Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [135]
“The men think the earth is steady, but we women know that rock moves, floating on a sea of fire. It be our life, the earth, the deep, deep earth. Did you know that the very rocks do float upon fire?”
“I didn’t, my lady, and I give you a thousand thanks for the telling of it.”
She smiled and yawned. One hand plucked at the edge of the blankets, her fingers as long and thin as twigs, and as gnarled. Lopa stepped forward, alarmed, turning to Rhodry and framing a few silent words, “Leave soon.” He nodded to show that he understood, but Othara recovered herself.
“I’ll give you a present, Rori, for all that you’re both a man and an elf, because you’ve brought my son back to me.” The old woman turned her head Lopa’s way. “Open the chest in the corner. Find the lead casket and do open that. You shall find a bit of blue silk. Well, it were blue once. Unwind it and you shall find a blue stone upon a chain.”
The young woman scuttled off to do as she was bid. Out of a developing sense of what dwarven courtesy would include, Rhodry pointedly refrained from looking her way as she rootled through the ancient woman’s treasures. While they waited Othara closed her eyes, and her breathing rasped so loudly that Rhodry feared she’d drifted off. When the girl returned, though, clutching a gold chain, Othara held out her hand. She took the stone from Lopa, felt it carefully, then passed it back.
“That be the one. Give it to him.”
With a low whistle of awe, Rhodry took a chunk of lapis lazuli the size of a crabapple, fine-shaped and polished into an egg. At the narrow end the fine gold chain ran through a drilled hole lined with silver, to prevent wear, he supposed. Instinctively he closed his hand over it.
“It feels like a presence,” he burst out. “A live thing, not a stone.”
He opened his hand and looked again: it seemed an ordinary gem, if indeed so big a piece of such a rare thing could be called ordinary. Othara smiled, a draw of blue lips.
“You feel it, do you?” she rasped. “Good, good. Then you be fit to own it. There be great dweomer on that stone. Wear it, and I think me your enemies shall find it a great travail to scry you out.”
Rhodry slipped the chain over his head and settled the gem under his shirt.
“I don’t know how to thank you enough,” he began. “You’re most generous—”
The old woman had fallen asleep, her head turned into her pillow. With a waggle of her finger and a flick of her apron, Lopa shooed him out of the chamber to the corridor, where Garin waited.
“Well, that was kind of you to indulge the old dear,” Garin said.
“Ye gods! ‘Old dear’ indeed! She’s one of the most powerful women I’ve ever met, and that includes Jill. Truly, my only regret is that Jill’s not here to sit with Othara awhile and hear her lore.”
Lopa shot him a glance brimming with approval, but Garin seemed, really, to have heard not a word.
“Very kind,” he said again. “Well, we’d best be getting back up. We’ve a lot of planning to do before we leave.”
Over the weeks that Rhodry had been gone, Jill had fatten into the habit of scrying for him several times a day. Since she knew him so well, all die had to do was focus her attention on some mottled natural thing—a fire, a bank of clouds, wind moving over trees, and suchlike—and think of him to see his whereabouts. She’d traced his way through the hills and into Lin Serr, seen the old gatehouse through his eyes as well, and stored in her memory a hundred questions to ask him about these strange places in the hope, at least, that he’d live to tell her.
It was just after Rhodry had been given his audience with Othara that Jill was sitting in her tower room, looking out the window at a summer storm piling dark on the horizon. When she thought of Rhodry she saw nothing, not the barest trace or flicker of an image, not the slightest feeling of his presence.
“Odd,” she said aloud.
On her table stood a cup of water. She picked it up, swirled the liquid round, and scried into that. Not a thing. She set it down and returned to the window, but no matter how carefully she focused her mind,