The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [104]
“Fear not, I shall. And we can’t be all that far from the thing by now.”
In the northern stretch of the grasslands, at a place where a traveler coming up from the south would just begin to see the distant mountains of the Roof of the World, a huge outcrop of gray granite hunched like an animal. All around it tiny streams ran, fed by hidden springs. Dallandra and Valandario had decided to meet at this marker, and when Prince Daralanteriel led his alar up to Twenty Streams Rock, they found Val and her people waiting for them. Dalla left the work of setting up her tent to the others and immediately followed Valandario into hers. Val had arranged her piles of bright-colored cushions into seats on either side of her scrying cloth.
“I haven’t told anyone about this yet,” Dalla said. “I don’t want panic. Ebañy’s found out something terrifying.”
“Does it have to do with that new religion you told me about?” Val said.
“Just that. The Horsekin think it’s their sacred duty to wipe the People off the grasslands and the face of the world, just slaughter every last one of us.”
Valandario went very still. Not even her eyelids flickered for a long long moment; then she let out her breath with a little sigh. She raised both hands and ran them through her hair, pushing it back from her face as if the stray golden wisps suddenly bothered her. Dallandra waited patiently.
“I see now,” Val said at last. “Obsidian tumbling over lapis lazuli, fire over water—I see what that signified now. In yesterday’s reading, I mean.” She was silent again for some while. “Death along the water, of course.” Another pause. “Yellow jewels, distance. Not necessarily our deaths, but death at some long distance.”
“War, then?”
Val twisted around where she sat, dug into a small brass coffer, and brought out a pouch of embossed tan leather. She turned back, considered the scrying cloth for a moment, then poured jewels out upon it. A red ruby slid halfway across and came to rest on an embroidered spiral.
“War, yes,” Val said. “With Deverry men.” She touched a purple stone that lay nearby. “In the company of Deverry men, I mean, not against them.”
“Soon?”
“Very. When Ebañy returns with proof of his warning.” Val laid a slender forefinger on a piece of dark jade and moved it along a seam ’twixt two pieces of silk, one yellow, one red. “If he gets back.”
Dallandra shuddered. “I was hoping we could get Ebañy out of this alive.”
“So was I. Nothing I see here discourages me, but the Horsekin—”
They sat in silence for some while with the unfinished words hanging between them, a malediction upon those distant enemies. Not distant enough, Dalla thought. Halfway across the world would be too close still.
“You know,” Val said at last. “I hope you didn’t mind when I handed the job of curing Ebañy over to you. I feel guilty still, but I had no idea of what to do.”
“No need for guilt. I offered, didn’t I?”
“True. But I was afraid that I was failing my apprentice somehow.”
“Not that he’d studied with you in—what?—a hundred and fifty years?”
“Something like that.” Valandario was staring at her gems, sparkling on the silk before her. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten obsessed with my scrying. There are still so many problems, so many things to work out.”
“You should take another apprentice, or no, a jour neyman dweomerworker, to learn it, perfect or not. And I wonder—shouldn’t you write it all down?”
“I suppose so, yes.” Val looked up. “I doubt if I’ll die soon, but these days, well, you never know, what with war in the west and all.”
“I didn’t mean to be morbid—”
“You weren’t. Realistic, perhaps.” Val sighed with a shake of her head. “Do you remember Nevyn? Aderyn’s master in the dweomer?”
“Vividly, yes. I met him ever so long ago, but he was the kind of man who made an impression on people.”
“Indeed.” Val paused for a smile. “We discussed the ancient lore once, the lore of the Seven Cities, I mean, and how so much of it had been lost. They never wrote down the core of their teachings, you see. When Meranaldar first came to us, I had