Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

“That’s your ill luck. Do you want to add your right hand to the price you paid? Ah, I see you don’t. Just bring it out. Time’s short.”

When Gedryc handed over the enormous ruby, Nevyn cradled it in his palm. With his second sight he saw a faint crystalline pattern of force lines, the bound spirit within.

“My thanks,” Nevyn said. “I trust you’ll remember that honesty costs less than this sort of thing?”

“I will, indeed. Uh, I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is all about?”

“You’re quite right. I can’t. Good day, good smith.”

With the ruby clenched in his hand, Nevyn stalked out of the shop. Once outside, he paused beside his horses, gave a quick glance round, and saw that no one was nearby. He opened his hand and stared into the ruby. Unlike truly inanimate matter such as earth or leather, the crystalline structure of jewels gives them an extremely dim, extremely rudimentary consciousness, which can be influenced by a dweomer-master who’s done the necessary long years of training. This influence is a subtle thing, a matter of making the gem vibrate to a certain feeling, normally, and then release that feeling back to a human mind, as when a dweomerman makes a talisman of courage, for instance. Those who are highly trained can make the gem vibrate in exact sympathy with a certain elemental spirit, to the result that the gem sucks up the spirit and traps it within. Releasing the spirit again is usually a difficult process, but to Nevyn it was the work of a minute to persuade the gem to let its unwilling inhabitant go. He saw the lines of force in the ruby dim and wink out. All at once the gray gnome was clutching him by the legs and staring up, his face contorted with joy and gratitude.

“There you go, little brother,” Nevyn whispered. “Now, never go near that bad man again. Get back to Jill. She misses you.”

The gnome gave him one last hug and disappeared. Nevyn slipped the ruby into the pouch at his neck, then mounted his horse, caught the lead rope of the other, and rode out of town fast. Although he was low on food, he decided to wait to buy provisions, because he knew a place to get better than those Marcmwr offered.

As soon as he’d left the town far behind, Nevyn turned off the main road and guided his horse north, directly into the foothills. For several hours he threaded his way along narrow tracks through the pines while the hills grew steeper and rockier round him. At last he came to an outcropping of pale rock that towered over him in a sheer cliff some hundred feet high. At its base were enormous boulders, scattered as if by a giant hand. Nevyn dismounted and led his horses through them until he stood at the base of the cliff. Since it had been many years since last he’d passed this way, he studied the various ridges and furrows in the stone for some time until at last he found the right pattern and pressed it hard with the heel of his hand. Although he could hear nothing, he could imagine the enormous bell inside booming as it turned over. Then came a wait while he fretted. Finally he heard a scraping sound above and looked up to see a shutter of stone swing open, revealing a suspicious, bearded face.

“Tarko!” Nevyn hailed him. “I need to use your road, if your people will allow it.”

“And when have we ever denied anything to the Master of the Aethyr? Stand back a bit, my lord, and I’ll open the door.”

Nevyn got the horses out of the way, and Tarko disappeared back inside. In a few minutes pebbles began to bounce down; rock dust plumed like smoke on the cliff face. With a grinding rasp, an enormous door into the mountain swung open. A lantern in his hand, Tarko beckoned Nevyn inside. He was tall for a dwarf, about five feet, and even more heavily muscled than most of his folk. His gray beard was neatly trimmed close to his chin.

“Haven’t seen you in years, my lord,” he remarked as Nevyn coaxed the nervous horses into the tunnel. “In fact, we haven’t even been using this door much now that your folk are living so close by. You’re lucky, truly. A party of the lads went out hunting, and so I was here to let them in again.”

“You can’t know how grateful I am that you were. I need to reach Dun Hiraedd in a hurry fit for the Lord of Hell.”

“Well, the big road runs straight enough.”

So it did. In just twenty-five miles Nevyn would be free of the mountains, and the road would bring him out only thirty more from the town.

“These horses are going to be exhausted by the time I’m through,” Nevyn remarked.

“Leave them with us and take a pair of ours.”

“My thanks. Then I can ride all night, too.”

Nevyn mounted and, with a wave to Tarko, set off, the hoofbeats echoing under the high arched vault of the tunnel, lined with perfect blocks of stone and lighted by carefully cultivated phosphorescent fungi and mosses. Soon he would come to one of the great caverns where air shafts let in sunlight, and there he could buy enough food to see him on his way.

Because of the drowsy sound of the rain on the roof, Jill slept late that morning. When she woke, she lay in bed for a while and debated going down to the tavern room. She was in for a terrible day, she knew, one spent in a boredom that was full of dangers, rather like marching to war. In her mind she could still see the driven eyes of the stranger, threatening her. Finally she got up and dressed. She was just buckling her sword belt when the gnome appeared.

“Thanks be to every god!”

When she threw open her arms, he rushed to her, leaping up to twine his skinny arms around her neck. She held him tight and rocked him like a baby while tears ran down her cheeks.

“You little beast, I’ve been so frightened! I was afraid some harm had befallen you.”

He pulled back to look at her and nodded his head in a solemn yes.

“Something terrible did happen?”

He flung himself against her and shook in terror.

“My poor little creature! Thanks to the gods you’re safe now. Here, how did you escape whatever the danger was?”

In an agony of concentration he looked away, obviously trying to figure out a way to show her.

“ Nevyn saved him, you dolt, who else? ”

“Listen, you beastly gem! Don’t you insult me! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this pile of horseshit up to my neck.”

“ I know, hut I’m worth it. ”

“Bastard.”

“ Well, if that’s the way you’re going to be, cursed if I’ll tell you one jot more. ”

Jill was too pleased to have her gnome back to care if the dweomer-stone spoke or not. For a long time she sat on the floor with him in her lap and fussed over him. When he finally did disappear, it was slowly, as if he hated to leave but had to go: a bit at a time he faded, became transparent, then at last was a smudge in the air that turned to nothing.

Smiling to herself, she went down to the tavern room and got a bowl of suspiciously lumpy barley porridge. She was picking her way through it, looking for steamed weevils, when Bocc came in. He strolled idly past her table, glanced at her as if he’d never seen her before, then whispered, “To the Red Dragon” under his breath. Jill got her cloak from her chamber, then hurried through the drizzle to the inn, where she found a pale, sweating Ogwern sitting at his usual table. His vast paws were shaking so hard that he had to raise his tankard to his mouth with both hands.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“You remember that fellow from last night? Well, he came back. He walks in here not an hour ago, as bold as brass and twice as solid, and sits himself down beside me without so much as a by-your-leave. If I don’t find the opal for him, he says, he’ll turn me into sausages! The gall!”