The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘No,’ Salamander said. ‘Their writing is almost the same as the Deverrian, and their word for water is much longer than two letters. Dragonish?’

  ‘A good guess, not that there’s much watery about dragons. Kov, when Arzosah returns, you could ask her.’

  ‘I could?’ Kov’s rose several intervals. He coughed and brought it back down. ‘I mean, why, yes.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ Salamander managed to keep from grinning. ‘Don’t worry. She’s quite safe around people she views as useful.’

  ‘Then I’ll hope she finds my presence of some benefit. There’s a legend about these runes, that they spell out an ancient dweomer spell. Silly, isn’t it, how these superstitions spring up?’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Dallandra quirked an eyebrow. ‘I’d say that it must have some kind of dweomer upon it. The wood should have rotted away by now, if it’s as old as you say.’

  ‘What?’ Kov frankly stared. ‘I never—I mean, I—ye gods, you make a very apt point, Wise One. I, uh, well, um.’

  Salamander suppressed another smile. Kov hesitated, looking back and forth between them. Finally he bowed to Dallandra. ‘My thanks, Wise One. I very much appreciate your help.’

  With a second bow, Kov backed a few steps away, then turned and strode off, his staff over his shoulder. Salamander started to make some pleasantry, but a yawn interrupted. Dallandra looked at him with narrow eyes.

  ‘How much have you been scrying?’ she said.

  ‘Too much. I should have known I couldn’t hide it from you, oh mistress of mighty magicks. The problem is, I can’t see Sidro.’ Although he wasn’t telling the entire truth, what he was telling was true enough to pass Dallandra’s muster, or so he hoped. ‘I can find her, but she’s built some kind of shield around herself, so I spend a great deal of time trying to break through her defence.’

  ‘If she’s using dweomer, she can’t still be a priestess.’ Dallandra said. ‘I wonder where she learned that trick?’

  ‘From our raven mazrak, mayhap? He was following her when last I saw her clearly.’

  ‘You told me, yes, that she’d left the temple and met up with him.’

  ‘Well, now she’s living in a forest. She herself is mostly a patch of fog, the clot-of-wool sort you get hanging over Cannobaen in the summer, but I’ve had glimpses of trees and shadows around her. The raven might well hide in the forest.’

  ‘Just so! Isn’t this interesting? Curse it all, I wish I’d seen her in the flesh so I could scry her out. Rori’s convinced she was Raena in her last life, or at least, in some life, so she must have a certain amount of dweomer talent.’

  ‘I suspect that all the priestesses do. They merely won’t admit it. Rocca can summon the Wildfolk of Aethyr to make a dweomer light, for example, but she insists that Alshandra’s sending it to her, and that she herself has naught to do with it.’

  ‘Raena said the same, but in her case, it was accurate enough, though she could work a little dweomer on her own. I suppose Sidro has gifts in this life because of Alshandra’s meddling in her last one. But that’s only a guess on my part.’

  ‘It sounds reasonable to me. Perhaps you’ll meet up with her one fine day, and then we’ll know.’

  When he returned to his tent, a question of a different sort waited for him. Gerran had been telling Clae what he knew about the Horsekin, and something odd had occurred to him.

  ‘When we were still back at the Red Wolf dun, gerthddyn,’ Gerran said, ‘you told us a tale about the burning of the Vale of Roses.’

  ‘I did, indeed. It was a translation of a long poem my father recites now and then. I didn’t put it in rhyme though, that lying beyond my modest powers.’

  ‘Well, somewhat just struck me. In the tale, you said the Horsekin were small, like demons or suchlike, clinging to their horses’ necks.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. The tale did. And now that you mention it, I wonder why. The Horsekin are anything but short.’

  ‘Think that scribe of Prince Dar’s would know the answer?’

  ‘Most likely. Shall we search him out?’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  They found Meranaldar sitting near Prince Daralanteriel’s tent. When he saw them coming, the scribe rose and bowed to Gerran, then favoured Salamander with the briefest possible nod. He did, however, listen carefully while Salamander explained their question.

  ‘Naught happened to make them grow,’ Meranaldar said. ‘They’ve always been large. Making them small was just a poetic convention.’

