The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  Ridvar opened his mouth and shut it several times, then glanced around on the edge of anger, but he did finally answer. ‘Not that I know of, Lady Branna, though such would be a great blessing, of course. Otherwise, she fares well.’

  ‘She must be so happy, married to a handsome lord like you.’

  Ridvar blushed, but he did smile and stay where he was.

  Branna managed to chatter for some brief while, long enough for Prince Voran and her uncle to return. As soon as she saw them in the doorway, Branna got up with one last piece of flattery for Ridvar. A much subdued Cadryc took the chair that had formerly held the prince, while Voran seated himself in the tieryn’s, directly next to Ridvar, and looked at the gwerbret in a way that managed to be bland and frosty at the same time. Branna hurried back to her place beside Gerran, who gave her one of his rare smiles.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘If Ridvar forces Cadryc into rebellion, the war’s over. The Horsekin can finish their cursed fortress in peace.’

  ‘It gladdens my heart that you’ll be travelling with my uncle, you and Salamander both.’ Branna grabbed his tankard and helped herself to a long swallow of ale. ‘I’ll pray for you.’

  The rest of the evening passed without further trouble. After the women had retired to their own hall, Prince Voran’s body servant appeared at the door with a note, written on the finest scraped white leather, from his master for Branna. It said simply, ‘my thanks,’ but Branna tucked it into her kirtle to save, not because it came from a prince, but because she could write upon the back.

  After a hasty breakfast eaten in grim silence, the noble-born allies and commanders began leaving the dun to rejoin their men in the meadow. The Red Wolf warband began to get itself ready to ride. Out in the ward, pages and servants rushed back and forth, carrying sacks and campaign chests and wicker baskets of gear and supplies. Grooms led out the horses and began to saddle them.

  Through the midst of this confusion Branna and Neb went looking for Clae. They found him eventually down by the dun gates. He was standing on a crate beside Gerran’s dun riding horse in order to reach its saddle. He’d already attached his lord’s saddlebags to the cantle; now he was struggling to hang the shield, which Neb had recently painted; on a white-washed background a yellow falcon spread its wings, done in paint made from the local clay for lack of gold for gilding.

  ‘Well, now,’ Neb said. ‘I’ve come to bid you good luck.’

  ‘My thanks.’ His task finished, Clae jumped down from the crate. ‘Don’t look so grim, Neb. It’s not like I’ll be fighting or suchlike.’

  ‘Still, a war’s a dangerous place to be. You be careful now, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you remember what I told you about Salamander?’

  ‘I do. And Lord Gerran won’t let any harm come to me.’

  Not if he can help it, anyway, Branna thought to herself.

  ‘True spoken.’ Neb managed to smile.

  ‘It must ache your heart, not getting to go.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll get over it. So fare you well.’

  ‘And the same to you.’ Clae glanced around, distracted. ‘It’s time for me to lead my lord’s horse into line.’

  The Red Wolf warband were forming up their marching order. Branna and Neb got out of their way and went to stand by the entrance to the great hall.

  ‘Does it truly ache you’re heart that you’re staying behind?’ Branna said.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ Neb said, ‘but I didn’t want to be telling Clae that. Here, I’m going inside. I know that my brother’s an apprentice of sorts now, and that he’s gone from my care, but blast it all, I can’t stand to watch him ride to war!’ He turned and strode off before Branna could say a comforting word.

  As her father and uncle left the broch, Branna bade farewell to them, then stood to one side with Solla while the warband finished getting itself organized. The men led their horses into line, then stood waiting for the order to mount. Gerran had a brief word with Tieryn Cadryc, then walked down the line, looking over every man, checking his gear, and making the occasional remark, before returning to its head, where Clae was holding the reins of his horse. Before he mounted, Gerran reached inside his shirt and took out a strip of blue cloth, which he gave to Clae, and said a few words.

  Branna stood too far away to hear the order, but Clae handed him the horse’s reins. Gerran held them in his right hand while the page tied the strip around Gerran’s upper left arm. Solla caught her breath. Branna glanced her way.

  ‘That’s your scarf, isn’t it?’ Branna said.

