The Spirit Stone

  ‘You!’ he hissed. ‘Raena, Merodda, you howling bitch!’

  ‘Who?’ Sidro stammered. ‘I’m not! Why do you hate me? Please don’t kill me!’

  She fell to her knees and stretched out her arms in supplication. The vinegar smell of wyrm hung so thick in the air that she could barely breathe, much less think clearly. She heard Pir shout, heard men running towards her, but she knew that they could never prevent the dragon from striking. Sidro drew a deep breath and stopped trembling. She would face death bravely, she decided, the only dignity left to her. The dragon took another step towards her, lowered his head, and growled with a sound like an avalanche rumbling down a distant mountain.

  ‘Get back!’ Sword in hand, Lord Gerran charged in between them. ‘You may not kill her.’

  ‘What’s it to you if I do or not?’

  ‘I gave my word of honour that no one would harm her.’

  ‘Do you think you can stop me?’ The dragon’s words turned into a long hiss.

  ‘Of course not.’ Gerran’s voice sounded perfectly calm. ‘But you’ll have to kill me first to get hold of her.’

  The silver wyrm raised his massive head and opened his mouth to reveal fangs the size of sword blades. Gerran waited, his sword held in front of him, the point touching the ground as if he were completely indifferent to the malevolence that faced him. In the sunlight, Gerran’s red hair flamed. The dragon’s scales glittered, as silver as a murderer’s moon. Sidro waited, wondering if she’d find Laz in the Deathworld, for a moment that seemed to stretch to touch eternity. Suddenly the dragon sighed with so human a sound that she yelped in surprise.

  ‘I could never harm you.’ The dragon said to Gerran, then laid his head upon the ground. ‘Well and good then. I shan’t kill her, if it means that much to you.’

  ‘Do I have your sworn word on that?’ Gerran said.

  ‘You do.’ The dragon’s voice turned into something very soft, very human. ‘I swear it on a dragon’s honour, Cullyn, since the man I was had none left.’

  ‘Done, then!’ Gerran sheathed his sword, then looked up, puzzled. ‘What did you call me?’

  The dragon rumbled with laughter. ‘My apologies! He was another man I knew once, that’s all. Before a fight, he held his sword much as you held yours, and so you reminded me of him just now. You have my sworn word, Lord Gerran, that I’ll let the woman live. I’ll take my oath on the fire mountain I call home.’

  ‘My thanks,’ Gerran said. ‘And you have mine that she won’t be doing you any harm—as if she could!’

  The dragon bobbed his head in deference, then swung his massive self around and waddled away, as clumsy on the ground as he was deadly in the sky. His huge tail flicked from side to side. Sidro staggered to her feet, surprised that she could stand on legs that had all the strength of snow under a hot sun. Gerran was watching her with a slight smile. She could smell not so much as a trace of fear. He might have merely swatted away a fly who’d been circling around her.

  ‘My thanks,’ Sidro stammered. ‘My heartfelt thanks! I know not how I may ever repay—’

  ‘No repayment needed, your holiness.’

  ‘Please call me not that. I be no priestess any longer.’

  ‘Well and good, then, my lady.’ Gerran bowed to her, then strode off, following the dragon.

  Pir raced forward and flung his arms around her. She could feel him trembling and smell his fear, slowly ebbing. She pressed against him and ravelled in the warmth of his arms around her, a tangible safety. For a long while neither of them could speak. He stroked her hair, then kissed her on the mouth.

  ‘We’d best join the others,’ Pir said. ‘The Ancients have taken charge of them.’

  The Ancients seemed to be determined to treat their prisoners as decently as guests. Once they all reached the tents, the Lijik men drew back and let the Ancients lead Pir’s band to a communal fire in the centre of their part of the camp. Since Sidro knew nothing of the Ancients’ language, and they knew nothing of hers, they spoke together in the Lijik tongue. An archer with hair as pale as Evan’s came forward and introduced himself as Danalaurel and the herald as Maelaber.

  ‘Come eat,’ he said. ‘Do you drink mead? We’ve got some.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Sidro said, ‘but it were kind if you did share with our men.’

  ‘Gladly.’ He turned to Pir. ‘I understand that you’re a horse mage. Come sit in the place of honour. My lady, if you’d accompany him?’

