The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [75]
“I’m not sure,” Kov began then paused, running through his memory. “Wait! I heard somewhat once. I think it’s called a torc. A very long time ago the men of Deverry wore things like this around their necks.”
“They did?” Clakutt’s eyes narrowed in thought. “They must have had truly skinny necks to get them on.”
Kov laughed. “When the jeweler finished braiding this rope, it would have been a straight piece. He must have bent it very carefully around the person’s neck. Then they’d never take it off.”
“But how did it get off, then, to get here?”
“Well, I suppose you could bend it one more time without breaking it.” Another detail rose in his memory. “Or an enemy might have cut the person’s head off and pulled the torc free.”
Clakutt wrinkled his nose and growled in disgust, a throaty sound so animal that it startled Kov. He’d started thinking of the Dwrgwn as just a different variety of Mountain Folk, he realized. A mistake, he told himself. Don’t fall into it again.
At the end of the workday, the crone, Marmeg, who’d once been Kov’s captor, came to fetch Clakutt, her grandson. For the boy’s sake, Kov decided to be polite to her, even though he’d not forgotten the kicks and insults she’d given him during the night he’d spent tied up and helpless in her hut. When Clakutt launched into an excited recital of the day’s work, she laid one bony hand on the boy’s shoulder and scowled at Kov.
“You know,” Kov said, “your grandson’s unusually intelligent. I’m truly pleased he wants to help.”
At that her look softened, though not so far as a smile. Over the next few days, every time Kov saw Marmeg, he made a point of praising Clakutt and his mental abilities, which quite truthfully stood far above most of the Dwrgwn he’d met. Finally, when she came to fetch him, Marmeg brought Kov a flat basket laden with oatcakes. He’d won her over, but even as he thanked her profusely, he wondered why he’d cared to change her low opinion of him. I may be stuck here for the rest of my life, he thought. No use in keeping old enemies or making new ones.
His success came in handy the very next day. In the middle of the afternoon Kov discovered, carelessly wrapped in a twist of half-rotted linen, a pair of fire opals and a palm-sized brooch of obviously dwarven workmanship, displaying a silver hound, couchant, wound round with bands of interlace. He could place it as a style popular for trade goods some forty or fifty years past.
“This is a very different-looking thing,” Kov said.
“It be so,” Clakutt said. “It be not gold.”
“Very good! This was made by my people, the Mountain Folk.” Clakutt’s lips formed an O, and he nodded in wonder.
When Marmeg came to fetch the boy, Kov asked her on a whim if she knew anything about this unusual piece, mostly because she was the oldest Dwrgi he’d ever seen. To his surprise, she remembered it.
“It did come from a trader from the Far West,” she told him. “Varc or Ferrik or some such name he had.”
“Verrarc,” Kov broke in. “I met him once, when I was but a child. He came from Cerr Cawnen.”
“They all do, what traders we do see. But truly, Verrarc was his name. My man did take this bit of work and them there moonstones in trade for an old book he had, a nasty looking thing, all beaten and torn, but Verrarc, he were fair taken with it.”
“A book?” Kov said. “Do you remember what it was?”
“Just some book.” She shrugged in profound indifference. “None of us kenned what its marks did mean.”
“I see. Does anyone else have any old books around here?”
“They may well. There used to be a fair number of books around here, before the—” She stopped speaking and looked away, her toothless mouth working.
“Um, before the what?” Kov said.
“I forget what I did mean to say.” She gave an elaborate shrug. “I be old. I do forget things.”
“Before the Great Scour, you mean?” Clakutt said.
Jemjek, who’d been idly listening, caught his breath with a gasp. Marmeg turned to Clakutt and hissed, then let go with