The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘Well, thank you. I have to admit that I need something to wear besides this shift. I don’t suppose you thought to steal me some needles and thread.’

  Laz swore under his breath.

  ‘That means no, I take it,’ Sidro said. ‘Oh well, maybe you can find a peddlar in the woods and waylay him.’

  ‘Ah, a jest! Your good humour returns at last. I can whittle you a bone needle. This cloth looks like a very loose weave to me.’

  ‘That will do, most likely. I can pull some of its own threads or lace it with thongs.’

  ‘Good. But you know, I did see something very odd in the woods, though not a peddlar, alas. When I was flying home, I spotted a small party of our Gel da’ Thae compatriots, on foot, coming down from the north.’

  ‘You didn’t summon your men to rob them, too?’

  ‘I considered it. They were leading a mule that looked pretty well loaded down. But I recognized their leader, so I decided to leave them alone.’

  ‘What? Who was it?’

  ‘The Most Exalted Mother Grallezar, head of the Braemel town council.’

  For a moment Sidro found it impossible to speak. ‘In the forest?’ she said at last. ‘Not on the Braemel Road?’

  ‘Stumbling around among the trees, yes. Hiding from someone, I’d say.’

  ‘Do you know what that must mean?’

  ‘Your holy fools have taken over Braemel.’

  ‘Just that. It pains me to admit this, but I’m horrified.’

  Dallandra had learned of Braemel’s fate from Grallezar herself, when the Gel da’ Thae leader finally reached her mind to mind and begged her for help. With an escort of thirty mounted archers, Dallandra rode out to find her just below the cliffs at the forest verge. Her archers led extra horses, because Grallezar had warned her that two of her four loyal men were wounded, one badly from a spear thrust to the ribs, and the other with an arm broken in a good many places from a blow with a heavy club. When they saw the elven party approaching through the grass, the Gel da’ Thae stopped walking and merely stood, heads bowed, to wait. Grallezar herself could barely stand. She leaned against a laden mule who looked as weary as she did.

  With a shout, the Westfolk men surrounded them, then dismounted and hurried forward to help the men. Dallandra swung down from her saddle and rushed to greet her friend. Like the average Horsekin woman, Grallezar was taller than many Deverry men, and as well-muscled, too, but at that moment she looked frail. The dust of her frantic journey smeared the green tattoos covering her face. Somewhere in the forest she’d lost the leather cap that usually protected her shaved head, which had sprouted a brownish stubble in compensation. Her dress, once the finest buckskin, had rips and stains all over it. When Dallandra put her arms around her in greeting, she could feel Grallezar trembling.

  ‘Thank every god you’re alive!’ Dallandra said.

  ‘I suppose I’m glad, for all the good it is,’ Grallezar said. ‘I left Braemel with over twenty loyal people and as many horses. These four men and the mule are all that survived.’

  ‘Ah, gods!’

  ‘We had to fight our way free,’ Grallezar went on. ‘We managed to kill all the attackers. May the Light be thanked, I can scry out those filthy priest-dogs. I saw them waiting for their soldiers to return. By the time they realized they weren’t coming back, we were long gone.’

  ‘I cannot tell you how glad I am that you escaped.’

  ‘Dalla, they were going to burn our books. Every scrap of the dweomerlore we’ve put together with so much work over so many years—they wanted to burn it all.’

  ‘And you with it, I suppose.’

  Grallezar shrugged her own danger away. ‘We saved it, though.’ Her voice broke, but she steadied it again. ‘Every book I had I brought, and I had copies of everything.’ She turned to stroke the mule’s nose. ‘He’s carrying them all.’

  ‘Good. Let’s get you and your men back to camp so I can treat the wounded.’

  When they reached the encampment, Dallandra took Grallezar to her own tent to eat and rest, then did what she could for the two injured men. Both would recover, as she told Grallezar later that day, when the Gel da’ Thae leader woke after a long afternoon’s sleep. Since they were alone, they could speak in the strange mixture of Elvish and the Horsekin tongue they’d developed on their various visits.

  ‘The army will camp here tonight, so we won’t have to move them immediately,’ Dallandra said. ‘We’re waiting for scouts to return.’

