The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [199]
‘I’m on my way!’
Salamander turned his horse and jogged back in the direction of the army to find it already moving out. On her grey gelding, Dallandra was waiting for him. He pulled up next to her mount and turned in the saddle to face her.
‘You had to do what you did,’ Dallandra said. ‘If Rocca had left with the other women, she’d still be alive. She chose to die, Ebañy. You didn’t kill her.’
‘I forced her into a position where she had that choice to make.’
Her silver eyes considered him in the same cool way that they would assess a man with a battle wound. ‘You did?’ she said at last. ‘Ye gods, how vain are you? The will of the princes, your people, the Deverry lords, and the Deverry high king himself, to say naught of the rakzanir who decided to build that wretched fortress in the first place—none of them had a thing to do with it, did they? It was all you?’
Salamander had never felt so murderous in his life. Dallandra sat calmly in her saddle, though her horse tossed up its head as if it suddenly feared him.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Am I right?’
Salamander choked back a barrage of curses, then released his anger with a sigh that let him speak normally. ‘Of course you are. I wouldn’t be furious if you were wrong.’
‘Ah, so you can see it. Good!’
‘You’re becoming as cold-hearted as Nevyn was, I hope you realize.’
‘Maybe it’s old age.’ She smiled at him. ‘Let’s go catch up with the army. We can talk later.’
That day the army marched back to the west-running road leading to Braemel, a position about half-way between Zakh Gral and the ford. Dallandra and Salamander left the noise and confusion behind and rode a short distance west. Beyond the forested hills they could see the dark rise of the distant mountains. Someday the People will have to go back there, Salamander thought, Horsekin or no Horsekin.
‘Do you feel a little better?’ Dallandra said. ‘About Rocca, I mean.’
‘The guilt has not yet ceased to chew upon my heart, if that’s what you mean,’ Salamander said. ‘But its teeth are shorter and duller. I still wish—’ His voice clouded, and he stopped speaking.
‘Grief takes its own time to heal,’ Dallandra said. ‘I’m so sorry you lost her.’
‘So am I. Very sorry.’
When they’d gone about a quarter of a mile, they halted and dismounted beside a rivulet, trickling down to join the Galan Targ. They slacked their horses’ bits and let them drink while they sat among the rubble from the clear-cut forest. Dallandra set the black pyramid down between them on Salamander’s old shirt. With the spirit unbound, Salamander was expecting it to glitter in the usual way of gems, but a peculiar quality still marred its reflected light.
‘It’s staining the light that touches it,’ Salamander said. ‘Or withering it? No, that’s not it, either. I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t, either, not completely,’ Dallandra said, ‘but this pyramid isn’t physically here in the way that an ordinary piece of stone is here in this world. It’s the shadow of a thing that exists on a higher plane.’
‘A what? I’ve never heard of that before.’
‘Evandar explained it to me years and years ago. He gave Rhodry a knife that shared the same qualities. These things have their true being on another plane of existence—the lower astral in this case, I’d say—but they cast a shadow onto the physical plane. The shadow’s made of matter.’
‘It’s like the Wildfolk, then.’
‘Not precisely, no. When the Wildfolk manifest in our world, they’re no longer in their own. They’ve travelled here, you might say. But with one of these—’ Dallandra held up the obsidian pyramid, ‘—only the shadow is here. The real object’s still in its proper world.’
‘Yet it feels so solid.’
‘It is solid, even though it’s only the shadow. It can be held and used and carried around, but doing so has effects in its own world, ones we can’t be aware of.’
‘That must be why it could bind such a powerful spirit.’
‘Exactly.’ She paused, her eyes stricken. ‘Loddlaen sold it to the man who trapped the spirit.’
‘I see.’ Salamander tried to think of some