The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [22]
“Back where I left them. I told Casso that I’d bring you back. He said naught about your friends.”
“I can’t desert them!”
“You already have.” Evandar grinned with the wide-eyed innocence of a small child and pointed off in the distance.
Galerinos spun around to look downhill. The mist was lifting, revealing a clear view of the camp, only some five hundred yards away. Horses, wagons, people—they spread out in a dusty spiral on the plain, desolate except for grass, crisping in the autumn heat, and a few straggly trees. A faint umbrella of brown dust hung in the air above the conjoint tribes of the Devetii, refugees from the Rhwmani wars.
Out in the open grass stood Caswallinos, his hands on his hips, his staff caught between his side and the crook of his left elbow. For someone so blessed by divine power, he was an unprepossessing fellow, almost as skinny as his staff and bald except for a fuzz of gray stubble round the back of his skull. As they hurried down to join him, Galerinos was expecting his master to kneel before the god. Instead, the old man merely smiled and bobbed his head in Evandar’s direction.
“My humble thanks for returning this stray colt to me,” Caswallinos said. “I take it the other lads are all dead.”
“Two were still alive last I saw them,” Evandar said.
“Then where are they?”
“Still up on the mountain. They were wearing iron, and so I left them there.”
Caswallinos sighed and ran a hand over his face as if he were profoundly weary. “What have I told you about wyrd?” he said. “And how things undone redound upon you?”
“Do you think those two are part of my wyrd?” Evandar said.
“They are now, since you left them somewhere to die.”
“But they were wearing iron.” Evandar stamped his foot like an angry woman. “Iron swords, iron shirts. It aches me.”
“I know that,” Caswallinos said. “No one was asking you to touch them.”
The supposed god—Galerinos found his belief in Evandar’s divinity crumbling—stared at the druid for a long moment then turned away. He seemed to be watching the white clouds drifting in from the south.
“We need our two lads back,” Caswallinos said, “and we need water.”
“You’re not far from a big river.” Evandar kept his back to the druid. “Head to where the sun rises. It won’t take you long to reach it.”
“I wish you’d told me that this morning.”
Evandar merely shrugged.
“If you had,” Caswallinos went on, “those lads wouldn’t be dead, and the last two stranded on a mountainside.”
“Oh.” Evandar turned around to face him. “Mayhap their wyrd is mine, then.”
“It is.”
Evandar pouted down at the ground for a long moment. “I suppose you’re right,” he said at last. “But I shan’t bring them here.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll be leaving to find that river.”
“Will you bring them to me there?”
“I shan’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the river’s too wide. Too much water!” He vanished, completely and suddenly gone without even a shred of the opalescent mist to cover his departure.
Caswallinos muttered a few words under his breath, something highly unpleasant from what Galerinos could hear of it.
“Master?” Galerinos said. “Is Evandar truly a god?”
“Of course not! I’m not sure what he is, mind, but he’s most assuredly not divine.”
“But he opened the sea road for our ships, and he comes and goes—”
“Just as the gods are supposed to come and go?” Caswallinos snorted profoundly. “In the old tales, fancies of the bards, lad, fancies of the bards. I’ll explain later. Come with me. We need to tell the vergobretes about this river.”
“True spoken. We’d best get there today. The horses have to have water.”
“Indeed. My heart aches for your two friends, but I’m afraid we’ll have to leave them to Evandar.” Caswallinos paused to look Galerinos over. “Ye gods, your arms, lad! It looks like you’ve been fighting a few savages yourself. By the by, did Evandar drive your attackers off?”
“He didn’t.” Galerinos paused, wondering if his master would believe his tale. “I, uh, well, er, I did. Not that I know what I did. I mean—”
“What, by all the hells, do you mean?”
“I cursed them by the