The Spirit Stone (67 page)

‘Ah, I see.’ Branna hesitated, thinking. ‘I keep feeling like there’s somewhat I should say to him, or discuss with him, more like, but I can’t think of what it may be.’

‘Well, you know, other than helping me lift the dweomer upon him, there may be naught for you to say. I’ve learned that at times, saying naught means more than words. It’s a message in itself.’

Branna looked utterly puzzled, but Dallandra merely smiled. Evandar had taught her that some truths needed to be left as riddles so that the persons who needed the answers could find them for themselves.
It’s the finding that matters,
she thought,
not the answer.
Dallandra did, however, have a straightforward question for Neb. She’d not forgotten Penna and Tarro.

‘I remember Penna from the village, truly,’ Neb told her. ‘Tarro I only met once, when the gwerbret’s captain let him come home for a visit. Penna was an odd child, but it gladdens my heart that she’s been rescued from the Horsekin.’

‘Odd how?’ Dallandra said.

‘First off, they were stepchildren. Their father was a river fisherman who drowned, and her mother married a farmer—his name was Gutyn—who took her children in and raised them as his own. He was a decent man, truly. The mother died before Clae and I got to Uncle Brwn’s farm, so I never met her.’ Neb suddenly paused. ‘Gutyn must have been killed by the raiders, now that I think of it. Gods, it’s horrible still, remembering all that.’

‘Of course it is. Penna’s still half in shock herself, I think. You could see her grief written on her face.’

‘No doubt!’ He frowned, thinking. ‘She was terrified of the river, too.’

‘Well, that’s understandable, since her father drowned in it.’

‘True spoken, but it had to be somewhat more than that. I found her weeping once because she was supposed to lead the cows down to drink. The river will take me one day, she told me. I thought she meant she’d drown, but she insisted it wasn’t that.’ Neb shrugged and spread his hands. ‘She couldn’t quite say what she meant. So I led the cows down for her, and after that, her half-brother took over the task.’

The half-brother had died in the raid, too, Dallandra supposed. The sudden look of slack-mouthed grief that crossed Neb’s face confirmed it.

The dragon lounged in the lair he’d made in tall grass. The sun gleamed on his silver scales, tipped here and there with blue, as if he were wearing the finest mail in the world, made from some dweomer metal—except for the pink gash of his old wound, spoiling it. Branna could see where Dallandra had cleaned the dead flesh away, but the gash remained, stubbornly unhealed. Still, he sprawled comfortably enough. His eyelids drooped, and he yawned, revealing fangs longer than her arm.

‘Rori?’ Branna said. ‘Are you awake?’

‘I am now,’ he said and raised his massive head.

His voice stirred memories, so deep in her mind that they brought no images or words with them, merely a piercing sense that she’d heard his voice before. Salamander had warned her about his eyes. Like Salamander, she nearly wept, seeing that human gaze, trapped behind the face of another order of being. He studied her with longing, a minute examination.

‘You’re no longer Jill,’ he said. ‘Dalla made that clear to me. I don’t want it to be true, but I know it is.’

‘Good. I don’t want to be Jill. She’s dead.’

‘So she is.’ He sighed and laid his head to rest upon his enormous front paws. His claws dug into the earth, then relaxed. ‘It gladdens my heart that you’ve come out to speak with me. I hoped you would, in your own time.’

‘You’ve not been here more than half a day.’

He rumbled with laughter. ‘I’ve always been the impatient sort.’

‘You could have sent a message back with Dalla when she tended your wound.’

‘That would have spoilt it.’ He raised his head to look straight at her. ‘I wanted to—I needed to see if you’d come on your own.’

‘Well, here I am.’

Branna waited, let him continue studying her with his all too human dark blue eyes. The moment had come that she’d been anticipating, when she would meet the silver wyrm at last and speak with him. The moment grew longer as she realized that she still had no idea of what to say.
There should be somewhat,
she thought.
Or is Dalla right?
Finally he sighed so deeply that the sound came close to a roar.

‘Ever since that night in Cengarn,’ Rori said, ‘when you called out to me that you’d come back, I’ve been thinking of things to say to you. I might as well have been a bard, going through every fine word and phrase I knew. But now we’re face to face, and none of the words are right, because you’re not Jill. Now I can see it for myself. It’s not just a tale that Dalla told me.’

‘You know, I’ve been doing the same thing, but I don’t remember who you were to Jill, so I’d not thought of much to say at all.’

‘You don’t remember anything?’

‘Well, I know she was your friend. If there was somewhat more, my apologies, but I truly don’t remember.’

‘My friend? Well, she was that, too.’ He sighed in a long hiss. ‘You don’t remember.’

‘Does it truly matter? Dalla told me you want the dweomer lifted. One day I’ll know what Jill knew, whether I’m her or not. And I swear it, Rori, I’ll do whatever I can to lift that spell.’

‘Will you? Then my thanks.’

His eyes, those striking dark blue eyes, filled with tears.
Dragons can’t weep, can they?
Branna thought.
It’s the man inside the form who’s so sad.

Rori raised his head with a shake to knock the tears away. For a moment he busied himself in rearranging his front paws on the grass. ‘I’ll be leaving for the winter in a little while. I can’t take the cold in this body. Even cool days like this, they make me sluggish.’

‘Well and good, then. I’ll see you in the spring.’

He nodded, then lowered his head onto his paws and closed his eyes. She lingered, unsure if he were truly sleeping or if he were telling her farewell. Finally she walked away, heading back to the camp and Neb.

