Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [161]
“My thanks,” Verrarc said. “I be on the mend.”
Korla snorted in disbelief. Verrarc sat up straight and glanced around. Where was Raena? He got up fast, though his cramped legs protested.
“Here, here,” Korla snapped. “Sit you down and rest!”
“Where be my lady?”
Harl and Korla exchanged a glance that told him everything. He rushed across the room and threw back the door into their bedchamber. In the dim twilight he could see only the vague shapes of furniture. The silence hung in a peculiar emptiness.
“Bring a lantern!” Verrarc called.
Muttering under her breath Korla lit a candle at the hearth, placed it in a pierced tin lantern, and shuffled over to hand it to him. The light fell on what seemed to be answering sparks, gleaming on the floor, but when Verrarc knelt to look more closely, he realized that he was seeing gold. A poker lay nearby. Raena had thrown his mother's necklace onto the floor and smashed each teardrop of soft gold into a shapeless mass.
“Ai!” Korla sobbed. “She did have no call to be doing that!”
Verrarc set the lantern down on the floor and picked up the fragments of gold. The necklace had been his only memento of his mother. For a moment he stroked them between his fingers, as if he could somehow massage them back into the teardrops he remembered gleaming around her neck.
“No call at all,” Verrarc whispered. “Here, Korla. Keep these safe for me?”
When she held out her apron Verrarc dropped the golden handful into the cloth. He took his lantern and rose to throw open the lid of the wood chest—nothing remained, not one dress nor trinket of Raena's things.
“She did go back to the Horsekin, bain't?” Verrarc said.
“So I do suppose,” Harl said. “I did see her in her strange black clothes just after that there dragon did fly away. She were hurrying down the path to the lake, and she did carry a bundle of cloth and suchlike in her arms.”
“I see.” Verrarc paused, thinking. “I'd best go see if I can find her. The Chief Speaker did charge me with keeping a watch on her, and here I've gone and failed him.”
“Shall I be searching too?” Harl said. “I'll gladly row us across to the town. We have a bit of light left before the night does fall.”
“Do that, and my thanks, but do you go alone. I'll follow in a bit. I've an errand to run here.”
Just after sunset, Jahdo made his way across the lake to Citadel. Panting for breath, he hurried uphill through the winding streets. His year spent in the flatter lands of Deverry had spoiled his wind, but once he reached his home, he had enough air left to tell his parents the tale of gods in the sky and powerful dweomers. Through the recital Lael listened stone-faced, whilst Dera kept twisting her hands together and pulling them apart, only to twine her fingers once again. Finally, when Jahdo ran out of breath and tale both, Lael got up from his seat at the table.
“I'll be off to find Kiel,” he announced. “Mayhap he can make some sense of all this.”
Lael strode out, leaving the door half-open to the twilight. The fire in the hearth brightened and set light to dancing in the room. For a long while Dera stared at the worn planks of the table; then she rose, sighing.
“Well, I'll just be making some dinner,” she announced. “Life won't stop just because the whole town's gone daft.”
From a wooden bin she took a sack of turnips. Jahdo sat down on the straw-heaped floor with Ambo on his lap. The ferret curled and fell asleep, so oblivious of their plight that Jahdo envied him.
“Well,” he said, “if the Horsekin do siege us, at least the weasels can