The Spirit Stone (43 page)

‘What news, Wise One?’ Gerran said.

‘Listen to you!’ Dallandra was trying to smile. ‘You’re turning into one of the Westfolk.’

‘It would be an honour, truly, but I was wondering—’

‘Cal will tell you everything later,’ Dallandra interrupted him. ‘I’m not sure if I understood all the details. But Rori told us that it’s impossible for us to mount a surprise attack on Zakh Gral.’

‘Oh, I assumed that, my lady,’ Gerran said. ‘If naught else, they should be able to hear an army this size coming from miles away.’

‘I see. Here I was thinking it was a terrible setback.’

‘Not truly. What counts is when they learn about us. If they’re warned, we’ll end up fighting the first battle at the ford.’

‘The first battle.’ Dallandra repeated the words as if she could think of naught else to say.

‘Well, they’re not going to sit behind their walls and wait for us to invest them.’

‘Truly, I suppose they wouldn’t.’ Dallandra sounded so faint that Salamander caught her elbow to steady her. Dallandra glanced at Salamander and spoke next in Elvish. ‘You’ve gone white in the face.’

‘I feel sick, that’s why.’ Salamander answered in the same.

‘It’s truly ghastly, isn’t it? Everything, I mean.’ She turned back to Gerran and spoke in Deverrian. ‘My apologies, Gerro, and you too, Envoy. I don’t mean to put you both off, but I’m very tired.’

‘Then I should apologize to you,’ Gerran said. ‘I shouldn’t have kept you standing here. No doubt I’ll hear all I need to know later.’

‘And I apologize as well,’ Kov said. ‘Please, my lady. Do go rest.’

When Dallandra turned to walk away, Salamander started to follow, but she swung around and held up one hand to stop him. ‘I can’t talk about Rhodry any more just now,’ she said in Elvish. ‘I don’t want to talk about anything. Can you understand?’

‘Oh yes,’ Salamander said. ‘I can understand very easily indeed. But please, could you tell me just one more thing? What of Sidro?’

‘I don’t know if he’ll leave her alone or not.’ She cocked her head to one side and considered him. ‘I suppose you want her dead, too.’

‘No. I’ve come to pity her. That’s why I asked.’

‘Well, there’s one of you sane, anyway.’ Dallandra smiled briefly, then turned and strode away. Salamander sat down to watch the dice game. In but a few moments, Clae came running with the news that the princes were summoning Kov to the council of war. The dwarven envoy scrambled up, grabbed his staff from the blanket, and trotted off after the page. Gerran scooped up the dice in one hand and held them out to Salamander.

‘I doubt me if I can think clearly enough to count the pips,’ Salamander said.

Gerran nodded and put the dice away in a leather pouch. Far above the army’s tents, the sky shone an opalescent blue, touched here and there with clouds turned gold by the setting sun. Salamander stared at the sky but barely saw it. The memory of Rori’s human eyes, staring desperately from a reptilian head, filled his inner vision.

Without an army and bad weather to hold them back, the messengers—two men, their horses, and a pack mule—made good speed back to the Red Wolf dun. Dusty, sweaty, and exhausted, they walked into the great hall some hours before sunset, when Neb, Branna, and Lady Galla were sitting at the table of honour. With a sigh of relief Daumyr knelt by the lady’s side and pulled a silver message tube out of his shirt.

‘Took us just four days, my lady,’ Daumyr said. ‘We pushed it a fair bit, of course. We had two horses a-piece, you see, so we could change back and forth.’

His companion, Alwyn, raised an eyebrow and gave Neb a weary grin.

‘Well, lads,’ Lady Galla said. ‘You’ll sleep well tonight, and we’ll give you fresh horses in the morning. Go get somewhat to eat and drink.’

‘My thanks, my lady.’ Daumyr got up, staggered, and steadied himself by grabbing the corner of the table. ‘A tankard will be welcome just now.’

Alwyn nodded his agreement and got up as well. Together they hurried over to the servant’s side of the hall, where the men of the fortguard were waiting for them. Neb pulled the letters out of the tube and looked them over.

‘All the news is good so far, my lady,’ he said to Galla. ‘In fact, there’s not much news at all, except that the silver dragon’s joined the black one and pledged his help.’

‘I suppose that gladdens my heart,’ Galla said. ‘Everything’s turned so strange lately that I’d not be surprised if one of the gods came to the door and announced that he’d like to join us for a meal or two.’

‘No more would I, my lady. We seem to live in peculiar times.’