  ‘It is,’ Solla said. ‘Just a little token. For luck.’

  ‘Of course. Just a little token. Of course.’

  They shared a smile, but when Gerran mounted and gave the signal for the warband to do the same, Solla’s smile disappeared into a tight-lipped determination to show no feeling at all. Branna suddenly felt selfish, that her beloved would stay behind, in safety. If we are safe, she thought. When she glanced up at the sky, she saw no sign of the raven mazrak. With a yell and a wave, Tieryn Cadryc led his men and his noble-born allies and vassals out of the gates at the trot. On Gerran’s arm the blue scarf fluttered like a pennant.

  While the army assembled out in the meadow, the women of the dun climbed up to the catwalk to watch and wave farewell. Branna was about to join them when she felt a tug at her skirt. The grey gnome stood beside her, his pointy little face screwed up in anxiety. His mouth gaped, and he waved his hands.

  ‘What is it?’ Branna whispered. ‘What’s upset you?’

  The gnome turned and dashed a few yards away, then paused, flapping its hands at her. When she followed, it darted around the side of the broch. A man was just leading a horse from the stables, and despite the warmth of the day, he wore a cloak with the hood up around his face in a futile attempt to hide his identity.

  ‘And what are you up to, Mirro?’ Branna said. ‘Going to sneak off and follow the army?’

  ‘Blast you!’ Mirryn pushed the hood back; sweat beaded on his forehead and cheeks. ‘I suppose you’ll run straight to my mother and tell her, too.’

  ‘I won’t have to. She’s up on the walls with the other women, and she’ll see you ride out. Did you really think you could bring this off? You could wear ten cloaks, and your womenfolk would still recognize you.’

  ‘Ah by the red scabby balls of the Lord of Hell!’ Mirryn pulled the cloak off and threw it onto the cobbles. His horse snorted and danced a few steps back. ‘Hold and stand, you mangy mule!’

  As if it knew it were being insulted, the horse laid its ears back, but it did stand.

  ‘You might as well take him back to his stall,’ Branna said. ‘Besides, you promised the prince you’d stand surety for Matto, didn’t you? How can I let you sneak away from that?’

  ‘You wretched little tattle-tale!’

  Branna started to retort, but all at once an omen took over her mind and mouth. She could hear her own voice, cold and hollow, speaking beyond her power to stop it.

  ‘Much evil would come from your riding, more than you can know, Lord Mirryn. It’s a right thing that your father bade you stay. Soon, at the turning of next year towards spring, your time of war will come, and your glory will travel the kingdom.’

  The omen left as suddenly as it had taken her, leaving her cold and trembling. Mirryn was staring open-mouthed.

  ‘What was that?’ he whispered.

  When she staggered, he grabbed her arm with one hand and her opposite shoulder with the other. Gratefully she let him steady her.

  ‘Mirro, please, stay here. You’ve got to, you’ve just got to.’

  For a long moment he hesitated; then he nodded. ‘Maybe I’d best do just that. I’ve heard you say strange things before, Branni, but this takes the prize at the tourney!’

  ‘It’s an omen, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all? What do you mean, that’s all?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She held up a sh
aking hand. ‘Mirro, I’ve got to get somewhat to drink. My mouth’s as dry as a bone.’

  Mirryn took her into the great hall and brought her a pitcher of water and a cup. Branna gulped the first cup down, then sipped the second while he hovered nervously by her chair. ‘Ah,’ Mirryn said suddenly. ‘Here’s the gerthddyn.’

  ‘What?’ Branna turned on the bench and saw Salamander strolling in the door. ‘You didn’t ride with the army?’

  ‘The army’s still milling around the meadow.’ Salamander walked over and made her a bow. ‘It takes a long time to get that many men on the road. They can’t all start moving forward at the exact same moment, you know. I’ll ride near the end of the line, so I’ve time to come say farewell.’ Abruptly he leaned closer. ‘Are you ill or suchlike?’

  ‘Just tired. I had an odd dizzy spell out in the ward a moment ago.’

  Mirryn started to speak, then merely gave the gerthddyn a vacant smile.

