The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [83]
“Why is this cursed book so important to you, anyway?”
“A number of reasons. First off, having the silver wyrm back in human form would be a great relief. He’ll probably still be an ill-tempered berserker, but he’ll be a great deal smaller.”
Faharn laughed in agreement.
“And then there’s the matter of Sidro,” Laz went on. “Wouldn’t she be impressed if I rescued the thing? It would make me appear far more powerful than Pir.”
Faharn’s smile disappeared, buried under a look that revealed no feeling at all.
“I know you’ve never liked her,” Laz said.
“Why would you want her back?” Faharn blurted this out. “She betrayed you with a man you counted as a friend.”
Laz wanted to make a jest, could think of none, and finally sighed with a melodramatic shrug. “Once again you’ve made a good point,” Laz said. “But I don’t care to discuss it.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you. I just wondered why you wanted the book, is all.”
“Oh, don’t cringe!”
Faharn winced.Laz considered saying more then got up instead. Faharn stayed where he was, looking up at him as if waiting for the conversation to continue. With another shrug, Laz turned and strode off. Faharn never followed.
Laz walked to the edge of the beaten-down area of grass that marked where his full camp had once stood. He shoved his hands into his brigga pockets and lingered, looking west at the elven tents. The various comings and goings had left a path of flattened grass between the two camps. He could walk across it, he realized, and ask to speak with Sidro. There, surrounded by safety, in the midst of her new people, she might well agree to a talk.
But what could he say, with Gel da’Thae speakers like Exalted Mother Grallezar nearby to eavesdrop? Or do—he could hardly attempt to ensorcell her again with Dallandra and other dweomerworkers so close to hand. Not that I would, he reminded himself. Of course not. I want her back of her own free will. He was lying to himself, he realized, just as he’d so often lied to Sidro about so many things. He found himself remembering young Neb’s scorn over the false name he’d used in Trev Hael.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” he said aloud. “That’s what Haen Marn did to me.”
Or perhaps he’d never really known who he was. Perhaps that was the heart of the matter. Perhaps.
Laz stood there for a long while that morning and listened to his thoughts bending this way and that, like the tall grass when a gusty wind blows, announcing a coming storm. Only much later did it occur to him to wonder how he knew that Rhodry Maelwaedd had been a berserker.
The man with the beast on his cheek had saved the book from the ugly men who stank of blood. The spirits had puzzled out that much, because at times the beast-marked man would take the book out of the leather bag. He would turn the pages, run his fingers over the letters, and weep before putting it back into the bag and hiding it under a straw mattress. Because he’d saved the book, the spirits decided to reward him. With all the loose matter in the hay-loft, where he slept, they could easily create blank pages in case he wished to write upon them. They made the entire astral construct larger, too, until it would no longer fit into the bag, simply because they hated the presence of leather. The man with the beast on his cheek seemed both pleased and frightened by the changes.
His fear puzzled them. They’d done nothing extraordinary, but they reversed the changes because he was afraid. If only Evandar would come—they told each other this often—he would explain everything. Evandar or one of their lords, someone who could speak to the beast-marked man—they could only wait.
“It’s time we left Twenty Streams,” Cal said. “The sheep have torn up too much of the grass as it is.”
“So I see,” Dallandra said. “But what about Rori?”
Cal grinned at her. “I think he’ll be able to spot which way we’ve gone. He flies high.”
“Of course! Silly of me.”
They had left