed the exercise. Corbin donned his waders and they all helped Jak with readying six heavy hurricane lamps of tarnished brass. Each tall lamp had to have its wicks adjusted and its oil vessels filled. Carrying three lamps each, Jak and Corbin threw open the door and stamped outside. Brand was surprised by the wind's strength, it tousled everything in the room, spraying the swap-cards like fallen leaves and making the fire gust up and sputter. He pushed the door shut after them and tended the fire and packed away the cards.
Crouched before the crackling flames with a poker in his hand, he felt eyes on his back. He turned and Telyn was there, standing just a few feet behind him. He blinked in surprise. “How do you do that? I know this house so well, no one can move through it without me hearing their steps on the boards.”
“The wind drowns out sound,” she said with a slight shrug and a tiny smile. She pushed back her hair from her face. “Besides, I'm no great thumping river-boy with wading boots on.”
“But I know every creak and groan those stairs make…” he protested. It just didn't seem possible, but then, she had always moved differently.
She silenced him with a finger to her lips. “It doesn't matter,” she extended her delicate white hand. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Brand hesitated for a moment, then set aside the poker and took her hand. The look in her eyes told him she was serious about something. She led him up the steps to the old nursery.
“You're sleeping in here?” he asked.
She nodded. “It's the room I have the best memories of.”
Then he noticed the candle in the window. It was a single taper of waxy white tallow, not like the ones they had kept in the house.
“But the shutters are closed,” he pointed out. “You can't hope to signal Myrrdin with that.”
“Not Myrrdin, necessarily-”
“But it doesn't matter who you're trying to signal,” he said, still staring at the tiny flame. It bothered him, somehow. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something odd about it. “No one can see it through the shutters, much less the hedge outside. Only the hurricane lamps can be seen from the river, and then only if they are on lampposts at the shoreline. The River knows that a candle would just blow out if you opened the shutters, anyway.”
Telyn silenced him with a single finger touched to his lips this time. She gave him one of her knowing smiles. “How did you see the one in my window last night, then?” she asked.
His mouth sagged open. “Are you saying that-that your shutters were closed?”
She made no attempt to answer. Instead, she guided him out of the room with light touches of her hands. Hardly aware of it, he moved at her slightest touch, and soon found himself standing in the hall. “You should know better than to be caught in a lady's room this late at night,” she scolded, closing the door.
“Wait!”
“Good night,” she said sweetly.
He was left standing in the dark hall, at a loss. Later, when Jak and Corbin had returned from their work, stamping their boots and rubbing their hands, he went to bed. It was then, staring at the ceiling, that he recalled what was odd about that candle.
It had not flickered, even when in the window, where drafts and gusts always came through the shutters. The flame had been perfectly steady and still. Even in a light wind, much less a storm, it should have flickered and danced and perhaps even been blown out by the drafts. He fell asleep trying to remember if Telyn's hair had been tousled by drafts that should have affected the candle, but that just got his mind onto the subject of her face, and then it was hard to think at all. Wondering what it all meant, he slipped into troubled dreams.
Chapter Ten
Many hours into the night there came a loud hammering at the door. The storm was at its peak. It howled and clawed at the shuttered windows, seeking to slip in cold fingers and pry away the protective boards. Brand, who had been dreaming of owls and strange lights and Telyn's fine face, awoke with a start. Beads of cold perspiration were on his forehead and cheeks. It took him a moment to realize where he was and what had awakened him. Out in the hall he heard the boards creak beneath Jak's feet, then Corbin's heavier tread. The hammering came again, thump, thump, thump. He scrambled out of the bedclothes and pulled on his trousers, shivering in the cold.
Telyn, wearing a nightdress that would have set Brand's heart to pounding if it hadn't been pounding already, was the first to reach the door. She seemed in a terrible hurry, her cheeks were flushed with excitement as she lay her hands on the bar that held the heavy oaken door. Although most folk on the Berrywine River rarely barred their doors, Rabing Isle was close to the northern border of the River Haven and things had not been well this autumn. Jak had decided to bar the door tonight as a precaution.
“Hold it!” Jak shouted as she made ready to throw up the bar and open the door. He extended his hand, palm outward.
Telyn paused with a visible effort of will and stepped to one side. “You set the lamps out,” she said. “You wanted them to come, so why do you hesitate now?”
“Them?” questioned Jak. “I wanted Myrrdin to come, none other.”
Telyn crossed her arms beneath her breasts, looking cold and a bit cross. “Perhaps it is Myrrdin, his beard white with frost and his feet half-frozen in their boots.”
Thump, thump, thump. The door resounded with heavy blows.
Suddenly, Brand felt a bite of concern. Would Myrrdin's fist fall so heavily? It sounded as if a smithy's hammer were being wielded full force upon the door. Despite it's heavy oaken timbers, it shook and rattled with each blow. What kind of man would come to Rabing Isle on such a night?
“Who hammers on my door in the deep of night?” Jak demanded loudly.
Thump, thump, thump. The hammering was the only reply.
Jak scowled, his mood turning dark. Before Brand could caution him, he had thrown up the bar and swung open the door. Corbin raised the lantern he was carrying a bit higher so that all could see into the dark night. The figure that stood outside in the raging blizzard was not what they had expected. It was not tall like Myrrdin or a shadow man, nor as short as one of the Faerie.
It was clearly one of the Battleaxe Folk. Although he stood very tall for one of his race, almost as tall as Telyn, he was built along the lines of all his folk. The head was massive with crude, overlarge features and a heavy beard of coarse, red and gold hair. The arms were long and thick and the legs short and thicker. His powerful barrel-like chest made up the rest of him. Brand was taken aback, he had seen a few wandering traders of fine goods before from the Battleaxe Folk, but never one nearly as large as this. He had to weigh as much as Corbin, at least. Brand's eyes drifted uncontrollably to the heavy, doubled-bladed battleaxe that hung on a leather thong from his wide belt.