Rhydderch

Midway through the morning Circle meeting, an Unmade tapped Rhydderch on the shoulder with a cold talon. The big biped looked to be part ox, listing forward with huge horns swaying on a massive, barrel neck. Human arms the size of horse legs draped down from massive shoulders, the fingers tipped in wicked black claws. Jagged canines protruded from upper and lower jaws, reminding Rhydderch of legends of werewolves village goodwives told their children to keep them in at night.

The Unmade had a slur arising from a too-large tongue. “You haffth a fisthitor, Auld Rhydderch.”

“Can it wait?” Rhydderch continued to monitor the meeting, his eyes watching Mathis Norfeld as the Auld described his family’s desires to purchase a small spark mine from the Ganlins. The Ganlins needed the money, but they weren’t interested—yet. Everyone was waiting to see how much the Norfelds were willing to put on the table, and from what Rhydderch had seen, it was a lot. Their sudden interest in the spark mine triggered something within him that made him wary. In fact, the whole negotiation had left him in a state of anxiety that he could not place.

The Unmade continued to hover behind him, a looming mountain of muscle. “No. It can’t.”

Rhydderch glanced over his shoulder at the creature. Whereas most of the Aulds and Auldin of the Spyre dismissed them as idiot veoh-constructs, he knew better. “Why not?”

The Unmade obviously did not enjoy talking, and, with his misshapen mouth, it was little wonder. The Auldhund shrugged and strode off, split hooves thumping on the stone with his retreat.

Sighing, Rhydderch stood up. Across the table, Agathe looked up at him. Something twisted inside of him as she met his gaze. Once again, she saw him as a rival, a nuisance, a conniver.

A Vethyle.

A part of him died every time their eyes met. He quickly looked back at the table, pretending to organize his notes.

“Going somewhere, Auld Rhydderch?”

“The Unmade says I have a visitor.”

“Can’t it wait?” Agathe demanded, irritation thick in her voice.

Rhydderch glanced at the massive retreating back of the messenger. “Apparently not.” He bowed and followed the Unmade out into the antechamber of the Hall of Governors.

In it, his hounds-keeper, a young Ganlin auldling by the name of Llew, was sitting on a bench beside two more Auldhunds, looking paler than a corpse. Rhydderch immediately felt a knot in his gut. “What happened, Llew?”

The young Ganlin looked like he feared Rhydderch would kill him. He was so petrified by Rhydderch’s presence that for several moments he could form nothing in the way of speech except for, “Um.”

Rhydderch set his sheaf of notes aside and squatted before the youngling. “Llew. Is it my hounds?”

Tears sprang to the kid’s eyes and he nodded.

Rhydderch fought down a rush of fury, thinking one of the fools at the kennels had misfed them or allowed his hounds to mingle with the bitches, three of which were in heat. He stifled it, however, not wanting to alarm the child. “What happened?”

Llew was trembling. “I don’t know, Auld Rhydderch. Aggie was out. Brael’s hurt bad. Fenna and Amelie were murdered.”

For a moment, Rhydderch simply couldn’t comprehend. Then, softly, he turned to the Unmade and said, “Let the Auldheim know I’ll miss the rest of the meeting.”

The big Auldhund bowed and pushed open the doors to the Governor’s Hall once more. Rhydderch didn’t hear what was said—he was already in the corridor outside, striding towards the kennels.

Rhydderch found a group of four other caretakers standing in mournful silence outside the kennel door. They parted as he approached, and immediately Rhydderch stopped, looking down.

“Are all my hounds accounted for?” he asked, glancing at the blood smears on the stone floor outside the kennels.

“Y-yes, sire,” Llew said behind him.

Rhydderch grew grim. “Good.” He steeled himself, then pushed open the door.

