The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [116]
‘I want to come with you.’
The clouds turned black as smoke, and she fainted. When she woke, she lay decorously on her side in the grass. Laz was sitting cross-legged nearby. She sat up and looked around. Long shadows fell across the meadow from the western verge of the forest. In among the shadows something moved. As she watched, a Horsekin man emerged from the trees, leading a saddled horse.
‘Do you feel better?’ Laz said. You needed that little nap.’
‘I must have, yes.’ Sidro sat up, yawning. ‘Who’s that over there?’
‘A friend of mine. I summoned him while you slept. The horse is for you, to spare your poor swollen feet the walking. Ah, my love, I can’t tell you how joyful my heart is, that you’ve agreed to come with me.’
‘Mine is too.’ Yet for a moment she felt utterly muddled. When had she agreed? She couldn’t remember, yet she was sure that somehow, she had indeed done so. And I won’t have to walk in the forest alone, she thought. My dear Laz! Alshandra must have sent him.
When Laz’s friend arrived, Sidro noticed that the horse—a black mare with a white off-fore and a white diamond on her forehead—followed him without the benefit of a lead rope, though she wore a leather halter. The Horsekin nodded at Laz, then bowed to Sidro, but said nothing. He was slender, short for one of the ’Kin at about six feet tall, with their typical milk-white skin between the welter of blue tattoos on his face, neck, and hands. Across his left cheek blue letters in the Horsekin alphabet spelled KREN, the goddess of wild things. He wore a loose green shirt and a pair of buckskin leggings, ordinary enough clothing.
His black hair, however, marked him as someone beyond the typical. Most Gel da’ Thae men let their hair grow long and brushed it straight back or kept it in waist-length braids. This fellow had cut his hair very short except for a wide stripe down the middle of his skull, which he’d done in a row of narrow braids so that it fell to one side like a horse’s mane. When he bowed to her, the metal charms tied into the braids jingled and caught the light with a glint of silver.
‘I’ll transform and fly over the forest, my love,’ Laz said to Sidro. ‘I’ll see you at our camp. It’s not very far.’
Sidro’s shift had dried enough for her to put the dress on over it. Laz waited to leave until his friend had helped Sidro mount the horse. He handed her the blanket and her sack.
‘Don’t watch,’ Laz said.
She looked away, but once again she saw the flash of bluish light. From the saddle she glanced back to see his human body gone. The raven took a few steps, then bunched his muscles and sprang into the air with a drumbeat of wings. The mare ignored him; she must have been part of his herd for a good long while. Laz circled over the meadow once, croaked a farewell, and headed north-east.
The Gel da’ Thae nodded to Sidro, then clucked to the mare and strode off in the same direction. His long braided mane bobbed and swayed as he walked. The mare followed right along, switching her tail in a parallel rhythm.
‘What’s your name?’ Sidro said to him.
‘Pir.’
‘You must be a horse mage.’
‘Yes.’
She waited, but he volunteered not a word more. She considered asking more questions, but once they walked into the forest all her attention went to ducking low-growing branches and clinging to the saddle-peak. The trail they were following twisted uphill and down, dodged around boulders and sudden ravines. The black mare plodded after her leader, only breaking stride when she needed to pick her way around some obstacle.
The sun hung so low that shadows filled the forest, though overhead the sky still shone blue, when Sidro first smelled the camp: a stink of men, old cooking, some sort of ale-like brew, and the inevitable results of the last two. Another quarter mile on, and she saw it.
Scattered among the trees stood wooden shelters, made of rough planks supplemented with deer hides and laced together with thongs and bits of rope. She counted sixteen of them, more lean-tos than cabins, with their slant roofs and empty windows, but she could