‘Does it say anything more about the dragon?’ Branna put in. ‘The silver one, I mean.’

‘It doesn’t, just that he’s joined his mate.’ Neb suddenly realized that he felt jealous of this Rori creature. Why was Branna always so interested in him, anyway?
You’re going daft,
he told himself.
Jealous of a wild animal, ye gods!

Neb spent the rest of that evening first reading the letters to the noble-born, then writing their answers. On the morrow, Daumyr and Alwyn, with their fresh horses and a fresh mule laden with supplies, stood by the gates while Neb handed them the messages and told them which tube went to which lord.

‘Are you going to be able to find your way back?’ Neb said,

‘Don’t trouble your heart about that,’ Daumyr said, grinning. ‘The army’s left a trail of ruts and filth behind it as broad as a river.’

With the messengers on their way, Neb returned to his work in the herb garden. The Red Wolf cook had planted a few table herbs: sage, thyme, mustard, and rosemary. The mustard would also make a useful rubefacient. Neb searched through the meadows and hedgerows around the dun until he found more medicinals: coltsfoot, comfrey, feverfew, horehound, and, out by the fence in a fallow cow pasture, valerian. When he was digging up the valerian to transplant, its disgusting smell brought with it a faint whisper of memory. He used to slice this root with a miniature silver sickle, he realized, though he couldn’t quite remember why. Jill’s book of physicking, his guide in these matters, never mentioned the sickle, either.

‘I suppose it was buried with Nevyn,’ he remarked to Branna.

‘I think it was,’ Branna said. ‘He didn’t want grave goods, but Jill couldn’t stand it, just dumping him into a bare grave.’

They were up in their chamber. Branna was sitting on the floor, reading by the light of two candles set on her dower chest, and Neb was scrubbing his dirty hands in the washbasin by the window. He used up their scrap of soap before he got them clean enough to satisfy him.

‘I don’t understand why you’re working so hard in the garden,’ Branna said. ‘One of the servants could do the digging for you.’

‘Oh, I’ve got to do somewhat to fill my time. You spend most of your days with your cousin and the children, after all.’

‘Do you want me to stop?’ She sounded alarmed.

‘What? I don’t, truly. They need you, just as the garden needs me.’ Neb was concentrating on rinsing his hands. ‘Besides, I don’t want to eat at the tieryn’s table without earning my keep. Being your husband is a joy, not gainful labour.’

She laughed, pleased, or so she sounded. He shook his hands dry, then turned to smile at her. For the briefest of moments she looked like a stranger. He was expecting Jill, who was taller, thinner, her hair heavily streaked with grey. Why weren’t they sitting together in their home deep within Brin Toraedic, laughing at the antics of the Wildfolk? Then he remembered when and who he was.

Those moments, when the past would take over his consciousness, happened regularly enough that they’d stopped frightening him. Working in the garden, the regular rhythms of physical labour, the heat of the sun, the smell of the herbs—they all combined to thin the barrier in the mind that separates conscious awareness from deep memories and dreams. While he worked, he also would meditate upon the figure of the raven mazrak, as Salamander had suggested. This he found difficult. His mind kept wandering, or so he thought of it at first. The image of the young priest who’d escorted him and Clae down the Great West Road after the death of their parents kept rising in his mind and spoiling the meditation.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Neb told Branna one evening. ‘I don’t think about that priest when I’m doing anything else, just when I’m trying to concentrate on the wretched mazrak.’

‘Well, maybe that’s a clue,’ Branna said.

‘Maybe he’s connected in some way with the mazrak, you mean?’

‘Just that. You told me about that head priest in the northern temple, the one whose cows Arzosah stole. Didn’t he know a little dweomer? And didn’t you and Dalla wonder who taught him?’

‘Ye gods.’ Neb felt like an utter fool. ‘Of course he did. And truly, this fellow—he said his name was Tirn—didn’t strike me as your usual priest of Bel. He had quite an eye for the lasses, for one thing, and then there were the tattoos.’

‘Tattoos? I’ve never heard of a priest of Bel having tattoos.’

‘Exactly my point, my love. These were blue and all over his face, and down his neck as far as I could see, too. He told me that they covered scars from burns he’d got as a child.’

‘Could you see scars under them?’

‘I never really looked. My mother had just died, and I wasn’t thinking very clearly.’

‘My poor love! You’ve suffered so much.’

