The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [107]
‘Our squabbles always end the same way,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I said anything, all right? I won’t say another word.’
He stared at her, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. She thought the matter settled, but after a little while he abruptly spoke.
‘You’re saying I can’t hold my drink. That’s insulting.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘Oh? What else does staggering drunk mean?’
Val found herself tempted to scream at him, but she choked the impulse back. Maybe a smile would soothe his temper? She tried laying a loving hand on his arm as well, but he shook it off.
‘Very well, then,’ Jav said. ‘If you’re going to mock me, I’ll go home.’
Javanateriel stood up, took a staggering step to restore his balance, then walked off, heading in the direction of their tent. Valandario started to get up to follow him, but one of the other women caught her arm.
‘You’re the Wise One, but I’m a good bit older than you,’ she said. ‘It’s best to let the men just sleep it off.’
‘Maybe so.’ Val sat back down. ‘If I go after him now, we’ll only fight some more.’
The woman smiled, nodded, and hurried away, disappearing among the tents. Valandario returned to watching the dancing, but something nagged at her. As she thought about it, Val realized that she’d never seen her before—a tall woman with honey-blonde hair, darker than usual for one of the People. She turned to a man sitting nearby.
‘Who was that?’ Val said.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She must have come with some other alar. She’s not a part of yours?’
‘No. It’s odd. I can’t even picture her face, and here she just spoke to me.’
The dweomer cold seized Valandario in claws of ice. She got up, trembling and gasping for breath. The fellow she’d been speaking with rose, too, caught by her alarm.
‘Wise One?’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ Val said, ‘but Jav’s not.’
She turned and ran, dodging through the crowd. Dimly she was aware of other people following her, of shouts of alarm, of cries that the Wise One needed help. All she could think of was Jav, off alone somewhere—our tent, she thought. He said he was going home. By the time she reached her alar’s part of the campground, she was panting for breath and soaked in the cold sweat of sheer terror. Their tent stood in the midst of others. She dodged her way around and through. As she ran up, Wildfolk appeared in swarms, gnomes at her feet, sprites in the air, clustering around her, drenching her and the tent flap in silver light.
Valandario flung back the tent flap and ducked inside. Jav lay sprawled on his back, his mouth open, his eyes staring at nothing, his shirt soaked not with mead but blood from the dagger wounds stabbed into his chest. All around him lay tent bags and their contents, spilled and kicked this way and that. Val took a few steps and flung herself down beside him, too out of breath to scream. She could hear the others, swearing, yelling back and forth, but their words made no sense at all.
‘Jav?’ she whispered. ‘Jav?’
She grabbed his right hand—still faintly warm—but she knew he was dead. She dropped into trance as fast as she could, found her body of light waiting, and transferred into it. All around her the Wildfolk shone and sparkled, lines of light and crystalline shapes in a multitude of colours, their true appearance on the etheric. In this glimmering crowd she rose up to the tent roof. She should have seen Javanateriel’s etheric double still hovering around his body, but she only saw the dead flesh and the blackness of the objects scattered around him. She rose higher and sailed through the tent’s roof out into the night sky, where the blue light billowed around her. Far above the moon shone like an enormous silver scowl.
‘Jav!’ She sent her thought out in a scream of pain. ‘Jav! Think of me so I can find you! Call my name!’
Someone was approaching her through the blue, but it was the simulacrum of a woman, an abnormally tall woman with honey-blonde hair. She wore the semblances of leather leggings and an elven tunic, and she carried a golden bow