The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [60]
“Worms?” Hwilli snapped. “Perhaps you’d rather this worm let someone else tend your wounds.”
The axeman yelped, as surprised as if a statue had spoken to him. Vela slewed around on her stool and barked an order in Dwarvish. After that, the men talked only to answer the healers’ questions about their injuries.
Once they’d done everything they could for every injury, Jantalaber invited the healers to come eat in his chambers. The other dwarven woman, Othanna, begged off, because she desperately needed sleep.
Jantalaber’s outer chamber, high up in the mages’ tower, displayed on its walls the many treasures he’d collected over his long life, elaborately glazed pottery, silver work, tapestries, pictures painted on tawed leather. A tiny fire burned in the freestanding pottery stove, using just enough fuel to take the bitter chill from the air. Only the priests kept truly warm in winter at Garangbeltangim. Bundled in their cloaks the three healers sank gratefully into cushioned chairs while Jantalaber’s manservant brought bread and wine and dried fruit to go with a dish of spiced meats, stewed beyond identifying but tasty all the same.
At first the two masters tried to talk of pleasant things, but eventually the conversation turned to the attacks. No one in Garangbeltangim could avoid them, Hwilli realized, not for more than a few moments together. Trying to chat about some other subject struck her as trying to ignore a bleeding wound.
“My apologies for that fellow with his talk of worms,” Vela said to Hwilli.
“My apologies for snarling at him,” Hwilli said. “If they let Meradan into your city, they were worms no matter what tribe they belonged to.”
“I suppose.” Vela stared across the chamber with exhausted eyes. “I’ll never be able to forgive them, never, but I do wonder if mayhap they never realized how the Meradan would treat us. I want to believe that.”
“I think you may,” Jantalaber put in. “No one could have anticipated what followed. I suspect that no one meant to set those fires, at least. It seems likely that the Meradan were planning on using Lin Rej as a stronghold. They had no reason to destroy it. Sometimes men go mad when a battle starts.”
Vela nodded and held out her goblet. The manservant stepped forward with a flagon of wine and refilled it. Paraberiel, who’d been growing paler as he listened, held his up for more as well.
“Everyone was so surprised that our farm folk would join the enemy,” Vela said. “Dolts! I have been warning the council for years and years now that we had no right to treat those people that way!” Her voice sank to a growl. “Lackwits! Blind!” She had a sip of wine to clear her throat. “Still, I was shocked at how—they were so, well, savage—I didn’t realize. None of us did, we just didn’t realize how hot rage can burn.”
“Don’t think of the horrors,” Jantalaber said in a soft, careful voice. “Try not to dwell upon them.”
Vela nodded and drank a long swallow of wine. She sighed before she continued, “Maybe now the council will listen to me. What’s left of it.”
“And maybe the prince will listen to Maral about our farm folk.” Jantalaber paused, and the twist of his mouth expressed something less than hope. “I suppose.”
“Master?” Hwilli said. “I didn’t know that Maraladario cared about my people.”
“Very much, child. She cares very much.”
Hwilli’s eyes filled with tears beyond her power to stop them. Jantalaber smiled sadly, then pointedly looked away while she wiped the tears on her napkin.
“The Meradan, however,” Vela said, “have no such excuse beyond their own evil natures.”
“Indeed,” Jantalaber said, “I wonder what started them off. It was last winter when they began raiding. They came out of nowhere, it seemed. A famine, I thought, but it seems that wasn’t the case.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Vela said. “Our men have doubtless told your prince all of this already. I don’t understand all of it, but I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Please do.”
“First of all, you doubtless know already that Tanbalapalim’s threatened.”