In the smoke and the dust, in the midst of shrieks of terror and cries of pain that hung as thick as the smoke and dust, Salamander finally found Rocca. Muffled in a shabby cloak she had wedged herself in to a corner of stone ruins, and she sat so still that he thought her dead, but when he knelt down in front of her, the cloak trembled as she moved an arm. In her lap lay a cloth sack, crammed full.
‘It’s Evan,’ he said in Deverrian. ‘Are you hurt?’
Slowly she raised her head and even more slowly lifted a hand to shove back the cloak’s hood. Soot and grime caked her face, except where tears had embroidered a patten on each cheek. Blood crusted the hand that lingered beside her face.
‘You are hurt. Tell me where!’
She looked up and smiled at him, a radiant burst of joy.
‘Evan!’ she whispered. ‘You’ve come back. It be that you’ll be bringing me to our goddess, isn’t it?’
‘Tell me where you’re hurt.’ He saw, then, the blood seeping through her cloak, a spread of crimson all down her side. When he folded the cloak back, he could see her blood-stained dress, half-torn away to reveal worse-torn flesh beneath. As far as he could tell, some heavy but sharp thing had fallen upon her, to do its worst damage when she struggled to get free. As carefully as he could, he picked her up. She cried out in pain, but he settled her against his chest. Staggering under her weight, he headed for the breach in the stone wall.
The smoke hung so thick that at first he feared he’d gone in the wrong direction. He could barely breathe, and her added weight made him gasp as he staggered onward in the parching hot air. One foot after the other—his world shrank to that, one foot after the other, until at last he saw ahead of them the opening in the stone wall. He was coughing and spitting, but he carried her through at last. He managed to get a few yards beyond the dying fortress before he could go no further.
When he laid her down she whimpered. He knelt down beside her and realized that he’d come too late. Blood soaked her dress and his shirt where she’d lain against him. Her face had turned a ghastly white.
‘Will I see her soon?’ She whispered the words.
‘You will, truly.’ Even if I end up mad again, he thought, you will have that.
Salamander summoned every bit of dweomer he had and thought of Alshandra, built up an image of her, vast, towering over them, but smiling, holding out her hands as if to greet her priestess. With a wrench of will he sent the image out from his mind. He could see it as if it hovered in the air over them. At first he feared he’d misjudged Rocca’s latent dweomer talents, but all at once she smiled in her brilliant way and lifted one hand towards the image.
‘Beloved,’ she whispered. ‘My life and hope.’
Salamander summoned his body of light, a silvery flame-shaped glow. He transferred over fast, too fast, but her etheric body had already separated from the flesh, and he had no time to spend on caution. Together he and Rocca floated in the blue light, high above the swirling storm over the battlefield. Before them the image of Alshandra towered, huge but smiling, and stretched out her hands to her worshipper.
‘Go with her.’ Salamander sent his thoughts to Rocca. ‘Let us go with her to the river of life.’
With no dweomer training Rocca lacked the skill to send him coherent thought messages, but he could feel her joy, a pure thing like morning sunlight, as they rose together through the whirling indigo vortex that led inward to the astral. Ahead of them stretched the meadow of white flowers, pale under violet light, nodding in some intangible breeze. On the other side of the stretch of flowers Salamander could just make out the white river whose water has never flowed on land or into sea. He gave Alshandra’s image a mental push that sent it floating towards the boundary of life and death. Smiling still, Rocca followed without his urging.
Pain struck Salamander like a razor cut. A tug on the silver cord wrenched him away from her. With a sound like the roar of a waterfall he plunged back into his body with a yelp of sheer agony as his etheric double slammed into bone and blood, muscle and skin. In his arms Rocca still breathed, but faintly, and for only a few heartbeats more. Her head flopped back, and her lungs emptied in a last rattling sob. He grabbed her shoulders and lifted her half off the ground.
‘Rocca!’ He howled out her name. ‘Rocca!’
She had gone beyond answering him in any world. Gently he laid her down, then closed her unseeing eyes. When he looked up, the air seemed strangely thick and shimmering. Not madness, he realized, but tears. He bent his head and wept so hard that he was barely aware of the man running towards him, sword raised.