  ‘I don’t understand—’

  ‘Well, they were enemies, so of course they had to be described as ugly and despicable, as their name, Meradan, that is, demons, also indicates. They certainly couldn’t be portrayed as the equals of the People, could they?’

  ‘Why not?’ Gerran broke in. ‘It would have given us a picture of them, and that would have been cursed useful when they showed up again.’

  ‘Ah.’ Meranaldar blinked at him for a moment. ‘Your lordship, I’d not thought of it that way. But you have to admit it makes for a better tale.’

  ‘Hang the tale! What we needed was hard fact.’

  ‘The sagas present things symbolically. How could those horrible bloodthirsty beings be as tall and graceful as we are?’ Meranaldar laid a hand on his own chest. ‘Inwardly their souls are shrunken and hairy, so the poets made them consistent, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Gerran snapped. ‘You mean they lied.’

  ‘No, they were depicting an inner truth.’ He turned to Salamander. ‘Here, you’re a gerthddyn. You know tales. You must see that the poem’s better the way it is.’

  Salamander saw nothing of the sort, but the point hardly seemed worth arguing. He caught Gerran’s eye. ‘We’ve got our answer, don’t you think?’

  ‘So we do.’ Gerran said. ‘My thanks, good scribe. We’d best be getting back to our quarters.’

  Late that night, Salamander felt too tired to sleep at the same time as he wanted nothing more than to sleep. He went for a walk through the camp, then left it for the sake of silence. The new moon, close to setting in the clear sky, tempted him too badly for him to resist using it as a focus. He scried for Rocca and saw her sleeping, lying in straw heaped on a stone floor. And what was she going to say to him, he wondered, if they met again? If she lives, he thought. If they let her live. The prince would no doubt give the women of the fortress the chance to leave unharmed, but would the rakzanir let them take it? He could do nothing but wait and see.

  ‘Laz,’ Pir said, ‘the only thing worth eating in this camp is meat. The men are starting to grumble. I sent the last of the horses’ grain off with Bren for his mount. He won’t reach the Boar dun without it. You’ve got to go raiding, and you’ve got to do it soon.’

  ‘So we do,’ Laz said. ‘There’s that big farming village north of here. We’ve not paid them one of our visits since the spring.’ He glanced at Sidro. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to join me and the fellows?’

  ‘I most certainly wouldn’t,’ Sidro said. ‘It’s bad enough knowing I’m eating stolen food. I don’t want to watch you steal it.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Pir will stay here, being of much the same noble turn of mind as you. I’m surprised he didn’t end up in a temple like you did.’

  The horse mage gave Laz a look that Sidro found hard to interpret. Annoyance, most likely, at the tease, but something else flickered in his dark eyes. Contempt, perhaps?

  ‘Vek never goes with us, either, but mostly because he’s too young,’ Laz went on. ‘We’ll be gone several days. Don’t worry about me, Sisi. This lot won’t give us any trouble.’

  Although Faharn would officer the raiding party on the ground, Laz would fly ahead and lead them in his raven form. The magical raven always frightened the villagers into obedience, or so he told her. Sidro supposed that the fifteen Horsekin spearmen he was bringing along would frighten them a fair bit more, but she refrained from pointing that out. Pir accompanied t
hem when they left the camp, but only to help them with the packhorses, which he pastured during the day in forest clearings.

  Now that she’d left Alshandra’s worship behind, Sidro had returned to the scrupulous cleanliness that she’d learned as a slave child. First she took Laz’s clothes and her own linen shift down to a stream and pounded them clean, then hung them from low-growing branches to dry. Next she set work on the cabin, despite the way her leather dress chafed without the shift under it. First she made a broom of twigs and swept the filthy rushes and pine needles out of the cabin. Down by the stream fresh rushes grew in profusion. She pulled big armfuls of them, then spread them out in front of the cabin to dry.

  For the pine needles she’d need an edge sharper than the kitchen knife. She searched through the camp until she found an axe and a big basket, then returned to the forest and cut a number of slender branches. Trimming the needles from the pitch-sticky twigs proved difficult. She was struggling with the job when she heard someone walk up behind her. With a yelp, she spun around, clutching the axe, but it was only Pir, returned from seeing the raiders on their way.

