The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [125]
Gerran grinned at her. ‘So it is, but good enough for war.’
‘I suppose so. The new one will be waiting when you return.’
‘Let’s not tempt the gods, my lady. If I return. And if I do, I uh er, well, there’ll be um somewhat I want to discuss with you. A matter of great import for both of us.’
He felt that the sunlight had suddenly turned her face to gold, she looked so happy. She’d understood, and he thanked every god.
‘It’s not the time now,’ he went on. ‘What if I don’t come back?’
‘I’m not even going to think such a thing possible!’
‘But it is. Here, you’re a warrior’s daughter. You know what war means.’
‘So I do.’ She looked away, the smile gone. ‘Well and good, then. But may I give you a token to wear? To the others it’ll mean naught more than that I favour you.’
‘Then I’d like naught better.’
Solla turned and hurried into the broch. He followed more slowly and paused in the shadows by the door as she hurried up the staircase. The great hall stood mostly empty, except for a pack of dogs snoring in the straw out in the middle of the room and a pair of ragged lasses gossiping over by the servants’ hearth. In but a few moments Solla returned, carrying a narrow scarf, which she laid across his hands when he held them out. It had once been beautiful, he supposed, a blue strip of fine Bardek silk, embroidered with roses at either end, but long years had faded and frayed it.
‘It’s not grand, but it’s the best I have,’ she said. ‘My brother begrudged me the coin for finery.’
Gerran stopped himself just in time from calling her brother, Gwerbret Ridvar, a mingy little bastard. ‘Well, this suits me,’ he said instead. ‘I’m not much of a noble lord, either.’
He folded the scarf up and slipped it inside his shirt, settling it against his belt to ensure it stayed there. For a long while they stood staring into each other’s eyes until they heard Tieryn Cadryc and his guests talking and laughing as they strode towards the door.
With the dun so full of noble lords, Neb and Branna took to spending as much time as possible up in their chamber. They would sit on their bed and take turns reading to each other from the books Dallandra had sent them. Of course, at times their newly-wed feeling for each other took over, and they’d get no reading done of an afternoon. But they kept on, memorizing page after page, until sundown made reading the faded writing impossible. They drilled each other on the tables of correspondences and the lists of peculiar names until they could rattle off the various planes and levels of the universe, the beings who lived upon them, and all their various attributions and characteristics.
‘I suppose this is all going to make sense one day,’ Branna remarked late one afternoon. ‘In those dreams I had, everything was so easy and glorious, not like this at all. It’s almost as tedious as spinning.’
‘Well, the memory work leads to the other,’ Neb said, ‘or so we’ve been told. You know, I’m finding that book about physick almost as interesting.’
‘I’ve noticed you studying it.’
‘It’s because of the sickness that killed my father and sister and half of our town, too.’ Neb glanced away, his eyes brimming with remembered mourning. ‘I want to understand it. I know that if a person’s humours are unbalanced, then the person will get sick. But how can an entire town’s worth of people get unbalanced humours all at once?’
‘When you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous.’
‘Precisely. So some evil thing, a poison or suchlike, must have disrupted the humours in the first place, somewhat in the town wells, mayhap, or in the air, or…’ Neb let his voice trail away. ‘There had to be some agent of corruption, a thing that could somehow spread itself through the town. I don’t know what it could be.’
‘I’d guess that it spread through the air.’
‘That was my thought, too, because of the bodily spirits.’
‘Spirits in the body? Wildfolk or suchlike?’
‘Not in the least.’ Neb grinned at her. ‘That’s just a name for the subtle vapours