Читать книгу The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr - Страница 7

Two men of the Mountain Folk sat on a ledge halfway up a cliff and took the sun. Below them, at the foot of a cascade of stone steps, a grassy park land spread out on either side of a river that emerged from the base of the cliff. Just behind them, a stone landing led to a pair of massive steel-bound doors, open at the moment to let the fresh summer air into the rock-cut city of Lin Serr. Kov, son of Kovolla, was attending upon Chief Envoy Garin, son of Garinna, while this important personage nursed a case of bad bruises and a swollen ankle. A few days previously Garin had been talking to a friend as they hurried down these same steps; a careless engrossment in the conversation had sent him tumbling down two full flights.

‘Sunlight’s the best thing for the bruises,’ Kov told him. ‘Or that’s what the healers told me, anyway.’

Garin muttered a brief oath, then continued blinking and scowling at the brilliant summer light. He’s getting old, Kov thought, ready to stay in the deep city forever, like all the old people do. At a mere eighty-four years, Kov was young for one of the Mountain Folk and still drawn by life above ground.

‘Well,’ Kov continued, ‘the sun’s supposed to help strengthen your blood.’

‘Doubtless,’ Garin said. ‘I’m out here, aren’t I?’

Kov let the matter drop. From where they sat, Kov could look across the park land and watch the workmen raising stone blocks into position on the new wall. The city sat in the precise middle of a horseshoe of high cliffs, dug out from the earth and shaped by dwarven labour. Eventually the wall would run from one end of the horseshoe across to the high watchtower at the other, enclosing the park land. Until then, armed guards stood on watch night and day. Everyone in Lin Serr knew that the Horsekin had been raiding farms on the Deverry border. Although no Horsekin had been sighted up on the Roof of the World in forty-some years, the Mountain Folk always prefer safe to sorry.

‘What’s that noise?’ Garin said. ‘Sounds like shouting.’

Kov rose to his feet and listened. ‘It’s the guards.’ He shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed across to the wall. ‘Strangers coming.’

A cluster of guards surrounded the strangers and led them across – four human men, leading riding horses and a packhorse. As they drew near, Kov recognized the sun blazons of Cengarn. One of the humans, a dark-haired fellow, shorter than his escorts, with the squarish build of someone whose clan had mountain blood in its veins, also looked familiar.

‘It’s Lord Blethry, isn’t it? The equerry at Cengarn.’

‘I think you’re right.’ Garin held out his hand. Kov handed him his walking stick. With its help Garin hauled himself to his feet and looked out towards the wall. ‘Yes indeed, that’s Blethry. Those other fellows look like a servant of some sort and then an armed escort.’

Kov rose, too, and watched as dwarven axemen marched the human contingent across the park land. At the foot of the stairs, they paused and allowed Blethry to shout a greeting in Deverrian. ‘Envoy Garin! May I come up?’

‘By all means!’ Garin called back in the same. ‘What brings you here?’

Blethry waited to answer till he’d panted his way up to their perch, some hundred and twenty steps high. He wiped the sweat off his face with one hand and snorted like a winded horse.

‘War, that’s what,’ Blethry said. ‘The Horsekin are building a fortress out in the Westlands. We figure they want a staging ground for a strike at our borders.’

‘And if they take over your lands,’ Garin said, ‘they’ll be heading north, no doubt, for ours.’

‘No doubt. Gwerbret Ridvar’s hoping we can count on your aid to destroy the place. It’s called Zakh Gral.’

‘Our High Council will have the final word about that. Now, as for me personally, I hope his grace Gwerbret Cengarn doesn’t take this as a slight, but I’ll have to send my apprentice here to Cengarn with the news, whatever it may be. I can barely walk.’ Garin used his stick to point at his wrapped and swollen ankle.

‘I’m sure young Ridvar will understand.’ Blethry turned to Kov and bowed. ‘My thanks for accompanying us.’

‘Most welcome,’ Kov glanced at Garin, who was smiling in what appeared to be relief. It’s not the ankle, Kov thought, he just doesn’t want to leave the safety of the dark.

‘Kov,’ Garin said, ‘go down and help his lordship’s men tether their animals and set up their tents and suchlike. Then join us in the envoy’s quarters.’

Lord Blethry had visited Lin Serr several times, but the sheer size of the place always left him awed. The steel doors led into a domed antechamber that could have held Cengarn’s great hall twice over. The shaft of sunlight from the open doorway cut across the polished slate floor and pointed like a spear to a roundel, inlaid with various colours of stone to form a maze some twenty yards across. Beyond it, on the curved far wall, tunnels opened into distant gloom and led down to the deep city, forbidden to strangers.

Some ten feet in, well before they reached the floor maze, Garin turned left, hobbling along with his stick, and led Blethry down a short side tunnel that ended in a tall wooden door, carved in a vertical pattern of chained links. Yet for all its massive appearance, when Garin poked it with his stick it swung open without a sound to reveal a small room, bright with sunlight.

‘Here we are,’ Garin said. ‘You’ve stayed here before, haven’t you?’

‘I have,’ Blethry said. ‘It’s a comfortable place.’

A big window made the small room seem large and airy, thanks to its view of the green park land far below. Tucked against the inner wall stood a bed, and near it a table and a pair of wooden chairs. On the walls hung steel panels, chiselled and graved into hunting scenes. Garin shoved a chair in to the most shadowed corner of the room, then lowered himself into it with a grunt of pain. Since the last time Blethry had seen him, a thick streak of white had appeared in Garin’s close-cropped hair. His short beard had turned entirely grey.

‘I’ll have Kov bring in another chair,’ Garin said. ‘Brel will want to join us once he hears the news.’

Indeed, Brel, the avro, to give him his dwarven title of ‘warleader’, arrived at the same time as Kov and the third chair. He strode in, stood for a moment to glower at Garin, then sat down in a chair near the window and stretched his legs out in front of him.

‘The Council’s called an emergency meeting,’ he said to Blethry. ‘They meet down in the deep city, of course, so you’re to describe the situation to me, and I’ll relay it to them.’

‘Very well,’ Blethry said. ‘In that case, I’d better speak formally.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I come in the name of Ridvar, Gwerbret Cengarn, to call in the aid owed to us in time of war from the Mountain city of Lin Serr. By treaty and solemn oath we are bound together to render assistance to one another for our mutual benefit.’

‘He speaks the truth.’Garin joined this recitation of ancient formulae. ‘We did renew our pact on its prior terms after the hostilities known as the Cengarn War, concluded at the date 1116, as is written in the –’

‘Worms and slimes!’ Brel broke in. ‘I know all that. If the Council can’t remember it, they have gravel where their intellect ought to be.’

‘It’s a question of the proper wording,’ Garin snapped. ‘The Council needs to know that we’ve heard Lord Blethry speak the proper wording, and that I responded in the same way.’

Brel growled and cross his arms over his chest.

‘As is written in the documents pertaining to that war, that time of blood and darkness.’ Blethry took over again. ‘In that most solemn instance we did celebrate a victory over the army of the peoples known to us as Gel da’ Thae or Horsekin, when they made so bold as to besiege our city of Cengarn. In thankfulness for that aid, we did renew our bonds with the Mountain Folk who do inhabit the city of Lin Serr.’

‘I too did witness this,’ Garin said. ‘So be it.’

‘Are you two done now?’ Brel said.

‘We are.’ Blethry grinned at him. ‘You can tell the Council that we brought a sacrifice to the temples of proper manners.’

‘Huh!’ Brel snorted profoundly. ‘Oh, and welcome! It’s good to see you, by the way.’

‘My thanks.’ Blethry smiled again. ‘It’s good to see you too.’

Young boys carrying trays of food marched in and began to lay a meal upon the table: a platter of bats, disjointed and fried, a soft mushroom bread, and stewed purple roots of a sort new to Blethry. Kov shut the door after them, then sat on the floor for want of another chair. Garin poured everyone pewter stoups of a thick brown liquor, which Blethry had encountered before. He drank it in small sips and made sure he stopped well before he finished it. He noticed Kov doing the same.

While they ate, Blethry expanded upon his reason for coming to Lin Serr. Some of the savage Horsekin of the far north had turned themselves civilized – they’d become Gel da’ Thae, as settled Horsekin called themselves – but living in cities hadn’t slaked their thirst for war. They were building a fortress, Zakh Gral, on the edge of the grassy plains that belonged to the Westfolk.

