The Spirit Stone (42 page)

‘Then someone must have done it before it came into her hands.’

‘Well, there’s Loddlaen.’ Dallandra pronounced the name carefully, slowly, as if it pained her. ‘But I doubt if he had the skill to do a binding like that. I’m just judging from what Val’s told me, over the years, though. I don’t know for certain.’

‘Maybe someone got hold of it after he—um, ah, no longer had the crystal.’

Dallandra flinched as if from a blow.

‘I’m sorry to bring this all up,’ Salamander said. ‘We don’t have to discuss it.’

‘Yes, we do. It could be important. Does Val know what happened to the stone after Loddlaen died?’

‘No. She told me that no one knows.’

‘Then he probably didn’t have it when—’ She let her voice trail away.

Salamander waited.

‘I’ve really got to go back to my work,’ Dallandra said abruptly. ‘We can talk more later.’

Before he could answer, she turned on her heel and strode off to rejoin her assistants.

Although Princess Carra led her contingent out just after dawn, the army lingered to allow the army from Deverry to rest their horses. Some of the Westfolk archers had fought at the siege of Cengarn, as had some of the dwarven axemen, and they spread out among the Deverry men to tell them what they knew about the Horsekin they’d faced in battle. When Salamander walked through the camp, he saw the fighting men standing in small groups and talking urgently together.

Around noon, the two dragons flew over just as Arzosah had promised. Salamander and Dallandra had been waiting at her tent with a sack of medicinals. They hurried through the camp as fast as possible—not very, with the clutter and crowding of tents, men, horses, and wagons all around them. The dragons stayed high, drifting on the wind, then slowly led them off to the north about half a mile before they settled to ground. As the two Westfolk pushed their way through the high grass, Salamander could feel his heart pounding, but not from the physical effort.

‘You look anxious,’ Dallandra said.

‘I am,’ Salamander said. ‘What does one say to a brother who’s been turned into a dragon?’

‘What does one say to an old lover who has?’

‘Aha! That’s why you never wanted to discuss him with Branna.’

‘Well, yes. You have to admit that it’s all a bit complicated. ’

‘Complicated?’ Salamander found himself on the edge of laughter but pulled back. If he gave in to the impulse, he knew, his laughter would become a hysterical giggle or perhaps even a shriek.

Apparently Arzosah found the situation distressing as well. The two wyrms had beaten down a good-sized circle in the grass, but well before Dallandra and Salamander reached it, Arzosah sprang into the air and flew, a black glint against the sky like a spark from the obsidian pyramid. Rori sat alone at its centre, lounging on one side, his front legs outstretched like a Bardek lion at ease. From a distance he looked as majestic, too, with his massive silvery head, touched along the jaw and the lines of the skull with a glistening blue. Although he’d folded them, his huge silver wings shimmered with a rainbow pattern where they caught the light.

As they approached, however, Salamander saw the wound in his side, barely a foot long but black with crusted blood and morbid flesh. It stank so badly that they could smell it through the normal vinegar scent of wyrm.

‘By the Black Sun!’ Dallandra murmured.

‘Indeed.’ Salamander nearly gagged as he spoke. ‘It must be dweomer-cursed.’

Dallandra shook her head no. By then they were close enough for Rhodry to overhear. When they stepped into the circle, he lifted his wings, just very slightly before he folded them again, yet enough to show that he felt like taking flight. Dallandra marched straight up to him.

‘That wound!’ she said in Elvish. ‘Rori, you’ve got to let me look at it.’

Her flat matter-of-fact voice worked like dweomer on Salamander’s nerves, and apparently on Rhodry’s as well.

‘Why do you think I’m here?’ His voice had a breathy rasp at its edge, but it sounded like the voice Salamander was remembering as his brother’s, merely magnified. ‘Dalla, I have to say one thing straight off. I should have listened to you, that day in Cerr Cawnen.’

‘You know, I never thought I’d live to see the hour when I’d hear you say that—about anything.’

The dragon rumbled, and Salamander laughed, a normal laugh that matched Dallandra’s grin.

‘But there was the little matter of the town’s safety,’ Dallandra went on. ‘With Arzosah threatening to destroy it, what choice did you have?’

‘To die and let Evandar control Arzosah. He could have taken her elsewhere in a beat of the heart, somewhere too far away for her to harm the town. Eventually she would have come to her senses. I realized that when it was too late.’ He tossed his head with a glitter of light off silver scales. ‘Or no, that’s less than honest. At that moment I wanted what I have now. I refused to think clearly. If I hadn’t wanted it, Evandar never could have worked the transformation.’

