The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [52]
“The wedding fire wouldn’t light,” Dera said at last. “Young Athra tried and tried, but no matter how many sparks she did strike, the tinder, it did smoulder, but it did refuse to burn.”
“Ye gods!” Lael said. “Be they not married, then?”
“Oh, they are,” Kiel muttered. “Verro, he’d not let the thing be stopped.”
“It did light, you see,” Dera added. “In the end. Harl did help Athra, and they did get the tinder burning in the end.”
Niffa caught her breath in an audible gasp.
“Truly,” Dera said, nodding her way. “It be a terrible, terrible omen. All this food? It were few of the guests who stayed for the feasting, so Verrarc, he did pile our arms high with it.”
“Huh,” Lael said. “Bad omens twice over. Nah, thrice, I’d say, and three times thrice at that.”
As winter turned toward spring, Evandar began to visit Cengarn and Dallandra more often. In back of the kitchen hut he’d spotted the herb garden, dead under the last of the snow, lying at some distance from any iron. Toward dawn on one frosty morning he sent her a dream, and once the sun rose, they met there, well out of sight of the main broch.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Dallandra said.
“Indeed?” Evandar said. “What’s so wrong?”
“I’m worried about Elessario. I’ve just spent a long night trying to get her to go to sleep so Carra could get some rest.”
“Is she ill?”
“No, but she will be if the baby keeps running her ragged.”
“I meant Elessi.”
“Ah. No, not at all.” Dallandra hesitated for a moment, thinking. “But she’s not—she’s not quite right. I don’t know how to explain it, but while she looks like a normal infant, she’s not. Her mind works very differently.”
“Like little Zandro?”
“Who?”
“My apologies. I forgot you wouldn’t know. Salamander’s youngest child. He’s one of Alshandra’s people, but born, I mean, into a human body now. His mother’s in despair over him.”
“What? How could he—”
“I’ve been thinking about that very thing. When we were scheming to get our magical child born, didn’t Alshandra the Hag try to stop us? She set her spies to watching and following Elessi everywhere she went. And then, when you were teaching the child what it might mean to be born into this world, didn’t you take her to Bardek? The spies obviously followed you.”
“So they must have. I suppose it’s possible, that one of them got fascinated with the place and its people, but—”
“Not fascinated with Bardek, my love. Fascinated with Salamander. Spirits swarm around him all the time. It’s like his soul is a lantern burning out on the astral, and they’re the moths.”
“Oh.” Dallandra considered this with a small frown. “Well, that would explain it, all right. Now, what about the rest of Alshandra’s pack? Have you taken them into yours yet?”
“I have not, and I shan’t, either, the ugly little spawn! It’s bad enough that I’ve saddled myself with Shaetano’s creatures.”
“But if you leave them running loose in the world, they’ll be working mischief.”
“I don’t care. Let them fade away into naught!”
“You can’t just—”
Evandar kissed her to silence her, then turned away with a laugh.
“We’ll speak of these things later, my love. I’d best see to Salamander’s troubles.”
“Come back here! We need to talk about this.”
Evandar walked over to the wall round the garden. In a shimmer of early light he could just see a link between the worlds.
“Evandar!” Dalla sounded furious. “You can’t leave those creatures to their own devices!”
With a smile in her direction, he sprang to the top of the wall and stepped through the link. Sure enough, one of the mother roads lay waiting. He walked onto it and followed a long shaft of sunlight south.
Although Evandar set out for Bardek, in a few moments he looked around him, saw pine-forested hills, and realized that he was heading north. He turned around and started to walk south again only to find himself circling back round, as if the road were moving under his feet. In the wind he heard a voice,