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‘Well, it’s not like you’re the only man or woman either to kick like a balky horse during training. It’s a common enough stage in the apprenticeship, especially among the lads.’
Neb winced, his shoulders a little high, as if he expected a blow. ‘Common, is it?’ His voice choked on the words.
‘Very, actually.’ Dallandra felt genuinely sorry for his humiliation, but he’d earned every moment of it. ‘I take it you’re no longer so confused. Your decision about becoming a healer who incorporates dweomer into his work is a truly good one.’
At that he looked up again.
‘Now, I’m a healer, certainly,’ Dallandra continued, ‘but it’s only a craft for me. You’re hoping to try somewhat new.’
‘Hoping is about right. I don’t know if I can or not.’
‘No more do I, but I wager you’ll succeed. At this stage you’ve got to learn both crafts down to the last jot.’
‘I know that now.’ Neb’s voice rang with sincerity. ‘And I promise you that I’ll gather every scrap of knowledge that I possibly can.’
‘Good! That’s all anyone can ask of you. Now we’d both best clean up. I’ve got gore all over my hands, and your tunic is a fearsome sight.’
Dallandra had just finished washing her blood-stained hands in a bucket of water when one of the Cerr Cawnen men walked over, another beefy blond with narrow blue eyes, a common type among the Rhiddaer men, who were descended from the northern tribes of ‘Old Ones’, as the original inhabitants of the Deverrian lands used to be known. This particular fellow introduced himself as Richt, the caravan master.
‘You do have all my thanks, Wise One,’ he said, ‘for the aid you and your people do give me and my men. I would gift you with somewhat of dwarven work. It be a trinket I did trade for in Lin Serr.’ From the pocket of his brigga he brought out a leather pouch.
‘I don’t need any payment, truly,’ Dallandra began, then stopped when he shook a pendant out of the pouch onto his broad palm. ‘That’s very beautiful.’
‘As you are, and I would beg you to take it.’
The pendant hung by a loop from a fine silver chain. Two silver dragons twined around a circle of gems, set in silver. The jeweller had arranged three petal-shaped slices of moonstone and three of turquoise around a central sapphire.
‘Are you sure you want to part with this?’ Dallandra said.
‘I be sure that I wish you to have it.’ Richt smiled, a little shyly.
‘Then you have my profound thanks.’
When Dallandra held out her hand, he passed the pendant over, then bobbed his head in respect and walked away. The more she studied the pendant, the happier she was that she’d accepted the gift. Rarely did she like jewellery enough to wear any of it, but this particular piece made her think of the moon and its magical tides. A bevy of sprites materialized in the air and hovered close to look at it. She could hear their little cries of delight, a sound much like the rustling of fine silks.
‘Who gave you that?’ a normal elven voice said.
Dallandra looked up to see Calonderiel watching her with his arms crossed over his chest.
‘The caravan master,’ she said. ‘In thanks for tending his wounded men. He told me it’s dwarven work.’
‘Oh.’ Cal relaxed with a smile. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Thus, it suits you.’
‘Shall I put it on?’
‘Please do.’
The pendant hung just below Dallandra’s collarbone. As it touched the magical nexus at that spot, she felt emanations.
‘There’s dweomer on this piece,’ she said to Cal. ‘I’m not sure what, though. I’ll have to show it to Val later.’
‘Maybe you’d better show it to her now. Are you sure it’s safe to wear it?’
‘Yes, actually. Cal, you sound so worried.’
‘I keep thinking about the spell over Rori.’ He paused, glancing away, biting his lower lip. ‘And how dangerous it’s going to be to lift. I’ve got suspicious of everything dweomer, I guess.’
‘Reversing the spell may not be dangerous at all. We don’t know that.’
Cal did his best to smile. ‘If it turns out to be dangerous, then,’ he said, ‘warn me.’
‘I will, I promise. I’ve been thinking about what happened to Evandar. He wasn’t incarnate, don’t forget, which meant there was nothing truly solid about him. He could appear to have a body, but at root he was nothing but pure spirit, pure vital force. After he drained himself of most of that power, there was nothing left for him to fall back on, as it were.’
‘Ah.’ Cal paused, visibly thinking this through. ‘I do see what you mean. But I’ve heard you talk of the – what did you call that? the rule of compensation or suchlike.’
‘The law of compensation, yes. Any great pouring out of dweomer force is going to have an equal reaction of some kind. The problem is knowing what it will be.’ Dallandra smiled briefly. ‘I may never be able to fly in my own bird form again. That’s my best guess.’
‘You’re willing to do that?’
‘Flying comes in handy, but it doesn’t mean a great deal to me any more. I have you, I have our child, and the ground seems like a very pleasant place to be.’
He smiled so softly, so warmly, that she felt as if she’d worked some mighty act of magic.
