The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [143]
“My thanks. If it comes to that, my apprentice and I most assuredly will.”
“Good. We need to learn somewhat about the Horsekin tongue, and if naught else, you can teach us. As for Voran, I have hopes that Garin can talk the prince out of marching too far for the sake of his men. It’s too great a risk for too little reward. Let the cursed Boars go live with the Horsekin, say I. It’ll serve’em right.”
With a friendly wave, Brel left, disappearing into the dark between campfires. Laz sat back down and gave Faharn the gist of the warleader’s remarks.
“Well, that’s torn it,” Laz finished up. “If the Boars have the book, and we’re not going to pursue the Boars, how am I going to pry the thing out of the miserly grasp of Fate?”
“We don’t know if the Boars still have it,” Faharn said. “Maybe the spirits have managed to drop it by the side of the road or some such thing.”
“You know, that’s quite possible. I’ve not scried for it today. Let me see what I can see, if anything.”
Laz considered using the campfire as a focus, but he feared that the bright flames would mask the candlelit glow that usually accompanied his glimpses of the dragon book. He fed a handful of green sticks into the fire, then stood as the smoke plumed up. In the gray billow he saw a candle gleam. He focused his mind upon the dancing glimmer and thought of the dragon book.
He saw a page by suddenly bright candlelight—the Elvish lettering, the red runes scribed at the top, and a pair of hands, long fingers, and the cuffs of rough brown sleeves as the reader turned a page. Laz tried to follow the sleeve up to the face, but the vision began to dissolve. When he returned his scrying gaze to the book, the vision clarified again.
This new page looked exactly like the last, as apparently the reader discovered. His hands turned the page back, then forward again with an irritable brush of his fingers. The hands closed the book with a snapping motion. Laz saw the dragon motif on the cover as the reader moved, standing up, walking a few steps, to judge by the motion of the book and the hands. The hands laid it down on an open saddlebag lying on a pile of sacks. Laz caught a glimpse of a wall, a rough plank wall made of fresh-cut wood, before the hands slid the book into the saddlebag, then hid the bag under the top sack.
Laz broke the vision then sat down rather suddenly. The smoke and the scrying had combined to make him dizzy. Faharn moved closer in alarm, but Laz waved him away.
“You know,” Laz said. “You were quite right. I don’t think the Boars have the book, not if they’re fleeing across the plains to reach Horsekin territory. I saw the book and the hands of the person who has it. He’s inside some kind of wooden shelter, and I doubt me if the Boars are dragging a privy with them or suchlike.”
Faharn snorted with laughter.
“I suspect the astral currents have changed direction,” Laz went on. “The candlelight seemed a fair bit brighter than usual. The vision was much clearer and more detailed, too. The flow seems to be drifting our way for a change.”
“Could that mean the book’s close by?”
“No, distance has little influence over scrying. If you can see the thing at all, it doesn’t matter how far—” Laz stopped, struck by an idea. “Here! The farm buildings! They’re made of wood, just like the wall of that shed or whatever it was in the vision. And I saw a pile of cloth sacks, the same kind as farm folk use to store grain.”
“Ye gods! I wonder if the Boars left that slave behind for some reason and the book with him.”
“It would be a splendid piece of luck if they had, so splendid that I doubt it. Still, in the morning I’ll scry again. Let’s hope that the army doesn’t turn around and retreat straightaway at dawn.”
Late that night Laz woke from a sound sleep to see that he had a different sort of visitor. The white spirit in the peculiar blue dress was standing beside the banked fire.
“Have you seen the book?” she said in Deverrian.
“I have.” Laz pushed his blanket back and sat up. “Is it nearby?”
“It is. The beast-marked man still