The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [81]
“Are you wondering if this slave was the one who did? From the way he was paging through the book, I’d say he can read.”
“It’s likely.” Dallandra turned her head and looked out over the grass, sighing like the sea under the night wind. “Let me talk with Cal about this. He was there at the temple, and I wasn’t.”
Cal again, always Cal. This is ridiculous, Laz told himself. You have no hope of getting this woman to warm to you, none! Sidro, on the other hand—if he could only find the right key, he was sure he could unlock her heart once again. He always had before. If he could find some way to impress her, something grand, some feat of dweomer that Pir could never match—maybe then she’d see him in the old light.
Laz returned to the fire to find Faharn stuffing himself with still more roast lamb and a half-round of thin fresh bread. Dallandra must have noticed Faharn’s appetite as well. Not long after dawn on the morrow, Neb arrived at Laz’s camp, his arms full of sacks of food.
“Gifts from the Wise One,” Neb said.
Faharn hurried over to take some of the sacks. Together, the two apprentices went off to stow them in the tent. Laz felt an odd unease at the sight of Neb—odd because he’d liked the lad when first they’d met back in Trev Hael. Neb had been miserable and thus weak, back then, in deep mourning for his hearth kin, carried off by the pestilence that had ravaged the town. Now something about him warned of danger, but the danger lay under his surface, like an ebb tide waiting for the unwary swimmer under a pleasant-seeming sea.
Odd and twice odd, Laz thought. Wait—what was that name Dalla mentioned? Nevyn. Neb and Nevyn. Hearing the names sound together in his mind turned him suddenly cold with dweomer warning. Why? He had no idea. He decided that he’d best see if he could find out.
Neb came out of the tent with Faharn right behind, carrying a basket of bread and dried apples. Laz took a chunk of bread between his thumb and forefinger and waved it in Neb’s direction. “Did Dallandra mention that I’d scried out the dragon book?” Laz said.
“She did.” Neb sat down on one side of the cold firepit. “She also told me that spirits of Aethyr were guarding it.”
“That’s what I saw, truly.” Laz sat down on the other side.
They considered each other, with Neb as wary as Laz. Faharn joined them, but since he knew only a few words of Deverrian, he ate steadily and said little.
“Do you have any idea where it might be?” Laz said at last.
“I don’t,” Neb said. “But Salamander thinks it must be at the Boar dun. Evan, I mean.”
“I’ve heard all his names now, my thanks. I am amazed by the number of names the Westfolk have, and Evan Ebañy Salamander tran whoever his father was is no different.” Laz paused, thinking. Salamander himself had acquired that same odd aura of dangerous interest. Did I know these men in my former life? Laz wondered.
“Things are different among the Gel da’Thae?” Neb said.
“They are. A name’s something to be guarded most carefully. You only get two if you’re freeborn, one if you’re a slave.”
“Is that why you made up another one? You were calling yourself Tirn when first we met.”
Laz winced. He’d quite forgotten that.
“My apologies,” Laz said. “I felt I was on dangerous ground, there among your people.”
“Ah.” Neb considered this for a few moments. “Understandable, I suppose.” His tone of voice made it clear that he neither understood nor approved. “But about the book, Dalla told me what you saw. You know, that would fit a rough dun built by men who are basically renegades, and the slave had the Boar on his cheek, too.”
“So you’re guessing it’s at the Boar dun, then?”
“I am, which is a pity, because if it’s there, it’s doomed.”
“What? Why?”
“Prince Voran’s planning on razing the dun, that’s why.”
“Razing it? You mean burning it? And who’s this Voran person?”
“The Justiciar of the Northern Border. The Boars have been raiding into Cerrgonney, so it’s his duty to gather an army and burn the place in