‘So did half the people in Trev Hael. I’ve no reason to pity myself.’ Neb shrugged with a shake of his head to banish the grief. ‘But those tattoos—they looked like writing. Ye gods! I didn’t realize it then, but they looked like characters from the Westfolk syllabary. Meranaldar wrote it out for me during the siege of Honelg’s dun, you see, just to pass the time.’

‘Now that’s significant.’ Branna spoke slowly, thinking. ‘Ask Mirryn, will you? It’s a thing he told me a long time ago.’

(Continued)

Lord Mirryn did indeed know
the meaning of tattoos that featured Westfolk letters. ‘Horsekin,’ he said. ‘The Horsekin put those all over themselves.’

‘But this fellow was human,’ Neb said. ‘Or at least, he looked human, except for the tattoos.’

‘Well, they’ve been taking slaves for centuries, haven’t they? I’d imagine that the women have little choice about whose bed they warm.’ Mirryn wrinkled his freckled nose in disgust. ‘Savages, they are, the Horsekin.’

‘They are all of that,’ Neb said. ‘Though to be fair, our ancestors weren’t much better, or so my father told me once, when it came to bondwomen.’

‘Well, maybe so. You know, I think we’d better tell Lord Oth up in Cengarn about this. A Horsekin half-breed in Bel’s priesthood? He’s most likely a spy or suchlike.’

‘True spoken, my lord. I’ll go get my pen and ink. Lord Oth probably can’t smoke him out till the gwerbret returns, but he should be warned. Though you know what’s odd? I never saw this fellow in the temple when I went there with the prince and Gwerbret Ridvar. I was looking for him, too, because I wanted to thank him.’

‘That
is
odd. Maybe he wasn’t a real priest of Bel at all. I suppose if you shaved your head and put on that tunic they wear, who would argue with you about it? Giving a priest trouble is a good way to get the god he serves angry with you.’

‘You’re quite right. Challenging him would be too risky. If it turned out he was genuine—’ Neb shuddered to finish the point.

It was several days before Neb saw the raven mazrak again. Neb worked all morning in the sunny herb garden until his shirt was soaked through with sweat and he felt dizzy from the lack of moving air. He hauled up a bucket of water from the well and poured it over himself, then hauled up another and used the tin cup chained to the bucket to scoop up a good long drink. Once his head cleared, he climbed up the ladder to the catwalk near the top of the dun wall, where the Red Wolf pennant flapped, promising a breeze. Neb breathed in the cleaner air, then sat down on the catwalk and leaned back against the cool stone wall.

Down below he noticed Branna, walking across the ward with Horza the woodcutter. Branna held a big sack of the sort in which she stored carded wool. Horza was carrying an odd contraption—a dwarven straked wheel mounted on a very short axle supported on four little legs. He’d added wooden pegs to the wheel’s rim as well. They disappeared into his workshop with Branna talking all the while. For a moment Neb wondered what they were doing; then he remembered Branna talking about making a device she called her wool-spinner.

The idea held little interest for him. He leaned back, glancing up, and saw the raven mazrak, drifting in a circle high above the dun. Slowly, keeping his back to the stones of the wall, Neb slithered up rather than stood. The raven completed his circle and began another. Neb slid his hand into his pocket and very slowly, standing in shadow, pulled out his leather sling, then froze. The raven finished his second drifting circle and began a third. Equally slowly Neb reached into his other pocket and pulled out a smooth round stone. All at once the raven croaked in alarm. Rather than flying off, he merely climbed higher, out of the sling’s range, and began another circle. Neb had the sudden odd feeling that he’d heard the raven speak, then realized that he was perceiving an attempt to reach him with thought alone. He put the sling and stone back into his pockets. The raven dropped down lower again.

‘Do you want to parley?’ Neb called out.

The raven croaked, then began to lose height, circling and following the line of the dun wall. In a flurry of wings he landed on a crenel, swaying and flapping until he got his balance. Intelligence peered out of his round eyes, an abnormal—for a raven—brown. With a clack of beak, he spoke or tried to speak. He could only manage a series of croaks and clicks that sounded, faintly, like words.

‘I can’t understand you,’ Neb said.

The raven tried again, his beak working hard as he formed a few ungrammatical Deverrian words, ‘ihr yhdoh een anavod ki.’ Or at least, as far as Neb could tell, he might have said, ‘I know you.’

‘I know you, too,’ Neb said. ‘You called yourself Tirn, last time we met.’

Neb was merely guessing, but his guess hit home. The raven bobbed his head in acknowledgement and spoke again, a few words that seemed to say, ‘my name is—’ What the name might have been, Neb couldn’t decipher.