The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [76]
“But he be one of us now,” the boy said in Mountain dialect. “The dweomer did make him so.”
Marmeg hesitated in mid-tirade, then spoke normally, still in Dwrgic. Clakutt nodded and looked at Kov.
“She says, you might be asking Lady what we do mean by the Scour. If Lady does tell you, then all be right and proper.”
“Very well, then.” Kov gave Marmeg a conciliatory smile. “I’ll do that. I want to talk with her about another matter, as well. She told me that we’d have a scribe for the work, and I’ve not seen hide nor hair of one.”
“Scribe?” Clakutt quirked an eyebrow. “What be that?”
“A person who can read and write.”
“I know not of such a thing among us.”
Then why, Kov thought to himself, did she promise me one? Just like the wretched woman, her and her grand ideas!
Kov hadn’t seen Lady in some days. That evening, at the communal meal up in the village, he asked various people where she might be, but no one seemed to know or care. “Down some tunnel or other,” was the usual answer to his questions. “She does come and go as she wills.” He reminded himself that life among the Dwrgwn was—well, fluid, he thought. Their minds run this way and that like water, too. He wasn’t truly surprised that few—if any—of them could read.
Yet, apparently, Lady heard that he wanted to see her. The very next morning she came to the treasure chamber and stood just inside the door to watch them work. That particular day she went barefoot. Her long gray hair fell to the shoulders of her simple cloth tunic, fastened with brass pins, such as all her folk normally wore.
Humble clothes or not, she was still Lady and the lady of this peculiar underground city. Kov, Clakutt, and Jemjek all bowed to her. She acknowledged them with a wave of her hand, but said nothing. Finally, after some little while of watching, she motioned to Kov to follow, then stepped into the tunnel just beyond the door.
“I did hear that you wished to ask me a question,” she said.
“I did, my lady.” Kov decided that it would be safer not to mention Clakutt by name. “I don’t mean to give offense in any way, mind, but I overheard one of the children mentioning this, and I’m curious. What’s the Great Scour?”
“A painful but necessary thing that did happen some years ago now.” She looked down, and with one long toe began to make a little groove in the dirt floor. “There were some among us who had to be turned out.”
“Turned out?”
“Sent away. Some among us were folk like Deverry men or the First Ones. For years my own folk had lived with them and next to them in their villages. Some of us had made households with them and even borne children, impure children with both kinds of blood in their veins. Some could become Dwrgwn in the water, but most couldn’t.” She frowned, hesitating. “It was very peculiar. Most times some children in a litter could change in the water like normal folk, but not the rest. So we banished all those who couldn’t change.” She looked up, her dark eyes cold under their fan-shaped gray brows. “I lived among Deverry people. I know what evils they can work when they’ve a mind to. Once I became Lady here, I couldn’t allow my folk to have such as they living in our tunnels.”
“So you made them leave. What if they refused to go?”
“Then we killed them. They didn’t give us any choice.”
For a moment Kov could find no words. She was looking at him calmly, openly, her eyes wide, her mouth unsmiling but far from grimly set.
“I see,” he said at last. “I’m surprised you’ll let me live here.”
“Oh, you’re a man of the Mountain Folk.” She smiled and patted him on the arm. “Earth and water blend well enough.” The smile disappeared. “It was those others we couldn’t allow.”
“I see.” He repeated it for want of anything better to say. “Um, well, my thanks for telling me.”
She smiled again, turned, and trotted off down the tunnel. Kov went back to the chamber of gold, where Clakutt was waiting for him.
“She told you,” the boy said. “I heard her.”
“She did,” Kov said.