  Pir shrugged and smiled his agreement. ‘Um, well, this is a surprise,’ he whispered to Sidro in their own tongue.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘You’ve arranged the most successful surrender I’ve ever heard of.’

  ‘I’ll wager they want something from us. Let’s not celebrate till we see what it is.’

  As they walked through the camp, Sidro kept looking around her for Evan, even though she wondered why she would want to confront him. He’d lost her everything she loved—no, she told herself, Lakanza’s safe, Laz lost himself, and Alshandra never truly existed, did she? Finally she saw him, standing off to one side. He hailed Danalaurel, started forward, then stopped, staring her way.

  ‘Evan!’ Sidro called out. ‘Please, come speak with me!’

  He hesitated, then slouched over, his hands in his pockets. ‘Are you going to berate me, your—wait!’ Evan said in the Lijik tongue. ‘I hear you don’t consider yourself a priestess any longer.’

  ‘I do not, nor would the order consider me one, should I ever try to go back. Some days ago I scried that you did speak with Lakanza. I fain would know what she did say.’

  ‘She forgave me, bizarrely enough. And she told me that it ached her heart that she’d not listened to you. She said she knew she’d been unjust to you and wished she could tell you so.’

  Sidro’s eyes filled with tears even as she smiled. ‘That gladdens my heart,’ she whispered. ‘But never could I blame her.’

  ‘Well, you were right, you know,’ Evan said. ‘I am Vandar’s spawn, and a witchman, and all of it. I even was in love with Rocca, just like you thought.’

  ‘Then my heart aches for your loss.’

  ‘Does it truly?’

  Sidro surprised herself, but she nodded. ‘It does. Go in peace, Evan, and I shall do the same.’

  ‘Done, then.’ He reached out and touched her hand with his fingertips, then turned and strode away, disappearing among the tents and the growing shadows of twilight.

  The Ancients gave them food as well as drink. After the meal, several men brought out harps. Pir and Sidro sat together and spoke but little, listening to incomprehensible songs swirling through the camp. The Ancients had parcelled out Pir’s men to the campfires close by. At first Sidro worried about Vek, but Danalaurel told her that two healers had taken charge of the boy.

  ‘One of Pir’s men mentioned that Vek has fits now and then,’ Danalaurel said. ‘Our healers have herbs that might ease them.’

  ‘That gladdens my heart,’ Sidro said. ‘I do worry that he might fall some time and badly hurt himself.’

  As the evening wore on, Sidro first rested her head on Pir’s shoulder, then leaned against him and fought to stay awake, until at last he told their hosts that she needed to rest.

  ‘My apologies!’ Danalaurel leapt up. ‘Let me talk with our herald.’

  At his call, Maelaber appeared along with a young Lijik boy, who told her his name was Clae.

  ‘He’ll take you to a tent,’ the herald said. ‘It’s on the edge of the camp, where’s it quieter. It’s near Lord Gerran’s.’

  ‘You don’t need to be afraid of anything,’ Clae said. ‘Not with Lord Gerran right there.’

  ‘I see.’ Pir smiled at him. ‘You do honour Lord Gerran.’

  ‘Oh, he’s the greatest lord in all Deverry, but I don’t suppose anyone but me knows it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you somewhat, lad,’ Sidro said. ‘I too know that he be so, and I will tell it to anyone who might ask.’

  Th
e tent proved to be a typical soldier’s shelter, a prism shape of canvas pegged down and slung over stretched rope between poles, but it did offer privacy. Sidro spread out their blankets, which completely covered the floor cloth. Two people could sleep side-by-side, but should it rain, they would have to shrink back from the stretched canvas or let the water in. Sidro pulled off her leather dress, folded it, and laid it down for a pillow. In her linen shift she knelt on the blankets. Pir ducked inside and knelt facing her.

  ‘You must be weary,’ Pir said. ‘The night’s dry and warm. I can sleep outside—’

  ‘No. I can’t bear to be unfair to you.’ The moment she spoke she regretted it. In the dim light filtering into the tent from the campfires outside, she couldn’t see his expression, but she could hear him sigh clearly enough. ‘That sounds so cold,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘I don’t see you like—well, like what? a meal you might owe me for tending your horses.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.’