‘I do love you,’ he said. ‘I’m terrified of losing you.’
‘Don’t worry, and don’t forget, I’ll have a great deal of help – Val, Grallezar, Branna, and for all I know, the lass on Haen Marn knows enough to take part in whatever the ritual is.’
‘That’s right! I tend to forget about them. It’s not like you’ll be fighting this battle by yourself.’
Dallandra smiled and said nothing more. At the very beginning of a ritual she always asked that any harm it might evoke would fall upon her alone, but that Cal didn’t need to know.
‘I’m not just worrying for my own sake and for Dari’s,’ Cal went on. ‘If you –’ he hesitated briefly ‘– went away, what would happen to the changelings?’
‘There are other dweomer workers. Look at Sidro. She’s amazingly patient with those poor little souls, much more than I can be.’
‘True.’ He suddenly smiled. ‘Oh very well, I’m truly worried if I can forget things like that. I’ll do my best to stop, but I make no promises.’
Richt and his gift reminded Dallandra that she had an extremely unpleasant task ahead of her, telling her fellow dweomermaster in Cerr Cawnen about the fate of the caravan. As she went to her tent for privacy, she wondered if Niffa might already know, since Niffa had lost a great-nephew in that attack. The plight of bloodkin had a way of reaching a dweomermaster’s mind. Indeed, as soon as Dallandra contacted her, she could feel Niffa’s grief, as strong as a drench of sudden rain.
‘My heart aches for your loss,’ Dallandra said.
‘My thanks,’ Niffa said. ‘Jahdo’s the one who’s suffering the more, alas. Aethel was always his favourite grandchild.’
Dallandra let a wordless sympathy flood out from her mind. Niffa’s image, floating in a shaft of dusty sunlight, displayed tears in her dark eyes. Her pale silver hair hung dishevelled around her face, a sign of mourning.
‘The men who’ve survived this long are likely to live,’ Dallandra said. ‘I just tended them and spoke with Richt. They won’t be able to get back on the road for some while, though.’
‘My thanks for the telling. With my mind so troubled, it’s been a hard task to focus upon their images and read such things from them.’
‘No doubt! Here, I’ll let you go now. I’ll contact you again to let you know how they’re faring.’
Niffa managed a faint smile, then broke the link between them.
Just as Dallandra got up to leave, Sidro brought her the baby to nurse. They sat together, discussing the changeling children, until little Dari fell asleep. Dallandra settled the baby in the leather sling-cradle hanging in the curve of the tent wall. Westfolk infants sleep more or less upright, settled on beds of fresh-pulled grass, rather than wearing swaddling bands as we Deverry folk wrap our babies.
‘I was just going to talk with Valandario,’ Dallandra said. ‘Do you think you could watch the baby for me?’
‘Gladly, Wise One,’ Sidro said. ‘I’ll take her with me to my tent, if that pleases you.’
‘It does, and my thanks. Ah, here’s Val now! I thought she might have heard me thinking about her.’
Val had, indeed. After Sidro left them, they spoke in Elvish. Valandario exclaimed over the pendant when Dallandra handed it to her, rubbed it between her fingers, and pronounced the dweomer upon it safe enough to wear.
‘Someone’s turned it into a talisman to attract good health, is all.’ Val handed it back. ‘Huh, and the dwarves claim they don’t believe in dweomer!’
‘Probably one of the women did the enchanting.’
‘I suppose so.’ Valandario settled herself on a leather cushion. ‘I’ve been thinking about the dragon book, and I don’t understand how Evandar could have written it. He couldn’t read and write, could he?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘What? The subject never came up in all those hundreds of years?’
‘There’s something you don’t understand. Hundreds of years passed in this world, yes. For me it was only a couple of long summers with barely a winter in between. That first time when I went to Evandar’s country, I thought I’d spent perhaps a fortnight away.’
Valandario pursed her lips as if she were clamping them shut.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ Dallandra went on.
‘Of course I do.’ Val stayed silent for a moment more, then let the words burst out. ‘But how could you love a man who’d trick you that way? He trapped you in his little world, and by the Star Goddesses themselves, the grief he caused in this one!’
‘Tricked me?’ Dallandra found that words had deserted her. She sat down opposite Val, who apparently mistook her silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ Val said. ‘A thousand apologies.’
‘No, no, no need.’ Dallandra managed to find a few words. ‘I’d never – I don’t think I ever thought of it – of him – that way before.’
‘As what? A trickster? He had to be the consummate trickster, the absolute king of them all, from everything I know about him. This book – it’s another of his tricks, isn’t it? Like the rose ring and the black crystal. I hope it’s the last of the bad lot.’
‘Well, so do I.’
The silence hung there, icy in the pale silver light. Abruptly Val flung one hand in the air. The dweomer light above them changed to a warmer gold.
