The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [14]
While Salamander told her Neb’s insights about the plague, he could feel her concern.
‘I’m glad you told me this right away,’ she said. ‘If it does come from the Horsekin cities, I hope they don’t realize it. They could use it as a weapon against us.’
For a moment Salamander felt as if the solid stone had moved under him. ‘Ye gods,’ he said. ‘Just—oh ye gods!’
‘There’s a good chance it doesn’t, though,’ Dallandra went on. ‘If the plague were still somehow alive there in the northern cities, why haven’t the Gel da’ Thae come down with it? Why didn’t I get it, come to think of it, when I visited Zatcheka and Grallezar in Braemel, all those years ago?’
‘A most soothing and apposite point, oh princess of powers perilous. Deverry towns aren’t known for their cleanliness. Maybe it’s just something that Neb’s birthplace brewed up in its gutters.’
‘That seems more probable.’ Yet Dallandra sounded doubtful. ‘Rinbaladelan’s the only one of the ruined cities that’s likely to still have pestilence. The plague began there. I’ve been told that they had underground cisterns for fresh water. Moist, dark places usually do breed one kind of accidental humour or another. It’s the slime that accretes, you see.’
‘If you say so.’ Salamander knew nothing about medicine. The thought of moist, dark slimes made him profoundly glad of it, too. ‘What about that priest who brought Neb to his late and lamented uncle’s farm?’
‘What about him? Don’t priests of Bel travel about the kingdom all the time?’
‘Yes, they do. Somehow I had the odd feeling that he and the pestilence had some connection. Yet no one in the temple near Honelg’s dun was suffering from it.’
‘That’s true, nor any of their farmers, either. And it’s not likely that they’d have been in one of the Horsekin towns, is it?’
‘Most extremely unlikely, indeed. I seem to have got obsessed with this wretched illness, probably because of your friends in Braemel. I had a moment of fearing that they’d bring plague with them to the war.’
‘Well, it’s not likely and doubly so now.’ Dallandra’s worried mood returned in force. ‘Something very odd seems to be happening in Braemel.’
‘Haven’t you heard from Grallezar?’
‘No. I’ve tried to reach her several times now, but I can’t. I can feel her mind, but she seems utterly distracted. I hope things are going well there.’
‘Maybe the Gel da’ Thae simply don’t want to fight against their own kind. They have no love for Deverry men, certainly. What do they call them? Red Reivers?’
‘That’s right, Lijik Ganda in the Horsekin tongue.’
‘Wait—Rocca used a different word for red.’
‘The Gel da’ Thae have a great many words for all the different colours. Gral means red like rust. Ganda means red like fresh meat.’
‘Oh. That says a great deal about the name they chose for Deverry men.’
‘True. Now, Braemel allied itself with us and with the Roundears up in Cerr Cawnen out of fear of the Horsekin, those wild tribes of the north. This spring Grallezar hinted at some sort of trouble in her city, something to do with a coterie of Alshandra worshippers, but she never said what it was. I assumed it was none of my affair. The Gel da’ Thae can be as clannish as we are.’
‘Then we’ll know exactly what she chooses to tell us, and naught a thing more.’
‘That unfortunately is very true. I could definitely feel her fear, though, when we talked mind to mind.’
In his daily scrying sessions, Salamander had seen changes taking place at Zakh Gral. New troops had arrived, hordes of slaves were building new barracks, and always work on the stone walls went forward. He told Dallandra about these developments in detail. For some while more they talked back and forth, letting their minds reach across the hundreds