The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [79]
“I wish I could show you to Dallandra,” he said to it. “I’ll take you along on the off chance I can escape from this ghastly place.”
With the codex tucked under his arm, he went back to his chamber, where Grallag had taken up his usual station. Kov greeted him and went inside, shutting the door behind him, to catch what sleep he could with worry for unpleasant company.
The more he mulled over what he was learning about this peculiar folk, the more Kov wished he could consult with Dallandra. She had the strange lore to understand these things better—he was certain of that. She has dweomer, too, he thought, which would come in handy about now. With the thought he realized that despite what he’d always been taught, he now believed in the existence of sorcerers.
Out on the grasslands, as Laz’s mood grew blacker and blacker, and his temper worse and worse, more and more of his men deserted him. Even though Drav had started drilling his ragtag collection of deserters with military discipline, the Westfolk camp offered enough comfort and amusement to make Drav seem tolerable, or so Krask informed Laz as he left. Finally, after some days of these slow desertions, Laz ended up with a band comprised of himself and one man.
After the last deserter had walked off in a huff, early one evening, Faharn built a small fire of twigs and dried horse dung. By its smoky light they ate dry flatbread and cheese washed down with spring water. The evening breeze brought them the drift of distant music and the occasional burst of laughter from the elven camp. Now and then, Laz caught a faint scent of roasting meat. At those moments Faharn would stop fanging his leathery dinner and look wistfully across to the painted tents, glowing from the fires scattered among them.
“Why don’t you just go join the others?” Laz said. “Ye gods, just because I can’t bear seeing Sidro doesn’t mean you have to fester out here with me.”
“Don’t be stupid!” Faharn snapped. “I’m not going to desert you.”
“Why not? I must be the worst company in the Northlands at the moment.”
Faharn shifted his weight on the log, shrugged, and scowled at the stale flatbread in his hand. “I was hoping,” he said at last, “that we could take up my lessons again.”
Laz felt so sour that he was tempted to tell him the truth, that Faharn’s small talent for dweomer had blossomed as much as it ever would, that in fact there was no use in his studying any more dweomer than he already knew. But Faharn was watching him so hopefully, so patiently, like a dog who knows that sooner or later his master will share the meat he’s engaged in eating, that Laz threw him a morsel of reassuring lie.
“There is that,” Laz said. “Which reminds me. I promised Salamander that I’d keep scrying for that wretched dragon book. I might as well give it another try. Now, I want you to watch me as I concentrate. To scry you have to absorb yourself in the thing you’re scrying for. You can’t let your eyes or your attention wander.”
Faharn nodded, his eyes bright with anticipation. Laz laid his own food aside and concentrated on the tiny flames of their campfire while he sent his mind out to the dragon book. He was expecting the usual murky dark, but this time an image built up of Wynni’s saddlebags, lying upon a table, with the book open on top of them. He was so startled by success that he nearly lost the vision, but with a long exhalation of breath, he steadied himself.
Men clustered around the table. All he could see were dim shadowy shapes, their blood-red auras flickering this way and that as they leaned forward to peer at the book. One of them laid a hand upon it; with that gesture, his image clarified. Laz could discern his face, strangely jowly and bloated for someone as young as this man seemed to be. His thick, glossy hair, half-hidden