The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [144]
“Where is he?”
“Inside there.” She waved vaguely at the north.
“Do you mean the farm?”
“I know not what that is.” She frowned, then turned around and pointed in the general direction of the buildings. “Inside there.” She turned back and began to fade, growing first pale, then translucent, then gone.
Laz grabbed his boots from the ground next to him, and after a brief struggle got them on. He stood up and looked around him. In the east a faint silver light lay along the horizon, though the stars overhead and to the west still shone brightly. All around him, men lay asleep, wrapped in blankets or lying restlessly on top of their bedding.
Had he really seen the spirit, he wondered? Or merely dreamt the entire incident? They had never exchanged the sigils that would have confirmed a genuine manifestation. Even if she’d truly appeared to him, her comment of “inside there” might have meant the structure he’d glimpsed in his vision, or it might have meant “somewhere on the vast plain.” He would have to wait and see what he could learn later in the day.
It was several hours after dawn before Prince Voran, with an escort of several hundred armed men, rode over to the farm. Laz managed to talk himself into joining Envoy Garin on the excuse that the prince might need a translator. The farm buildings huddled inside an earthen wall—a round house, a barn, a scatter of sheds, all with thatched roofs. As they rode up to the stout wooden gate, three big black dogs rushed forward, barking. From inside the house a woman screamed at them to come back. Slowly, reluctantly, they obeyed.
The woman got the dogs inside then, slammed the door shut. Only the clucking of frightened chickens, back by the barn, broke the silence.
“Halloo!” Voran called out. “We mean you no harm.”
No one answered. Garin urged his horse up beside the prince’s, and they conferred about the best way to gain the farmers’ trust. Laz took the opportunity to scry for the dragon book, only to see nothing but darkness, most likely the inside of the saddlebag. Still, he felt an odd tingling sensation in his maimed hands, as if he were running them over the leather cover. He could almost feel the edge of the dragon-shaped appliqué. Perhaps the spirits guarding the book were trying to send him a message, that indeed it lay nearby.
Laz rose in the stirrups and looked over the farmyard. Off to his right, back near the barn, stood a round wooden shed. He could just discern that a wooden bar held the door shut on the outside. For a brief moment a golden line of light flickered on the roof. It’s there! He knew with an absolute certainty that the dragon book lay inside that shed. But why was the door barred from the outside? To keep the slave scribe in, perhaps?
By the gate Prince Voran and Garin had finished speaking. Voran turned his horse to face his escort.
“Men,” he called out. “We’re pulling back to some little distance. These people are never going to open up with an army at their gate. Envoy Garin and the translator here will parley.” Voran paused to point out five men at the front of the escort. “And you five will stay as guards. Keep your hands away from your weapons unless someone threatens the parley.”
While the main force trotted off some hundred yards or so, Garin disposed his five guards a few feet away. With a wave to Laz to follow, the envoy rode back up to the closed gate.
“Halloo!” Garin called out. “We truly do mean you no harm! I’ve got a good woodsman’s ax here of Mountain workmanship. I’ll exchange it for some information.”
Only the chickens clucked in answer, but Garin and Laz waited, listening to the silence from the house. Finally, the door opened partway. A man slipped out, a tall fellow, dark-haired, dressed in shabby brown clothes. His shirt, in particular, was so near to rags that Laz could see skin through holes in half-a-dozen places. He walked to a spot halfway between house and gate, about twenty feet from the envoy. The way he stood struck Laz as odd, not bent-backed like every other Lijik farmer he’d seen, but straight and