Katharine Kerr - The Silver Mage

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.

‘He does want to take his men away from Laz and join us,’ Grallezar said. ‘I did tell him that only the prince could decide such a thing.’

‘That’s very true,’ Dallandra said. ‘How many men are there?’

‘But four, and one of them wounded. Two others did die in the rescuing of that caravan.’

‘I can’t see, then, why Dar wouldn’t agree. By all means, take Drav to him. I think Cal’s over there, too. Could you ask Drav if Laz is going to come tell us about that crystal?’

The two Gel da’Thae conferred briefly. Drav rolled his dark eyes and swung one hand through the air, a gesture that Grallezar had often used when dismissing someone as a fool.

‘He tells me,’ Grallezar said in her dialect of Deverrian, ‘that Laz be in a fair foul mood over Sidro. He does walk around swearing and kicking at things that be in his way. So he knows not what Laz might or might not do.’

‘I see. Thank him for the information, will you? Then we can go talk with Dar.’

By then the royal alar had grown used to travelling with individuals of the race they’d always called Meradan, demons, now that they knew that these ‘demons’ were real flesh and blood, not some faceless horde but individuals who were capable of changing their minds and their allegiances. The prince was glad enough to have more highly trained warriors in his warband, even if these were Gel da’Thae.