The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [87]
“Sheer chance. I met an actual priest of Bel upon the road, and for a while we traveled together. Alas, he grew very ill and died just before we reached your city. So I took his tunic and appurtenances and—what’s so wrong?”
Neb’s face had turned dead-white. “Ill with what?” His voice came out as a rasp.
“Oh, ye gods!” Laz suddenly understood. “With some sort of ghastly flux of the bowels, in truth, that drained him, and a fever came with it. I was sure he’d eaten spoiled food. He never ate what I did, because ordinary food wasn’t pure enough for him. Whilst I feared for my life at first, I never fell ill myself, so I assumed it couldn’t be an actual sickness.”
“I see.” Neb’s color began to return to normal. “Well, I have to assume the same. He must have eaten somewhat that had turned or suchlike. Where did you bury him?”
“I didn’t. I took his body to the temple of Bel just outside your town, the one on that little hill on the other side of the river. When he was dying, he begged me to do that, so he could have the proper prayers said over him.”
“No doubt. The priests hold their prayers in high esteem.”
“They buried him among those trees on the hills.”
“And then you came to town for the market fair?”
“I did. The temple sent a delegation, like, to bless things.”
“So they buried him on the hill.” Neb’s voice trailed away. “I wonder . . .”
“What?”
“Well, when it rained, the runoff from that hill flowed into the river upstream from the town. That river’s where a lot of us got our water.” He paused, chewing his lower lip in thought. “But you never felt ill yourself?”
“Only queasy at the poor fellow’s symptoms. You might ask Dallandra about all this.” Laz felt a trace of dweomer cold run down his back. “Somewhat tells me it might be important.”
“I’ll do that. My thanks.”
Neb strode off, leaving Laz profoundly uneasy. At the time, he’d been convinced that Tirn the priest’s special food, kept too long in his saddlebags, had been the cause of his illness. But what if it hadn’t been? Could the young priest’s corpse have been the source of the corrupted humors that had ravaged Trev Hael? May the gods forgive me! Laz thought. I should have buried him by the road and been done with him! Yet he himself hadn’t fallen ill. And, ye gods, I even wore his clothes! He could comfort himself with that thought, that if anyone should have been a victim of spreading corruption, it would have been him.
“Ready to ride, scribe?” Rhidderc put a welcome end to his thoughts.
“I am. Let’s get on our way.”
As they rode out, following the track the messengers had left through the high grass, Laz glanced back for one last look at the Westfolk camp. Somewhere among those tents were Sidro and Pir. He wondered if he’d ever see her again, and the wondering wrung his heart.
Branna stood at the edge of the camp and watched Elessario feeding the changelings. Although, at some forty years old, Elessi still had the mind of a child, she was in most respects an ordinary child, who loved her mother, made friends, listened carefully when someone spoke to her, and made much loved pets out of the alar’s dogs—unlike the changelings. As soon as they were old enough to run, speak a few words, and feed themselves, they wanted nothing more than to live apart and never be touched by anyone again.
Yet had they left the alar, they would have starved, died from accidents in the wilderness, or even been eaten by the wild animals that terrified them far more than they terrified ordinary children. The older ones, some eight souls in all, trailed along with the alar in a small crowd of their own kind, surrounded always by an absolute horde of Wildfolk. Only Elessi could speak to them, and she was the only person they would answer. “Princess,” they called her, those of them who had chosen to learn to speak.
Twice a day Elessi gathered food from everyone in the camp and took it out into the grass. The changelings would come running and gather around her to grab handfuls