‘Rori, you were dying!’ Dallandra said. ‘How can I hold it to your shame, that your mind wasn’t perfectly clear and calm?’

He was silent for a moment, then nodded. ‘I can’t tell you how much that eases my heart.’ His voice dropped to a whisper that was almost a hiss. ‘The shame of it’s been eating me worse than this wound, that I’d not seen what might happen.’

‘We’ve all been wondering what was so wrong.’ Salamander stepped forward. ‘I’ve been trying to find you, but it seemed that you’d fly off the moment I spotted you. I gather you didn’t want to speak to me.’

‘My apologies. I did feel shamed, but you see, I’ve also been patrolling the Northlands.’

‘For Horsekin, I assume.’

‘Just that. I found some raiders earlier this summer. I was too late to save the villagers they killed, but I did manage to give the hairy bastards the scare of their lives.’

‘So that was you!’ Salamander said. ‘I thought so.’

‘Were you there?’

‘No, but I rode that way later with the warband sent to chase them off.’

‘Ah, I see. It’s just as well you weren’t. They’ve got a new kind of sabre, the Horsekin do. It curves like a scythe blade. They rode down the men fighting on foot and swung down with the blade. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’ Rori lifted his head and looked around him. ‘Where’s Jill? I know her name’s not Jill in this life, but you know who I mean.’

‘Yes,’ Dallandra said. ‘Her name’s Branna, and she’s not truly Jill. You’ve got to remember that. We refused to let her come with the army. She’s only a young lass, and she’s married to the lad who once was Nevyn.’

‘Good.’ Rori nodded in approval. Before he spoke again, he looked this way and that, peering into the grass as if he thought someone might hide among the stalks. ‘I’ve also been looking for Raena.’ He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. ‘I guessed that she’d be reborn among the Horsekin, and I was right.’

‘Sidro the priestess?’ Salamander said.

‘The very one. I’m going to kill her if I can get at her.’

‘Rori, no!’ Dallandra said. ‘That’s what got you into this wretched mess in the first place, isn’t it? Wanting revenge?’

Rori swung his massive head around and blinked at her as if he was puzzled. ‘If I hadn’t killed her,’ he said, ‘Carra and the child would have had no peace.’

‘That war was mine to fight, not yours. Besides, we can’t know what would have happened had Raena lived. For one thing, the Alshandra people would have lacked their most important witness, as they call them. Her death heaped tinder on the sparks of the cult.’

The dragon growled under his breath. Dallandra set her hands on her hips and considered him, her eyes as cold as his, their two heads close together, his so massive, hers so delicate—but he looked away first.

‘I hadn’t realized that.’ His voice was as mild as a dragon’s voice is capable of being. ‘I don’t know, Dalla. I don’t know anything any more, who I am, what I am. The one sure thing in all my days is my Lady Death. I’ve not stopped longing for her. I’d say she’s set a task for me, to send her as many Horsekin as I can before she deigns to release me.’

‘Lady Death?’ Salamander said. ‘Do you mean Alshandra?’

‘Of course not!’ Rori rumbled with laughter, then spoke in Deverrian. ‘My Lady Death, my own true love, she whom I served all my years as a silver dagger and a warlord both. They’re the same, truly, aren’t they, my brother? A warlord talks and talks and talks some more about his honour, but in the end, doesn’t it always come down to death? He’s merely paid in a different coin than the silver dagger.’

‘Well, that it does. But why do you—’

‘Don’t you see?’ Rori raised himself up on his front legs. ‘If I don’t serve my lady, she’ll never take me. I’ll live a dragon for hundreds of years. My only hope is to send her tribute.’

Salamander took an involuntary step back. The dragon rumbled and lowered his bulk to the ground again.

‘What about Raena, then?’ Dallandra returned the conversation to Elvish. ‘I suppose your Lady Death demands her, too.’

‘No. I’m the one who wants her dead, and Tren as well.’

‘Tren?’ Dalla said. ‘Who’s Tren?’

‘Matyc’s brother. The one I killed in front of Cengarn.’

Salamander’s bewilderment deepened. The only Matyc he knew was Branna’s young nephew. Rori seemed to sense his confusion.

‘Matyc was a traitor lord I killed in a trial by combat,’ the dragon said. ‘His brother Tren tried to avenge him, but I killed him during the battle in front of Cengarn.’