‘Salamander!’ Gerran shouted. ‘Gerthddyn! You fool! Get out of here! The whole cursed field’s on fire.’
Salamander grabbed the sack of relics, tried to stand, and nearly fell. Gerran seized him by one arm and hauled him to his feet. All around them fire crackled in the grass as it leapt from broken beams and walls. Greasy black smoke rose high in the sky. At least she’ll have a pyre, Salamander thought. There’s naught else I can do for her.
‘Come on, move!’ Gerran was yelling. ‘Do you have horseshit where your brains ought to be? Run!’
With Gerran hauling him along, Salamander managed to do just that. Together they stumbled through the spreading fire to the safety of the Red Wolf warband, waiting with horses on the edge of the battlefield.
‘It’s over,’ Calonderiel said. ‘Prince Voran and his men are chasing down the hairy bastards that managed to escape. The rest of our men are keeping the fire back from the camp.’
‘Good,’ Dallandra said.
‘Is that all you can say?’
‘Cal, I just finished taking an archer’s leg off at the knee. He still might die anyway. I’m in no mood to sing your praises or whatever it is you want.’
Dallandra was sitting on the ground between two tents, taking a desperately needed rest. Calonderiel hunkered down in front of her. He reeked of sweat and smoke, and a mixture of the two smeared his face and neck. All down his right arm blood oozed through his mail.
‘You’re wounded,’ Dallandra said.
‘Not truly,’ he said. ‘I can still use the arm, so it can’t be that bad. You look exhausted.’
‘I am.’ She watched as two Deverry men, supporting a wounded third between them, staggered past. ‘That one’s not that badly off. The chirurgeons can tend him.’
‘Good.’ Calonderiel pulled off his pot helm and pushed his sweat-soaked hair back from his face with both hands, leaving a smear of blood across his forehead. ‘Why don’t you go back to our tent and hide from all this? By now you’ve either treated the worst wounded, or they’re dead.’
Dallandra allowed him to help her up. Although she was tempted to lean on him, she shook herself free of his offered embrace. ‘I’m not that tired,’ she said. ‘I need to go back and see—Wait! There’s Ebañy heading our way.’
Salamander trotted up, carrying a blood-stained sack. Blood crusted on his sleeves and soaked the front of his shirt.
‘Your friend?’ Dalla said in Elvish.
‘Is dead.’ Salamander tossed his head, then spasmed with a racking cough that ended when he spat up black rheum. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Here are the so-called holy relics.’
Salamander shoved the sack into her arms, then trotted off, dodging among the other men. He truly loved her, didn’t he? She watched him till she could see him no longer.
‘Dalla!’ Calonderiel grabbed her arm. ‘You should go back to our tent.’
‘I’ll go back if you go.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’ His mouth went slack, and he looked away. ‘Too many of our men are dead. I’ve at least got to go speak to the wounded.’
‘And I’ve got to do what I can for them. Let’s go tend them together.’
Calonderiel had told her the truth about his wound. When she finally got a chance to examine his arm, she saw that a blow from the trailing edge of a falcata had landed with enough force to split the skin
through his padding and mail, but the cuts were shallow and easily stitched. His mood, however, would take far more time to heal. He glowered and swore revenge for every dead man, for every wound any of his men had taken until he became a walking pillar of rage and little more.
With Calonderiel to worry over and so many wounded men to attend, Dalla had no chance to open the sack of relics that day or night. By then, with the fires beaten out, the army had chased down and slaughtered every Horsekin and human straggler from the fortress that they could find. In the morning, the various lords sent a pack of messengers off on their way back to Deverry with the news. Dallandra had already used dweomer to send messages from Prince Daralanteriel to Valandario and through her, to Princess Carra and the others at Mandra.
While Dallandra and the chirurgeons did their best to save the wounded, and the warbands buried the men they failed to save, the princes, the gwerbret, and all their lords held a long council of war. Calonderiel told her of their decisions that evening. They were eating a scrappy dinner of stale flatbread and mouldy cheese, augmented by a couple of chunks of stewed horsemeat, in their tent.
