The Silver Mage (29 page)

L
az turned away rather than watch Dallandra leave. Had there been anything near him to kick but grass, he would have sent it flying.
Ye gods! Here I am, riding all over the wretched Northlands to do the bidding of another woman who doesn’t want me!
Sidro, on the other hand—he calmed himself with a couple of deep breaths. If he returned the dragon book to Dallandra, wouldn’t Sidro find that impressive? Perhaps, assuming she’d be at Haen Marn to see his triumph, which was not, he told himself, very likely.

But a sudden thought soothed his mood. If he got the book, why should he just hand it over? He could bargain with it, use it as a lever to pry Sidro out of the elven camp. He could picture himself triumphant, knew exactly what he’d say: Send Sidro over here, and I’ll give
her
the book.

In a private talk with Sidro, somewhere away from all the others, he could use every weapon he possessed in the battle to get her back. If, of course, he could get the book in the first place. And if she happened to go to Haen Marn with Dallandra for the working. With a long sigh for the injustice of everything, he returned to his tent to tell Faharn that they’d be leaving on the morrow.

“Assuming you want to leave with me, that is,” Laz said. “You can stay with the Westfolk if you want. There’s no use in both of us riding off on what most likely will turn out to be a fool’s errand. Besides, it could turn dangerous. Wars often do.”

“Oh, I’ll stick with you,” Faharn said. “The Westfolk—all that noise and all those children and dogs running around—I don’t know why, but they put me on edge.”

“Very well, then, but you’ve been warned.” Laz was only making a jest, but his words made a ripple of cold run down his back. An omen? He doubted it, since they’d be joining a large army and as mere translators would stay behind the lines during any sort of fighting. Faharn merely smiled, unalarmed.

They would travel back with the messengers, four solid Deverry men all wearing tabards embroidered with Prince Voran’s wyvern. Rhidderc, their leader, a dark-haired fellow with a scar running across one cheek, looked Laz over with a cold eye.

“A scribe, are you?” he said.

“I am,” Laz said, “and a bit more than that, considering I can read and write in three languages.”

Rhidderc made a snorting noise that might have meant anything. He jerked a thumb in Faharn’s direction. “Who’s this?”

“My apprentice.”

“And just why are you two willing to help your enemies? He’s a full-blood Horsekin by the look of him.”

“He’s Gel da’Thae, not Horsekin. The Alshandra people are my enemies, too.” Laz held out his maimed hands. “Look what they did to me, and all because I refused to worship their false goddess.”

Rhidderc’s suspicion disappeared. He whistled under his breath. “Must not have been a pleasant afternoon’s work.”

“Most unpleasant.” Laz arranged a thin, cold smile. “And healing them was almost worse. The herbwoman had to keep cracking open the burns so the fingers wouldn’t fuse completely. She could only save a couple as it was.”

“You have my sympathy.” Rhidderc winced sharply. “Hurts to think about, like. Well and good, then, lad. My apologies for not trusting you.”

“It’s most understandable. Don’t let it trouble your heart. By the by, where exactly are we going? Is the prince still in Cerrgonney?”

“He was when we left, but we’re to meet him elsewhere. There’s an attainted dun that he’s handing over to the Mountain Folk. It’s north of Cengarn. Know where that is?”

“I do. Huh. The dun must be near Lin Serr, then.”

“A fair bit south of it, if you mean the Mountain Folk’s town, but in that general direction. Now, get yourself ready to ride. We need to get back on the road.”

They were on the verge of leaving when Neb brought Rhidderc messages in silver tubes from Prince Daralanteriel and Exalted Mother Grallezar. A Westfolk archer followed, leading a packhorse, laden with supplies for the journey, including a set of inks and pabrus in case Laz needed to act the scribe as well as translator. Faharn took the horse from the archer and led it away. Neb waited till he’d gotten out of earshot before he spoke.

“The inks and such are from Salamander,” Neb said.

