The Spirit Stone (37 page)

You’re going daft! he told himself.
With a shake of his head he turned back to the broch. Out of habit he started to go in by the servants’ door, then caught himself and walked around to the honour side. Lady Solla was just coming out. At the sight of him, she broke into a grin, then hastily stifled it into a decorous little smile.

‘And a good morrow to you, Lord Gerran,’ she said.

‘The same to you, my lady.’

They stood facing each other in an awkward silence. There was so much that Gerran wanted to say, all of it leading to ‘will you marry me?’, but he hesitated, not out of fear that she’d say him nay, but its opposite. If they became betrothed now, and he were killed, she’d be a widow in men’s eyes, and have no chance at a good marriage. As she waited for him to speak, her beautiful hazel eyes grew troubled, and she arranged an utterly false smile. He had to say something, he knew, or he’d wound her.

‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I have the greatest respect for you.’

‘And I for you.’ She sounded puzzled—not a good omen.

‘Will you hold me in your prayers while I’m gone to war?’

‘Of course.’ The smile began to look natural.

‘I suppose you women folk will have plenty do while we’re gone, your spinning and suchlike.’

‘Oh, we certainly will! The sewing’s eternal.’

‘Do you think I could presume to ask you a favour? The tieryn owes me a new shirt as part of my maintenance, but these blazons—’ Gerran touched the Red Wolf embroidered on one yoke.

‘They’re not right, are they?’ Solla smiled again. ‘I can work you a shirt with a pair of falcons easily enough. Those wolves look like they’re going bald, don’t they? That shirt’s so old.’

Gerran grinned at her. ‘So it is, but good enough for war.’

‘I suppose so. The new one will be waiting when you return.’

‘Let’s not tempt the gods, my lady.
If
I return. And if I do, I uh er, well, there’ll be um somewhat I want to discuss with you. A matter of great import for both of us.’

He felt that the sunlight had suddenly turned her face to gold, she looked so happy. She’d understood, and he thanked every god.

‘It’s not the time now,’ he went on. ‘What if I don’t come back?’

‘I’m not even going to think such a thing possible!’

‘But it is. Here, you’re a warrior’s daughter. You know what war means.’

‘So I do.’ She looked away, the smile gone. ‘Well and good, then. But may I give you a token to wear? To the others it’ll mean naught more than that I favour you.’

‘Then I’d like naught better.’

Solla turned and hurried into the broch. He followed more slowly and paused in the shadows by the door as she hurried up the staircase. The great hall stood mostly empty, except for a pack of dogs snoring in the straw out in the middle of the room and a pair of ragged lasses gossiping over by the servants’ hearth. In but a few moments Solla returned, carrying a narrow scarf, which she laid across his hands when he held them out. It had once been beautiful, he supposed, a blue strip of fine Bardek silk, embroidered with roses at either end, but long years had faded and frayed it.

‘It’s not grand, but it’s the best I have,’ she said. ‘My brother begrudged me the coin for finery.’

Gerran stopped himself just in time from calling her brother, Gwerbret Ridvar, a mingy little bastard. ‘Well, this suits me,’ he said instead. ‘I’m not much of a noble lord, either.’

He folded the scarf up and slipped it inside his shirt, settling it against his belt to ensure it stayed there. For a long while they stood staring into each other’s eyes until they heard Tieryn Cadryc and his guests talking and laughing as they strode towards the door.

With the dun so full of noble lords, Neb and Branna took to spending as much time as possible up in their chamber. They would sit on their bed and take turns reading to each other from the books Dallandra had sent them. Of course, at times their newly-wed feeling for each other took over, and they’d get no reading done of an afternoon. But they kept on, memorizing page after page, until sundown made reading the faded writing impossible. They drilled each other on the tables of correspondences and the lists of peculiar names until they could rattle off the various planes and levels of the universe, the beings who lived upon them, and all their various attributions and characteristics.

‘I suppose this is all going to make sense one day,’ Branna remarked late one afternoon. ‘In those dreams I had, everything was so easy and glorious, not like this at all. It’s almost as tedious as spinning.’

‘Well, the memory work leads to the other,’ Neb said, ‘or so we’ve been told. You know, I’m finding that book about physick almost as interesting.’

‘I’ve noticed you studying it.’