‘How did you find it?’ Kov said. ‘Or was it the Westfolk?’

‘Not us nor them,’ Blethry said. ‘But a gerthddyn name of Salamander. He –’

‘Never mind that now,’ Brel cut in. ‘What matters is that they found it. Details later.’

‘We figure that it’s only the point of a salient,’ Blethry went on. ‘Other fortifications will follow, I’ll wager. Apparently they want to take over the western grasslands. They need pasturage for those heavy horses of theirs. And of course, they claim that their wretched fake goddess wants them to have it.’

‘Alshandra yet again?’ Brel said.

‘The very one. They refuse to believe she’s dead.’

‘How convenient for them,’ Garin muttered. ‘It’s amazing how these gods and goddesses always appear when someone wants someone else’s land.’

‘My thought exactly.’ Blethry nodded Garin’s way.

‘They won’t stop at the Westlands,’ Brel said. ‘But no doubt you realize that, or you wouldn’t be here. What’s this fortress like?’

In as much detail as Blethry could remember, he repeated Salamander’s description of the place.

‘It sits on the edge of a cliff over a river gorge,’ Blethry finished up. ‘Clever scum, the Horsekin.’

‘Wooden walls, did you say?’ Brel shot a significant glance Garin’s way.

‘For now,’ Blethry said. ‘They’re working hard at replacing them with stone.’

‘Huh,’ Brel said. ‘We’ll see how far they get. I take it that your lords have worked out some sort of plan to bring this fortress down.’

‘They have. Gwerbret Ridvar’s calling in all his allies, and what’s more, Voran, one of the princes of the blood royal, is on hand with fifty of his men.’

‘Only fifty?’ Garin said.

‘At the moment. He’s sure his father will send reinforcements. The messages may have reached Dun Deverry by now, for all I know. I left Cengarn weeks ago. As for the Westfolk, Prince Daralanteriel’s keen to join the hunt.’

‘He should be,’ Brel said drily. ‘He stands to lose everything if the Horsekin move east.’

‘True spoken, of course. He’s promised us five hundred archers. Ridvar can muster at least that many riders.’

Brel winced. ‘Is that the biggest army you can put together?’

‘Until we hear from the high king.’

‘And how long will it take to get a full army up here from Dun Deverry?’ Brel went on and answered his own question. ‘Too long. With what you have, you’ll never take the place. You’ll have to lay siege and hope you can hold it.’

‘I know,’ Blethry said. ‘Till those reinforcements arrive from Dun Deverry.’

‘The Horsekin are likely to see a relieving force before you do. All it’ll take is one messenger to slip through your lines when you’re investing the fortress. If they’ve got a town up in the mountains, they doubtless keep a reserve force there. I hate the filthy murderers, but I’d never say they were stupid.’ Brel paused to pick a fragment of fried bat out of his grey-streaked beard. ‘So I wouldn’t plan on a siege. With us along, you won’t have to.’

‘Sir?’ Kov spoke up from his place on the floor. ‘What can we –’

‘Think, lad!’ Brel snapped. ‘This fort’s perched on the edge of a cliff.’

Kov suddenly grinned. ‘Tunnels,’ he said. ‘We’ve got sappers.’

‘They’re our main hope,’ Blethry said. ‘If the High Council allows you to join us.’

Brel snorted profoundly. ‘They will. There’s not a family in Lin Serr that didn’t lose someone in the last Horsekin war.’

‘Kov.’ Garin turned to his apprentice. ‘What do we owe Cengarn by treaty?’

‘Five hundred axemen, sir,’ Kov said, ‘and a hundred and fifty pikemen, along with provisions for all for forty days.’

‘Very good.’ Garin nodded at him, then glanced at Blethry. ‘Do you think the gwerbret will be offended if we replace those pikemen with sappers and miners?’

‘Huh! If he is, and I doubt that with all my heart, then Lord Oth and I will talk some sense into him.’

‘Good,’ Garin smiled briefly. ‘The council meets tomorrow morn. We should know by noon.’

On the morrow, Blethry woke at first light and spent an anxious hour or so pacing back and forth in his quarters. Every now and then he stuck his head out of the window and tried to judge how long he had to wait till noon came around. Well before then he heard a knock on the door. He flung it back to find Garin, stick raised to strike again, with young Kov behind him.

‘Ah, you’re awake!’ Garin said. ‘I thought you might be asleep still.’

‘Not likely, is it?’ Blethry said. ‘Well?’

‘The Council saw reason quickly, for a change,’ Garin said. ‘They’re organizing the muster now, and the army will march at dawn on the morrow. Five hundred axemen and a full contingent of sappers and miners with all their gear and the like. Oh, and provisions for twice forty days.’

‘Splendid!’ Blethry said, grinning. ‘And my thanks. I’ll go down and tell my men the good news.’

Kov slept little the night before the march out of Lin Serr. He packed up his gear, worried about what he might have left out, unpacked the lot, added things, took things away, then packed it all up again. Although he’d visited Cengarn several times, he’d never gone farther west than that city. He’d never seen a war, either. When he finally did fall asleep, he had troubled dreams of shouting and bloodshed.

Just before dawn, Garin woke him when he arrived to give him some final instructions. As well as his walking stick, the elder dwarf carried some long thing wrapped in cloth.

‘You’re not the apprentice any longer,’ Garin said. ‘You’re the envoy now. Remember your dignity, lad. Speak slowly, listen when you’re spoken to, and think before you answer. Follow those simple precepts, and you’ll do well.’

‘I hope so.’ Kov caught his breath with a gulp. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know you will. Now, you’ve got your father’s sword, I see, so here’s something to go with it.’

The long bundle turned out to be a staff, blackened and hard with age, carved with runes. Kov took it with both hands and turned it to study the twelve deep-graved symbols. He could recognize Rock and Gold as Mountain runes, and two others as Deverry letters, but he’d never seen the rest.

‘Do you know what those mean?’ Garin said.

‘Well, no.’

‘Neither does anyone else. They’re very old, but we do know that they once graced the door of Lin Rej.’

‘Lin Rej? The old city?’

‘The very one. It had carved wooden doors. When the Horsekin arrived, back in the Time of Death, they didn’t hold. The besiegers lit a fire in front of them, and when the doors burned through, they finished the job with axes. But one of our loremasters carved these runes here –’ Garin pointed at the staff ‘– on a scrap of wood so they’d be remembered. Over the years, they’ve been carved on other staffs, but this one came to me from my father’s father. It was a hundred years old when he received it as a child.’

‘It must be nearly a thousand now, then.’

‘Yes. There’s a superstitious legend about the runes, too. They’re supposed to contain a dweomer spell.’ Garin rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘Anything that’s no longer understood is supposed to contain a dweomer spell, of course. Don’t take it seriously.’

‘Oh, don’t worry! I won’t. But now I know why Lin Serr has steel on its doors.’

‘We may learn slowly, but in the end, we learn.’ Garin paused for a smile. ‘Now, spell or no spell, I’m letting you borrow that staff because I can’t go to the battle myself. We’ve never had a formal badge for our envoys, but you’re new on the job.’

‘Very new.’ Kov could hear his voice shake and coughed loudly to cover it.

‘Just so.’ Garin smiled at him. ‘So I decided you might need something to mark your standing and keep your spirits up. This staff’s never left the city since the day my father’s father brought it inside. Carry it proudly, and never shame it.’

‘I’m very grateful for the honour. I’ll do my best to live up to it.’

‘That’s all any man can do, eh? Now get on your way. There’s a mule for you to ride, by the by, down at the muster.’

Out in the meadow, five hundred dwarven axemen drew up in marching order, followed by a veritable parade of carts, each drawn by two burly menservants. The sappers and miners were milling around, scrutinizing each cart, repacking some, adding wrapped bundles to others. Kov invited Lord Blethry to come along as he and Brel Avro inspected the muster. Blethry murmured his usual polite remarks until they came to the line of carts. Most carried provisions, ordinary stuff all of it, but those at the head of the line were loaded with mysterious-looking crates, barely visible under greased wraps of coarse cloth that would keep them dry during summer rains. Embroidered runes decorated each cloth. Blethry fell silent, studying the runes, craning his neck to get a better look at the crates.

‘Can your read our runes?’ Kov said with a small smile.

