The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [79]
“Now he can’t help being a bit tedious.”
“He could too help it if only he wanted to, but no matter, O mistress of mighty magicks. What counts is this new dun that Rocca spoke of.”
“Well, yes. I’ve been searching for that spirit you saw, by the way, the white womanlike creature. I’ve found no trace of her. She may have just been curious about Branna, not vengeful or the like.”
“Let us hope so.”
Salamander may have considered Meranaldar tedious, but he soon realized that he’d never known how tedious tedium could be. In the morning, when he and Rocca set off for the west, Salamander urged her to take his horse and ride, but she insisted on walking. She did at least allow him to tie her rough cloth sack, containing her few possessions, onto the packsaddle of the second horse. They left the dun and followed a leveled dirt road through farmland. Rocca strode along at Salamander’s stirrup, talking all the while. Her harsh life, spent mostly out of doors, had given her a splendid pair of lungs.
“Numbers be the key,” she began. “All the novice lore it does circle around numbers like ducks around a pond. The most important numbers be seven, thirteen, and fifty-two.”
“Seven, thirteen, and fifty-two. Very well, I’ll remember those,” Salamander said. “You know, I could shift some of the packhorse’s load so that we could both ride.”
“I want not to ride.” She sounded near laughter. “Our goddess did give me the power to walk where I will, and I’d ask for naught more. Now. We start with seven. There be fifty-two lists of seven sacred things each, and there be a need on you to remember them in the correct order. First, the planets.”
Salamander allowed himself a brief surge of optimism. He knew the names of the seven planets already, and perhaps the rest of the lore would be equally easy to learn. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that Alshandra’s priests would never name any sacred thing in either Deverrian or Elvish.
“Azgarn and Rebisov be what we call the sun and the moon,” Rocca said. “Then there be Jalmat, Ringonnin, Saddet, Fomthir, and Honexel. Repeat those back.”
Salamander did manage to repeat that first lot, but as the morning wore on, and the lists kept coming, he felt his heart turn as heavy as sgarkan, one of the seven sacred metals, otherwise known as lead. He had hated the early teachings of the dweomer for just this same emphasis on memory, the lists of names, the formulae of rituals. Now he was starting over in yet another system, learning a vast bundle of minutiae, all of which would doubtless prove to be of crucial importance at some point, just as the dweomerlore had proved to be.
“Sooner or later,” Rocca said cheerfully, “there’ll be a need on you to learn the sacred language. That be where all these names do come from.”
“No doubt,” Salamander said. “It’s the language of the Horsekin, isn’t it?”
With a little gasp she stopped walking. He reined in his horse and turned in the saddle to look at her, watching him wide-eyed and frightened as she stood in the road.
“Rocca, everyone here in the north knows about the Horsekin,” Salamander said. “Why do you keep trying to pretend they don’t exist?”
“Well, I—” She let her voice trail away.
Salamander dismounted so they could talk face-to-face, but she refused to look at him, even when he walked up close to her.
“I’ve noticed a couple of times now how you nearly say some word and then shy away from it. That word’s Horsekin, isn’t it? Your Horsekin masters?”
“True enough. It does frighten people, Evan. They think the Horsekin be evil, horrible slavers who live to conquer the whole world.”
“Aren’t they?”
“Of course not!” She tossed her head and looked up at last. “They merely be wanting to spread the word of Alshandra and salvation. But Deverry folk understand this not, and they attack us.”
“From what I’ve seen, I’d say that the attacks generally come from the Horsekin.”
“Well, at times there be a need on us to protect ourselves by striking first.” Rocca hesitated for a long moment. “Truly, once you meet the