‘It’s because of the sickness that killed my father and sister and half of our town, too.’ Neb glanced away, his eyes brimming with remembered mourning. ‘I want to understand it. I know that if a person’s humours are unbalanced, then the person will get sick. But how can an entire town’s worth of people get unbalanced humours all at once?’

‘When you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous.’

‘Precisely. So some evil thing, a poison or suchlike, must have disrupted the humours in the first place, somewhat in the town wells, mayhap, or in the air, or…’ Neb let his voice trail away. ‘There had to be some agent of corruption, a thing that could somehow spread itself through the town. I don’t know what it could be.’

‘I’d guess that it spread through the air.’

‘That was my thought, too, because of the bodily spirits.’

‘Spirits in the body? Wildfolk or suchlike?’

‘Not in the least.’ Neb grinned at her. ‘That’s just a name for the subtle vapours that—’

Someone knocked on their chamber door.

‘Who is it?’ Branna called out.

‘Salamander, escaped at last. Are you decent?’

‘What? Of course we are!’

Without waiting to be invited, a pale and weary Salamander opened the door and slipped in, shutting it firmly behind him. ‘If anyone comes looking for me,’ he said, ‘I’m not here.’

‘What’s happened?’ Neb said, grinning. ‘You look like Lady Adranna’s been trying to poison you or suchlike.’

‘Poison would be a relief.’ With a groan Salamander flopped into the only chair. ‘I’ve been slaving away in the great hall, performing tricks and telling tales for the noble-born until my poor throat’s practically stripped raw.’ He flapped one hand in Branna’s direction. ‘Your uncle’s going to owe me a winter’s maintenance at least.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be welcome, but it’ll mean telling more tales.’ Branna picked up the herbal, which had been lying next to her on the bed. ‘Let me see, Bardek wine’s a good remedy for an aching throat, but I don’t think Cook’s got any left. Perhaps I can find somewhat else.’

‘Horehound,’ Neb said, ‘the whole herb, minced, steeped, and reduced to syrup with honey water.’

‘Aha!’ Salamander said. ‘You’ve been studying.’

‘We have. Branni, do you think Cook has any horehound?’

‘She should. It’s blooming in the meadows, or at least it was, if all those horses haven’t eaten it. Gods, there’s a lot of them! And the men, too, and the servants—’ Branna shook her head in wonder. ‘It’s almost as many people as live in Cengarn, isn’t it?’

‘A few less.’ Salamander grinned at her. ‘Which reminds me. I’ve been scrying, and the army should arrive soon. Ridvar’s left Cengarn.’

Branna felt a stab of grief, so sick at heart that she nearly wept.

‘What’s wrong?’ Neb reached over and clasped her hand.

‘I’m frightened. My uncle, and Gerran, and my father—all the men, really. Who knows what will happen to them?’ She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. ‘Neb, you’d best start spending time with your brother.’

‘He’s going to the war?’ Salamander sounded astonished. ‘He’s but eight summers old!’

‘He’s Gerran’s page now,’ Neb said. ‘Where his lord goes, he goes. That’s one reason I wanted to go with the army, to look after Clae.’

‘I’ll do the looking after, then,’ Salamander said. ‘I shall be you, scribe and brother and all.’

‘My very great thanks,’ Neb said. ‘Truly, that’s most generous of you.’

‘I just hope he won’t take it amiss.’

‘I’ll tell him that he has to listen to you.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Salamander paused, thinking. ‘What about Matto? They must be taking him along, too. He’s the prince’s hostage, after all.’

‘They’re not,’ Branna joined in. ‘Voran sent a message about that, asking Mirryn to stand surety for the lad.’

‘Good. He’ll doubtless be happier after Gerran and I are gone. If naught else, at least he’ll be willing to take his meals in the great hall.’

‘No doubt,’ Branna said. ‘When do you think the army will get here?’

‘Soon. A couple of days. I’ll tell you if I see anything untoward. ’

Perhaps the strangest thing of all, Branna decided, was how normal and ordinary it seemed to have a master of dweomer discussing an event happening far away. Only a few short months ago she would have laughed in scorn at anyone who’d tried to tell her that a person could know what was happening forty miles off. Now she knew that the world was not only bigger, but far stranger than she’d ever believed.

That night, she stood at her chamber window looking out at the stars. Where was the silver dragon lairing, she wondered, on such a fine night? Surely not in some squalid cave.
Someday,
she told herself,
I’ll have a chance to speak with him.

‘Oh do come lie down!’ Neb already lounged on their bed. ‘Are you thinking about that wretched dragon again?’