“Then thank him most heartily for me, will you?” Laz said.

“I will. And I owe you some thanks as well, for taking me and my brother to my uncle’s. It’s only been a couple of summers, but so much has happened, and I fear me I simply forgot to thank you.”

“Most welcome, I’m sure. Will you forgive me for lying to you? It’s not just the name. I never was a priest of Bel, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now.”

“I have.” Neb paused for a brief smile. “And truly, I do understand why you’d not want to admit to being Gel da’Thae and all that. But why a priest?”

“Sheer chance. I met an actual priest of Bel upon the road, and for a while we traveled together. Alas, he grew very ill and died just before we reached your city. So I took his tunic and appurtenances and—what’s so wrong?”

Neb’s face had turned dead-white. “Ill with what?” His voice came out as a rasp.

“Oh, ye gods!” Laz suddenly understood. “With some sort of ghastly flux of the bowels, in truth, that drained him, and a fever came with it. I was sure he’d eaten spoiled food. He never ate what I did, because ordinary food wasn’t pure enough for him. Whilst I feared for my life at first, I never fell ill myself, so I assumed it couldn’t be an actual sickness.”

“I see.” Neb’s color began to return to normal. “Well, I have to assume the same. He must have eaten somewhat that had turned or suchlike. Where did you bury him?”

“I didn’t. I took his body to the temple of Bel just outside your town, the one on that little hill on the other side of the river. When he was dying, he begged me to do that, so he could have the proper prayers said over him.”

“No doubt. The priests hold their prayers in high esteem.”

“They buried him among those trees on the hills.”

“And then you came to town for the market fair?”

“I did. The temple sent a delegation, like, to bless things.”

“So they buried him on the hill.” Neb’s voice trailed away. “I wonder . . .”

“What?”

“Well, when it rained, the runoff from that hill flowed into the river upstream from the town. That river’s where a lot of us got our water.” He paused, chewing his lower lip in thought. “But you never felt ill yourself?”

“Only queasy at the poor fellow’s symptoms. You might ask Dallandra about all this.” Laz felt a trace of dweomer cold run down his back. “Somewhat tells me it might be important.”

“I’ll do that. My thanks.”

Neb strode off, leaving Laz profoundly uneasy. At the time, he’d been convinced that Tirn the priest’s special food, kept too long in his saddlebags, had been the cause of his illness. But what if it hadn’t been? Could the young priest’s corpse have been the source of the corrupted humors that had ravaged Trev Hael?
May the gods forgive me!
Laz thought.
I should have buried him by the road and been done with him!
Yet he himself hadn’t fallen ill.
And, ye gods, I even wore his clothes!
He could comfort himself with that thought, that if anyone should have been a victim of spreading corruption, it would have been him.

“Ready to ride, scribe?” Rhidderc put a welcome end to his thoughts.

“I am. Let’s get on our way.”

As they rode out, following the track the messengers had left through the high grass, Laz glanced back for one last look at the Westfolk camp. Somewhere among those tents were Sidro and Pir. He wondered if he’d ever see her again, and the wondering wrung his heart.

B
ranna stood at the edge of the camp and watched Elessario feeding the changelings. Although, at some forty years old, Elessi still had the mind of a child, she was in most respects an ordinary child, who loved her mother, made friends, listened carefully when someone spoke to her, and made much loved pets out of the alar’s dogs—unlike the changelings. As soon as they were old enough to run, speak a few words, and feed themselves, they wanted nothing more than to live apart and never be touched by anyone again.

Yet had they left the alar, they would have starved, died from accidents in the wilderness, or even been eaten by the wild animals that terrified them far more than they terrified ordinary children. The older ones, some eight souls in all, trailed along with the alar in a small crowd of their own kind, surrounded always by an absolute horde of Wildfolk. Only Elessi could speak to them, and she was the only person they would answer. “Princess,” they called her, those of them who had chosen to learn to speak.