  ‘Truly?’ Salamander hesitated for a moment. ‘Well, I’m glad Neb will be staying here. Between his lore and that herbal Dalla sent you, he should be able to tend you if you need it.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Branna said. ‘Now, you take care of yourself, will you? I do worry so.’

  ‘Oh, I have no intention of getting anywhere near the fighting, I assure you!’ Salamander glanced at the door. ‘I’d best leave. My lord Mirryn, fare thee well.’

  ‘Same to you, gerthddyn,’ Mirryn said. ‘And may the gods speed you all to the war and bring you all home again as well.’

  Salamander bowed, then hurried out to the ward. Branna went to the door and looked out just as he was mounting his horse. He waved to her, then clucked to the horse and trotted out of the gates. May the true Goddess watch over you. The thought brought her a peculiar sense of knowledgeable dread, one that she could only explain as dweomer. Someone else was on the watch for Salamander, someone female, and whoever she was, she meant him no good.

  Sidro often did try to scry for Evan the minstrel, as she thought of Salamander. Every now and then she received a faint, momentary impression of him but naught more. Those moments always seemed to come just after sunrise and sundown. Mostly, though, she could only sense, rather than clearly see, some sort of sphere or shield glowing around him. Of his whereabouts she could see nothing.

  ‘He’s probably building a sphere of light around himself,’ Laz told her when she asked. ‘Master Hazdrubal showed me that trick after you left us.’ He sighed in a sudden melancholy. ‘Ai, our poor teacher! I miss him still.’

  ‘How could you?’ Sidro snapped. ‘He was a disgusting old man. Eating raw meat like that! I never trusted him around young boys, either. He kept staring at their bottoms.’

  ‘In his personal habits, most assuredly disgusting, but a good teacher of wizardry nonetheless. Besides, no one deserved to die the way he did.’

  Once, Sidro realized, not so very long ago in fact, she would have told him that Hazdrubal had deserved his death because he’d defied Alshandra’s laws. Once.

  ‘Well, I have to admit it was horrible,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to watch.’

  ‘No? I should have thought you’d have gloried in it. Your pack of holy fools did.’

  ‘Not Lakanza! She ran into the temple with me, and we prayed that Alshandra would stop them. Those weren’t our people, Laz, not at that moment. They were like animals, that mob. I mean, tearing a man apart with their hands…’ Memory pictures rose and made her stammer. ‘Horrible.’

  ‘They came for me next. Did that frighten you, Sisi? To think of your old love being torn to shreds by the fingernails of the faithful?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked at her gape-mouthed, his eyes brimming with hurt.

  ‘Because I knew you’d get out of it,’ Sidro went on. ‘I have perfect faith, Laz, that you could talk your way out of anything.’

  He tipped back his head and laughed in prolonged delight. ‘And so I did,’ he said at last. ‘Though it took a bit of help from my mother. Huh. I was surprised then and I still am now that she cared enough to hide me.’

  Sidro reached up and tapped with her fingertip on the blue spiral tattoo in the centre of his forehead. ‘You were First Son.’ She brought her hand down. ‘What she thought of you didn’t matter, compared to that.’

  He winced. ‘I suppose it was silly of me to hope for a flicker of maternal love in her dry and stony heart.’

  ‘She had her heart set on your becoming a rakzan, that’s why. It dried up because she was so disappointed—’

  ‘—that I turned out to be a coward? That’s how she saw it, you know. I was supposed to want to throw my life away for the mach-fala’s glory. The very first rakzan to come from a mixed-blood clan! What an honour! I didn’t want it.’

  ‘I thought you made the right decision.’

  ‘Which is another reason I love you.’ Laz paused for a dramatic sigh. ‘But be that as it may, do you want to learn how to make a protective sphere around yourself? I don’t like the idea of Evan scrying you out.’

  ‘I don’t like it, either. Please do show me.’