‘I can’t, truly,’ Blethry said. ‘I was just noticing the wheels of your carts here. The design is quite striking.’

Good parry! Kov thought. Aloud, he said, ‘A little innovation of ours.’

Blethry nodded, and indeed, to his eyes the wheels must have possessed a fascination of their own. Instead of the solid slab wheels of Deverry carts, dwarven craftsmen had lightened these with spokes radiating from a metal collar that attached them to the axles. Strakes, that is, strips of metal studded to give them a grip on the road, protected the wooden rims.

‘Much lighter,’ Kov said, ‘but just as strong. Easier to fix, too.’

‘Stronger, I should think. I trust you’ll not be offended if our cartwrights look them over when we reach Cengarn? I shan’t be able to keep them away.’

‘Of course not. I’m sure our men would take it as an honour if they should copy them.’

‘Would you two stop jawing?’ Brel turned on them both impartially. ‘The sun’s up, and it’ll be hot soon. Mount up, both of you! Let’s march!’

Kov and Blethry followed orders. During the long ride down from the mountains, whenever the contingent camped, Blethry found excuses to walk by the dwarven carts that contained the wrapped bundles and crates, but, Kov could be sure, no one would ever give him one word of information about their contents. The design of a set of wheels they were willing to share, but the formula for the mysterious cargo was going to remain a secret forever, if the Mountain Folk had their way.

They reached the border of Gwerbret Ridvar’s rhan when they came to the dun of one of his vassals, a small broch tower inside a high stone wall, perched on a hill wound around by a maze of earthworks. All around it stretched litter from a military camp – firepits, garbage, broken arrows, broken tent pegs, and assorted ditches, hastily filled in. The dwarven contingent drew up to camp some distance away in a cleaner area. Kov remembered this dun as belonging to the clan of the Black Arrow, but men wearing Cengarn’s sun blazon on the yokes of their shirts came trotting over to greet them.

‘What’s happened to Lord Honelg?’ Kov asked Blethry.

‘I don’t know yet.’ Blethry gave him a grim smile. ‘But I’m assuming he’s dead. He turned traitor, you see. When I left Cengarn, the gwerbret was getting ready to march on him. From the look of things, Ridvar took the dun.’

Cengarn’s men, left on fort guard, confirmed Blethry’s guess. Lord Honelg was dead, his lands attainted, his young son a hostage, his widow gone back to her father’s dun.

‘Who’s the new lord here?’ Blethry said. ‘Or has Ridvar reassigned the lands yet?’

‘He has, my lord,’ the fortguard captain said. ‘Lord Gerran of the Gold Falcon. You might remember him as the Red Wolf’s common-born captain, but he’s a lord now.’

‘I do indeed, and he’s a grand man with a sword and a good choice all round.’

‘We all feel the same, my lord. Are you marching down to Cengarn on the morrow?’

‘We are.’

‘His grace may have left already. He’s mustering his allies at the Red Wolf dun for the march west.’ The captain turned to Kov and bowed. ‘It gladdens my heart to see your people, envoy, with a war about to start.’

‘My thanks,’ Kov said. ‘But it sounds to me like the war’s already started.’

‘You could look at it that way, truly,’ the captain said, grinning. ‘But either way, we’re glad you’ve come in on our side.’

The Mountain Folk weren’t the only allies of Gwerbret Ridvar who were readying themselves for the Horsekin war. At the dun of the Red Wolf, a good many miles south-west of the dun that now belonged to the Gold Falcon clan, Tieryn Cadryc and his men were only waiting for the arrival of his overlord to ride out. Preparing the warband for that ride fell to Gerran of the Gold Falcon, its lord and so far one of its only two members, the other being his young page Clae. Despite his sudden elevation to the ranks of the noble-born, Gerran still considered himself the captain of the tieryn’s warband, mostly because none of the tieryn’s other men could fill the post. Although the tieryn had a son, Lord Mirryn, Cadryc was leaving him behind on fortguard.

Every night at dinner in the great hall, Mirryn would stand behind his father’s chair like a page. When Cadryc arrived, Mirryn would bow to his father, then without a word pull out the chair at the head of the honour table to allow Cadryc to sit down. He would wait to eat, too, until all the others at the honour table had finished their meal. After three days of this treatment, Cadryc had had enough.

‘Still sulking, are you?’ Cadryc said.

‘Well, ye gods!’ Mirryn snapped. ‘How do you think I should feel, Father, left behind out of the fighting like a woman?’

‘And what’s this business with my blasted chair?’ Cadryc continued without acknowledging the question.

‘Since I’m being treated like a servant, I thought I should act like one.’

‘Just sit down, and do it right now. You’ll drive me daft, hovering like that.’

With a grunt Mirryn sat himself down at his father’s left hand, but he crossed his arms over his chest and stared out at nothing. The tieryn swung his head around to glare at his son, who pretended not to notice. Although most of the tieryn’s hair was either grey or missing, and Mirryn still sported a thick mop of brown hair to go with his freckles and the family blue eyes, no one would have doubted they were father and son, lean men, both of them, and stubborn.

‘If you starve yourself at my table,’ Cadryc said, ‘you’ll be too weak to fight even if I should change my mind, which I won’t, so by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell, stop sulking and eat your blasted dinner!’

Mirryn went on studying the empty air. Finally Lady Galla, his mother, leaned across the table from her place at the tieryn’s right. ‘Mirro,’ she said, ‘please? This has been dreadful for all of us.’

‘Oh very well, Mam.’ Mirryn drew his table dagger from the sheath at his belt and placed it next to the trencher in front of him. ‘Shall I cut you some bread?’

‘If you’d be so kind.’ Lady Galla smiled at him, then favoured her husband with another smile, which he ignored.

The ‘all of us’ to whom the lady had referred were the other occupants of the honour table. Besides the tieryn, his stout, dark-haired lady, and his son, Gerran was now eating with the noble-born, who included Galla’s niece, Lady Branna, and her common-born husband Neb. Branna, with her yellow hair and her narrow blue eyes, was a pretty young woman, but Neb was the nondescript sort, brown haired, skinny, neither handsome nor ugly. Most people would have ignored him, but Gerran knew his worth.

Soon, however, Cadryc’s allies and vassals would appear to join the muster. Gerran was counting on the table filling up, allowing him to sneak back to his old place at the head of one of the warband’s tables over on the other side of the great hall, even though he had to admit that sharing a trencher with Lady Galla’s serving woman, Lady Solla, had its compensations. Every now and then her lovely hazel eyes would meet his when he offered her a slice of bread or passed her some portion of the meal. She would blush, and he would find himself at a loss for words.

The times were simply wrong for pleasantries. The coming war filled Gerran’s waking thoughts. On the morrow, messengers from their most important ally arrived at the dun. When the gatekeeper came running to tell Gerran that Westfolk were at the gates, Gerran told the man to let them in, then hurried out to greet them. From a distance the Westfolk looked much like ordinary men, but close up their wild blood revealed itself. Their eyes had abnormally large irises, slit with vertical pupils like a cat’s. Their long ears curled to a delicate point like sea shells. Rumours claimed they were immortal, too, but that Gerran heartily doubted. At his invitation they dismounted, three archers with their curved short bows slung over their backs and a man carrying the be-ribboned staff of a herald.

‘Messages, my lord,’ the herald said. ‘From Prince Daralanteriel himself.’

‘Good,’ Gerran said. ‘Come into the great hall. The tieryn’s there.’

As he followed them inside, Gerran was still wondering over the easy way the herald had called him ‘my lord’, since his shirt still bore the Red Wolf blazon, not his new gold falcon. Most likely the prince or his cadvridoc had described him at some point. Heralds, after all, remembered everything they were told or they lost their exalted positions.

From the door of the great hall, Lady Branna watched the herald dismount, then hoist down a pair of bulging saddlebags. A dark-haired fellow who looked more human than elven, he seemed somehow familiar, though she couldn’t place where she’d seen him before. She followed him to the table of honour, where her uncle was sitting at the head with her aunt at his right. Branna sat down next to her on the bench just as Neb came trotting down the staircase.

‘Ah, there you are!’ Cadryc called to him. ‘Messages from Prince Dar, I’ll wager!’

‘They are, your grace,’ the Westfolk man said. ‘My name is Maelaber, by the by, and I’m Calonderiel’s son.’

Aha! Branna thought. That’s why he looks familiar.