  ‘I’ll do that for you if you like,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’ She handed him the axe. ‘You’re doubtless better with this than I am. Do you have a spare shirt I can wash in return?’

  ‘No.’ He leaned the axe against a tree, then pulled off the shirt he was wearing. Soft dark hair rippled on his chest and arms and down his back. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you could do something with this one. It, um, well, stinks, not to put too subtle a word upon it, as Laz would say.’

  Stink it certainly did. Sidro hurried to the stream and immersed it straightaway to soak, weighted down with stones. The cloth, once sturdy farm-spun wool, had worn so thin in places that she hated to pound it clean. What are we all going to do in the winter? she wondered. None of us have cloaks or anything but old blankets to keep us warm. When she realized that she’d started thinking of the band of outlaws as ‘we’, she nearly wept.

  Once the shirt was as clean as she could get it, Sidro hung it to dry with the others. She sat on the ground and watched Pir strip branches of their needles against the edge of the axe.

  ‘Been meaning to ask you,’ Pir said. ‘Could you do the coming of age ceremony for Vek? His hair sprouted months ago, but we didn’t have a woman with us to work the rite.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Do you believe in the old gods, Pir?’

  ‘No, nor in the new one, either.’

  ‘Yet you want the ceremony done?’

  ‘I don’t. Vek does. He was brought up to expect it.’

  ‘So he was. Very well, then. Do you remember much from your own ceremony?

  ‘Yes, most of it, if you want me to be the sponsor.’

  ‘If you would. You know that Laz won’t do it. He’ll only mock and sneer.’

  Pir smiled, just a twitch of his mouth, but for him it amounted to a smile. For a few moments he concentrated on his work.

  ‘There’s something else Vek asked me,’ Pir said, looking up. ‘He told me that he wants to become a true prophet of the old gods. I pointed out that no one wants to listen to his kind of prophecies any more, but he insisted it doesn’t matter. Do you know how to perform the prophet’s rite?’

  ‘No, I certainly don’t! It would be too dangerous anyway, out here with no healer for miles and miles. What if something went wrong?’

  ‘I did ask him that. He said he was willing to risk it.’

  ‘Does he know how much it’s going to hurt?’

  ‘Oh yes. He told me all about it.’ Pir’s mouth twisted in distaste. ‘Having a slit cut into your—well, imph—manhood, and then a stone put into the cut, and all the rest of it. It makes me sick to think about it. But Vek told me that he has to become both male and female or the goddesses won’t accept him.’

  ‘Well, luckily for him, I can’t help him do it.’

  ‘I suppose it’s lucky. Sometimes I envy Vek. He’s lost his mach-fala, his home, his city—everything he ever had in life. But it doesn’t matter to him. He has his gods, and he’s determined to serve them. And he says that it’s enough.’

  ‘I used to feel that way. Once.’

  ‘But now you know the truth about your Alshandra.’

  ‘Yes. It’s a very bitter thing, that truth. I suppose I was happier with the lies, but truth is always better than falsehood.’

  ‘Is it?’ Pir frowned at the basket of needles. ‘I begin to wonder. Consider our rakzanir. Will they ever become Gel da’ Thae, true Gel da’ Thae, I mean, without Alshandra or someone like her to believe in? All they did before was fight among themselves. Now at least they’re fighting someone else.’

  ‘Oh yes. They’re planning on slaughtering the Ancients and taking their land. I don’t see where this is a step away from savagery.’

  ‘Ah. You’re quite right, now that I think of it. Um, well. Yes. Um.’ With a sigh Pir stood up. ‘Here’s the first basketful. I’ll cut more if you’ll take these back.’

  That night Pir lit a bonfire in the ashy pit where Movrae had died. The men who’d stayed in camp gathered around, spears in hand, to welcome Vek into their ranks when the moment came. The ceremony itself was simple and short. Pir brought the boy forward and told him to kneel before the priestess. Sidro combed Vek’s hair with her fingers, found a bit long enough to braid, and tied into it one of Laz’s old charms that she’d discovered in the detritus on the cabin floor.

  ‘You have left the arms of your mother,’ she said. ‘Where will you stand in the ranks of men?’ She whispered under her breath. ‘Turn and look at Pir now.’

