The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  Suddenly he dropped it, and everyone in the round room laughed. A marketplace trick like that would have no place in any serious recital. Her heart steadied itself.

  Behind her the cabin door opened with a thump and a kick. She turned around to see Laz carrying a big pottery bowl in both hands. Behind him came a skinny Horsekin boy whose skull sported the thin dark fuzz of his first hair-growth. He carried a basket in one hand and a pitcher in the other. She smelled burnt bread and venison stew.

  ‘This is Vek,’ Laz said. ‘He has the unfortunate habit of going into trances and mumbling omens, so he had to flee Taenalapan for his life.’

  The boy gave her a watery smile and set his burdens down on the table. With a nod towards Laz, he turned and trotted out of the cabin. Laz put the bowl of stew down in front of her, then picked up the white stone and began to wrap it in its various sacks.

  ‘What did you see in it?’ he said.

  ‘The black pyramid on our altar back in the shrine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just that. It was like I was looking out of the black stone and seeing the shrine. You said you saw Evan, but I don’t understand how you could have.’

  ‘No, no, I must confess something. I was just guessing. I saw some sort of figure, but it’s very cloudy to me, that crystal, so I didn’t know who it was.’

  ‘It was Rocca. I wish you’d stop lying to me.’

  ‘I wasn’t lying. Merely guessing.’

  She decided against starting an argument. In the basket lay thin rounds of soda bread, blackened along one edge. They would do, she supposed, for spoons.

  ‘I have some cheese in that sack,’ she said, ‘and some apples. They’re still a little green, but they’re ripe enough.’

  ‘We’ll save those for our breakfast.’

  The stew contained carrots, onions, and turnips as well as chunks of venison, and though luke-warm, it tasted half-way decent and safe enough to eat. Sidro scooped up mouthfuls with the bread, then ate the scoop when it grew soaked with cold gravy. She’d refrained from eating meat for so long that she could only manage a little before she felt disgustingly full.

  ‘Where do you get all this food, anyway?’ she said.

  ‘Raiding,’ Laz said. ‘Where else? We hunt for the deer, though.’

  ‘Raiding? You mean stealing from farmers.’

  ‘Who else raises food?’ He paused to wipe his mouth on his sleeve.

  ‘I suppose you kill anyone who objects.’

  ‘Of course. We’re not Gel da’ Thae any longer, Sisi. We’ve reverted to our savage tribal roots. We’re outlaws, you know, and that’s what outlaws do. Why should we stay civilized when our fellow citizens would like to torture us to death? And in the public square, too! The gall! If I’m going to be forced to scream and moan and piss all over myself, I’d at least like to do it in private.’

  ‘I’ve heard about those raids on the Lijik border. They get blamed on Alshandra’s men.’

  ‘Most of them are done by Alshandra’s men, that’s why. I happened to witness a particularly nasty incident myself earlier this summer, when I was flying over a farming village. They killed all the men in cold blood, just lined them up and cut them down. Then they dragged the women away—to sell, I suppose, in Taenalapan and Braemel.’

  ‘As if your pack is any better!’

  ‘But we are. If the farmers don’t object, we don’t kill them, and we only steal what they can spare. Farmers who starve to death plant no crops. Besides, we don’t take slaves—hence our lack of hard coin to pay the farmers with. I’ve come to the conclusion that taking slaves is a very bad thing.’

  ‘What?’ She was honestly shocked. ‘Why? Everyone keeps slaves, well, except for Vandar’s spawn.’

  ‘I wish you’d stop calling the Ancients Vandar’s spawn. The name is meaningless and really rather stupid, given as he fathered none of them.’

  ‘But—’ She choked the words back. The sacred teaching no longer mattered, she reminded herself, now that she was damned.

  ‘As to why,’ Laz continued, ‘consider yourself, born into slavery and utterly incapable of living free even though I made you legally free. As soon as we had our difficulties, what did you do? You joined a cult of fools and madmen who ordered you around, and why? Because you were so accustomed to being ordered around. You couldn’t stand being free, could you, Sisi? You didn’t know how. That’s a horrible thing to do to someone, like pulling the wings off a butterfly.’

  Sidro felt as stunned as if he’d struck her in the face. Laz flashed her a brief grin and returned to eating his dinner. She took another piece of griddle bread, had one bite, then merely crumbled the rest between her fingers while she tried to bring to heel the yapping pack of thoughts that Laz had awakened in her mind.

  Every evening after dinner, Salamander would entertain the great hall with his patter and sleight-of-hand tricks. Gerran enjoyed them as much as anyone. At Tieryn Cadryc’s insistence, during these shows he stayed with the noble-born at the table of honour. He was thus close enough to see Salamander’s slip that evening. The gerthddyn was prattling away as usual when he reached up and plucked an egg out of mid-air—only to drop it. His audience laughed, thinking he’d done it on purpose, but Gerran noticed how troubled he looked. For a moment Salamander stared out at nothing. While it was hard to be sure in the uncertain candlelight, Gerran thought he turned a little pale.

  ‘Ye gods!’ Salamander recovered himself with a sickly grin. ‘My apologies, one and all! I seem to be oddly clumsy tonight, and now I’ve quite forgotten what I was saying.’ He jumped down from the table that he’d been standing on. ‘If you’ll forgive me?’ He bowed to the tieryn and Lady Galla, then strode off to the staircase without another word.

  In a stunned silence everyone watched him hurry upstairs. Finally Cadryc shook his head and shrugged.