‘Then twice welcome, lad,’ Cadryc said.

‘My thanks. We’ve also come to lead your army to our muster. It’s too easy for Deverry men to get lost out in the grasslands.’

‘Now that’s true spoken.’ Cadryc paused for a smile. ‘It gladdens my heart to have you with us. Your prince is a far-sighted man.’

‘He is that, your grace. I’ve also got a gift for Lady Branna. Councillor Dallandra sent it.’ Maelaber opened one of the saddlebags and brought out a large bundle wrapped in thick grey cloth and stoutly tied with leather thongs. ‘Books, I think. She didn’t tell us.’

Courtesy demanded that Branna sit quietly until the tieryn gave her the parcel, but curiosity trounced courtesy. Despite her aunt’s dark looks, she got up and ran around the table to snatch the parcel out of Maelaber’s hands.

‘My thanks,’ she said with a grin. ‘I’ll just take these upstairs.’

Branna avoided looking Galla’s way as she dashed for the staircase, but she did notice Neb scowling at her – but not for her lack of good manners, she was sure. As the tieryn’s scribe, he was going to have to stay at his lord’s side until Cadryc gave him leave to go. His curiosity would have to wait.

Up in their chamber, she laid the parcel onto the bed, then flung open the shutters over the window to let in the sunlight. A few slashes with her table dagger disposed of the thongs. She unwound the cloth to find two leather-bound books and a scrap of pale leather bearing a note from Dallandra.

‘These belonged to Jill and Nevyn,’ the note read. ‘They should therefore belong to you. Study them well while the army’s gone, especially the larger one. Someday you’ll need to carry all this lore in your memory.’

Branna laid the note down and pulled the larger book free of the wrap to lay it right onto the bed, despite the smell of ancient damp from its dark leather binding. It was far too large for her to hold, taller than her forearm was long. When she opened it, the smell of mouldy parchment made her sneeze. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, then saw, written on the first leaf, Nevyn’s name. With that sight memory flooded back. She could see the old man opening the book and pointing to a diagram of concentric circles marked by words that, in the memory, she couldn’t yet read.

Jill never learned her letters until she was grown, Branna thought. Nevyn taught her. Tears blurred her sight, sudden hot tears that shocked her as they spilled. If only Nevyn were alive now, with his vast knowledge, if only he were here – but of course, he was there, opening the door to the chamber, in fact, though he was now as young and ignorant and as nearly powerless as she.

‘What’s wrong?’ Neb said. ‘Ye gods, that thing stinks!’

‘It does.’ Branna pulled a handkerchief from her kirtle. ‘It’s made me sneeze, and my poor eyes!’

While she wiped her face and blew her nose, he turned a few pages of the book. He frowned a little, mouthed a few words, then suddenly smiled.

‘I remember this,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

‘I do. You told me once you’d owned it since you were a very young man.’

Neb looked up, his lips half-parted in shock.

‘I mean,’ Branna said hastily, ‘Nevyn told Jill that.’

‘I figured that. It just always surprises me, how much you remember.’

‘Me too. What’s this second one?’

The smaller book turned out to contain healing lore, first a treatise on the humours, then a vast compendium, page after page of herbs, roots, symptoms, and treatments, and finally some instructions for simple chirurgery. The handwriting wavered, each letter spiky and oddly large.

‘Jill’s writing,’ Neb said abruptly. ‘I do remember a few things, here and there. She learned late, you see, and so her hand’s somewhat childish.’

‘I feel like there’s four people in this chamber. Do you feel that, too?’

‘In a way.’ Neb glanced over his shoulder as if he expected to see Jill and Nevyn standing behind them. ‘It creeps my flesh.’

Branna closed the book of medicines and walked over to the window. Outside lay the familiar view of her uncle’s dun wall and the green fields beyond. She’d half-expected to see a different prospect, though the details had escaped her memory. Somewhere I’ve never been, she thought, not as me, anyway. Did I know the silver dragon when I was there? Ever since she’d seen Rori fly past Cengarn, the silver wyrm had never been far from her mind.

‘What were Prince Dar’s messages?’ she said.

‘Um? Jill, what did you say?’

Neb was reading a page in the larger book. He was leaning over to peer at the writing, his shoulders hunched like those of a much older man. Again she remembered seeing Nevyn reading in this same book, sitting at a rough-made table with a dweomer light hovering above him. For a moment she saw their surroundings: a windowless stone room, and at the top of the walls ran a carving of circles and triangles, abruptly broken off as if someone had deliberately defaced it. Stop! she told herself. You’re Branna; Branna, not Jill.

‘Neb, stay here!’ Branna made her voice as sharp as she could. ‘What were Prince Dar’s messages?’

With a toss of his head Neb straightened up and turned to face her. ‘You’re right,’ he said softly. ‘For a moment I was back there. What did you used to call it? The other When?’

‘Just that. But we’re here now.’

‘So we are. That’s going to be our spell of safety, isn’t it? Stay here now.’

‘It’s a good one. We’ll need it.’

Neb smiled, nodding a little. ‘But the messages,’ he went on, ‘were all about the army. He’s raised over five hundred archers and a good many swordsmen. He’s hoping to raise more before we join him.’

‘We? You’re not riding with the Red Wolf warband, are you?’

‘Of course I am. My place is at the tieryn’s side.’

For a moment she could barely breathe. Neb caught her hand in both of his.

‘What’s wrong –’ he began.

‘I’m terrified you’ll get killed, of course,’ Branna said. ‘Why does he want you to go?’

‘To write messages if he needs some sent, of course.’

‘Very well, then, but you won’t be riding to battle, will you?’

‘I won’t. Will you look down on me because of that?’

‘Oh, don’t be stupid!’

Neb grinned. ‘I’d be useless in a battle, unless they need someone who can throw stones with a fair degree of accuracy. I used to be good at slinging them at crows and squirrels.’

They shared a laugh, and she felt the fear leave her.

‘After all,’ Branna said, ‘you are my husband now. I get to worry. You’re supposed to be touched by my devotion.’

‘That’s true spoken, and my apologies.’ Neb made a sweeping bow. ‘May I express my complete and total devotion to you?’

‘You may. How about the passion that burns within you?’

‘That, too. Quite a lot of that, actually. Do you regard me with great esteem?’

‘I do, and with affection to match it.’

‘Well and good, then. Give me a bit of time, and I’ll compose some englynion in your honour.’

‘That’d be lovely, but what is this? I’m supposed to sit at my window with the scroll in my lap and long for your return? Huh. I’m going with you.’

‘What? You can’t do that!’

‘Why not? I’ll be your assistant. I can gather rushes for pens and all that. It’s not like anyone would be asking me to swing a sword, is it?’ Branna thought for a moment. ‘And I can tear up rags for bandages and help Dalla.’

‘Your uncle won’t let you come.’

‘Then we shan’t tell him until it’s too late.’ She laid a hand on his arm and smiled up at him. ‘Don’t you want me there?’

‘Of course I do. I mean – gods, I never should have admitted that.’

‘True spoken. You shouldn’t have, but you did, and so let’s plan my escape.’

‘What about your aunt?’

‘She’s got Adranna and the children, and Solla now, too. She won’t be lonely any longer.’

‘There are times when I can see that being married to you is going to be like living in one of Salamander’s tales. And I’m thankful to every god there is.’ Neb raised her hand and kissed her fingers.

Someone knocked in urgent rhythm on the door. Neb ran to open it and reveal Salamander, who strode in without waiting to be asked. The gerthddyn frowned and looked Branna over with stern grey eyes.

‘What is this?’ Salamander said. ‘I’ve just had an omen warning about you, my fine lady. You’re not planning on doing anything stupid like following the army, are you?’

‘What makes you think I’d do such a thing?’

‘Your general temperament, mostly, as well as the way you blushed scarlet just now.’

‘I hate you.’

‘Ah, so I’m right.’

‘I cannot let Neb go off to war while I stay here, I just can’t.’

‘What?’ Salamander turned to Neb. ‘You’re riding with the army?’

‘I’m the tieryn’s scribe,’ Neb said. ‘He wants me there.’

‘That is profoundly short-sighted, risky, and altogether foolish of his grace, but since he’s a Deverry lord, I’m not surprised in the least. Isn’t Ridvar bringing a scribe?’

‘He is,’ Neb said, ‘but Cadryc can’t possibly ask for the use of him. Have you forgotten his grandson, Matto? Ridvar did want him killed.’

