The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [109]
‘He might have taken ship again,’ Valandario told the others. ‘I wonder if someone was waiting for him down at the coast. It’s only a few miles away.’
At daybreak Valandario, Enabrilia, and two other women returned to her tent to sort through the tent bags and other possessions scattered around. Since Valandario couldn’t bear to remove them, the others packed up Javanateriel’s clothing and possessions. Val searched through the scattered goods left behind. As she worked, she carefully repacked each tent bag and hung it in its usual place to force her mind to do something besides mourn. She found that Loddlaen had left two handfuls of gemstones behind—a small fortune in gems, in fact—but sure enough, the black obsidian pyramid had disappeared with him.
‘Everything else is here,’ Valandario said at last. ‘As far as I can tell, anyway. My mind—I just can’t seem to think.’
‘Of course,’ Enabrilia said. ‘Do you think you can sleep?’
‘I doubt it, but I’ll try.’
Despite her doubt, as soon as she lay down, Valandario did fall asleep. She dreamt of Javanateriel. She saw him walking towards her, laughing at the jest he’d played on her. She berated him for pretending to die, but when he caught her hands, she forgave him—only to wake and remember that no, he truly had been murdered. She sat up, feeling that she might be sick at any moment, sure that the smell of his blood still lingered in the humid summer air. Enabrilia was sitting near by, watching her.
‘It’s noon,’ Enabrilia said. ‘Do you feel like coming outside?’
‘Yes,’ Valandario said. ‘I’ve got to have some fresh air.’
They walked outside to find the camp oddly quiet. Children stayed close to their parents, who stood or sat in little groups, talking in subdued voices. Even the dogs had picked up the mood and lay near the tents with barely a wag of a tail or a whine.
‘They never found him,’ Enabrilia said. ‘Ah by the Black Sun! I wonder what his mother’s going to think of this, if we ever see her again to tell her about it, anyway. Dalla was my closest friend, you know, when we were girls. Thinking that her child—ah gods.’
Distantly, at the edge of the camp, someone howled out the word ‘no’, followed by a long shriek of mingled rage and grief. Everyone turned to look in that direction.
‘I’ll wager that’s Aderyn,’ Valandario said. ‘Someone must have told him.’
Aderyn came striding through the tents, his silver hair swept back from his face, his eyes dripping silent tears, his mouth set and grim. Everyone turned to watch him without speaking a word. When he saw Valandario, Aderyn stopped, then drew himself up to full height and hurried to meet her.
‘My poor child!’ Aderyn said. ‘My heart aches for you!’
When he held out his arms, Valandario ran to him. She felt like a child, indeed, that young, frightened apprentice once more. Aderyn held her close and stroked her hair with one hand while she wept against him.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said through her sobs. ‘I don’t blame you.’
They wept together while all around them the People stood watching. On the edge of the crowd someone began a mourning song, and slowly, a few at a time, the others joined in, until the entire camp chanted its grief.
In the hot weather, the death ground at the Lake of the Leaping Trout lay too far north for his alar to take Javanateriel there for the last rites. The Deverry merchants and their men gave them every stick of firewood they’d brought along with them for the funereal pyre. The women in the alar wrapped Jav in a linen sheet and laid him on the pyre, then poured flasks of olive oil from Bardek over him and the wood. Before they lit that final fire, Valandario brought out the pair of wooden cups and tucked them one into each flaccid hand.
The fire burned much of the night. With the dawn, when the ashes had cooled, Valandario let them scatter in the rising wind. As she watched them drifting away, she knew that she would never love another man,