‘About the book,’ Val said. ‘So Evandar could have written it.’
‘Yes, perhaps he might have.’ Dallandra let out her breath in a long sigh. ‘Though it seems like it would have taken a long time, just from its size, I mean, and he had so little patience.’
Valandario quirked an eyebrow. Dallandra kept silent.
‘What about the archives in the Southern Isles?’ Val went on. ‘Could it be a copy of something there?’
‘I had hopes that way, but no,’ Dallandra said. ‘Meranaldar was a librarian there, you know, and he knew every single volume that survived the Great Burning. Before he left last autumn, I asked him about the book that Ebañy saw in the crystal. He didn’t recognize it, and yes, he remembered all the covers of the books, too.’
‘He would.’ Valandario grinned at her. ‘But boring or not, he was a useful sort of man to know. You were already wondering, last summer, if the book contained dragon lore, too.’
‘So I was. He told me that the only dragon lore they had was the occasional comment or passage in books about other things.’
‘Didn’t you say that Jill had books from the Southern Isles?’
‘Yes, and when she died, Evandar reclaimed them. Meranaldar told me that he brought them back to the archive. I’ve got her other books, and the only dragon lore in them is what she wrote in the margins.’
‘So much for that, then. Now, what about Laz’s book, his copy of the Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll? It has such a similar cover. Sidro told me that he bought it already bound but with blank pages up in Taenbalapan. Do you suppose the dragon book came from there, too?’
‘A very good point.’ Dallandra rose and began to pace back and forth in the tent. ‘I wonder if Evandar saw the other one there and acquired it somehow.’
‘Stole it, you mean.’ Valandario got up and joined her.
Dallandra swirled around to face her and set her hands on her hips. Val’s expression revealed only a studied neutrality. She’s right, Dallandra thought. He really was an awful thief. She wasn’t quite ready to admit it aloud.
‘Anyway, to return to the book.’ Val’s expression changed to narrow-eyed disgust. ‘I suppose we’d better talk with Laz Moj about it.’
‘You suppose? Val, you look like you just bit into turned meat.’
‘He’s someone else I have to forgive.’ Valandario forced out a brittle little smile. ‘After Jav’s murder, Aderyn and Nevyn spent a long time trying to piece together what had happened. A very long time, truly. Things didn’t fall into place till after the war where Loddlaen died.’
I was still gone then, Dallandra thought. The guilt bit deep. If she’d not gone off with Evandar, how different things might have been!
‘It wasn’t till then,’ Val continued, ‘that they realized Alastyr lay behind the murder and the war both.’
‘Rori told me that Laz was once Alastyr.’
‘Exactly, and I actually saw him when he was only a lad, a nasty little bit of work named Tirro. He grew up to be a merchant, and it was his ship that carried –’ She paused briefly ‘– the crystal away, which is why no one could scry for it. They would have been out on the open sea by the time I tried to find them.’
She means the crystal and Loddlaen, Dallandra thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I’ll go speak with Laz, but there’s no reason you need to come along.’
‘Thank you. I was hoping you’d say that.’ She hesitated again, then glanced away as if she’d decided not to say some painful thing.
‘What is it, Val? You might as well say it.’
‘Why couldn’t Evandar have just told you about the book on Haen Marn?’ Val’s words floated on a bitter tide. ‘Why all this secrecy and glittering crystals and the like? If that wretched crystal hadn’t existed, Loddlaen wouldn’t have coveted it. Yes, I know that sounds stupid, but he wanted it enough to kill for it. Why all the –’ She stopped, breathing hard. ‘My apologies.’
Dallandra could think of a dozen reasons why, but faced with Val’s undying grief, she found them shallow, stupid, pointless – rationalizations, not reasons. She sighed and said the simple truth, ‘I don’t know why, Val. I truly don’t.’
‘Oh.’ Val paused for a long cold moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you don’t.’ She got up and left the tent.
Dallandra followed her, but she left Val her privacy, and instead went looking for Grallezar. The royal alar spread out along a sizeable stream, tents on one bank, horse herds and sheep flocks on the other. Against the rich green of the grass, the freshly painted designs on the tents gleamed in the summer sun as if the dull leather had been beaded and bejewelled. Children and puppies chased each other among the tents, followed by swarms of Wildfolk, crystalline sprites in the air, warty grey and green gnomes on the ground. Now and then this crazed parade ran into an adult who, nearly toppled, yelled imprecations upon them all as they raced on past.
Dallandra found her fellow dweomermaster standing on the edge of the camp well away from the children’s chaos. She was talking with a Gel da’Thae man who wore a filthy grey shirt and trousers, the remnants of a regimental uniform, Dallandra assumed. Indeed, Grallezar introduced him as Drav, an officer in one of Braemel’s old cavalry troops.
