The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [162]
By then, Artha had run out of invective. She and Niffa stood glaring at each other.
“Er,” Dallandra said, “that staff. Is it permitted for me to ask whence it came?”
Artha was so startled by this sudden change of subject that she nearly dropped the staff in question.
“I know not where the first of these came from,” Artha said when she’d recovered. “But my teacher in the spirit lore did have this one, and on her deathbed she did give it to me. They be handed down over the long years, and when one does grow too frail, it be given to the holy fire, and a new one carved.”
“My thanks,” Dallandra said. “That’s most interesting.”
Artha pursed her lips and glared at her as if she were a half-wit. Niffa smothered a laugh.
“I think me we shall disagree on these things forever,” Niffa said to Artha. “What the townsfolk will do, I ken not. I think me that what the prince of the Westfolk does say will have the true deciding of this.”
With a pleasant wave, Niffa turned and began to climb the steps back up to the plaza. Dallandra said farewell to the furious spirit talker and hurried after her fellow dweomermaster. Neither said anything till they were up on the plaza and well past the shrine.
“Do you really think she’ll stay here?” Dallandra said. “The Horsekin—what they’ll do to a priestess of other gods—it’s too horrible to even think about it.”
“I did make a plan already. Some of my brother’s muleteers, they did say they would sweep her up and tie her to a wagon if such should be the only way to, um, persuade her to leave with us.”
“Good. That sets my heart at rest. I agree with you, though, that whatever Dar says will really decide the issue for the town.”
“Then we should know soon.” Niffa glanced up at the sky, where a few white wisps of cloud were moving in from the south. “I fear me that the rain, it be coming, though.”
“I think you’re right. I hope it doesn’t slow Dar and his men down too much. Well, that’s in the laps of whatever gods there may be.”
As he winged north toward Haen Marn, the Horsekin were very much on Laz’s mind as well. Even though Laz in raven form could fly faster than he could travel on horseback, he felt as if he were crawling through the air, burdened as he was with worry. With Horsekin raiders close by, what if Haen Marn had fled back to Alban? He could return to the Westlands, he supposed, find the royal alar, and deliver the book to Dallandra there, hundreds of miles away. The very thought wearied him.
At night, when he stopped to rest, Laz found himself missing Faharn. They had met back in Taenbalapan, years before, when their dweomer studies had led them both to Hazdrubal, the Bardekian refugee. Almost from the beginning, however, Faharn had disliked Hazdrubal. He stopped his studies early on, claiming that the teacher was evil, disgusting, and probably a criminal to boot. Laz agreed with his opinion, but he stayed on, learning what he could, discarding what he hated.
He made such fast progress that he could take Faharn on as a pupil after only a year or two with the Bardekian. When the howling mob of Alshandra worshipers began purging the city of magicians, Laz and Faharn escaped together and gradually built up their band of fellow refugees. Outlaws, perhaps, but unwilling ones—and now most of them were dead or had deserted to the Westfolk, including Pir. I always thought he was my true friend, Laz thought, and Faharn just a hanger-on of sorts. How wrong I was!
Occasionally, Laz shed a few angry tears over the bitterness of Pir’s betrayal. He could take comfort in thoughts of revenge, of taking Sidro back again and then mocking his former friend for losing her. Now and then he thought of scrying Sidro out, but the fear of seeing her in another man’s arms always stopped him.
On his third day of flight, which happened to be the day