The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [108]
‘I took him to the lavender meadow and sent him across the white river,’ the woman said. ‘He interrupted us.’ She sent out an exhalation of regret like bitter perfume, then disappeared, completely and suddenly gone.
Only Valandario’s long years of training saved her from joining Jav there and then. A lesser dweomerworker would have screamed and raged and flown this way and that until her silver cord broke behind her. Instead, Valandario slid down the cord back to her body, transferred her consciousness over to the flesh, and banished her body of light with the proper ritual. Yet when she opened her eyes, she saw that she’d fallen forward into the pool of drying blood on Jav’s chest. She screamed, screamed again, could not stop screaming and sobbing, reached up to claw at her hair and face with her fingernails. Hands caught hers and stopped her.
‘Val, Val!’ It was Enabrilia’s voice. ‘No! Don’t hurt yourself! He wouldn’t want that.’
She turned blindly towards her old friend and wept. Enabrilia threw her arms around her and pulled her close. Other women clustered round, murmuring, and helped them stand.
‘Come out of the tent,’ Enabrilia murmured. ‘Let’s go outside.’
Without their support Valandario never would have been able to walk those few steps. They half-led, half-carried her into Enabrilia’s tent while she wept, trembling with it, choking on her grief, gasping down air only to weep again. They helped her sit, then huddled around her, while the sprites hovered above and wrung tiny hands.
A man’s voice cut through her tears. ‘I thought maybe Loddlaen could help, but none of us can find him,’ he said. ‘His horse and mules are gone. His tent’s here, but it’s empty.’
Rage flared and burned into the grief. Valandario choked down her tears and looked up. ‘Was it him?’ she whispered to the sprites.
They nodded, then winked out like blown candles. She realized that Danalaurel was standing in the doorway.
‘Was it Loddlaen who killed him?’ Danno’s voice trembled as badly as hers, but with rage. ‘His own foster-brother, and he killed him?’
Valandario nodded. Words lay beyond her.
Danno turned and shouted to someone outside. She heard answering shouts, then Danalaurel turned and ducked out, yelling about fetching horses.
‘Why?’ one of the women said. ‘Why would he do—’
‘Thievery, most likely,’ another woman said. ‘Didn’t you see how everything was all thrown around in there? Everyone knows that Val carries a lot of gemstones with her.’
A memory began to rise in Valandario’s mind. Gemstones, Loddlaen wanting—
‘The black pyramid!’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go back to the tent!’
‘Not just yet.’ Enabrilia grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Let the others—’ She hesitated briefly. ‘Let the others finish what they’re doing in there.’
‘Do what?’ Val whispered. ‘You mean taking Jav away.’
Enabrilia nodded. Valandario began to weep again, hugging herself and rocking back and forth like a child. When another woman brought in a clean tunic and leggings, Enabrilia helped Val out of her blood-soaked clothing and into the clean as if she really had been a child.
‘I’ve got to tell Aderyn,’ Valandario said. ‘He can’t just ride in and hear about this.’
‘Yes, he can,’ Enabrilia said. ‘I think it’ll be kinder, actually, to tell him about it to his face. We can all try to comfort him that way. It’s not long before dawn, anyway, so he’ll be here soon.’
No one slept that night. Two and three at a time, the men rode back to camp to relay messages, then rode out again to resume searching. By dawn they’d all returned with the bad news that the search was hopeless. Although they’d sent out parties in all directions, Loddlaen and his stock had vanished, apparently without leaving a single hoof print on the ground.
‘He has dweomer, doesn’t he?’ Danalaurel said. ‘It’s no wonder we can’t find him.’
With the pale light of day Valandario’s first flush of grief had spent itself. Danno’s remark reminded her that she had dweomer herself, more powerful than Loddlaen’s, and she tried scrying