The Spirit Stone (48 page)

‘They have well-armed regular troops, then?’

‘They do, officered by our own rakzanir, driven mad by dreams of loot and pasture land, all promised by the false prophets who think this Alshandra creature still lives.’

The men listening glanced at one another with expressionless eyes, their faces as grim as stone.

‘I don’t suppose, my lady,’ Voran said, ‘that you’d know how many of these troops they have.’

‘Why would I not know? Were I not once the commander of those men Braemel could summon to war?’

Voran grimaced at his gaffe and bobbed his head in her direction. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘Your ways are still new to me.’

‘No doubt.’ Grallezar tried to soften her remarks with a smile, but the sight of her pointed fangs made the prince wince again. ‘Each town, it did support a thousand men at arms, to say naught of the citizens who would muster to fight in times of war. But that were before town upon town did turn on its fellows and battle them. Many have died, your highness, and the rakzanir, they did strip their garrisons for the building of Zakh Gral.’

‘Thank every god!’ Ridvar muttered. When Kov shot him a warning glance and shook his head in a no, Ridvar had the decency to blush. Grallezar pretended to take no notice, but Dallandra saw her glance flick the young gwerbret’s way and back.

‘Let me trouble you for one last question,’ Voran said to her. ‘The northern tribes, will they be riding to Zakh Gral’s aid?’

‘They be here already, your highness. Once a town did go over to the worship of Alshandra, its leaders did bring men from the north to swell the ranks of its armies, fresh and ready to conquer the next town should it hold out for the old ways. So the armies now, they be led by men who ken the ways of fighting, but the men they lead, some ken little but rushing into the enemy ranks and laying about them with whatever weapon they have to hand.’

‘I see.’ The prince got up and bowed. ‘You have my humble thanks, my lady. Please, go back to your friend’s tent and rest yourself. In the morning, come tell me what you wish to do next, whether to remain with the Westfolk or take refuge in Deverry.’

‘Refuge in the Slavers’ Country?’ Grallezar rose from her chair and smiled again, all fangs. ‘Refuge in the Slavers’ Country! Those words, they be ill-matched in my mind, your highness.’

‘No doubt, considering the ill will between our two peoples in the past, but I’d gladly offer you shelter in Dun Deverry itself. I think me that my father, the high king, would consider lending you an army to see you rightfully restored to your city.’

‘Would he now?’ Grallezar, just the same height as the prince, was looking straight at him with a faint smile hovering around her fanged mouth. ‘Among my folk the children have a little toy. Mayhap your folk do whittle somewhat like it. On the end of two sticks there stands a tiny wooden warrior with a spear. The children may push the sticks up and down and see the warrior fling his arms about and wave his spear. It be a clever thing, but truly, your highness, never have I wanted to be one.’

Voran opened his mouth and shut it again. Dallandra risked a quick glance at Kov and saw him grinning in open admiration.

‘My friend Dallandra did offer me shelter, your highness,’ Grallezar continued. ‘I shall take that. No doubt I can find honourable work tending her horses.’

Grallezar dropped the prince a curtsey, then turned and strode off. Dallandra had to run to catch up to her. As they walked back through the camp, Grallezar kept her gaze firmly on the ground in front of her. All the men, whether they were Westfolk, Mountain Folk, or Deverry bred, stared as she went past. Dallandra felt like screaming at all of them to mind their courtesies.

Once they’d regained the safety of the tent, Grallezar sank onto a pile of leather cushions. Dallandra sat cross-legged on the floor cloth. She had crucial questions to ask, and all of them distressed her. They sat in silence until Dallandra realized that she needed to be blunt.

‘I absolutely have to ask you something,’ Dallandra said.

‘I know what it is,’ Grallezar said. ‘Why didn’t I tell you years ago about the savages in Taenalapan?’

‘That’s one question.’

‘I was afraid your men would raise an army and come destroy it. They barely accepted the existence of us Gel da’ Thae as it was. If they’d known that the northerners were moving south, they would have wanted to destroy all of us.’

‘That might have happened, yes.’

‘Besides, when Mother Zatcheka made the alliance with your people and with the men of the Rhiddaer, all those years ago, Taenalapan was no more than a town, a small town at that, not a city at all. It wasn’t till some years ago that I realized how big it had grown.’ Grallezar leaned forward, all urgency. ‘It’s the tribes, Dalla. Some thousands of them settled in Taenalapan about twenty years ago. They brought slaves to do the farming, and horses to trade, and bit by bit, they took the town over.’