She’d killed some fine thing, she realized, some grand love, most likely, that she’d once shared with the man Rori had been. What precisely it was, she couldn’t remember, and no more did she mourn the thing itself, but she wept, anyway, just a scatter of tears for all the honour and love that the river of Time sweeps away in its scouring flow.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

If any readers want to know more about the dwarven fire bolts, which are based on real weapons, they can find the source information in Aeneas the Tactician’s
How to Survive a Siege.
Various reference books, such as Peter Connolly’s
Greece and Rome at War,
have more detailed reconstructions. The falcata was also a real weapon, carried by the native Hispanic troops in Spain against the Roman army when Rome was mopping up after the Carthaginian Wars. Human beings have been wasting man-hours and resources on finding better ways to kill each other for a very long time.

GLOSSARY

Alar
(Elvish) A group of elves, who may or may not be bloodkin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.

Alardan
(Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.

Astral
The plane of existence directly ‘above’ or ‘within’ the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure House of Images.

Banadar
(Elv.) A warleader, equivalent to the Deverrian cadvridoc, (q.v.)

Blue Light
Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).

Body of Light
An artificial thought-form (q.v.) constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes.

Cadvridoc
(Dev.) A warleader. Not a general in the modern sense, the cadvridoc is supposed to take the advice and counsel of the noble-born lords under him, but his is the right of final decision.

Captain
(Dev.
pendaely.)
The second in command, after the lord himself, of a noble’s warband. An interesting point is that the word
taely
(the root or unmutated form
of—daely,)
can mean either a warband or a family depending on context.

Deosil
The direction in which the sun moves through the sky, clockwise. Most dweomer operations that involve a circular movement move deosil. The opposite, widdershins, is considered a sign of the dark dweomer and of the debased varieties of witchcraft.

Dweomer
(trans. of Dev.
dwunddaevad.)
In its strict sense, a system of magic aimed at personal enlightenment through harmony with the natural universe in all its planes and manifestations; in the popular sense, magic, sorcery.

Ensorcel
To produce an effect similar to hypnosis by direct manipulation of a person’s aura. (True hypnosis manipulates the victim’s consciousness only and thus is more easily resisted.)

Etheric
The plane of existence directly ‘above’ the physical. With its magnetic substance and currents, it holds physical matter in an invisible matrix and is the true source of what we call ‘life.’

Etheric Double
The true being of a person, the electromagnetic structure that holds the body together and that is the actual seat of consciousness.

Falcata
(Latin) A curved and weighted sabre derived from the earlier falx—an ancient weapon, carried in our world by Hispanic tribes of the second and third centuries BC, independently discovered by Gel da’ Thae swordsmiths.

Gerthddyn
(Dev.) Literally, a ‘music man’, a wandering minstrel and entertainer of much lower status than a true bard.

Gwerbret
(Dev.) The name derives from the Gaulish
(vergo-bretes.)
The highest rank of nobility below the royal family itself. Gwerbrets (Dev.
gwerbretion)
function as the chief magistrates of their regions, and even kings hesitate to override their decisions because of their many ancient prerogatives.

Lwdd
(Dev.) A blood-price; differs from wergild in that the amount of lwdd is negotiable in some circumstances, rather than being irrevocably set by law.

Malover
(Dev.) A full, formal court of law with both a priest of Bel and either a gwerbret or a tieryn in attendance.
Mach-fala
(Gel da’ Thae) A mother-clan, the basic extended family of Gel da’ Thae culture.

Rhan
(Dev.) A political unit of land; thus, gwerbretrhyn, tierynrhyn, the area under the control of a given gwerbret or tieryn. The size of the various rhans (Dev. rhannau) varies widely, depending on the vagaries of inheritance and the fortunes of war rather than some legal definition.

Scrying
The art of seeing distant people and places by magic.

Sigil
An abstract magical figure, usually representing either a particular spirit or a particular kind of energy or power. These figures, which look a lot like geometrical scribbles, are derived by various rules from secret magical diagrams.

Tieryn
(Dev.) An intermediate rank of the noble-born, below a gwerbret but above an ordinary lord (Dev.
arcloedd.)

Wyrd
(trans. of Dev.
tingedd.)
Fate, destiny; the inescapable problems carried over from a sentient being’s last incarnation.

APPENDICES

A NOTE ON DEVERRY DATING

Deverry dating begins at the founding of the Holy City, approximately year 76 C.E. The reader should remember that the old Celtic New Year falls on the day we call November 1, so that winter is the first season of a new year.

A NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF DEVERRY WORDS

The language spoken in Deverry is a member of the P-Celtic family. Although closely related to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, it is by no means identical to any of these actual languages and should never be taken as such.

Vowels
are divided by Deverry scribes into two classes: noble and common. Nobles have two pronunciations; commons, one.

A as in
father
when long; a shorter version of the same sound, as in
far,
when short.

O as in
bone
when long; as in
pot
when short.

W as the
oo
in
spook
when long; as in
roof
when short. Y as the
i
in
machine
when long; as the
e
in
butter
when short.

E as in
pen.

I as in
pin.

U as in
pun.

Vowels are generally long in stressed syllables; short in unstressed. Y is the primary exception to this rule. When it appears as the last letter of a word, it is always long whether that syllable is stressed or not.

Diphthongs
generally have one consistent pronunciation.

AE as the
a
in
mane.