The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [198]
‘Oh, hold your tongue! Don’t mock the dead!’
‘Why? Do you think she’ll come back to curse me if I do?’
‘Naught of the sort! It’s merely an ugly stupid thing to do.’ Sidro looked away, shocked at her own feelings. For years she’d hated Rocca, her rival and tormentor, but now Rocca was dead while she still lived. ‘My sister in Alshandra,’ she whispered. ‘She really was, you know, in spite of everything, a sister. I shall miss her.’
Laz stared, uncomprehending.
‘I used to envy her so much,’ Sidro continued. ‘Her faith came so easily, like a river in spate, where mine was a little trickle from a muddy spring. But now I see that she was mad, absolutely moon-struck. She’ll never have the chance to learn the truth. I don’t envy her any longer. I’m sorry she’s dead, I really am.’
‘I suppose I understand that.’ Laz spoke softly. ‘But I also suppose I don’t need to understand.’
‘No, you don’t.’ She managed a smile. ‘Not in the least.’
He smiled in return, then lowered his gaze and contemplated the white crystal again. It glowed from within, as if celebrating its twin’s release from the dark shrine.
‘What I do want to understand,’ Laz said, ‘is this crystal. I wonder if I can make it show me other views. I want to know how it manages to convey images from one place to the next. And here’s an answer very much worth knowing. If someone looks into its twin, can they see us?’
Sidro reflexively laid her hand on her throat.
‘Not a nice thought, is it?’ Laz said. ‘Especially if that minstrel can see you. You’d best not look into it again, Sisi.’
‘I won’t, then. Maybe you shouldn’t either.’
‘I’ll certainly put it aside for now. I don’t want to cause Grallezar any more pain by forcing her to see my disgusting visage. But later, I’ll come back to it. It intrigues me.’ He picked it up in one hand and stroked it with the forefinger of the other. ‘It has other secrets to show me. I’m sure of that.’
Sidro felt a ripple of cold run down her spine. A wizard warning, she thought, but she knew Laz too well to hope he’d stop pursuing a thing he wanted because of a mere omen.
Salamander’s grief had finally forced him to see the obvious, that he’d been in love with Rocca. The bitterness of the realization haunted him, that he’d not seen how much he’d loved her until his treachery had killed her. He knew that he’d had no choice, that he’d had to protect his people from the Horsekin warriors no matter what the cost to himself or to her. She was an enemy, he would remind himself. She wanted the Westfolk dead. But always in his mind a traitor voice would answer, I could have changed her, I could have shown her the truth.
That night, when sleep refused to come to him, he slipped out of the tent without waking Gerran and Clae, then walked for hours at the edge of the sleeping camp. Now and then he would look up at the stars, so cold and far above him, and weep for her. At last, so weary that he could barely stand, he stumbled back to his blankets and fell into welcome darkness, only to have Gerran shake him awake at dawn.
‘You’ve got to get up,’ Gerran said. ‘The army’s pulling back this morning.’
Salamander mumbled a few unpleasant words under his breath and rolled out of his blankets. He pulled on his boots—he’d slept in the rest of his clothes—and staggered out of the tent to search for food. The servants had been busily packing up all the supplies, but he managed to talk one of the freed village girls into giving him some cold soda bread and half a greasy sausage, which he ate on his way to the horse herd to fetch his roan gelding.
While the rest of the army formed up into a rough marching order, Salamander sat on horseback and looked at the ruins of what had once been Zakh Gral. A breeze lifted wisps of ash and dust and sent them drifting before they scattered and fell. Somewhere in the cinders and shattered stones lay Rocca’s ashes. The wind would scatter them, too. The rain would wash them into the river and down to the sea.
‘Ebañy!’ He heard Dallandra’s voice so clearly that it took him a moment to realize