‘Oh,’ Dallandra said. ‘I do remember that, just vaguely.’

‘He’s returned to torment me as well. They’re like the wound, those two. They eat at me. I’ve been searching for them. I forget them for a while, but then I remember, and I have to search for them. If I kill Sidro, maybe the wound will heal. I don’t know Tren’s new name, but he’s a shapechanger, and he’s cursed me.’

‘No, he hasn’t!’ Dallandra snapped. ‘Killing her won’t heal you, either. Rori, I’m willing to wager high that they don’t even remember you. They’ve died and been reborn since then. For all I know, they may even have had two new lives. Do you remember the talk we had, standing in Cengarn’s dun? I told you then that most people become someone new when they return.’

‘They’re still my tormentors.’

‘No, they’re not.’ Dallandra strode up next to him and laid a hand on his massive jaw. ‘They are no longer who they were. Why would they torment you? Please believe me!’

Rhodry looked as if he would speak, then lowered his head and rested it upon the ground to allow her to reach his face. She stroked him as if he were a pet dog, and slowly his mad fit eased. Salamander felt tears rising beyond his power to stop them. When he caught his breath in a sob, Rhodry’s eyes flicked his way, cornflower blue and shaped like human eyes, with their round irises and dark dot of pupil, not dragonish at all. Through them, despite their size and the taint of madness, he saw his brother looking back at him.

‘Go fetch Calonderiel, would you?’ Rhodry’s enormous voice became oddly gentle. ‘I’ve much to tell him.’

Salamander glanced at Dallandra, who mouthed a single word, ‘go’.

‘I’ll do that, then.’ Salamander turned and shamelessly ran before they could change their minds and call him back. After a few hundred yards he was gasping for breath. He slowed down to a trot. Around him the grass blurred and shimmered through tears.

By the time he reached the camp, he’d managed to stop weeping. He found Calonderiel, gave him the message, and saw him on his way, then sat down on the ground in front of the banadar’s tent. The smell of dragon lingered on his clothes, or so he felt, like a poison, forcing him to remember his brother’s misery. Clae found him there some while later—how long a while, Salamander was unsure—with a summons from Tieryn Cadryc.

‘His grace wants to send letters home while he can.’

‘Well and good then.’ Salamander hauled himself to his feet. ‘That gladdens my heart.’

Clae shot him a puzzled look.

‘It will be somewhat to think about,’ Salamander went on. ‘Somewhat other than the silver wyrm.’

Towards sunset, long after the messengers had got on their way, Salamander saw Rori flying over the camp, heading west, so high that for a moment he looked like a white bird, gleaming in the slanting light of late afternoon. Salamander walked back out to meet the returning Dallandra and Calonderiel.

‘He found Zakh Gral,’ Calonderiel said. ‘I’ve got to go call a council of war.’

Calonderiel rushed off, racing down the path of broken grass leading back to camp. Salamander and Dallandra followed, but slowly, and he stayed silent, letting her collect her thoughts. Finally she glanced his way.

‘I may be able to heal that wound,’ she said, ‘but it’s going to take leeches, if indeed leeches will eat dragon flesh and drink dragon blood.’ Her voice rose sharply, but she took a deep breath and resumed in a normal tone of voice. ‘I may be wrong, but I really don’t think it’s a dweomer curse, Ebañy. That would be too simple. He’s done it to himself, licking it and biting at it, over and over for nearly fifty years now. It was starting to heal, he told me, but it itched, so he began licking it, and then of course it got worse again. Now it’s horribly septic. There’s dead flesh all along its edges, too.’

‘Has the rot spread into his blood?’

‘I doubt it, but I don’t know. If he were a man, and the rot had spread that far, he’d be dead. But he’s not, he’s a dragon, and I don’t know the first thing about healing dragons. I do know that I’ll have to clean up what he’s done to it.’

‘Where are we going to find leeches?’

‘Out here? I have no idea. Look for slow-moving water, like you’d see down in the Delonderiel’s estuary.’

‘If we can’t find any nearby, it’s a long way down to the coast.’

‘Yes, it is. It’s all so horrible.’ Her voice trailed off.

Salamander decided that silence was the only appropriate comment. They reached the encampment and made their slow way through to the Red Wolf’s sector. Gerran was sitting on the ground in front of the tent he shared with Salamander and dicing for splinters of kindling with Kov, the dwarven envoy. The envoy’s staff lay on a folded blanket right beside him. Dallandra paused to speak with Gerran, who rose to a kneel and made a half-bow to Dallandra.