The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  She broke off contact before he could answer. Worse and worse, he thought. That’s two allies lost. Thank all the gods for the Mountain Folk! And how was he going to tell this news to Prince Voran and Gwerbret Ridvar? He quite simply couldn’t, he realized, because even if he could convince them that dweomer could send messages, they would never believe that he possessed it. He’d played the babbling fool too long and too well.

  On the morrow, the army reached the elven muster. Around noon, Salamander was riding just ahead of the baggage train when he heard shouting up at the van. Slowly the sound and the news travelled back along the length of the army—Westfolk tents ahead! Salamander turned his horse out of line, rode some hundred yards out to get free of the dust the army was raising, and saw like tiny clouds on the horizon the white peaks of elven tents. He nudged his horse to a trot and rode on ahead of the army.

  Salamander had never seen a Westfolk camp so large or so organized. What with the archers, the swordsmen, the horse handlers and others who’d volunteered to act as servants, the packhorses and the travois loaded with supplies, it spread out as widely as a small Deverry town. Herds of horses grazed round the edge of the camp under the guard of mounted archers. Inside this ring ditches stood open for garbage and other leavings; they also provided a certain amount of protection, Salamander supposed, should there be an attack by Horsekin cavalry. In the middle of the area, tents marched in even rows.

  Salamander dismounted and hailed the guards, who let him through. Leading his horse, he made his way through the camp. Everywhere he looked, swordsmen were coming and going with purposeful strides. Archers sat on the ground, straightening arrows, repairing fletching, testing bowstrings. He eventually found Prince Daralanteriel’s tent, painted with its distinctive roses, in the centre of a tight ring of other tents.

  ‘Ebañy!’ Dallandra hailed him. ‘Over here!’

  She was standing in front of Calonderiel’s tent, one of the central ring. Two men and two women stood around her—healer’s assistants, Dallandra told him. One of them took his horse’s reins and led it away.

  ‘I’m counting on your help, too, once the battles start,’ Dallandra said.

  ‘Whatever I can do, I will,’ Salamander said. ‘I can fold bandages if naught else. But I shan’t be able to camp with you once the two armies start moving again. I have to stay with the Red Wolf. I’ve been sharing a tent with Gerran and young Clae.’

  ‘Ah yes, you’re Cadryc’s scribe now. I’m so pleased that Neb isn’t with the army.’ Dallandra glanced around, then pointed to a plain grey tent set a little apart from its neighbours. ‘Valandario’s still with us. She’ll be part of the alar—well, the military escort, really—that’s going to take Carra and the children down to Mandra. All of the women archers will go with them. Cal says they’re more accurate than the men, you see, so they’ll make every arrow count if they have to. The entire contingent will stay close to the town for the duration.’

  ‘Near the ships, you mean?’

  ‘Just that.’ Dallandra’s eyes turned grim. ‘Just in case. If Dar dies, Rodiveriel’s the prince of the Westlands. They’ve got to keep him safe, even if it means heading out to sea. We have a treaty with the gwerbret of Aberwyn, and he’ll shelter the boy if it’s necessary.’

  ‘It’s just as well to plan for the worst, I suppose, but I doubt me if the Horsekin force at Zakh Gral is large enough to threaten Mandra.’

  ‘Oh, so do I, or I’d be a gibbering madwoman out of sheer terror.’ Dallandra smiled briefly. ‘I’ve got herbs to sort. Do you want to go talk with Val?’

  ‘I most certainly do. I’ve been vexing myself about that obsidian pyramid. If anyone knows anything about that most peculiar, bizarre, and just plain odd crystal, it will be Val.’

  Salamander found Valandario in her tent. A dweomer light hung in the air to supplement the sunlight filtering in from outside; the silver glow gleamed on her silk scrying-cloths and sparkled on the gems spread across them. Valandario herself was sitting cross-legged on a leather cushion behind the array. When he came in, she looked up and smiled without a trace of surprise, as if perhaps she’d not noticed he’d been gone for weeks.

  ‘Val, I know you’ll be leaving soon,’ Salamander said. ‘So I need to ask you a question. My apologies for interrupting.’

  ‘You’re not really interrupting, actually. I was just studying a fine point from yesterday’s omens.’ She waved at another cushion on the other side of the cloth. ‘Sit down and ask away.’

  Salamander sat down as carefully as he could to avoid disturbing the arrangement of gems.

  ‘When I was at the Horsekin shrine,’ he began, ‘I saw some objects they keep as holy relics. One of them was a crystal, and I thought you might know something about it and why the wretched Horsekin would value it. It was a piece of obsidian in the shape of a pyramid, but the top point, the peak, as it were, looked as if it had been lopped off at an angle.’

  For a long moment Valandario stared at him, her eyes wide, her lips half-parted.

  ‘Uh,’ Salamander said, ‘is it at all important, or is this an utterly stupid question?’

  ‘Not stupid, no, merely painful. So that’s where it went.’ Val set her lips in a thin line of grief. ‘That wretched awful gem.’ Her voice wavered. ‘I was so glad to get it, too. When I think what it brought with it—’ She caught her breath and steadied her voice. ‘What I wonder now is how did the filthy Horsekin get hold of it? It suits their nature, I suppose, a wicked little morsel like that.’

  ‘I take it you know what this thing is.’