  ‘I’d best leave.’

  ‘No.’ She reached out and laid her hand flat on his chest. ‘Pir, make me want you.’

  ‘I can’t do that. It’s against every vow I ever swore.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I’m willing. That makes all the difference.’ She ran her hand down his chest. ‘Please?’

  He made no answer at first, then caught her hand and raised it, kissed her wrist, then the palm. She could smell his desire, smell Desire itself, or so it seemed, a flood of scent that eddied around her, filling her lungs, sweeping over her. In that mist of scent, he turned into the most desirable man in the world. With a sigh of anticipated pleasure she lay down on the blankets. He followed, settling himself next to her on his side. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss her.

  It took the exhausted army a day and a half to join up with the contingent waiting across the ford. Dallandra rode towards the rear of the line of march to keep an eye on the recently wounded. Two of them died on the way. The army stopped each time to bury them as well as to repair the inevitable broken wheels on the carts. When at last they saw the tents of the encampment, like dirty flowers rising from the tall grass, Dallandra felt she’d been given a promise of sanctuary, though a treacherous one. No one knew how the Gel da’ Thae leaders in Braemel and Taenalapan would respond to the demands of the two princes.

  ‘They’ll bluster,’ Grallezar said. ‘Truly, you may count upon that, much blustering and threats. But as to acts of war—well, I wager it were some time before they mount one again.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ Dallandra said. ‘A long long time.’

  As soon as they reached the tents, Salamander came running to meet them. Since they’d talked mind to mind many times in the last few days, he had little new to tell her, which didn’t stop him from telling her the old news all over again. Neither he nor Sidro, the upshot was, had been able to scry out the slightest trace of the black pyramid or the raven mazrak.

  ‘I told Sidro you were coming,’ he finished up. ‘Do you want to meet her now?’

  ‘By all means,’ Dallandra said. ‘I take it she can stand the sight of you?’

  ‘Yes, and oddly enough it’s because she was right about me.’

  Sidro was sitting on the ground in front of the tent she shared with the horse mage, another person Dallandra wanted to meet. As they approached, she got up and stood waiting, her head held high, her hands clasped in front of her. Her raven-dark hair had grown out since her ritual humiliation to reach the neckline of her leather dress, painted with green and yellow designs, including a much-faded bow and arrow that looked as if she’d tried to scrub it off. As soon as Dallandra saw her, she recognized her: Raena, all right, but a changed Raena, one with dignity.

  Although Dallandra had been expecting to recognize her, she’d not thought that Sidro would know her in return. Sidro, however, looked at her closely, then flung up a hand as if warding a blow and stepped back, only to blush and stammer.

  ‘My apologies,’ Sidro said. ‘For a moment I did think I did know you, and it were not a good thing. But truly, we’ve never met.’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite all right.’ Dallandra smiled at her. ‘This summer’s been hard on us all. I can understand why things seem strange.’

  ‘True spoken, Wise One.’ Sidro returned the smile. ‘The Westfolk here, they do tell me to call you Wise One. Be that correct?’

  ‘It is. Do you want me to call you priestess?’

  ‘Never again!’ Sidro shook her head in emphasis. ‘I did worship a spirit and think her a god. Never again will I be cozened so.’

  ‘I can understand that, too. May I speak with Pir?’

  ‘He be out among the horses, but I shall fetch him if—’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself. There’ll be time later.’

  Towards sunset, Meranaldar joined Dallandra as she made the rounds of the wounded men in her care. She’d had her assistants set up her tent near theirs on the edge of the Westfolk encampment. Most of those still alive would recover to various degrees, including the young Deverry rider, Tarro. When Dallandra squatted down by his bed of blankets, his sister helped him off with his shirt, then knelt at his head like a guard. Someone must have given Penna some soap, because she’d washed her brown dress and her hair both. Her short hair in particular gleamed, as thick and soft as fur upon her narrow skull, growing low on her forehead above her bushy eyebrows.