  ‘I see.’ Grallezar paused to rub her face with both hands. ‘Dalla, we’re really here, aren’t we? I’m not just dreaming this or meeting you on the astral or some such thing, am I?’

  ‘You’re not. You’re safe in my tent.’

  Grallezar looked up with a long sigh. For a moment she stared out at nothing, then sighed again. ‘It’s an evil day indeed,’ she said, ‘when my city would open its gates to savage tribesmen.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘Yes. The Alshandra people got themselves elected to the council, you see, then voted an alliance with the northerners—those are the people who settled Taenalapan. When I objected, they stirred up their mob against me.’ But Grallezar suddenly smiled, revealing her long teeth, filed into points like fangs. ‘My city may be lost to me, but I’ll pray that Zakh Gral pays the price for it. I hope to every god that your army razes it to ashes. I hope they kill every man in it.’

  ‘Oh, if they can, they will. Have no fear about that.’

  Dallandra had some hard questions to ask Grallezar, but the leaders of the army were as eager to talk with her as she was. A page came with a polite summons and interrupted their talk. Dallandra accompanied her to Prince Voran’s peaked tent, where Gwerbret Ridvar, Prince Daralanteriel, Warleader Brel and Envoy Kov stood waiting. In the rising evening wind their banners, carried by the heralds who stood behind each man, snapped and fluttered with their devices, the gold wyvern, the red rose, Cengarn’s blazing sun, the dwarven axe. At the sight Grallezar caught Dallandra’s hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Courage!’ Dallandra murmured. ‘They won’t dare harm you, not with me here.’

  Indeed, Prince Voran behaved like the flower of courtesy. He had his canvas stool brought for Lady Grallezar, as he called her, and a stoup of Bardek wine as well, which he personally handed to her. Yet Dallandra was aware of the other lords eyeing the Gel da’ Thae women with a mixture of awe and suspicion, the way they might view some huge Bardekian lion brought to them in a cage. Even Daralanteriel—Dallandra stored up a few choice words to say to him later.

  Prince Voran knelt beside Grallezar’s chair with a friendly smile. Someone must have told him that she spoke a dialect of Deverrian, because he addressed her in that language. ‘My lady, if you’ve rested enough, it would gladden my heart if you’d tell us your tale.’

  ‘My thanks,’ Grallezar said. ‘It be a familiar tale, here in the Northlands, but no doubt not one you hear off to the east. Once there were six cities of Gel da’ Thae, though Taenalapan and Braemel were the largest. Now there be six towns ruled by Horsekin savages. Braemel, it were the last to fall to these loathsome dogs of priestesses and prophets. The price they did pay for those towns, it were high, a price of blood, not that these madmen count death as a peril.’

  ‘These savages,’ Voran said, ‘are they your northern tribes, then? We’ve heard about them.’

  ‘Some are, but their leaders, they be bred inside town walls as Gel da’ Thae. In the end they did prove themselves as brutal as any northerner, and all in the name of their goddess. This Alshandra poison, it did well up among the tribes, but then it did spread to the cities. One by one they fell to Alshandra’s people. Mine, it were the last. Their leaders did corrupt our troops and win them over.’

  ‘They have well-armed regular troops, then?’

  ‘They do, officered by our own rakzanir, driven mad by dreams of loot and pasture land, all promised by the false prophets who think this Alshandra creature still
lives.’

  The men listening glanced at one another with expressionless eyes, their faces as grim as stone.

  ‘I don’t suppose, my lady,’ Voran said, ‘that you’d know how many of these troops they have.’

  ‘Why would I not know? Were I not once the commander of those men Braemel could summon to war?’

  Voran grimaced at his gaffe and bobbed his head in her direction. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘Your ways are still new to me.’

  ‘No doubt.’ Grallezar tried to soften her remarks with a smile, but the sight of her pointed fangs made the prince wince again. ‘Each town, it did support a thousand men at arms, to say naught of the citizens who would muster to fight in times of war. But that were before town upon town did turn on its fellows and battle them. Many have died, your highness, and the rakzanir, they did strip their garrisons for the building of Zakh Gral.’

  ‘Thank every god!’ Ridvar muttered. When Kov shot him a warning glance and shook his head in a no, Ridvar had the decency to blush. Grallezar pretended to take no notice, but Dallandra saw her glance flick the young gwerbret’s way and back.