‘Just like they did to your city.’

‘Yes. Now I wish I had told you.’ Grallezar paused and looked away, stark-eyed. ‘I wish your men had come and burned Taenalapan to the ground. If I had had the omen-gift, if I’d seen what would happen, I would have led my own city’s troops out and helped them.’ Grallezar’s voice quivered and nearly broke. ‘Too late now.’

‘Tell me something else,’ Dallandra said. ‘Why have your folk turned to Alshandra like this? Oh, I know that it’s a comfort, thinking you’ll go to some wonderful country when you die, and the rakzanir want lands to conquer, but surely that can’t be all.’

‘It isn’t, of course. Do you want the truth? It may pain you.’

‘There are a good many things in life that pain me. So far I’ve survived them all.’

‘Very well, then. Do you remember when we first met, all those years ago in Cerr Cawnen? My people then thought you were the children of the gods, and they were terrified of you and yours. Prince Dar made things worse by humiliating that rakzan, whatever his name was—I’ve forgotten.’

‘Krag, Kraal, something like that. I do remember how your mother’s men kept kneeling to us. Your stepbrother Meer used to do that to me, too, no matter what I told him.’

‘Well, after that meeting in Cerr Cawnen, the truth spread fast. Yes, our people had done a horrible thing to yours, but you were mortals such as we, not gods, not favoured by the gods any more than we were. The Great Burning was a terrible burden of guilt, Dalla, a burden we carried for a thousand years. The priestesses had built all our rituals, our prayers, our sacrifices, around that guilt. And suddenly we threw the burden down.’

Dallandra felt the hair on the back of her neck rise in a dweomer chill.

‘Ah,’ Grallezar continued, ‘You’re beginning to understand, aren’t you? I can tell by your shiver.’

‘Let me guess. The priestesses of the old gods looked like liars and fools.’

‘You’re precisely right. What had happened in the past all looked new again, and we began to remember how we had suffered, not at your hands, but from the Lijik Ganda.’

‘And now your people want revenge on them?’

‘Right again. Oh, the rakzanir have worked everyone up so cleverly about those old horrors. A thousand years old and more, those stories, but oh so useful! After the great revelation, we’d begun to call your people the Ancients rather than ‘children of the gods’. We all thought we should respect you, until the rakzanir saw that you stood in the way.’ Grallezar paused for a fanged smile. ‘And of course, they also saw that the way you were standing in happened to cross good grazing land. Suddenly we began hearing about Vandar’s spawn. Those so-called holy women—oh ye gods! Can’t they see how they’re being used? They talk about Alshandra’s love, but they’re nothing but weapons to the rakzanir.’

The dweomer-chill deepened around Dallandra so badly that she shivered. ‘I’m going to have to tell Cal all of this,’ she said. ‘I hope you realize that.’

‘Why do you think I’m telling you? I couldn’t bring myself to tell him or that sly little Lijik prince, but you can.’ Her smile vanished. ‘And that’s another reason why I couldn’t tell you about Braemel. I knew where your loyalties lay. I never dreamt that mine would someday lie with yours.’

Again, grief trembled in Grallezar’s outspread hands. In silence she waited for Dallandra’s judgment. As Dallandra thought back over the last ten years or so, she could remember all the times that Grallezar had seemed distant, evasive, but she could also remember hints that something might be wrong, little clues and allusions that Dalla might have followed up, might have asked her to clarify, if only she had realized how important they were, as if her friend were hoping that she’d demand the truth.

‘Well, the past is past,’ Dallandra said at last. ‘You’re forgiven.’

Grallezar let out her breath with a sharp sigh. ‘Thank you.’

They clasped hands, but both found it too hard to smile.

‘What now?’ Grallezar said. ‘For me, I mean. My men want to fight in your army, but I’m too old. My hair gets more brown in it every time I let it grow. I know very little healing lore, but surely there’s work I can do. I’m willing to tend your horses, as I told the prince.’

‘That will hardly be necessary.’

‘But if naught else, you’ll have to let me do any lifting and hauling of heavy things.’

‘Um, why?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Grallezar sniffed the air, thought for a moment, sniffed again, then nodded as if affirming something to herself. ‘You’re pregnant.’

