The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [148]
‘But this fellow was human,’ Neb said. ‘Or at least, he looked human, except for the tattoos.’
‘Well, they’ve been taking slaves for centuries, haven’t they? I’d imagine that the women have little choice about whose bed they warm.’ Mirryn wrinkled his freckled nose in disgust. ‘Savages, they are, the Horsekin.’
‘They are all of that,’ Neb said. ‘Though to be fair, our ancestors weren’t much better, or so my father told me once, when it came to bondwomen.’
‘Well, maybe so. You know, I think we’d better tell Lord Oth up in Cengarn about this. A Horsekin half-breed in Bel’s priesthood? He’s most likely a spy or suchlike.’
‘True spoken, my lord. I’ll go get my pen and ink. Lord Oth probably can’t smoke him out till the gwerbret returns, but he should be warned. Though you know what’s odd? I never saw this fellow in the temple when I went there with the prince and Gwerbret Ridvar. I was looking for him, too, because I wanted to thank him.’
‘That is odd. Maybe he wasn’t a real priest of Bel at all. I suppose if you shaved your head and put on that tunic they wear, who would argue with you about it? Giving a priest trouble is a good way to get the god he serves angry with you.’
‘You’re quite right. Challenging him would be too risky. If it turned out he was genuine—’ Neb shuddered to finish the point.
It was several days before Neb saw the raven mazrak again. Neb worked all morning in the sunny herb garden until his shirt was soaked through with sweat and he felt dizzy from the lack of moving air. He hauled up a bucket of water from the well and poured it over himself, then hauled up another and used the tin cup chained to the bucket to scoop up a good long drink. Once his head cleared, he climbed up the ladder to the catwalk near the top of the dun wall, where the Red Wolf pennant flapped, promising a breeze. Neb breathed in the cleaner air, then sat down on the catwalk and leaned back against the cool stone wall.
Down below he noticed Branna, walking across the ward with Horza the woodcutter. Branna held a big sack of the sort in which she stored carded wool. Horza was carrying an odd contraption—a dwarven straked wheel mounted on a very short axle supported on four little legs. He’d added wooden pegs to the wheel’s rim as well. They disappeared into his workshop with Branna talking all the while. For a moment Neb wondered what they were doing; then he remembered Branna talking about making a device she called her wool-spinner.
The idea held little interest for him. He leaned back, glancing up, and saw the raven mazrak, drifting in a circle high above the dun. Slowly, keeping his back to the stones of the wall, Neb slithered up rather than stood. The raven completed his circle and began another. Neb slid his hand into his pocket and very slowly, standing in shadow, pulled out his leather sling, then froze. The raven finished his second drifting circle and began a third. Equally slowly Neb reached into his other pocket and pulled out a smooth round stone. All at once the raven croaked in alarm. Rather than flying off, he merely climbed higher, out of the sling’s range, and began another circle. Neb had the sudden odd feeling that he’d heard the raven speak, then realized that he was perceiving an attempt to reach him with thought alone. He put the sling and stone back into his pockets. The raven dropped down lower again.
‘Do you want to parley?’ Neb called out.
The raven croaked, then began to lose height, circling and following the line of the dun wall. In a flurry of wings he landed on a crenel, swaying and flapping until he got his balance. Intelligence peered out of his round eyes, an abnormal—for a raven—brown. With a clack of beak, he spoke or tried to speak. He could only manage a series of croaks and clicks that sounded, faintly, like words.
‘I can’t understand you,’ Neb said.
The raven tried again, his beak working hard as he formed a few ungrammatical Deverrian words, ‘ihr yhdoh een anavod ki.’ Or at least, as far as Neb could tell, he might have said, ‘I know you.’
‘I know you, too,