  ‘Let me trouble you for one last question,’ Voran said to her. ‘The northern tribes, will they be riding to Zakh Gral’s aid?’

  ‘They be here already, your highness. Once a town did go over to the worship of Alshandra, its leaders did bring men from the north to swell the ranks of its armies, fresh and ready to conquer the next town should it hold out for the old ways. So the armies now, they be led by men who ken the ways of fighting, but the men they lead, some ken little but rushing into the enemy ranks and laying about them with whatever weapon they have to hand.’

  ‘I see.’ The prince got up and bowed. ‘You have my humble thanks, my lady. Please, go back to your friend’s tent and rest yourself. In the morning, come tell me what you wish to do next, whether to remain with the Westfolk or take refuge in Deverry.’

  ‘Refuge in the Slavers’ Country?’ Grallezar rose from her chair and smiled again, all fangs. ‘Refuge in the Slavers’ Country! Those words, they be ill-matched in my mind, your highness.’

  ‘No doubt, considering the ill will between our two peoples in the past, but I’d gladly offer you shelter in Dun Deverry itself. I think me that my father, the high king, would consider lending you an army to see you rightfully restored to your city.’

  ‘Would he now?’ Grallezar, just the same height as the prince, was looking straight at him with a faint smile hovering around her fanged mouth. ‘Among my folk the children have a little toy. Mayhap your folk do whittle somewhat like it. On the end of two sticks there stands a tiny wooden warrior with a spear. The children may push the sticks up and down and see the warrior fling his arms about and wave his spear. It be a clever thing, but truly, your highness, never have I wanted to be one.’

  Voran opened his mouth and shut it again. Dallandra risked a quick glance at Kov and saw him grinning in open admiration.

  ‘My friend Dallandra did offer me shelter, your highness,’ Grallezar continued. ‘I shall take that. No doubt I can find honourable work tending her horses.’

  Grallezar dropped the prince a curtsey, then turned and strode off. Dallandra had to run to catch up to her. As they walked back through the camp, Grallezar kept her gaze firmly on the ground in front of her. All the men, whether they were Westfolk, Mountain Folk, or Deverry bred, stared as she went past. Dallandra felt like screaming at all of them to mind their courtesies.

  Once they’d regained the safety of the tent, Grallezar sank onto a pile of leather cushions. Dallandra sat cross-legged on the floor cloth. She had crucial questions to ask, and all of them distressed her. They sat in silence until Dallandra realized that she needed to be blunt.

  ‘I absolutely have to ask you something,’ Dallandra said.

  ‘I know what it is,’ Grallezar said. ‘Why didn’t I tell you years ago about the savages in Taenalapan?’

  ‘That’s one question.’

  ‘I was afraid your men would raise an army and come destroy it. They barely accepted the existence of us Gel da’ Thae as it was. If they’d known that the northerners were moving south, they would have wanted to destroy all of us.’

  ‘That might have happened, yes.’

  ‘Besides, when Mother Zatcheka made the alliance with your people and with the men of the Rhiddaer, all those years ago, Taenalapan was no more than a town, a small town at that, not a city at all. It wasn’t till some years ago that I realized how big it had grown.’ Grallezar leaned forward, all urgency. ‘It’s the tribes, Dalla. Some thousands of them settled in Taenalapan about twenty years ago. They brought slaves to do the farming, and horses to trade, and bit by bit, they took the town over.’

  ‘Just like they did to your city.’

  ‘Yes. Now I wish I had told you.’ Grallezar paused and looked away, stark-eyed. ‘I wish your men had come and burned Taenalapan to the ground. If I had had the omen-gift, if I’d seen what would happen, I would have led my own city’s troops out and helped them.’ Grallezar’s voice quivered and nearly broke. ‘Too late now.’

  ‘Tell me something else,’ Dallandra said. ‘Why have your folk turned to Alshandra like this? Oh, I know that it’s a comfort, thinking you’ll go to some wonderful country when you die, and the rakzanir want lands to conquer, but surely that can’t be all.’

  ‘It isn’t, of course. Do you want the truth? It may pain you.’