Inside, the hounds were exactly as they had been found, except for Aggie, who had been put back in her kennel unharmed. Fenna and Amelie were dead. They had both been stabbed repeatedly in the head and neck, with blood matting the hay bale he had used for Fenna’s jumps the night before. Brael panted in the lap of a keeper, and she tried to stand when she saw Rhydderch. However, when she moved, her hind two legs didn’t work properly and she slumped back to the ground and whined.

Fighting the rising tide of rage, Rhydderch knelt beside Brael, taking her head from the young boy and placing it in his own lap. He closed his eyes, opening himself to his veoh. Instantly, he found himself in a verdant forest, deer and wildlife darting across his path. Grim, Rhydderch took the well-worn trail through the undergrowth, arriving where he always did, overlooking a great lake of shimmering silver energy.

Purposefully, he walked down the stony beach, dislodging pebbles with his feet until he stood at the edge of the flashing silver liquid. He waded into it, feeling his entire body begin vibrating with veoh.

This, he channeled into his being and out into the world. He wrapped the hound in it, examining the damage.

Llew had done well. The knife-wound had cut through the back of the neck and had nicked the spine. The boy had staunched the bleeding, but he simply wasn’t skilled enough to work with the kind of veoh it would take to put the hound back to rights. Even now, as he examined the severed nerves, Rhydderch doubted that even he would be able to make his hound whole again.

Ignoring those around him, he bent to the task. He pushed every ounce of veoh he could into the dog, until Brael’s tissues were vibrating with his will. Rhydderch gently nudged them with his mind, urging the Function to return to the dog’s neck, and with it, its Form.

It was made easier by the fact that the dog was already infused with his essence, simply from all the time they spent together. The tissues, knowing what he desired, bound together, knitting where they needed to, becoming whole again.

Of course, Rhydderch could not return the original Form to an object once it had been destroyed—no one could. The result, while similar to the original, would not hold the same Function. The dog would forever limp.

Still, when Rhydderch released her, Brael got up, as spry as a pup, and began licking his face. Rhydderch rubbed her blood-matted fur, but his mind was on other matters.

“What about Aggie?” Rhydderch asked.

Llew swallowed, looking a little stunned that Rhydderch had been able to restore as much Function as he had. “Her muzzle was covered with blood. We think she wounded whoever did this.”

“She did,” Rhydderch said. “Were the Unmade informed?”

Llew grew red. “They...”

“They said it’s not their job to hunt down hound-killers.”

Llew nodded.

“Fair enough. It was a barren man who did this. An Auld wouldn’t have bothered with a knife.” Rhydderch got up and went to Aggie’s kennel and let her out. The big black hound immediately went to Brael and they sniffed.

“You ready for a hunt, young lady?” Rhydderch asked, once she was finished.

Aggie’s tail began to wag and she barked.

“Good girl. Llew, get my gear. I leave in an hour.” Rhydderch went to log his departure with the Unmade.

#

Rhydderch followed the trail for three and a half days, ending outside a Vethyle cottage near the edge of the winelands. Aggie circled it once, whining, then sat down outside the front door. Rhydderch dismounted, left his horse wrapped to the post, and knocked on the door.

A portly woman answered, a big smile on her face. “How can I help you, sir?”

“You’re a healer?”

Her smile grew wider. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m looking for a man,” Rhydderch said, casually wrapping the silver truth-cord around her neck. “He was attacked by wolves.”

The woman’s eyes widened slightly and she took a slight step backward, into her home.

“I am an Auld of the Spyre,” Rhydderch warned.

She licked her lips, but she knew enough about truth spells that she did not speak.

Rhydderch reached out and leaned against the frame, until she backed away from him in fear. “Whatever he’s paying you, woman, I will double it. Just tell me who he is.”

“He never gave his name,” she babbled.

“Of course not,” Rhydderch snapped. “He rode three days before he stopped to get himself patched up. He’s not an idiot.” That fact had become painfully obvious along the hard trail here, as the man had backtracked, walked his horse upriver, switched horses, and traveled through the foulest, busiest parts of every city he went through in an attempt to lose him.