‘The Roundears are probably still arguing,’ Cal said. ‘Prince Voran’s come up with a splendid idea, but Ridvar doesn’t like it. It’ll cost him taxes.’
‘Let me guess,’ Dallandra said. ‘The prince thinks Honelg’s old dun is indefensible.’
‘Right you are, my clever darling! He wants the Mountain Folk to take it over.’
‘Now that I’d never have guessed. The Mountain Folk?’
‘Why not? They maintain farming villages not all that far east of it. They could join those up with a dun or one of their underground fortresses and form a northern line of defence.’
‘But what about Gerran and his new clan?’
‘That’s where the lost taxes come in. He’d become a vassal of Tieryn Cadryc and be given a new dun on the Melyn river somewhere. That area needs fortifying against raiders anyway. It would be to our advantage as well, having allies right there to call upon in the future.’
‘So it would. Do you want some more of this bread?’
‘I do, my thanks. So here’s the thing that had Ridvar soiling his brigga. Voran wants Cadryc to change allegiance and become Prince Dar’s vassal. And of course, all of Cadryc’s vassals will come with him.’
‘I can’t imagine Ridvar allowing that.’
‘He’ll have to.’ Calonderiel paused to grin. ‘Otherwise, the high king will create a new gwerbretrhyn just to the south of Ridvar’s—or so Voran says, at any rate. And that means a rival on our gwerbret’s borders. Oh, he’ll let Cadryc go, all right.’
Dallandra found that she could still laugh. ‘Grallezar always calls Voran sly. It’s a good word for him.’
‘Yes, it is.’ Calonderiel returned the grin. ‘Now, tomorrow the entire army’s pulling back to the place where that road to Braemel joins the river. Day after that, part of it will retreat further, across the ford and some miles east.’
‘Only part of it?’
‘Yes. We’ll be sending the wounded back under heavy guard. The rest of us will stay and wait.’ He paused to scrape green mould from a chunk of cheese.
‘Wait for what?’
‘The Horsekin reinforcements. The dragons killed a couple of men we missed who were trying to get back to their cities, but I’m certain that some will make it back, the ones with the wits to reach the forest. The dragons can’t follow them there, and we can’t ride in after them, either.’
‘And when they reach the cities?’
‘I can’t believe the reserve forces won’t march out immediately.’ Calonderiel looked up with a sunny grin. ‘This is our chance to deal them a blow they’ll remember for years, Dalla. The more we kill now, the more time we’ll have to fortify duns along the Melyn. If the People are going to survive, we have to have somewhere to retreat to if—no, when—these shit-ugly savages break out onto the grasslands again.’ He stabbed the now-clean cheese wedge with his table dagger and gestured with it. ‘And you know they will.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do. Are you going to stay?’
‘Of course. I’m the banadar.’
By sheer dint of will Dallandra managed to keep from shedding angry tears. With the fortress destroyed, she had thought the worst over, but the worst was refusing to end.
‘I’ll stay with you,’ she said. ‘Some of our men might well be wounded, and you’ll need a healer here who understands the People. I can send two of my assistants back with the others.’
‘Good. We’ll need you.’
Her gratitude that he would say only the simple truth surprised her. Praise or fulsome thanks would have sickened her, she realized, but all of a sudden she lost her appetite, especially for tough, stringy horsemeat. She handed him the rest of her dinner to finish, then made a dweomer light and hung it near the smokehole.
‘What’s that for?’ Calonderiel said with his mouth full.
‘The holy relics from Zakh Gral. I haven’t even looked at them yet.’
‘You know, those might be useful. No doubt their wretched priestesses will want them back. They could give us something to bargain with in the future.’
‘Perhaps. Some of them should be destroyed.’
Dallandra found the sack and sat down with it under the light. She opened it and pulled out a lumpy bundle wrapped in the banner made of Salamander’s old shirt.
‘I can’t believe they thought that prattling dolt had worked a miracle,’ Calonderiel said.