  ‘There are a good many things in life that pain me. So far I’ve survived them all.’

  ‘Very well, then. Do you remember when we first met, all those years ago in Cerr Cawnen? My people then thought you were the children of the gods, and they were terrified of you and yours. Prince Dar made things worse by humiliating that rakzan, whatever his name was—I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Krag, Kraal, something like that. I do remember how your mother’s men kept kneeling to us. Your stepbrother Meer used to do that to me, too, no matter what I told him.’

  ‘Well, after that meeting in Cerr Cawnen, the truth spread fast. Yes, our people had done a horrible thing to yours, but you were mortals such as we, not gods, not favoured by the gods any more than we were. The Great Burning was a terrible burden of guilt, Dalla, a burden we carried for a thousand years. The priestesses had built all our rituals, our prayers, our sacrifices, around that guilt. And suddenly we threw the burden down.’

  Dallandra felt the hair on the back of her neck rise in a dweomer chill.

  ‘Ah,’ Grallezar continued, ‘You’re beginning to understand, aren’t you? I can tell by your shiver.’

  ‘Let me guess. The priestesses of the old gods looked like liars and fools.’

  ‘You’re precisely right. What had happened in the past all looked new again, and we began to remember how we had suffered, not at your hands, but from the Lijik Ganda.’

  ‘And now your people want revenge on them?’

  ‘Right again. Oh, the rakzanir have worked everyone up so cleverly about those old horrors. A thousand years old and more, those stories, but oh so useful! After the great revelation, we’d begun to call your people the Ancients rather than ‘children of the gods’. We all thought we should respect you, until the rakzanir saw that you stood in the way.’ Grallezar paused for a fanged smile. ‘And of course, they also saw that the way you were standing in happened to cross good grazing land. Suddenly we began hearing about Vandar’s spawn. Those so-called holy women—oh ye gods! Can’t they see how they’re being used? They talk about Alshandra’s love, but they’re nothing but weapons to the rakzanir.’

  The dweomer-chill deepened around Dallandra so badly that she shivered. ‘I’m going to have to tell Cal all of this,’ she said. ‘I hope you realize that.’

  ‘Why do you think I’m telling you? I couldn’t bring myself to tell him or that sly little Lijik prince, but you can.’ Her smile vanished. ‘And that’s another reason why I couldn’t tell you about Braemel. I knew where your loyalties lay. I never dreamt that mine would some
day lie with yours.’

  Again, grief trembled in Grallezar’s outspread hands. In silence she waited for Dallandra’s judgment. As Dallandra thought back over the last ten years or so, she could remember all the times that Grallezar had seemed distant, evasive, but she could also remember hints that something might be wrong, little clues and allusions that Dalla might have followed up, might have asked her to clarify, if only she had realized how important they were, as if her friend were hoping that she’d demand the truth.

  ‘Well, the past is past,’ Dallandra said at last. ‘You’re forgiven.’

  Grallezar let out her breath with a sharp sigh. ‘Thank you.’

  They clasped hands, but both found it too hard to smile.

  ‘What now?’ Grallezar said. ‘For me, I mean. My men want to fight in your army, but I’m too old. My hair gets more brown in it every time I let it grow. I know very little healing lore, but surely there’s work I can do. I’m willing to tend your horses, as I told the prince.’

  ‘That will hardly be necessary.’

  ‘But if naught else, you’ll have to let me do any lifting and hauling of heavy things.’

  ‘Um, why?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Grallezar sniffed the air, thought for a moment, sniffed again, then nodded as if affirming something to herself. ‘You’re pregnant.’

  ‘Oh no! Not now! Oh no no no!’

  ‘The goddesses are never convenient, are they?’

  ‘Apparently not! I can’t think of a worst time. Here, please, don’t tell anyone, will you? Cal will try to send me away, and I’ve absolutely got to be here for a great many reasons.’

  ‘Very well.’ Grallezar gave her a tentative smile. ‘Your men really don’t know their place, do they?’

  Much to her surprise, Dallandra found she could laugh, and Grallezar joined her.

  ‘You’re not far along,’ Grallezar paused for another sniff. ‘It’s too early to tell whether it’s male or female. How long do your folk carry your babies?’