He took a deep breath, stifling his irritation. “What did the man look like?”

“Tall,” she said immediately. “As tall as you. Thinner, though. All bones.”

“Hair color?”

“Blond,” she said. “Like you.”

Rhydderch stifled the nagging suspicion that one of his own family members had committed the act. None were that stupid. Still, there were very few tall blonds in the Spyre that were not Vethyles.

“Eye color?”

“Blue,” she said quickly. “Maybe blue-green.”

Like mine, Rhydderch thought, narrowing his eyes at her. If he hadn’t had the truth-cord wrapped around her throat, he would have suspected she was using his own image as a pattern.

“Strong jaw?” Rhydderch asked, thinking of Daegraf.

She bit her lip. “A bit on the weak side, I think.”

Rhydderch gave a frustrated sigh. “You just described two hundred of my kin at the Spyre. Do you have anything more specific?”

She frowned. “Yes, sir. He had an accent. Foreign. Of Etro.”

The moment she said it, Rhydderch knew. The drug-peddler. Rage began to bubble up, which he immediately crushed. He wanted to approach the situation with his wits about him.

Rhydderch considered what he knew of the man. Not enough. Other than the fact the little hairs on his arms stood up whenever the peddler got too close, he knew very little. “You eased his nerves with drink before plying your trade, did you not?”

She nodded fearfully.

“Tell me what he said.”

She did.

Apparently, even before the drink, the drug-peddling cur had had plenty to say.

Rhydderch learned what wines he liked, what bars he frequented, what types of women he preferred, and, most importantly, that he was not a drug-peddler.

The healer had given Rhydderch that juicy tidbit as Rhydderch was returning to his horse, his dogs in tow. He paused and glanced back when she called his name from the hut.

“Auld Rhydderch?” She flinched when he turned, even though he had shown nothing but kindness to her.

“You remembered something else?” Rhydderch asked.

She nodded, though she looked apprehensive. She was smart enough—she knew that she could lose dearly if an Auld of the Spyre judged her to be wasting his time.

“Don’t worry, girl. It’s not your skin I wish to hang on my mantle.”

She lowered her eyes. “Auld Rhydderch, I know you’ve said the man is a great merchant, but my father was from Etro.”

Rhydderch raised a brow. “A little far from home, aren’t you?”

“He settled in Vethyle lands just inside the pass,” she said. “After I failed to rank at the Spyre, he wouldn’t take me back. So I went here.”

Rhydderch felt sorry for her. After being allowed to taste the freedoms of the Spyre as an unranked auldling, she had been sent home with fewer prospects than she had left with. It wasn’t uncommon—almost fifty percent of auldling-potentials were returned after their requisite training, unranked. Yet still the peasant families tried. Once in a blue moon, they produced a gem—or a royal bastard. “Go on.”

“You say he’s a merchant lord, but he’s got the accent of a beggar.”

Rhydderch found his every muscle tensing. “Does he, now?”

She nodded. “Of Etro city.”

“The capital? You’re sure?” The peddler claimed he was from the northlands, near the desert.

“Yes, sir. He speaks just like my father, who lived on the streets most of his life.”

Rhydderch frowned, considering the teeming beggar population of the vast slums of Etro. It was unheard of for one to rise so far. Not impossible, he supposed, but damn unlikely without help. “Thank you,” he said, nodding to her. He drew forth another handful of coins and left them in her palm, then nodded at the little urchin grabbing her skirts with one hand and tentatively petting Aggie with the other. “He likes dogs?”

She nodded.

“You send him to the Spyre in a year or two and I’ll find a place for him.”

Her face slackened in shock. “Thank you, milord Vethyle,” she cried, bobbing in a curtsey. Rhydderch nodded. Then he mounted his mare and began the long trek back home, warmed by thoughts of what he was going to do to Vespasien once he was ready for his revenge.