  Tarro, Dallandra realized, shared the same thick hair and eyebrows. Although he was too young to raise a full beard and moustache, clumps of brown hair plumed at the corners of his upper lip. More to the point, though, he looked only a quarter of the way to dead, a definite improvement over half. While she changed the bandages around his shoulder, Dallandra was relieved to see that the flap of skin had avoided morbidity. In fact, it was already beginning to form scar tissue, incredibly soon for such a terrible wound.

  ‘You’re recovering,’ Dallandra told him. ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s because of Penna,’ Tarro said. ‘She’s been tending me like a baby, and truly, I need it.’

  ‘I won’t let him die.’ Penna spoke with calm certainty. ‘I told him so, and I won’t.’

  ‘Well, there’s no sign of infection,’ Dallandra said to her, ‘so you’ve done a good job so far. Tarro, what will you do, now that you can’t ride in a warband?’

  ‘Lord Gerran’s offered me the post of gatekeeper in his new dun—when he gets one built, anyway. He said he won’t let us starve in the meantime.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Meranaldar put in. ‘This means that, ultimately, you’ll be vassals of Prince Daralanteriel. Did you know that? Lord Gerran will swear to Tieryn Cadryc, and Cadryc will now be allied with the Westfolk as a direct vassal of the prince.’

  ‘Whatever the lords decide,’ Tarro said. He started to shrug, then winced in pain. The blood drained from his face. Penna leaned forward and placed her hands on his temples. His colour returned to normal so quickly that Dallandra gave Penna a good looking over. The lass stared back, calm but unsmiling, her luminous dark eyes utterly unreadable.

  ‘Try not to do that again,’ Dallandra said to Tarro, ‘at least for the next fortnight or so. You’ll get used to your loss eventually, lad.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Tarro said. ‘Wise One, I can still feel the arm. It prickles, like, and sometimes it hurts, but when I go to rub it, it’s gone, of course.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s normal. In time, the sensation will fade away’ Dallandra glanced at Penna with a smile as casual as she could make it. ‘Can you still see its shadow?’

  ‘The blue glowing part, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sort of. It’s shrinking, though.’

  ‘Good. When it’s all the way gone, he won’t feel the arm any longer.’

  Meranaldar looked as if he might gag on shock. Dallandra got up, slipped her arm through his, and steered him out of the tent.

  ‘That girl!?
?? Meranaldar said in Elvish, and he whispered for good measure. ‘Is she human?’

  ‘No, of course not! I don’t know what she is, though, or her brother, either. I’ll have to meditate on this. Farm folk, were they? I just wonder.’

  Together she and the scribe strolled back to her tent. They were standing outside, talking idly, discussing bits of news from the princes’ council, when Calonderiel emerged. He laid a hand on Dallandra’s shoulder.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I was wondering.’ He turned to Meranaldar and frowned. ‘You may go.’

  ‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ Meranaldar said. ‘I was talking with Dallandra, not awaiting your orders.’

  Calonderiel released his grip on Dallandra, stepped forward, and slapped the scribe so hard across the face that he staggered back and nearly fell. When Calonderiel slapped him again, from the other direction, he did fall, sprawling backwards, clutching his face with both hands. Blood oozed between his fingers. Calonderiel bent down and reached for him, but Dallandra grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked so hard that he choked and straightened up again.

  ‘Stop it!’ she snarled. ‘Just stop it right now!’

  Shouts, the sound of footsteps—men came running. Dallandra handed Calonderiel over to Danalaurel and two other archers. The three of them hedged him in while they murmured apologies, not to the scribe, but to the banadar for having to interfere. Calonderiel, however, had come to himself by then. He shook himself likea wet dog and glared at Meranaldar, who sat miserably on the ground, head tilted back as he tried to stop the bleeding of his broken nose.

  ‘What’s all this?’ Prince Daralanteriel came striding towards them. ‘Oh by the Black Sun herself! He’s finally gone and done it, hasn’t he? Cal!’

  ‘My apologies,’ Calonderiel said. ‘Your highness.’

  ‘It’s not me you need to apologize to.’

  Calonderiel crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing. Daralanteriel sighted in defeat.

  ‘Someone help my scribe up,’ Dar said, ‘and take him to Ranadario. I don’t think it would be wise to have Dallandra treat him.’

  Calonderiel growled his agreement.