Salamander said something in Elvish that sounded immensely foul, though Branna had no idea of what it meant. ‘Well, I can read and write.’ Salamander switched back to Deverrian. ‘I’m not much for scribing, Neb, but if you packed me up some inks and pens, I could do a passable job, and Dar’s scribe will be riding with us as well.’

‘But it’s my duty to –’

‘Hang duty! Neb, you and Branna both are far too valuable to risk your lives in a dangerous venture like the one we have in hand. Don’t you understand? Your dweomer is the hope of the border.’

Branna turned away, saw the books lying on the bed, and turned back again. Her heart was pounding as badly as if she’d run a long way.

‘I see.’ Neb, however, sounded perfectly calm. ‘What I can’t see is how to explain that to the tieryn.’

‘Imph,’ Salamander said. ‘No more can I, but it has to be done. I’ll consult with Gerran.’

‘Does he know?’ Branna turned back. ‘Gerro, I mean.’

‘He does, if you mean about dweomer and Neb having it,’ Salamander said. ‘And he suspects it about you. He doesn’t know the bit about the hope of the border and all that. Think! Even if we wipe Zakh Gral off the face of the earth, this is only the first skirmish in a long war. Do you think the Horsekin are going to go meekly back to their own lands and stay there if they lose?’

‘I see your point,’ Neb said. ‘The more dweomermasters we can muster, the better.’

‘It’s the best weapon we have against them,’ Salamander said. ‘We’ve got some days before Voran and Ridvar arrive. I’m bound to come up with a good tale for the tieryn’s ears before then.’ He paused for a sunny grin. ‘I’m good at tales.’

Whenever the tieryn left the great hall, Gerran went back to his old place at one of the warband’s tables. He had the only chair, and he liked to lean it back on its rear legs to allow him to put his feet up on one of the benches. He was just starting on his first tankard of ale for the day when Salamander came trotting down the stone staircase. The gerthddyn hailed him and hurried over.

‘I need your advice on somewhat,’ Salamander said. ‘May I join you?’

‘By all means. Fetch yourself some drink.’

Salamander found a tankard and filled it from the barrel over by the servants’ hearth, then sat down on the bench not occupied by Gerran’s boots.

‘It concerns Neb the scribe,’ Salamander said. ‘He tells me he’ll be riding with the army. He shouldn’t. He needs to be here in the dun. The fortguard can’t keep watch against certain kinds of danger, but he can, if you take my meaning.’

‘I do.’ Gerran had a long swallow of ale. ‘Not that I like thinking about it.’

‘I realize that.’ Salamander paused for a nervous glance around, but none of the servants were in earshot. ‘I can take his place, if our good tieryn will let him stay behind. But I need a tale that will convince Cadryc, some clever ploy, some magnificent obfuscation, a lie, in short, since I can’t tell him the truth.’

‘There’s no need to pile up horseshit.’ Gerran set his tankard down. ‘You’re not inventing a tale for the marketplace.’

‘Well, what else can I do?’

‘Leave it to me. I’ll go speak to his grace right now.’

Gerran found Tieryn Cadryc out in the stables, where he and the head groom were making an important decision: which horses the warband would take to Zakh Gral. Gerran waited for a lull in their talk.

‘Your grace?’ Gerran said. ‘A private word with you?’

‘Of course.’ Cadryc nodded at the groom. ‘I’ll be back straightaway.’

They walked across the kitchen garden and out to the curve of the dun wall, where no one could overhear.

‘What’s all this, Gerro?’ Cadryc said.

‘Your grace, do you trust me?’

‘What? Of course I do!’

‘And do you trust my judgment? You don’t think me daft or suchlike, do you?’

‘Of course not! Gerro –’

‘Then grant me a daft-sounding boon on my word alone. Neb the scribe should stay here when we ride out.’

For a long moment Cadryc stared at him narrow-eyed. ‘On your word alone? No explanation?’

‘None, your grace.’

Cadryc shrugged and smiled. ‘Done, then,’ he said. ‘It’s an easy enough boon to grant, eh? I can always ask Prince Dar’s scribe if I need a message written or suchlike.’

‘Better yet, Salamander can read and write. Neb can give him what he needs for the job.’

‘Well, there you are, then. Easy and twice easy.’

Cadryc went back to the stables, and Gerran started for the broch. He took a shortcut through the kitchen garden, then realized that someone was lurking behind the cook’s little gardening shed. He could guess who it was.

‘Come out, gerthddyn,’ Gerran said wearily. ‘I should have known you’d be eavesdropping.’

‘Think of all the effort I’ve saved you.’ Salamander strolled over to join him. ‘This way you won’t have to tell me what our noble tieryn said. My thanks, by the way. You were quite right. We didn’t need the pile of horseshit. I’ll just go tell Neb that the matter’s settled.’

Salamander trotted off with a cheerful wave. As Gerran followed, he happened to glance up. Far above the dun the black dragon floated on the summer breeze. Although he didn’t know where Arzosah was lairing, at various times during the day this strangest of all possible allies would appear, keeping watch over the dun. She’d take a turn or two over it at night, as well, when she was on her way to hunt down a wild meal. Gerran was never sure if her presence was comforting or terrifying. As long as she doesn’t scare the horses, he thought. With a shrug he went inside to join the warband.

‘Well, it gladdens my heart to have that settled,’ Branna said. ‘I feel horribly selfish, though. I’m just so happy that Neb will be staying here safe in the dun.’

‘Why not be happy?’ Salamander gave her one of his sunny grins. ‘Life is short, so grasp what joy it gives you. As to safe, I hope you both will be, but you’ll need to be on your guard.’

‘Because of the raven mazrak?’

‘Precisely. He may not know who you specifically are, but dweomer can always smell out dweomer. He must know you have it, and that therefore you’re a potential thorn in his feathered side.’

‘Let’s hope I can be a dagger, not a thorn.’

‘Someday, mayhap, but not now.’ Salamander’s voice dropped to a cold seriousness. ‘Never challenge him. Merely watch. He’s got a hundred times the power you do.’

‘Well and good, then. Will Arzosah be carrying messages back and forth? I can always send you one if I see him.’

‘Alas, I doubt it. We’ll need the dragons with the army.’

‘Rori will be there, too?’

‘Oh, of course. He never was the sort of man you could keep out of a good fight.’

Branna felt that she should know exactly what he meant, but the memories eluded her. She was about to ask more, but she heard voices behind her. They were standing just inside the honour door of the great hall, which was beginning to fill up for the evening meal. When she glanced over her shoulder she saw Aunt Galla and her daughter Adranna walking towards them. She stepped aside to let them enter. As they passed, Salamander bowed to both women. Galla favoured him with a smile and a wave of her hand, but Adranna strode on by with her mouth set in a thin line and poison in her eyes.

‘Alas,’ Salamander said. ‘I fear me your cousin will never forgive me. Truly, if I were her I wouldn’t forgive me, either. My heart aches for her loss.’

‘She’s better off without Honelg,’ Branna said. ‘So are the children.’

‘No doubt, but it must be hard on a woman to return a widow to her father’s dun.’

‘Little do you know how true that is! She and Galla squabble all the time.’

‘That must be unpleasant.’

‘It is, but at least she’s here to help with the spinning.’ Branna reflexively rubbed her right wrist with her left hand. ‘The more women the better for that. It’s so tedious.’

While they waited for the gwerbret’s army to ride in, Branna had been spending as much time as she possibly could with her cousin. During their long talks, Adranna occasionally discussed her dead husband and even wept for him, briefly and now and then, but the loss she felt most keenly was nothing so domestic as lord and dun. That evening they left the dinner table early and went up to the women’s hall, where they pulled their chairs over to a window and the cooler air.

‘You don’t know what it’s like, Branni,’ Adranna said. ‘Being part of a clan of believers, I mean. That’s how we thought of ourselves, as kin and clan, Alshandra’s people all, whether we were farmers or noble-born.’

‘I feel that way when we go to the Moon temple on the feast days and suchlike.’

‘Oh, that!’ Adranna tossed her head. ‘That’s just tradition. Alshandra is real. You can feel her presence. Our lady’s different, truly she is.’

‘How can she be? All goddesses are one goddess.’

‘That’s what the priestesses of the Moon say, but why should we believe them?’

