very good point.’ With a sigh Val wrapped the black stone up again in the shirt. ‘Well, I’ll keep it for a few days at least, to study its emanations. Evandar’s little gifts – by the Black Sun, how much trouble they’ve caused! The rose ring, this crystal, and now that wretched book.’
Some words they had, for dealing with those, either spiritfolk or flesh-folk, who knew Elvish words, but among themselves, the spirits of the dragon book used shape and colour to convey what thoughts they needed to share. Some leapt up in long iceblue lines, others agreed in a dim blue glow: danger, terrible danger, despite the smothering dark around the book they guarded.
Evandar, where is Evandar? They asked each other repeatedly by creating images of his various shapes, flashing like lightning in the dark. They summoned their lords and petitioned them. They brazenly asked their king, when at last he deigned to notice them. Where is the spirit known as Evandar?
Answers never came. No one knew.
‘You know, it’s odd,’ Branna said, ‘but I keep thinking about the dragon book. I wonder if we’ll ever find it?’
‘I do hope so,’ Grallezar said. ‘Without it, I doubt me we can ever turn the silver wyrm back into his true form.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that, too. Since dragons have some kind of instinct for dweomer, couldn’t we just teach him how to transform himself?’
‘After many a long year, mayhap. And mayhap the turning would fail and kill him, too.’ Grallezar sucked a thoughtful fang. ‘Did Dalla ever tell you how Evandar worked the dweomer?’
‘She did. He made some kind of dragon-shaped mould out of astral substance and wound it round Rhodry. Then the physical matter poured into it.’
‘Just so. And here be the crux of the thing. The turning itself may well be simple enough, once we find the key. But what then do we do with the astral substance that did make the mould? It be heavily charged with dweomer – twice so charged, once we free it from the man inside. I doubt me if a simple touch of a pentagram will turn it harmless and send it on its way.’
‘Oh. I’d not thought of that.’
‘The problem be a bit much for an apprentice, truly. I know you be eager to help with this working, but dealing with that dragon simulacrum had best be left to me and Dalla. Other work will come your way.’
‘Very well, then. Of course I’ll do as you say.’
Grallezar smiled briefly. ‘It gladdens my heart to see you listen to your master in the craft.’
‘Well, after what nearly happened to Neb –’
‘Indeed. At least some good did come of it, since you did take the lesson to heart.’
‘I have. I promise. But it’s a bit more than just my wanting to help with the working when it comes. I feel like I have to do this for some reason I don’t understand. I mean, I know Jill wanted to spare him this wyrd, but it seems like there’s more to it than that.’
‘Indeed?’ Grallezar paused to study her face for a moment. ‘That be a good theme for your meditations, then. See what symbols rise around your thoughts, and we shall discuss them.’
‘Well and good. I’ll do that.’ She paused, glancing to one side, where she’d seen a flash of movement. Her grey gnome had appeared. He sat down cross-legged, imitating her, and began picking his nose. When she shook a finger at him, he vanished. Grallezar rolled her eyes at his antics, but she was smiling.
‘Now it be time to stop thinking of dragons and the like,’ Grallezar said. ‘Let me hear you recite the true names of the spirit lords of each sphere.’
With a sigh, Branna began the lesson. Thinking about the silver wyrm held a great deal more interest than all the memorization that dweomer entails, but she knew that the one was the key to the other.
Dallandra, however, cut that particular lesson short. Branna heard her calling Grallezar’s name in a voice brimming with excitement. With a sigh Grallezar got up and stuck her head out.
‘I don’t mean to interrupt,’ Dallandra was saying, ‘but –’
‘Do come in,’ Grallezar said. ‘Being as you’ve interrupted already.’
When Dallandra ducked under the tent flap and came in, she was smiling, her eyes gleaming with delight.
‘And what be all this?’ Grallezar said.
‘I’ve just had a talk with Laz,’ Dallandra said. ‘He’s told me about the true nature of Haen Marn, so my apologies –’
‘The interruption, it be as naught.’ Grallezar pointed at a cushion. ‘Sit you down and tell.’
‘I shall do exactly that.’ Dallandra flung her arms into the air and danced a few steps. ‘It bears on the dragon book, too. Neither of them really exist.’
‘Hah!’ Grallezar said. ‘So we did wonder.’ She glanced at Branna and laughed. ‘You do look dumbfounded utterly.’
‘I am,’ Branna said. ‘Or do you mean, they don’t exist on the physical plane like ordinary matter?’
‘Just that.’ Dallandra sat down on a cushion. ‘You learn fast.’
After he spent some futile days searching for Berwynna’s lost mule and the book it carried, Rori took a round-about route back to the royal alar. On his previous scouting trips, he’d seen parties of Horsekin raiders on the move. Somewhere they had to have a central force, most likely one that was travelling toward the new fort he’d seen a-building. The logical starting point for this central army lay near Taenbalapan and Braemel. Braemel, Bravelmelim as it was known in the old days, lay more west than north. He passed over fields and pastures tucked into the mountain valleys and terraces, green with crops, that climbed the lower hills like steps. Now and then he saw flocks of sheep as well as cows grazing in the mountain meadows. That first night he picked off a cow, in fact, for his dinner and found her fat and tasty.
In the morning he reached Braemel, a prosperous-looking place lying in a broad valley, a semi-circle of houses set along straight streets, with the river along one edge of the town and good stone walls surrounding it on the other three sides. A straggle of huts stood outside the west gate, but when he flew low enough, he could see that they were guard stations and barracks. His shadow, vast in the morning sun, swept across the road like an omen. Shouting, soldiers ran out to watch him as he spiralled higher, well out of arrow range, and flew on.
Tanbalapalim, to give it its ancient name, lay spread across three hills. A river cut through the town, entering and leaving through breaches in the outer walls. In the old days, two graceful bridges made of stone overlaid with different colours of marble had arched over the smooth-flowing water like twin rainbows. Although stubby stone piers still jutted from the river banks, the bands of marble had been scavenged for other projects. The Gel da’Thae had built new bridges of wood reinforced here and there with plain stone.
When Rori flew over the town, he saw only one wooden bridge still whole and the other, burned down to the water line. Fire had swept through the eastern sectors, leaving nothing standing but the occasional blackened stone wall. Ashes covered the ground in sweeps of grey. Had there been riots, he wondered, when the Gel da’Thae realized that their new Horsekin