  Since she’d already broken her vows, Sidro returned to the dweomer studies she once had shared with Laz with some of her old passion. Since she was damned, she would think, she might as well revel in her damnation. Yet, every time she tried to scry in the white pyramid, she would see the Inner Shrine through the smoke-coloured crystal of its twin upon the altar. The sight made the shame of her broken vows rise up and choke her until she wept, shaking her head in pain like a dazed animal. Laz finally put the crystal back in its locked box and told her to leave it alone.

  In their first days together, Laz never left the camp and only rarely left their cabin. Their long years apart had left them greedy for each other. Their scent surrounded them, permeated the blankets, the bed, the very walls, or so it seemed to her. Laz forbade any of his men to enter, for fear that the scent would make them lust after her, too. When they needed food or water, he went and fetched it.

  While he was gone, she would stand at one of the cabin’s two windows and look out at the forest, on one side, or the camp, on the other. Occasionally Pir or one of the other men would stop to chat with her, but only briefly, and always from a decorous few feet away. Only young Vek, the boy who would have grown up into a prophet of the gods, had the old gods still held sway in Taenalapan, dared come close. He missed his mother badly, he told her one day.

  ‘But I had to run away,’ he said. ‘The priestesses would have killed me.’

  ‘Alshandra’s people, you mean?’ Sidro said.

  He nodded, his eyes full of tears. A child, Sidro thought. How could they have wanted to kill a child? She was getting a different view of her beloved Alshandra’s Elect, here among exiles.

  She came to know the other men by sight as they went about various errands: gathering firewood, bringing home game or fish, cleaning weapons, talking among themselves. Most were full-blooded Gel da’ Thae—thieves and political exiles both—but she counted five obvious half-breeds, three mostly Horsekin in appearance, two who could easily have passed for Lijik, just as she and Laz often did. The unofficial leader of the mixed blood men was Faharn, who had the thick black mane and welter of tattoos of a Horsekin man but whose blue eyes told of slave blood in his background.

  If Pir was Laz’s friend, then Faharn was his disciple. Laz had taught him magic when they both lived in Taenalapan and continued the lessons when Faharn had followed him into exile. At first, Sidro tried to talk with Faharn as she did with Pir, just a pleasant chat as they got to know each other, but if he answered at all, Faharn spat out short words only and ended the conversation as fast as he could.

  ‘Why does he resent me so much?’ Sidro asked Laz.

  ‘You’ve interrupted his training,’ Laz said. ‘It’s too bad that he doesn’t have much of a gift for magic. He wants to learn it very badly. But there’s no need for him to blame you for my obsessive lust.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ll have a word
with him.’

  After that, Faharn made an obvious effort to be civil to Sidro, but she still caught him watching her at times with a weary resentment.

  She worried about Faharn’s ill-will, but not half as much as she feared Movrae, a full-blooded Gel da’ Thae who, according to Laz, had joined the band not because he had magical gifts, but because he’d deserted his military unit. Had he stayed in the towns, they would have found him easily, since he wore his regiment’s name and number tattooed across his face. Whenever Movrae saw Sidro at the window, he would stand and stare at her from a distance, narrow-eyed and so grim that she had no idea whether he felt lust or some strange rage. She would leave the window until Laz or Pir chased him away.

  On a sultry afternoon Sidro was standing just to one side of the window, so she could get some air while staying out of Movrae’s sight. She heard Laz talking in an irritated near-whisper, but she couldn’t quite discern what he was saying. Pir’s answer, however, she heard quite clearly.

  ‘She’ll have to know sooner or later,’ the horse mage said.

  They moved away, but when Laz came back inside, Sidro told him that she’d been eavesdropping.

  ‘And just what is it that I’ll have to know?’ she said. ‘You might as well tell me sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just another sign that we’ve sunk to the level of savages. I’m thinking of having Movrae killed.’

  For a moment she was shocked enough to believe him. He shrugged and turned away, but he was looking back at her out of the corner of his eye, and she could see the barest twitch of a smile on his mouth.

  ‘Don’t lie!’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m not lying.’ He turned back. The child-like innocence on his face convinced her that indeed, he’d lied. ‘The way he stares at my woman bothers me. Don’t savage tribal chiefs always kill men who covet their woman?’

  ‘I don’t have the slightest idea, but I do know you’re a liar.’