  ‘And what was all that about, I wonder?’ Cadryc said. ‘He looked so startled that I thought mayhap he was seeing a ghost stroll in the door.’

  ‘This dun’s too new to have ghosts,’ Galla said. ‘I hope he’s not been taken ill.’

  Neb swung himself free of the bench and stood up with a half-bow in her direction. ‘I’ll go see, my lady,’ he said, ‘with your permission of course.’

  ‘You have it,’ Galla said, ‘and my thanks.’

  Neb returned some while later with the news that Salamander was suffering from a headache. ‘Councillor Dallandra left me some medicinals,’ Neb told Galla, ‘so I gave him some willow bark to chew upon.’

  ‘That should help, certainly,’ Galla said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a herbman as well as a scribe.’

  ‘I’m not, my lady, not yet. Those books she sent? One of them’s a herbal, so I’ve been studying.’

  ‘A very accomplished young man!’ Galla favoured Neb with a smile.

  Gerran, however, had the uneasy feeling that Neb was hiding something about Salamander’s condition. If so, he suspected that dweomer, not headache, lay at the root of the gerthddyn’s strange behaviour. Late that evening, when the great hall was clearing out, he had a chance at a private word with Neb.

  ‘Did the gerthddyn truly have a headache?’ Gerran said.

  ‘He didn’t,’ Neb said with a slight smile. ‘You’ve got good eyes, Gerro.’

  ‘Dweomer?’

  ‘Just that. I’ll explain more if you like.’

  ‘No need, no need! Don’t trouble yourself.’

  ‘Answer me somewhat. Why are you fighting men so troubled by talk of dweomer?’

  Since it was a serious question, asked with no hint of mockery, Gerran considered his answer. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘But I’ll wager it’s because we don’t understand it, and we can’t understand it, no matter how hard we try. It doesn’t seem real, because we can’t see it or touch it, and yet it is real. How can a man fight an enemy he can’t even see? It creeps my flesh, it does.’ All at once he grinned. ‘Besides, if we can’t use it to slash someone to bits or b
ash his head in, well, then, what good is it?’

  ‘Ah. That makes it perfectly clear.’

  They shared a laugh.

  On the morrow, the first lords and their warbands arrived for the muster. Cadryc’s vassals showed up first. Each brought as many men as he could spare from guarding his own holdings, generally five to ten. Although the noble-born slept in the broch, with so many guests expected, their riders ended up camping out in the meadow behind the dun. Next came Cadryc’s allies, among them Branna’s father, Tieryn Gwivyr, who brought twenty-five men and provisions for sixty days. When Gwivyr rode in, Branna dutifully went out to greet him. They spoke briefly, an odd pair, with him so tall and stout, her young and slender, though she’d obviously received her yellow hair from him. He patted her on the head, then strode past her into the great hall. With a shrug Branna followed him in, but as far as Gerran could tell, she seemed neither pleased nor distressed.

  Later that day, Gerran came across Gwivyr down by the dun wall. The tieryn stood with his hands on his hips and scowled at the bundles of hay leaning against the stones. Gerran stopped and greeted him with a pleasant ‘good morrow, your grace’.

  ‘Same to you, my lord.’ Gwivyr jerked his thumb at the bundles. ‘What are these supposed to be, targets?’

  ‘Just so. Goodman Gwervyl’s archers need practice.’

  ‘I don’t like it, all these cursed archers. What would our ancestors say about noble-born warriors fighting behind a shield of common folk? It’s dishonourable!’

  Gerran realized an unexpected advantage to having been ennobled. He no longer had to keep a polite silence around lords like Gwivyr.

  ‘Is it, your grace? What about letting the commoners face Horsekin raids without weapons to defend themselves?’

  ‘Well, true spoken, that would be a graver dishonour. But for a thousand years and more we noble-born have fought like men, facing our enemies sword in hand. Why bring these common-born archers to battle with us?’

  ‘Why?’ Gerran paused to consider how to keep his answer in the bounds of courtesy. ‘Because they can kill some of our enemies, your grace, while we kill the rest.’

  Tieryn Gwivyr stared at him for a moment, then laughed, a long braying bellow.

  ‘A good answer, my lord,’ Gwivyr said, still smiling. ‘But come now, doesn’t it ache your heart? You’re the greatest swordsman in the Northlands, but some oaf with a longbow could put an end to all that skill from a hundred yards off.’

  ‘That’s true spoken. I can’t say it gladdens my heart. You’re right about another thing, your grace. That thousand years you spoke of? It’s coming to an end, whether we want it to or no.’

  Gwivyr’s smile disappeared. He raised one hand in a strangely clumsy wave, then turned on his heel and strode off.

  Gwivyr’s heart would be a cursed lot more troubled, Gerran thought, if he knew about the dweomer mixed up in this. He thought of Neb, discussing dweomer so calmly and at times drawing upon it the way Gerran would rely on his sword. Better him than me! Yet he felt in an odd way that dweomer had somehow touched him and stained his thoughts. He was sure—though he tried to dismiss it as mere superstition—that in the coming battle he would find his father’s killer and face him. It was sixteen years ago! he reminded himself. By now that Horsekin warrior was most likely dead, or too old to be posted to a frontier fortress, or just simply living elsewhere. Yet deep in his soul he felt—no, he knew—that he wouldn’t merely face the killer. He would recognize him.

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

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

  ‘The same to you, my lady.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Then I’d like naught better.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘I’ve noticed you studying it.’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Spirits in the body? Wildfolk or suchlike?’

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

  Someone knocked on their chamber door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Branna called out.

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

  ‘What? Of course we are!’

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