The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [137]
Inside its plain green binding, the other book held a copy of the chronicles he’d mentioned on her first day in the camp, an account of the War at Highstone Tor in Slavers’ Country and its aftermath in the Freeland city of Marshfort. The latter tale she knew well. In Marshfort the holy witness Raena had died, slain by the man known as Rhodry Aberwyn, whom Vandar had then transformed into the silver dragon. Laz saw the chronicle of these events as a weapon to destroy her faith, Sidro knew, and at first she left it unopened. But curiosity—it’s your besetting sin, Sidro, she told herself. That and lust.
Finally, on the fourth evening, after she’d eaten the dinner Laz left outside the door, she surrendered to her sin and opened the chronicle. By dweomer light she read until her back was cramped from leaning over the book and her swollen eyes could read no more. She dragged herself away from the table and leaned on a windowsill to look through the trees at the night sky. Judging by the wheel of stars, the dawn lay close at hand.
‘He’s not the only liar in the world, is he?’ she said aloud.
For a moment she wept, then returned to the table. She banished the dweomer light, shut the book, and turned away to fall upon the mattress, exhausted. When she woke to a sunny room, Laz was sitting at the table and smiling at her. The book lay open in front of him.
‘Are you hungry?’ he said. ‘I’ll sleep over at Faharn’s again tonight, but I figured it was safe for me to be here during the day.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. I’m barely bleeding at all.’
He touched the tips of the fingers on his right hand to his forehead, a sign of submission and warding both. She sat up and considered him.
‘For all that you love to mock,’ she said, ‘you still cling to the old ways.’
‘In some things.’ He grinned again. ‘I brought you a couple of buckets of wash water. I’ll go get some food.’
Once he left, Sidro took off her dress and shift, then considered the buckets of water. There were prayers to be said while she purified herself, but she’d have to choose between two sets, the ancient ritual she’d learned as a young girl, and the new ritual that Alshandra’s priestesses had devised to replace it. She’d not used the ancient set in years. For a moment she considered chanting the prayer to Alshandra. Perhaps the chroniclers were wrong. Perhaps she would answer and forgive her priestess her broken vows. Sidro hesitated, then remembered Laz, touching his fingers to his forehead in a gesture as old as the Horsekin race.
‘Rinbala, goddess of the sea,’ she began. ‘Wash me clean now that my blood time is ending.’
When she finished the chant, she gathered up the bloody rags she’d been using. Later she would go into the forest and wash them in running water. When that time came, she knew that she would pray not to Alshandra, but to Kanz, goddess of the moon.
Sidro wasn’t the only person wondering about the whereabouts of the two dragons. Salamander was beginning to worry about their absence. The army, led by Maelaber and his escort, had been making its slow way west into the roadless grasslands for nearly a fortnight. With so many men and horses to tend, making and breaking camp took hours out of the day’s travel. Much to the frustration of the dwarven carters, the long grass kept catching and winding itself around the strakes on the cartwheels. The army would have to pause while the swearing carters removed it. The old-fashioned wooden wheels of the Deverry carts broke just as often as they always had, and again, the army would have to stop. On three different days it rained, forcing the army to huddle in its tents.
Salamander felt that they were crawling, not marching. Every now and then the raven mazrak would fly overhead. Salamander worried constantly that he’d flap off to warn Zakh Gral.
‘I wish that wretched dragon would get herself back here,