Branna decided to ignore the question. ‘Alshandra certainly could be a new aspect of the goddess,’ she went on, ‘but all that talk of Vandar’s spawn and the like – that sounds like the Horsekin men to me, making up a new excuse to start wars and conquer other people’s land.’

‘I have to admit that it sounded that way to me, too, especially the bit about Vandar’s spawn. They do want pasture for their horses, the Horsekin men. The ones that visited us, they practically came right out and said so, but well, I thought maybe Alshandra wants them to live on the grasslands.’

‘Grasslands, perchance, somewhere or other. I wouldn’t wager high on it. Goddesses don’t draw up boundary maps like a village priest, deciding which son gets what when a farmer dies.’

At that Adranna managed to smile.

‘Besides,’ Branna said, ‘why would your goddess want the Westfolk destroyed? She –’

‘Hold a moment!’ Adranna leaned forward in her chair. ‘The Westfolk? I never heard anything against the Westfolk.’

‘But that’s who Vandar’s spawn are, according to the Horsekin leaders. Salamander told me about it. The Westfolk lands are the ones they want for themselves.’

‘That can’t be true!’

‘It is true. Ask Salamander if you don’t believe me.’

‘And why would I believe one word that lying viper says?’

‘Well, why would he make that up? He only lies when he’s got a good reason. He told me that he heard it from the priestess Rocca.’

‘Still –’

‘Besides, Dallandra told me the same thing. Would she lie?’

‘She wouldn’t.’ Adranna whispered, and her hands tightened on the arms of her chair. ‘But that’s a horrible idea.’

‘I rather thought so myself.’

Adranna suddenly noticed, or so it seemed, that she was clutching the wood so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. She let go with a sharp sigh and let her hands rest in her lap. Branna waited for some little while to give her a chance to think things over.

‘From everything I’ve heard,’ Branna went on, ‘I’d say that the Alshandra cult modelled her on Aranrodda. And Aranrodda’s an aspect of the one true goddess, isn’t she?’

‘She is, truly.’

‘Well, then. Wouldn’t that mean Alshandra’s an aspect herself?’

‘Oh. I’d not thought of it that way, but –’

Branna waited. Adranna sighed, leaning back in her chair, her face so uncharacteristically thin and drawn, pale against her dark hair, that Branna nearly wept from looking at her.

‘You’re exhausted, cousin,’ Branna said. ‘There’s no need to go on talking now.’

‘My thanks.’ Adranna managed a faint smile. ‘We’ll have lots of time to talk while the men are gone to war. That’s one good thing to come out of this, I suppose.’

‘So we will, truly.’

‘There’s another good thing,’ Adranna continued. ‘You know, the worst thing about living with Honelg was being terrified. Not of him, so much, though he did have that awful temper, but because of Alshandra. I was always afraid that someone would find us out and tell the priests or the gwerbret. I got so tired of being frightened. Every time someone rode up to the dun, I’d tremble until I found out who it was. I really would, Branni. I couldn’t hold a cup of water steady for the trembling. Now the worst has happened and been done with, and the children are safe. I don’t much care what happens to me any more, but I prayed and prayed that my children would be safe. So, at least the fear’s over now.’

Branna just managed to stop herself from blurting out the truth: the real time of fear had just begun.

Whenever Arzosah wanted to speak with Salamander, she would wait till evening, when the grooms had stabled the horses, safe from the panic her presence would cause. Normally she would fly low over the dun until he noticed, then go land in the meadow just below the motte upon which the dun stood. That particular evening, however, she landed directly on the flat roof of the broch. Salamander, who was up in his top-floor chamber, felt the tower shake as if in a high wind. Out in the ward several maidservants screamed.

‘That must be the dragon,’ he remarked aloud. ‘I’d best go see what she wants.’

He climbed the ladder standing in the corridor outside and shoved open the trap door. In the hot, humid night, the vinegar scent of great wyrm nearly made him choke. He swung himself onto the roof from the ladder’s last rung, then stood up to bow to her. He could see her raise her enormous head in silhouette against the stars.

‘And a good eve to you, oh perfect paragon of dragonhood,’ Salamander said in Elvish.

‘My, you do know how to flatter a lady.’ Arzosah made the rumbling sound that signalled amusement. ‘Even minstrels have their uses, I see.’

‘And such as my poor skills are, they’re at your disposal.’

‘Good. I need to know if the dun will be safe if I leave. I have to search for Rori. He was supposed to meet me here, and he’s never arrived.’

‘That’s true. He hasn’t. I hope no harm’s befallen him.’

‘I doubt that very much, since only another dragon could possibly harm him. No, I’m sure he’s merely being an utter dolt about facing you and Dallandra.’

‘Can’t Dalla summon him?’

‘No, and all because he’s not a true dragon in his soul. When she calls out his true name, he can feel the summons in the dragonish way, but it lacks power over him. He’s been ignoring her.’ Arzosah clacked her massive jaws. ‘He can be infuriating.’

‘You have to understand,’ Salamander said, ‘that it’s a hard thing being caught between two peoples. I’ve spent my whole life that way, and I know.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ Arzosah considered this for a moment. ‘I can see the difficulties Rori goes through. But the worst of them is that it makes so much trouble for me.’

‘A terrible thing, truly. Well, once you’ve found him, why don’t you join Dallandra out on the grasslands? I doubt if we’re in any danger here, not from armed enemies, at any rate.’

‘Good. I’ll do that.’ She started to spread her wings, then folded them back again. ‘You know, you’d best be off the roof before I fly. I’d hate to knock you off it.’

‘I’d hate it even more. Good hunting, and I’ll see you when we join up with Daralanteriel’s army.’

Salamander climbed partway down the ladder, then shut the trap door. Just as he reached the safety of the corridor below, he heard her fly off in a great rush of wings like drumbeats.

Since his chamber was stifling in the summer heat, Salamander decided to take a turn around the ward in the cooler air before he tried to sleep. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he discovered that half the dun was doing the same thing, noble-born as well as commoners. Bright points of lantern light danced around the dark ward and glittered here and there up on the catwalks. He could hear men’s cajoling voices, speaking softly, and the giggling of serving lasses in return.

Off to one side Gerran stood talking with Lady Solla. In the light of the lantern he carried, his copper-red hair gleamed like the metal itself. Neb and Branna were strolling along arm-in-arm with Adranna’s two children trailing after. A crowd of Wildfolk danced around them, led by Branna’s skinny grey gnome, and Neb’s fat yellow one. A gaggle of crystalline sprites flew above. When Salamander stopped to greet them, Trenni gave him a pleasant ‘good evening’, but Matto turned his head away and ostentatiously spit on the cobbles. The Wildfolk vanished.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Branna said firmly. ‘Trenni, you too. It’s time for bed.’

She grabbed a child by the arm with each hand and hurried them into the broch. Neb, however, lingered outside with Salamander. They wandered around the back of the broch and stood in a patch of candlelight falling through a window.

‘Do you think that Matto will ever forgive me?’ Salamander said. ‘I’m afraid I had a great deal to do with his father’s death.’

‘I’m not so sure it’s that,’ Neb said. ‘More like, he blames you for losing him his home and making his mother so unhappy. Honelg lost every bit of the lad’s loyalty when he tried to kill him. Trenni outright hated her father, and I think me our Matto’s coming round to her way of thinking.’

‘I see. That’s truly sad in its own way.’

‘It is. It came as a shock to me. And yet, it’s odd, but Matto still feels he should hate you and Gerran, too, for the killing of his father.’ Neb shook his head. ‘I doubt if I’ll ever truly understand the noble-born.

‘Me either. On the other hand, though my own father and I have our difficulties, if someone killed him, I’d feel the need to bring them to the prince’s justice at the very least.’

‘My father and I never had any difficulties. I miss him still, but half the people in our town died from that plague. I can’t consider myself singled out for grief or suchlike.’

‘Truly. A natural affliction knows neither feud nor honour.’

‘Of course, the local priests denied that it was any such thing. They told us that Great Bel was angry. They wanted us to find white horses for sacrifice.’

‘If it happens again, we know where to find white cows – or won’t cattle do?’

‘They won’t. Bel demands horses, but – here, wait!’ Neb held up one hand. ‘I just thought of somewhat. I –’ He hesitated, visibly thinking.

Salamander held his tongue. Neb’s expression of intense concentration had made him seem suddenly older, far stronger. More Nevyn-like, Salamander thought. I wonder if a memory’s trying to rise?

