The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘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.

  ‘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 wande
ring, 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)