The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [120]
“Look, Salamander knows what he’s doing. He’s pouring enough magnetism into her to heal an elephant, and out of his own aura at that.”
“That’s supposed to be a good thing?”
“Of course it is! Come now, you don’t have to be jealous of your own brother.”
This last made so little sense that Rhodry shook his head as if he could physically shoo the words away like a buzzing fly. Later, when Jill was sitting up, dead-pale but managing to smile, and his worry had subsided enough to let him think clearly, he remembered Gwin’s obscure remark again, but this time it stabbed him to the heart. Jill and Salamander had ridden all over Bardek together for weeks, looking for him. He found himself watching them closely, as they sat under the magical silver light, heads together, whispering about things that he couldn’t understand, and he wondered why he had never noticed before just how intimate they seemed.
If Jill had been her normal self, she might have noticed immediately that something was wrong with Rhodry, but as it was, reclaiming the wolf had left her exhausted, and realizing that the danger round them had just doubled did nothing to let her rest. All that night she slept fitfully, waking often to mull over the strange fragments of dreams that came to her, torn visions of sneering sorcerers with burning dark eyes or enormous wolves that came plunging from the air to snap at her throat. Finally, about an hour before dawn, when the sky was lightening to a pale gray, she gave it up and rolled out of her blankets, leaving Rhodry sound asleep and snoring on his back with one arm over his face. Some couple of hundred yards from the camp, perched on a pale tan boulder, Salamander was keeping watch. Stumbling a little and yawning, she joined him there.
“You should be sleeping,” he remarked.
“Can’t. I feel like the Lord of Hell dragged me behind his chariot for about twenty miles, but I just can’t sleep.”
“How do you feel? Debilitated, mayhap, infirm, unwell, feeble, ailing, or just plain sick?”
“Just tired, my thanks. Or, well…” She hesitated, thinking. “There’s somewhat wrong, but I can’t quite place what it is … not a headache or suchlike, but … somewhat’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Missing. Part of me died with the wolf, like. I still hate the dark dweomer and everything it stands for, but I don’t hate it in the same way. It’s all cold, now. Does that make sense?”
“It does, and it’s for the better, too. Consider this, my open-minded owlet. Suppose someone went to a chirurgeon with a tumor swelling under their arm, and in his hatred of disease that chirurgeon began screaming and swearing and stabbing the wretched growth over and over with his knife. Would that be a good thing for the patient?”
“It wouldn’t, truly. I see your meaning—it’s better to hunt down evil with a cold mind, so you can cut carefully and deep and well.”
“Just so. Just so.”
Even though Salamander looked like he was about to say more, Jill yawned so hard that she shuddered. He laid an alarmed hand on her shoulder and stared into her eyes.
“Tired, indeed, my turtledove. Look thou there! Rosy-fingered dawn does chase away the ravens of night with her war darts fashio-d of the sun’s rays, and I suggest we get back to camp and wake the others. The sooner we get on the road, the sooner we get a real meal.”
As they were walking back together, Rhodry came to meet them. The way that he looked her over, with cold eyes and his mouth set in a thin line, made her feel uneasy.
“What’s wrong, my love?” she said.
“Is somewhat wrong?” He turned to Salamander. “What were you doing out there anyway?”
“Keeping watch, like we agreed.”
Rhodry started to speak, then merely shrugged and fell into step beside them. I’ll talk to him later, she thought, I’m just so tired. Back at the camp, Gwin was rolling up bedrolls and generally collecting the gear for the