‘That plague,’ Neb said slowly. ‘What if it wasn’t Bel’s doing nor a natural thing? At the time, I didn’t know one cursed thing about the Westfolk and their history. I didn’t know about dark dweomer, either. But I do now, and I wonder if someone brought sickness to town, like. It happened so suddenly, and the weather was warm. There’d been a big market fair in town, and there were a goodly number of strangers come for it.’

‘I wonder, too. How do the Westfolk come into it?’

‘They don’t, exactly, but the ancient plague on the Horsekin does. From what you’ve told me, it gripped their bowels and caused the same kind of bloody flux as –’ Neb paused to swallow heavily, summoning courage, ‘as I saw. Everything about it sounds the same. If some of it still lurked in that Horsekin city you told me about, and if someone had been there and caught it, and then come to Trev Hael for some reason, well?’

‘Indeed! I’m going to tell Dalla about this idea of yours.’

‘Good. Now, the town herbwoman decided that since it produced an excess of the watery humour, the fiery humour must be its natural enemy. So she had everyone roasting their food and boiling their well water. When someone died, we burned their blankets and clothing, too. And you know, it did seem to stop the spread of it.’

‘That’s most interesting. I’ll tell Dalla that, too.’

‘It was a horrible time.’ Neb shuddered and looked away. ‘I’ve not wanted to think about it before this, but truly, it’s important, isn’t it? I’ve got this feeling that I need to remember it. Huh, you know, when Clae and I were orphaned, priests of Bel brought us west. They were going to a temple north of Cengarn, but one of them was willing to take us as far as the Great West Road first. There’s only one temple north of Cengarn that I know of.’

‘Ye gods!’ Salamander’s voice caught. He coughed and spat onto the ground. ‘My apologies, but hearing you say that seems to have clotted my throat right up with omens.’

Salamander hurried up to the privacy of his chamber. He sat on the wide ledge of the unglazed window and looked out at the points of lantern light gleaming in the ward far below. When he thought of Dallandra, her image built up quickly in his mind. She was apparently sitting under a dweomer light of her own making, because a cool silver glow fell across her. With her ash-blonde hair and steel-grey eyes, she seemed made of pure silver like a creature of the moon’s sphere.

While Salamander told her Neb’s insights about the plague, he could feel her concern.

‘I’m glad you told me this right away,’ she said. ‘If it does come from the Horsekin cities, I hope they don’t realize it. They could use it as a weapon against us.’

For a moment Salamander felt as if the solid stone had moved under him. ‘Ye gods,’ he said. ‘Just – oh ye gods!’

‘There’s a good chance it doesn’t, though,’ Dallandra went on. ‘If the plague were still somehow alive there in the northern cities, why haven’t the Gel da’ Thae come down with it? Why didn’t I get it, come to think of it, when I visited Zatcheka and Grallezar in Braemel, all those years ago?’

‘A most soothing and apposite point, oh princess of powers perilous. Deverry towns aren’t known for their cleanliness. Maybe it’s just something that Neb’s birthplace brewed up in its gutters.’

‘That seems more probable.’Yet Dallandra sounded doubtful. ‘Rinbaladelan’s the only one of the ruined cities that’s likely to still have pestilence. The plague began there. I’ve been told that they had underground cisterns for fresh water. Moist, dark places usually do breed one kind of accidental humour or another. It’s the slime that accretes, you see.’

‘If you say so.’ Salamander knew nothing about medicine. The thought of moist, dark slimes made him profoundly glad of it, too. ‘What about that priest who brought Neb to his late and lamented uncle’s farm?’

‘What about him? Don’t priests of Bel travel about the kingdom all the time?’

‘Yes, they do. Somehow I had the odd feeling that he and the pestilence had some connection. Yet no one in the temple near Honelg’s dun was suffering from it.’

‘That’s true, nor any of their farmers, either. And it’s not likely that they’d have been in one of the Horsekin towns, is it?’

‘Most extremely unlikely, indeed. I seem to have got obsessed with this wretched illness, probably because of your friends in Braemel. I had a moment of fearing that they’d bring plague with them to the war.’

‘Well, it’s not likely and doubly so now.’ Dallandra’s worried mood returned in force. ‘Something very odd seems to be happening in Braemel.’

‘Haven’t you heard from Grallezar?’

‘No. I’ve tried to reach her several times now, but I can’t. I can feel her mind, but she seems utterly distracted. I hope things are going well there.’

‘Maybe the Gel da’ Thae simply don’t want to fight against their own kind. They have no love for Deverry men, certainly. What do they call them? Red Reivers?’

‘That’s right, Lijik Ganda in the Horsekin tongue.’

‘Wait – Rocca used a different word for red.’

‘The Gel da’ Thae have a great many words for all the different colours. Gral means red like rust. Ganda means red like fresh meat.’

‘Oh. That says a great deal about the name they chose for Deverry men.’

‘True. Now, Braemel allied itself with us and with the Roundears up in Cerr Cawnen out of fear of the Horsekin, those wild tribes of the north. This spring Grallezar hinted at some sort of trouble in her city, something to do with a coterie of Alshandra worshippers, but she never said what it was. I assumed it was none of my affair. The Gel da’ Thae can be as clannish as we are.’

‘Then we’ll know exactly what she chooses to tell us, and naught a thing more.’

‘That unfortunately is very true. I could definitely feel her fear, though, when we talked mind to mind.’

In his daily scrying sessions, Salamander had seen changes taking place at Zakh Gral. New troops had arrived, hordes of slaves were building new barracks, and always work on the stone walls went forward. He told Dallandra about these developments in detail. For some while more they talked back and forth, letting their minds reach across the hundreds of miles between them. Salamander could feel himself tiring. Far sooner than usual, he had to fight to maintain his concentration. Dallandra became aware of his difficulty the moment he felt it himself.

‘Ebañy, you’re exhausted,’ she said. ‘I know that we need to keep an eye on Zakh Gral, but be very careful that you don’t spend too much time scrying. You had to turn yourself into your bird form to escape the fortress. That was a huge strain. Then I got myself into trouble with that astral gate, and you had to come rescue me – another huge strain. I’m worried about you. Your old madness could reassert itself if you keep getting exhausted.’

‘Worry not, oh princess of powers perilous! I’m quite aware of that. From now on, I’ll scry only twice a day, morning and evening. I promise.’

They broke the link. When Salamander got up from his perch in the window, he felt so dizzy that he lay down on top of his blankets fully dressed. I’ll get up in a moment or two, he told himself. But when he woke, it was morning.

Technically, Neb and Branna were merely betrothed, not married, but with war looming, there was no time for formal ceremonies and no extra food for feasts. Since Branna’s father and uncle had approved their marrying, everyone who knew them assumed quite simply that they were. Upon their return to the dun, Neb had moved the few things he owned into Branna’s chamber from his own, and that was an end to it.

With Branna so busy with her cousin and the children, Neb saw little of her during the day. After breakfast he often lingered at table with Salamander, Gerran, and Mirryn, listening to their talk of the coming war. On this particular morning, after Branna and Galla had gone up to their hall, and Tieryn Cadryc had gone out to consult with the grooms, Maelaber, the Westfolk herald, came over to sit with them, though his escort stayed seated with the warband. Maelaber told them in some detail about the preparations the Westfolk were making for the fighting ahead. Gerran listened with the oddly bored expression on his face that meant he was absorbing every scrap of information. Mirryn merely glowered down at the table, so intensely that at last Maelaber fell silent.

‘And what’s so wrong with you, Mirro?’ Gerran said. ‘Did the porridge turn your stomach sour or suchlike?’

‘You know cursed well what’s wrong,’ Mirryn said.

‘Well, you can’t argue with Cadryc’s orders,’ Gerran said. ‘He’s the tieryn as well as your father.’

Mirryn answered with a string of epithets so foul that Neb, Salamander, and Maelaber all rose at the same moment and left the table. Neb could hear Gerran and Mirryn squabbling as they walked away.

‘Waiting for war’s always hard,’ Salamander muttered.

‘True spoken,’ Maelaber said. ‘When I left the Westfolk camp, everyone there had thorns up their arses, too.’