Twice a day Elessi gathered food from everyone in the camp and took it out into the grass. The changelings would come running and gather around her to grab handfuls from the various baskets she carried. As they sat in the grass they looked like ordinary elven children, pale-haired with beautiful faces if always a bit dirty, and huge cat-slit eyes, but they wore odd scraps of clothing, most of it torn and stained. Their parents had given them all decent clothing only to see them rip it, twist it, rub grass and mud or even blood upon it in oddly misshapen decorations. Branna had never seen any of them smile.

That morning Elessi had invited Branna to come with her. “They should know you,” Elessi told her. “If I am sick, will you feed them?”

“I will,” Branna said. “Will they take the food from me?”

“If I say so. So they have to know you.”

While they ate, the children kept glancing Branna’s way. The four girls looked frightened, three of the boys looked angry, but the fourth boy stared out into space as if she didn’t exist. As they walked back to camp with the empty baskets, Elessi commented on it.

“That was bad,” she said. “Basbar wouldn’t look at you.”

“His name is Basbar?”

“He says so.” Elessi shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything, but names don’t have to mean anything, do they?”

“They don’t, no. If one of the changelings gets sick, do you think they’d let Neb help them?”

“They wouldn’t, not yet.” Elessi considered this with a small frown. “They need to know Neb, too.”

“I’ll ask him if he’d like to come with you next time.”

“My thanks.” Elessi grinned at her. “I’d like that.”

Neb was more than willing to let the changelings grow accustomed to him. As he remarked to Branna, they all had hard lives ahead of them.

“What’s going to happen when they grow up?” he said. “And have children of their own?”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I wonder if the children will all be changelings, too.”

“It seems likely. I’ll discuss this with Dallandra.” Neb paused, thinking. “I should have asked Laz if the Gel da’Thae ever give birth to children like this.”

“Laz is gone?”

“Off to hunt for the dragon book.”

“Did you thank him before he left?” She laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I did.” He turned his head and kissed her fingers. “You were right. I needed to do that.”

“That gladdens my heart to hear.”

“I knew it would. Ye gods, you nagged me enough about it!”

They shared a laugh.

Branna had entered their tent to find Neb gathering up his herbal supplies. The two gnomes, the gray and the yellow, were attempting to help him, but their aid soon devolved into throwing packets of herbs at one another. Branna banished them back to the etheric, then picked up the packets and returned them to Neb’s sack of medicinals.

Since she, too, was studying herbcraft, though not as intensely as he, Branna joined him when he went to the tent where Dallandra had set up her improvised surgery. Most of the injured men had healed enough by then to get outside to the sunlight, but Hound still lay on his blankets. When they knelt down next to him, he woke, yawning, and turned his head to look at them.

“How’s the arm?” Neb said.

“It aches,” Hound said, “and it’s hot and swollen.”

Neb swore under his breath then began to unwrap the bandages from the wound. As soon as he got them off, Branna could smell the corrupted humors.

“It’s gone septic,” Neb said. “Well, we’ll have to do somewhat about that.”

“Don’t cut off my arm!” Hound tried to sit up then fell back, shivering with fear. “Ye gods, how can I live—”

“Hush now!” Branna laid a hand on his forehead. “That’s the last resort, and there are lots of things we can do first to treat it.”

“Indeed,” Neb said. “Branna, will you start a fire over on the hearthstone? I’ll need hot water. I—” He abruptly stopped speaking and stared at the filthy bandage in his hand. “Ye gods!” he whispered. “There’s some live thing on this.”

Branna looked, saw nothing but pus and old blood, then opened her sight. Sure enough, the matter on the bandage had an aura, only a faint reddish glow, but a sign of life nonetheless.

She studied the wound, a deep gash in pale flesh, sticky and green with dead matter. Even if the wound had been giving off some sort of emanation, Hound’s own aura glimmered bright enough to blot it out.