‘I am, truly. He’s just such a puzzle to me. I know Jill made a vow to free him from his evil wyrd. Getting himself turned into a dragon must be the evil, wouldn’t you think?’

‘I would.’

‘I’m assuming that I’ll have much to say to him when we finally meet, but I don’t know what it would be.’

‘Well, since we’re not going with the army, you’ll have plenty of time to think, so don’t worry about it now.’

‘You’re right.’ She turned to smile at him. ‘Do you want the shutters open or closed?’

‘Open, I think. It’s such a warm night. Now, come lie down. I mean, please?’

With a laugh, Branna joined him, and for the rest of that night, she never thought about the silver dragon, not once.

The dwarven contingent had reached Cengarn on the day before Gwerbret Ridvar was planning to leave it. After a single night’s rest, therefore, they set out again for the Red Wolf dun, though they found the trip less than gruelling. Travelling with an army of Deverry men turned out to be a much slower business than travelling with Mountain Folk alone. What was normally two days’ journey to the Red Wolf dun took three full and a bit over.

Kov, in his role as dwarven envoy, used the time to get to know as many lords and captains as he could, although he spent most of it with Gwerbret Ridvar and Prince Voran. The prince, a younger son of a younger son of the royal house, was an ordinary looking fellow at first acquaintance, with his brownish hair, thinning a bit on top, large ears, and a generous mouth that made his grin border on the froggy despite the attempt of his full moustache to hide it. But the intelligence gleaming in his grey eyes impressed Kov. When someone spoke to him, the prince would listen intently, his eyes shrewd and focused as he weighed the words being offered him.

Ridvar, on the other hand—Ridvar had inherited the rhan because both his father and his older brother had died in battle. He was a good-looking lad, dark-haired and hazel-eyed, but an arrogant child, in Kov’s opinion, though he did his best to keep the opinion to himself.

‘Just how old is he?’ Kov asked Blethry one noontide.

‘Not quite fifteen,’ Blethry said. ‘But a married man withal, and one who’s fought and fought well in a couple of scraps against the raiders.’

‘Very admirable of him, truly.’

Blethry raised an eyebrow. Kov smiled blandly back. In a moment Blethry changed the subject.

As the army travelled south, it gathered men and lords along the way, both those who owed fealty directly to Ridvar and those vassals of his tierynau who happened to live along the route. The gwerbret’s allies sent messengers, announcing that they were raising men and marching with all possible speed for the Red Wolf dun. Yet despite all the musters, by the time the army reached Cadryc’s, it numbered just over twelve hundred human men. Cadryc had a hundred waiting to add to the total. Without the dwarven sappers and miners, the chance of victory would have been slim indeed.

The dwarves set up their camp in the meadow behind the dun along with the majority of the army. Cadryc’s lady and his elderly chamberlain put forth a superhuman effort and managed to house the noble lords in the dun itself. Kov and Brel found themselves classed with the nobility. Lord Veddyn, the chamberlain, offered them a small chamber near the roof that gave every sign of having been hastily vacated by someone else.

‘By the stone gods!’ Brel muttered. ‘I’d rather sleep in the meadow than turn someone out of their bed.’

‘Indeed, my lord,’ Kov said to Veddyn. ‘We have a comfortable tent in one of our wagons. Why don’t you return this chamber to its owner? We’ll camp in the meadow.’

‘Ah, your wagons.’ Veddyn’s rheumy old eyes briefly gleamed. ‘I’ve heard they contain many an interesting thing.’

Kov smiled and said nothing.
Ye gods!
he was thinking.
What do they think we’re carrying? Gems and gold and such?
Considering the reputation of the Mountain Folk, he supposed, they might indeed have been thinking just that.

When, therefore, Kov saw Lady Branna studying the mysterious carts, Kov assumed that she too was wondering about the rune-marked crates, but her reason turned out to be atypical.

‘This new kind of wheel—it’s awfully clever,’ she said.

It took him a moment to realize that her comment was sincere. ‘It is that. You’ll be seeing more of them, I’ll wager. Every cartwright in Cengarn took a good look at them. Your woodcutter did, too, here in this dun.’

‘Horza? He’s a marvel when it comes to making things, truly.’

One of the dwarven carters was leaning over, hands on knees, and frowning at the cart’s left rear wheel. He muttered a few foul words, then knelt on one knee and began pulling something free of the strakes.