Maelaber returned to his escort and the warband, but Neb and Salamander went outside to the dun wall. They climbed up to the catwalks, where they could catch the fresh summer breeze and lean onto the dun wall. Between the crenellations they could see the green meadows and streams of the tieryn’s rhan. The sun fell warm on their backs, and Neb yawned.

‘Tired already, are you?’ Salamander said.

‘Being married cuts into a man’s sleep.’

‘Oh get along with you! Braggart!’

Neb grinned and decided to change the subject. ‘Have you heard from Dallandra?’

‘I have,’ Salamander said. ‘She shares our wondering about that pestilence, but she doesn’t think it came from one of the Horsekin cities. No more does she think that those priests who took you to her uncle’s have anything to do with it.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Neb turned around to lounge back against a crenel. ‘Oh by the gods!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Look up!’ With a sweep of his arm, Neb pointed at the sky. ‘He’s back.’

Far above them, a bird with the black silhouette of a raven circled against the pale blue, far too large for any ordinary bird.

‘So he is,’ Salamander said. ‘Our mazrak, home again from wherever his peculiar tunnel led him.’

‘He waited to arrive till Arzosah left us, I see. Huh, the coward!’

‘I wouldn’t call him that. Would you argue with a dragon thirty times your size? Ah, I see by your expression that you wouldn’t.’

Neb slid his hands into his brigga pockets and found the weapons he carried, a leather sling and a round pebble. He brought them out as casually and slowly as he could. ‘I wonder if I can get a stone into the air before he notices.’

The raven floated in a lazy circle over the dun, then allowed himself to drift in closer. Neb could see him tilting his head from side to side as if he was examining everything below him. All at once he swung around and flapped off fast, heading north from the dun, a rapidly disappearing black speck against the clear sky.

‘He must have seen your sling,’ Salamander said.

‘He’s got good eyes then, blast him!’ Neb slapped the leather loop of the sling against a crenel in frustration. ‘You know, Salamander, it’s a cursed strange thing, but I keep feeling like I know that bird – or the person inside it, I mean. It’s as if I can see through his feathers or suchlike. Well, that sounds daft, now that I say it aloud.’

‘Not daft but dweomer,’ Salamander said. ‘Most likely, anyway. You may be mistaken, of course, but somehow I doubt it. I’d say he’s someone you knew in a past life.’

‘Truly? I certainly don’t have any fond feelings for him.’

‘Oh, when you recognize a person like this, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were a friend. An old enemy will call out to you, like, just as loudly.’

Neb paused, thinking, letting his mind dwell upon the image of the raven and the feelings it aroused. ‘An enemy, truly,’ he said at last, ‘but there’s somewhat more as well. It’s like a debt linking us, or more than one debt. I owe him somewhat, but he owes me far more.’

‘Odd, indeed!’ Salamander said. ‘Well, meditate upon it. The answer might be important.’

‘The chains of wyrd always are, aren’t they?’

‘True spoken. Very true spoken indeed.’

Salamander saw the raven mazrak again the very next morning. A little while past sunrise, his regular time to spy on Zakh Gral, he focused through a scatter of high clouds and scried for Rocca. He saw her immediately, standing before the altar in the Outer Shrine. For a moment he gloated over her image. Had she taken care of herself, she would have been beautiful, with her high cheekbones and thick dark hair, but her face looked sunburned and dirt-streaked, framed in messy tendrils of dirty hair. She was wearing a long, sleeveless dress of pale buckskin, painted with Alshandra’s holy symbol of the bow and arrow.

Behind her, on the rough stone surface of the altar, sat the relics of her goddess’s legendary worshipper, the holy witness Raena. Salamander had seen most of them before – the box with the wyvern dagger, the copper tray with the miniature bow and arrows, the bone whistle, and the obsidian pyramid. A new addition to the hoard startled him. They’d sewn the shirt he’d left behind onto a plain cloth banner and attached it to a long spear. It stood behind the altar and snapped in the wind.

Lakanza, the grey-haired high priestess, stood next to Rocca with a scroll in one hand. In front of them Sidro knelt with her head bowed, while the two Horsekin holy women stood off to one side, their faces grim, their hands clenched into fists. As Salamander watched, Lakanza unrolled a few inches of the scroll and studied it for a moment. Sidro raised her head and looked at Rocca with such venomous hatred in her blue eyes that Rocca took an involuntary step back, but when Lakanza lowered the scroll, Sidro ducked her head to stare at the ground.

Although Salamander could hear nothing, he could see Lakanza’s mouth moving in some sort of chant. She raised a hand and beckoned to one of the Horsekin priestesses. The woman stepped forward and took the wyvern dagger out of its box. She grabbed Sidro’s long raven-black hair with one hand and raised the dagger with the other. Salamander yelped aloud, thinking he was about to see Sidro’s throat slit. Instead, the woman pulled Sidro’s hair taut and used the dagger to hack it off, cropping it close to her skull. Sidro endured the ritual with her mouth tight-set and her eyes shut.

Disgraced, Salamander thought. Serves her right, too, nearly getting me killed like that! Yet what had she done, after all, but tell the truth and identify an enemy of her people? Salamander’s conscience bit him hard. No one would listen to her now, but she had guessed the truth – he was one of Vandar’s spawn, just as she’d said. His supposedly miraculous escape might well bring disaster upon the fortress and shrine both.

Once she’d cut off Sidro’s hair, the Horsekin woman turned and threw it into the wind, which took and scattered the long strands. A few more words from Lakanza, and Sidro rose, picking up the things lying at her feet – a sack and a blanket. Salamander watched as she left the fort and set off on the trail heading north to the forest lands. Had she been thrown out of the holy order? Not likely, since she still wore the painted dress that marked her as a priestess. More likely she’d merely been sent out to preach to the distant believers, much as Rocca had done. She might even be heading to Lord Honelg’s dun. If so, she’d walk right into Ridvar’s fortguard and end up a prisoner in Dun Cengarn.

When Salamander widened his Sight to look over the fortress, he saw the raven mazrak drifting on the air currents far above her. Impossible! he thought. Less than a full day before, the raven had flown over the Red Wolf dun, a distance of at least three hundred miles. Ye gods, don’t tell me there are two of them! Salamander broke the vision with a quick stab of fear at the very thought of there being more than one powerful mazrak ranged against them. Then he remembered the astral tunnel.

‘Don’t you think it’s likely,’ Salamander asked Dallandra later, ‘that he’s discovered how to get onto the mother roads?’

‘Yes, I certainly do,’ Dallandra said. ‘Much more likely, in fact, than there being two of these wretched mazrakir. So that’s what that tunnel was for! Huh, that’s interesting. It’s never occurred to me to try to gain the roads from the astral. It’s not part of Deverry dweomer, either. I wonder where he learned that?’

‘Bardek, I suppose. You thought at one point that he might be from there, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, and he could be. But however he learned it, that he can work that dweomer means he’s a man of great power, so be careful.’

‘I shall be, never fear. Let us most devoutly hope that he can’t lead armies through those tunnels.’

‘It’s highly unlikely, since they originate on the astral.’

‘An entire army of dweomermasters does strike me as a very distant prospect, now that you mention it. Here’s another odd thing. Neb told me that he feels some sort of link to our mazrak from an ill-defined past wyrd they seem to share. He couldn’t tell me much more than that. It’s not a pleasant link, however. That he does know.’

‘Oh by the Star Goddesses!’ Dallandra’s image looked abruptly weary. ‘I don’t know why I’m even surprised. Nevyn made a great many enemies during his long life.’

‘That’s certainly true. I remember a whole ugly clutch of them very clearly indeed, being as I was involved in hunting them down. Off in Bardek, that was, our little war with the dark dweomer –’ Salamander abruptly paused, his mind flooded by a surge of memories and omen-warnings both. ‘The black stone. The obsidian gem on Alshandra’s altar. It has something to do with all of this. I know it in my soul, but I can’t say why or what.’

‘Then meditate upon it.’ Dallandra’s thoughts rang with urgency. ‘Brood over it like a mare with a weak-legged foal.’

‘I shall. I’d wager high that this is a matter of wyrd, something ancient and deep. It involves me, too, though I’m not sure how.’

And indeed, Salamander was right enough about that. During his early childhood, when forming and keeping clear memories lay beyond him, the raven mazrak and the black pyramid had woven a net of wyrd around him. It had snared even a man as powerful as Nevyn, the Master of the Aethyr – which had been Neb’s name and dweomer title in the body he wore then, back in those far-off days.