The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [197]
“On the morrow,” Jahdo continued, “we’d best try to make speed. When we do reach this promised farmland, there be much work to be done ere winter falls, building shelter and planting the seed grain. Our time of mourning best be short.”
“True spoken. Think of it this way, Brother. We be finally going home. The wretched Slavers stole our land so many years ago, but now they do need us so badly that they be forced to give some of it back.”
Jahdo laughed, one startled bark. “Truly, I never thought of it in such a way. But you be right enough. Let me go back now and summon the rest of the council. We shall tell everyone we be going home to the Summer Country. And this time we be a free people!”
As the news spread through the ragged camp of the refugees, laughter and cheers spread with it. Later, Jahdo knew, there would be more tears and regrets for what they’d lost, but from this moment onward, they once again owned a future.
With Carra and her children riding in the lead, the royal alar had been traveling toward Cerr Cawnen—slowly, of course, the way alarli always traveled. They were still over fifty miles away when the earth’s blood boiled and rained down on the distant town. Even so, they felt the earthquake as a hard trembling of the earth. The flocks of sheep immediately panicked. Ewes and wethers bleated, shoved one another, and finally ran off in all directions. The alar had to stop to allow the dogs to round them up again with the help of some of the men while the rest of the riders, under Pir’s direction, kept the horse herd under control.
By the time order had been restored, the sun was sinking low in the west, and the alar decided to camp where it was. Valandario had scried for Dallandra and the prince, seen them safe, and then contacted Dalla mind to mind. When the news spread through the alar that the Meradani army lay entombed in the boiling remains of Loc Vaed, such a loud cheer went up that the sheep nearly bolted again. The Westfolk broke out skins of mead and passed them around. Those who could play unpacked their harps and flutes. The music began as soon as the tents were raised, and the singing followed.
Branna, however, found it impossible to share in the celebration. As she told Neb, slaves and other innocent souls had died in the eruption along with the army.
“That’s true,” Neb said. “But I still thank the gods for Arzosah’s dweomer. If the Horsekin had followed the retreating townsfolk, the army would have slaughtered the prince, his guards, the townsmen—everyone they couldn’t enslave and sell.”
“And then they would have come for the rest of us. I know that. It just must have been such a horrible way to die.”
“Well, that I can’t argue with.” Neb shuddered and tossed his head as if he’d throw off the truth of it. “Truly horrible.”
Others also stayed away from the general merriment—Sidro, Pir, and the rest of the Horsekin left with the alar. Branna and Neb joined them at Valandario’s tent, which as usual stood some ways away from the noisy camp, for the evening meal. Young Vek had had a seizure, in fact, when he’d heard about the grim wyrd that had fallen upon the army.
“I did give him his usual medicaments,” Sidro told Branna. “He be inside Val’s tent, sleeping.”
“Well and good, then,” Branna said. “I—oh, by the gods! Sisi, do you remember that vision he had, back at the end of winter?”
Sidro caught her breath in a little gasp. “The tower of smoke,” she said, “and snow did fall upon the crops! The snow, it be ash, I think me.”
“Indeed.” Valandario joined them. “When I spoke to Dallandra, she told me how the smoke rose up in a pillar, and she thought of Vek.”
When they fell silent, the nearby music and laughter spilled over them. In a blaze of golden light as thick as honey, or so it seemed, the sun hovered just above its setting. When Branna shaded her eyes with her hand and looked off to the west, she could see a jagged edge etched along the skyline instead of the straight-as-a-bowstring horizon more usual to the