‘Oh no! Not now! Oh no no no!’

‘The goddesses are never convenient, are they?’

‘Apparently not! I can’t think of a worst time. Here, please, don’t tell anyone, will you? Cal will try to send me away, and I’ve absolutely got to be here for a great many reasons.’

‘Very well.’ Grallezar gave her a tentative smile. ‘Your men really don’t know their place, do they?’

Much to her surprise, Dallandra found she could laugh, and Grallezar joined her.

‘You’re not far along,’ Grallezar paused for another sniff. ‘It’s too early to tell whether it’s male or female. How long do your folk carry your babies?’

‘A full year, and sometimes a moon beyond that.’

And thank the gods for it, too,
Dallandra thought.
There’s no reason for Cal to know yet.

At dawn the next morning Arzosah and Rori flew back to the army with the news that the Galan Targ lay close ahead. Dallandra realized with a coldness around her heart that the battles for Zakh Gral were about to begin.

As the army made its slow way towards the ford of the Galan Targ, the two princes, the avro and the gwerbret rode together, talking back and forth, at the head of the line of march. Lesser lords, such as Gerran, rode some distance behind, out of earshot, though Gerran could see that some kind of argument was talking place. He noticed as well that Kov, Grallezar and Calonderiel rode just behind the commanders, close enough to lean forward and shout things into the conversation. Around noon, when the army came within sight of the river, the commanders called the usual halt to feed their men and rest the horses, then sent the dragons ahead to scout.

Gerran and Salamander walked a few hundred yards away from the camp to a low swell of ground from which they could see the ford. At this point the river stretched broad and shallow, maybe fifty yards across but not more than four feet deep. Big grey stones marked out a safe route across.

‘Someone made this ford, I’ll wager,’ Gerran said. ‘They must have widened the channel to let the water spread out.’

‘It does look like that,’ Salamander said. ‘The hard work was doubtless all done by slaves.’

Gerran snorted in disgust.

On the other side of the river scrub grass and weeds covered an area of uneven ground that stretched towards the west for about a hundred yards. Beyond lay scruffy second-growth forest. This weedy terrain, as far as Gerran could tell, rose to heavily wooded hills at some middle distance. In the heat of the summer’s day, the river murmured, and insects swarmed along its banks. Otherwise nothing moved, but the hair on the back of Gerran’s neck rose. Someone was watching him. He looked up, shading his eyes with one hand, then laughed. Salamander caught the gesture and did the same.

‘It’s just a raven,’ Gerran said. ‘I’ve seen one following us now and then.’

‘It’s a raven, all right.’ Salamander sounded so alarmed that Gerran shot him a puzzled glance.

‘Ravens do follow armies,’ Gerran said. ‘They always seem to know when a feast’s on its way.’

‘Oh, true spoken!’

Salamander’s tone struck Gerran as oddly brittle, but his face gave nothing away. Gerran looked back up and studied the raven—a strangely large bird, he realized. All of a sudden the raven croaked and flew, darting away as fast as its wings would work and heading north to the forest cover. Gerran heard a sound like a distant drum, coming closer.

‘The bird’s got good ears,’ Gerran said. ‘It doesn’t seem to like the dragon’s company.’

‘Sensible, I’d call it,’ Salamander said, grinning. ‘Shall we go back to camp?’

The dragon turned out to be Arzosah, returned with the news that Rori was scouting out the fort itself and would bring back information shortly. Gerran overheard Kov ask Salamander for an introduction to the black wyrm. Since he’d always wanted to meet her, he followed them out to the sunny spot where Arzosah was resting. She greeted them all graciously and listened with attention when the envoy showed her its staff.

‘None of those runes are Dragonish,’ Arzosah said. ‘Those four peculiar ones, though—I did see somewhat very much like them once, cut onto rocks up in the north country.’

‘You don’t think they’re a different form of Horsekin writing, do you?’ Kov said.

‘I don’t, because that far north none of the Horsekin know how to read and write. It’s a Gel da’ Thae trait, writing. Let me think—where was—by a river. That’s all I can remember, alas. It was in the wilderness somewhere, a big river that was flowing south. Not very helpful, I’m afraid.’

‘Still, my humble thanks for allowing me to impose upon you,’ Kov said.

‘Ah, what nice manners!’ Arzosah swung her enormous head towards Salamander. ‘That banadar person could take lessons.’