Katharine Kerr - The Spirit Stone

‘I’d hate it even more. Good hunting, and I’ll see you when we join up with Daralanteriel’s army.’

Salamander climbed partway down the ladder, then shut the trap door. Just as he reached the safety of the corridor below, he heard her fly off in a great rush of wings like drumbeats.

Since his chamber was stifling in the summer heat, Salamander decided to take a turn around the ward in the cooler air before he tried to sleep. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he discovered that half the dun was doing the same thing, noble-born as well as commoners. Bright points of lantern light danced around the dark ward and glittered here and there up on the catwalks. He could hear men’s cajoling voices, speaking softly, and the giggling of serving lasses in return.

Off to one side Gerran stood talking with Lady Solla. In the light of the lantern he carried, his copper-red hair gleamed like the metal itself. Neb and Branna were strolling along arm-in-arm with Adranna’s two children trailing after. A crowd of Wildfolk danced around them, led by Branna’s skinny grey gnome, and Neb’s fat yellow one. A gaggle of crystalline sprites flew above. When Salamander stopped to greet them, Trenni gave him a pleasant ‘good evening’, but Matto turned his head away and ostentatiously spit on the cobbles. The Wildfolk vanished.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Branna said firmly. ‘Trenni, you too. It’s time for bed.’

She grabbed a child by the arm with each hand and hurried them into the broch. Neb, however, lingered outside with Salamander. They wandered around the back of the broch and stood in a patch of candlelight falling through a window.

‘Do you think that Matto will ever forgive me?’ Salamander said. ‘I’m afraid I had a great deal to do with his father’s death.’

‘I’m not so sure it’s that,’ Neb said. ‘More like, he blames you for losing him his home and making his mother so unhappy. Honelg lost every bit of the lad’s loyalty when he tried to kill him. Trenni outright hated her father, and I think me our Matto’s coming round to her way of thinking.’

‘I see. That’s truly sad in its own way.’

‘It is. It came as a shock to me. And yet, it’s odd, but Matto still feels he should hate you and Gerran, too, for the killing of his father.’ Neb shook his head. ‘I doubt if I’ll ever truly understand the noble-born.

‘Me either. On the other hand, though my own father and I have our difficulties, if someone killed him, I’d feel the need to bring them to the prince’s justice at the very least.’

‘My father and I never had any difficulties. I miss him still, but half the people in our town died from that plague. I can’t consider myself singled out for grief or suchlike.’

‘Truly. A natural affliction knows neither feud nor honour.’

‘Of course, the local priests denied that it was any such thing. They told us that Great Bel was angry. They wanted us to find white horses for sacrifice.’

‘If it happens again, we know where to find white cows – or won’t cattle do?’

‘They won’t. Bel demands horses, but – here, wait!’ Neb held up one hand. ‘I just thought of somewhat. I –’ He hesitated, visibly thinking.

Salamander held his tongue. Neb’s expression of intense concentration had made him seem suddenly older, far stronger. More Nevyn-like , Salamander thought. I wonder if a memory’s trying to rise?

‘That plague,’ Neb said slowly. ‘What if it wasn’t Bel’s doing nor a natural thing? At the time, I didn’t know one cursed thing about the Westfolk and their history. I didn’t know about dark dweomer, either. But I do now, and I wonder if someone brought sickness to town, like. It happened so suddenly, and the weather was warm. There’d been a big market fair in town, and there were a goodly number of strangers come for it.’

‘I wonder, too. How do the Westfolk come into it?’

‘They don’t, exactly, but the ancient plague on the Horsekin does. From what you’ve told me, it gripped their bowels and caused the same kind of bloody flux as –’ Neb paused to swallow heavily, summoning courage, ‘as I saw. Everything about it sounds the same. If some of it still lurked in that Horsekin city you told me about, and if someone had been there and caught it, and then come to Trev Hael for some reason, well?’

‘Indeed! I’m going to tell Dalla about this idea of yours.’

‘Good. Now, the town herbwoman decided that since it produced an excess of the watery humour, the fiery humour must be its natural enemy. So she had everyone roasting their food and boiling their well water. When someone died, we burned their blankets and clothing, too. And you know, it did seem to stop the spread of it.’

‘That’s most interesting. I’ll tell Dalla that, too.’

‘It was a horrible time.’ Neb shuddered and looked away. ‘I’ve not wanted to think about it before this, but truly, it’s important, isn’t it? I’ve got this feeling that I need to remember it. Huh, you know, when Clae and I were orphaned, priests of Bel brought us west. They were going to a temple north of Cengarn, but one of them was willing to take us as far as the Great West Road first. There’s only one temple north of Cengarn that I know of.’

‘Ye gods!’ Salamander’s voice caught. He coughed and spat onto the ground. ‘My apologies, but hearing you say that seems to have clotted my throat right up with omens.’

Salamander hurried up to the privacy of his chamber. He sat on the wide ledge of the unglazed window and looked out at the points of lantern light gleaming in the ward far below. When he thought of Dallandra, her image built up quickly in his mind. She was apparently sitting under a dweomer light of her own making, because a cool silver glow fell across her. With her ash-blonde hair and steel-grey eyes, she seemed made of pure silver like a creature of the moon’s sphere.

While Salamander told her Neb’s insights about the plague, he could feel her concern.

‘I’m glad you told me this right away,’ she said. ‘If it does come from the Horsekin cities, I hope they don’t realize it. They could use it as a weapon against us.’

For a moment Salamander felt as if the solid stone had moved under him. ‘Ye gods,’ he said. ‘Just – oh ye gods!’

‘There’s a good chance it doesn’t, though,’ Dallandra went on. ‘If the plague were still somehow alive there in the northern cities, why haven’t the Gel da’ Thae come down with it? Why didn’t I get it, come to think of it, when I visited Zatcheka and Grallezar in Braemel, all those years ago?’

‘A most soothing and apposite point, oh princess of powers perilous. Deverry towns aren’t known for their cleanliness. Maybe it’s just something that Neb’s birthplace brewed up in its gutters.’

‘That seems more probable.’Yet Dallandra sounded doubtful. ‘Rinbaladelan’s the only one of the ruined cities that’s likely to still have pestilence. The plague began there. I’ve been told that they had underground cisterns for fresh water. Moist, dark places usually do breed one kind of accidental humour or another. It’s the slime that accretes, you see.’

‘If you say so.’ Salamander knew nothing about medicine. The thought of moist, dark slimes made him profoundly glad of it, too. ‘What about that priest who brought Neb to his late and lamented uncle’s farm?’

‘What about him? Don’t priests of Bel travel about the kingdom all the time?’

‘Yes, they do. Somehow I had the odd feeling that he and the pestilence had some connection. Yet no one in the temple near Honelg’s dun was suffering from it.’

‘That’s true, nor any of their farmers, either. And it’s not likely that they’d have been in one of the Horsekin towns, is it?’