  ‘Well, there might be more than one of them, but I doubt it. Don’t you remember it? It’s the gem that Loddlaen was stealing when he murdered my beloved.’

  Salamander let out his breath in a sharp puff. Val looked away, her face set, her delicate hands clenching into fists.

  ‘I was off in Deverry when the murder happened.’ Salamander made his voice as soft as he could. ‘So I only heard about it much later. I’m sorry I’ve reminded you of it.’

  Valandario shrugged, then let her hands relax. Still, it took her a moment more before she looked at him. ‘About the gem itself, though.’ Val’s voice had steadied again. ‘It’s a showstone of sorts—very much of sorts. You were the only person who could ever see anything in it. I honestly don’t understand why Loddlaen wanted it so badly.’

  ‘I was? I don’t remember ever looking into it.’

  ‘You were a very young child at the time. Let me think.’ She paused, her mouth a little slack as she considered her memories. ‘You saw a book with a dragon on it, and a man who turned out to be Evandar.’

  ‘By every god!’ Salamander whispered. ‘I’ve got no memory of that at all!’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You were just learning to talk at the time. What you told us was all very choppy and scant.’

  ‘No doubt. Why didn’t you have me look in it again later? When I was older, I mean.’

  ‘It would have been too dangerous—dangerous to you, that is. I consulted with Nevyn, and he agreed. It’s terrible to let an untrained child mess about with dweomer devices. In fact, one apprentice of his died young because some unscrupulous fellow exploited her gifts before she was ready to control them. It weakened her etheric double, and she came down with consumption. Lilli, I think her name was.’

  ‘I remember that story, yes.’

  ‘So we decided I should wait till you’d completely mastered scrying. But by then the stone was gone.’

  ‘I see.’ Salamander felt a stab of guilt. If I hadn’t kept running away, if I’d only worked harder, maybe I could have seen the message years ago. Valandario was looking at him with a grim frown that made him wonder if she were thinking the same thing.

  ‘Uh, well.’ Salamander came up with a quick question to change the subject. ‘What about the spirit indwelling the stone? Do you know what it is?’

  ‘Spirit? There wasn’t any spirit when I had it. Someone else has been working with the t
hing.’

  For a long moment they stared at each other in surprise.

  ‘It might have been Evandar’s doing,’ Salamander said at last.

  ‘That’s true, it might have,’ Val said. ‘You know, you can never ever tell Dallandra I said this, but the Guardians positively make my flesh creep. How she could have run off with one of them, I’ll never know.’

  ‘Jill made similar remarks.’

  ‘No doubt! Now, Evandar was at least less irrational than most Guardians. If he put a message in that stone, it must have been something important.’

  ‘Maybe it’s still there. If we do take Zakh Gral, I’ll be able to recover the pyramid and look into it again.’

  ‘If it isn’t destroyed in the battle. I wonder how the Horsekin got hold of it? After Loddlaen’s death, Aderyn looked for the stone, but he couldn’t find it. No one knew what had happened to it.’

  ‘It seems to have travelled a long way west.’

  ‘Yes, and I wonder how. Now, if you get the thing, look into it, write down what you see, and then smash it to pieces.’ For a moment her voice touched upon an animal growl. She laid a hand on her throat and coughed before she spoke again. ‘Look into it more than once, of course, if you need to. But when you feel there’s no more good to be got out of it, destroy it for me. Will you do that? I’d love to know it was gone forever.’

  ‘I’ll do that. I promise.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Valandario smiled, back to her usual composed and golden self. ‘You know, I’d best put these gems away and start packing for tomorrow. Princess Carra wants to leave at dawn.’

  ‘Well, then, may you all have a safe ride down to the coast.’

  ‘Oh, we will.’ Valandario pointed to her scrying array. ‘It’s the rest of you I worry about.’

  Salamander pushed out a weak smile, then rose and left. He had to admit that even though he’d received no sinister omens, he was worried himself.

  He found Dallandra and her cluster of helpers packing up for the march as well. Behind Calonderiel’s tent lay a welter of pack panniers, which the assistants were filling with medicinals, bandages, kettles for brewing herbs, and the like. When Salamander joined them, Dallandra gave some orders to her chief assistant, Ranadario, a young woman with raven dark hair and deep purple eyes. Since she had no dweomer apprentice at that time, Dallandra had taken on two young men and two young women who wanted to learn healing and herbcraft. Dallandra led Salamander some distance away, where they could speak privately.

  ‘What did Val have to say about the obsidian pyramid?’ Dallandra said.

  ‘A very great deal,’ Salamander said. ‘Let me tell you.’

  By the time he finished, Dallandra was frowning in thought.

  ‘The thing that bothers me,’ Dallandra said at last, ‘is the presence of that spirit. I wonder who bound it? Evandar never would have done such a thing. I doubt me if it was someone who followed the path of light.’

  ‘I’d wager on your nasty bitch of a Raena,’ Salamander said, ‘or beg pardon, the holy witness Raena. The other objects on the altar supposedly belonged to her.’

  ‘I know the wyvern dagger did at one point. But you know, I met Raena, and she didn’t have the power to bind spirits. She only knew the most elementary things about dweomer. All her dweomer acts derived from first Alshandra and then Shaetano working through her.’

  ‘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.’