  When Vek followed her order, Pir stepped forward. For the ceremony he’d washed himself to match his clean shirt and combed and re-braided his mane as well. It hung in a splendid cascade over one side of his head, revealing the close-cropped hair on the rest of it. In the leaping firelight his face gleamed like the charms tied into the braids. Long glints of light flew from his hunting knife when he drew it and held it point up.

  ‘Answer the truth,’ Pir said. ‘Or die.’

  ‘I will,’ Vek said. He smiled in such sweet delight that, Sidro assumed, he was seeing some deity behind the actual man.

  ‘Will you walk in the ranks of warriors?’ Pir said.

  ‘Never!’

  One at a time, Pir named the choices a man might make at this ceremony. Vek answered ‘never’ to each on the brief list.

  ‘What then will you do?’ Pir finished.

  ‘Serve the goddesses and gods all my life,’ Vek said. His voice choked on tears although he kept smiling. ‘And die when they wish me to.’

  ‘So be it!’ Pir grabbed the boy’s left hand and scratched its back with the point of his knife. ‘Blood and fire have witnessed your vow.’

  Vek raised his hand and let the blood run down his arm for all to see. The men in the surrounding circle lifted their spears and cried out, ‘Hai! Hai! Hai!’ Vek rose, still smiling as if he saw a thousand delights spread before him, and turned to Sidro.

  ‘Walk as a man from now on,’ she said. ‘Ride as a man always.’

  Once again came the ancient chant, ‘Hai! Hai! Hai!’ Sidro stamped her foot three times, and the ceremony had ended.

  Although she’d fretted enough about the ritual cut to bring a scrap of cloth for a bandage, Pir had managed to keep the scratch shallow. By the time Sidro examined it, the blood had already stopped running. She bound it up anyway to keep the ever-present camp dirt out of it, then sent Vek off with the rest of the men. Pir lingered with her at the fire.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. I have this awful feeling I forgot a speech in the middle, but the ritual pleased Vek, and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘That speech was boring, anyway.’ Pir thought for a moment. ‘I don’t remember much about it. The priestess droned on about never betraying your mach-fala, but um well, he’s already done that, hasn’t he? Betrayed them, I mean, by having magic.’
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  ‘Perhaps they’ve betrayed him, rather, by hating him for it.’

  ‘Ah.’ Pir looked at her sharply. ‘Hadn’t thought of it that way.’

  Sidro met his glance, then forgot what she was about to say. She found herself wondering what it would be like to stroke his close-cropped hair, to run her fingers through the hair on his chest. He stared back at her, unsmiling, silent, but she knew that he too felt the sudden attraction between them, because his scent began to change. Horse mages, however, learned to control their scents. After that first unmistakable waft of sexual desire, his returned to the normal smell of a man who’s stood close to a fire on a warm night. He started to speak, swallowed the words, then turned and strode off. Sidro stayed where she was until two of the other men came back with shovels to smother the bonfire.

  As she walked back to the cabin, she was wondering what her own scent had revealed. It’s the ceremony, she thought. Somehow we worked magic together. She’d never thought of the coming of age ritual as sorcery. As she mulled it over, she realized that Vek’s presence and his deep-rooted magical gifts had brought power into what was usually a mere social occasion. The power had caught her and Pir both unawares until that moment by the fire. That night she dreamt of the horse mage, but if he’d done the same about her, he gave no sign of it when she saw him in the morning.

  Laz led the raiding party back into camp late that day. Whooping in triumph, the men who’d been left behind rushed to unload the booty from the packhorses. The raven landed at the cabin door, then hopped and fluttered his way inside to his perch. Sidro stayed outside, watching Pir collect the horses, until Laz strolled out in human form, dressed in the clean shirt and brigga she’d washed for him, his brown hair roughly combed, like feathers ruffled by the wind.

  ‘My thanks,’ he said, patting the linen over his chest. ‘But I could have washed it myself.’

  ‘It gave me something to do while you were gone,’ Sidro said. ‘I gather everything went well.’

  ‘Yes, it did. I managed to extort some linen cloth for you, by the by, from a fairly well-off woman who, or so the farmers told me, is the local miser and deserves it.’ He smiled with an odd twist to his mouth—covering not a lie but an apology. ‘I have a small spark of moral sense left, I suppose.’