‘They wanted a miracle very badly, is why they believed it.’ One fold at a time, Dallandra unwrapped the relics and laid them onto a leather cushion beside her. In the dweomer light the golden bow and arrow glittered with a normal metallic sheen.
‘Now, these I won’t mind turning over to you, if you think they’ll be useful,’ Dallandra said. ‘They’re just ordinary objects. So’s this.’ She picked up a wooden box inlaid with spirals and opened it to reveal the so-called wyvern knife. ‘But here’s Yraen’s silver dagger.’ Dallandra handed the box to Calonderiel. ‘They shan’t have that back. They stole it in the first place. Give it to Gerran, I’d say. None of us can touch the thing without it blazing like a fire.’
‘Oh, it might come in handy on a dark night.’
‘I doubt if you want to use it for a torch. I’m not sure how it affects us, but I suspect it sucks out life force to fuel the light.’
‘Very well, out it goes.’ Calonderiel was scowling into the open box. ‘I’ll see if Gerran wants it. A silver dagger’s something of an insult among the Roundears, though.’
‘It’s too bad we don’t know where Yraen’s buried, or we could put it in his grave. Otherwise, I don’t know what to do with it. One of the Mountain Folk might want it for the metal, I suppose.’ She paused to hold up the bone whistle. ‘Here’s this hideous thing! I don’t want it in Horsekin hands. It has an odd power over dragons. I’m planning on giving it to Arzosah to destroy. Huh. If they want Salamander’s shirt back, they can have that, but I doubt very much that they will.’
Dallandra opened the last fold and found the black obsidian pyramid lying among the stains and frayed embroideries. It caught the dweomer light and glittered with sparks of what seemed to be black fire, edged with gold. Calonderiel leaned back as if he feared they would burn.
‘It won’t hurt you,’ Dallandra said. ‘That’s just a manifestation of the spirit trapped in the pyramid. It’s furious, I should think.’
‘I would be, if someone trapped me somewhere.’
‘I’m sure you would, but hush for a moment. Let me see if I can release it.’
Dallandra let herself relax to the edge of trance and opened her etheric sight. She saw a cage of blue light woven around the pyramid, the visible traces of the binding ceremony. Its builder, however, must have been an extremely powerful dweomerworker, because the lines of blue light ran through the obsidian as well, as if the cage had grown tendrils into the crystal. Deep in the black heart of the
gem she could just make out a whorl of silver light, spinning around and around in a tiny cell—the trapped spirit.
Dallandra visualized a pentagram, then pushed the image out of her mind onto the etheric cage. Nothing happened. She returned her sight to the physical world with a toss of her head.
‘May whoever did this rot!’ she said.
‘I take it you couldn’t just let it go.’
‘No, nothing so simple. Cal, would you go find Ebañy? I may need his help for this.’
‘You’re still so tired. Can’t it wait?’
‘And how would you feel, if the person who could let you out of prison decided to take a nap first?’
With a sigh Calonderiel got to his feet. ‘I’ll go look for him. No doubt someone knows where he is.’
Calonderiel ducked out of the tent, to return shortly with Salamander. Purple bruises under his eyes marked the gerthddyn’s dead-pale face.
‘Our most esteemed banadar told me you wanted my help,’ Salamander said. ‘Aha, behold the black stone!’
‘Just that,’ Dallandra said. ‘I’m going to go up to the astral to try to free that spirit. I wanted you here in case something went wrong.’
‘If naught else, I can channel vital force to you.’
‘If you have any to spare. Ebañy, you look utterly drained.’
‘Oh, it’s only grief. No dweomer, nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Don’t! I can’t bear to listen to you try to joke it away.’
‘No doubt. No more can I bear to listen to myself.’ Salamander nearly wept, choked it back, then knelt on the floor near her. ‘Are you going into full trance?’
Had it not been for the trapped spirit, Dallandra would have prodded him into the relief of tears. As it was, she said, ‘Yes. The simple working I just tried failed miserably.’
The Spirit Stone Page 45