The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [195]
“It will have to wait until the morrow.” Laz considered face-saving excuses, then damned them all and told the truth. “I’ve just been bruised in my very soul, and I need to go lick my wounds like a whipped hound.”
With the books held tight against his chest, Laz strode away. He refused to pick up the rest of the things that Sidro had given back to him. I’ll get her back, he promised himself. Somehow or other, I’ll get her back!
Pir was sitting cross-legged in front of their tent, merely sitting and staring out at the sunset sky, yet Sidro considered him the most beautiful sight she’d seen in many a long year. When she sat down next to him, he turned his head and smiled at her.
“You didn’t think I could go through with it, did you?” she said.
He reached over and took her hand to squeeze it. “I thought you wouldn’t want to go through with it,” he said. “Glad to see I was wrong.”
“So am I.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “So am I.”
He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. They sat together until the sun set and darkness sent them inside their tent.
After consulting with Prince Daralanteriel and Calonderiel, Rori left the royal alar under the guard of Arzosah and Medea and flew off north. He intended to take another look at that forward encampment he’d seen building, to say nothing of the migrating Horsekin. Grallezar had often described the Alshandrite leaders’ favorite tactic, to move the fanatical believers of the far north down to the cities in order to ensure a majority of their supporters in the formerly free towns. She’d lost her own position because of just such a migration. Her city, Braemel, had been the last Gel da’Thae stronghold free of Horsekin influence. Dar had pointed out that this new group might have been going to try to move farther south and rebuild another of the ancient cities that their ancestors had destroyed, a potentially more dangerous move than building near the new fortress. Once the Horsekin reclaimed and fortified one of the old cities, it would take far more men than they had available to pry them out again.
As he flew, Rori kept an eye out for Berwynna’s mule as well as for bands of raiders. When he reached the barrow lands, twice he saw stray mules, which he caught, killed, and ate. Neither of them carried a riding saddle nor, therefore, saddlebags. To search he flew a wider course, angling back and forth from east to west over a likely stretch of territory while still making progress toward the north. He saw no more stray mules and no bands of Horsekin raiders, either. The unit that had attacked Aethel’s caravan had most likely managed to reach the new fort in the north.
Perhaps they had Berwynna’s mule, perhaps not. He found himself curiously indifferent to the fate of that book. He simply could not decide whether he wanted to leave the dragon form and return to his former body. I’ll be old, he thought, old, half dead, unable to fight, unable to fly. In return, what would he gain? Hands, of course, the company of other men, and Angmar, back and within in his reach. Only the last gain seemed worth the losses.
If he found the book, and if the book contained the dweomer workings that Dallandra suspected it did, then in a strange way the decision might be made for him. He remembered his silver dagger, lost in Bardek, and how it had made its way back to him just as Jill had turned up to take him away from Aberwyn. The silver dagger had been a messenger of Wyrd. The book might well be another. If so, it would turn up, and then perhaps he would be able to make a decision. Perhaps.
As he flew onward, he put the matter out of his mind. It was more important, to his way of thinking, to discover what the cursed Horsekin were up to. Yet somewhere, deep in his soul, he heard a voice taunting him for a coward.
Every day at noon Angmar climbed the stairs of Avain’s tower to bring her firstborn daughter a meal. Despite her bulk, Avain ate but little: porridge in the morning, a plate of meat and bread in the middle of the day, a