The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [200]
‘The spirit had no way of telling me that. It did show me an image of him, a very typical Cerrmor man, I’d say. The spirit used the words “he dripped evil”.’
‘Dark dweomer, then—’ Salamander paused, thinking. ‘There was a Cerrmor man who’d learned the dark dweomer in Bardek. He tried to steal the Great Stone of the West—Alastyr, that was his name. Nevyn drove him into a trap, and then the scum’s own apprentice killed him. Nevyn told me that this Alastyr had some sort of link with Loddlaen.’
‘And a great interest in dweomer gems, it sounds like. Well, it probably was him, then.’
Her face betrayed nothing, nor did her voice, but Salamander knew that hearing her son had trafficked with the dark dweomer must have stabbed her to the heart.
‘Should we go back to camp?’ he said.
‘Not yet.’ Dallandra turned calm eyes his way. ‘The others can tend the wounded. I want to sit where it’s quiet for a while.’
‘Shall I look into the stone?’
‘Why not? I hope it’ll finish giving you Evandar’s message. You know, there was a time when I couldn’t bear to say his name, just because I missed him so much, but now things are better, partly thanks to Cal, of course, but partly just because it’s been so long. That’s one of the gifts the People have, the time to let old loves slip away. The Deverry folk and the Gel da’ Thae aren’t so lucky.’
‘And that’s your message to me?’
She merely smiled for an answer.
Salamander picked the black pyramid up in both hands and stared into it through the clipped square of its tip, only to see what appeared to be a section of a wooden plank. When he leaned closer, the view widened just enough to for him to realize that he was seeing part of a rough-made table and the edge of a red pottery plate. Before he could tell Dallandra, the vision inside the crystal changed. With it memory came flooding back.
He saw the island once again, remembered seeing it before, remembered, even, sitting in Nevyn’s lap and his bewilderment at the pictures that seemed to come out of nowhere. Now, as a man, he could focus his trained mind and understand what he was seeing.
‘There’s an island with a long wooden dock,’ he said aloud. ‘At the dock, a boat with a dragon head for a prow is bobbing at anchor. The island itself isn’t all that large, and half of it’s wooded. In the midst of the trees there’s a tall square stone tower. I think there’s a house of some sort in front of the tower. Someone’s standing on the pier. Ye gods, it’s Evandar, all right, yellow hair and turquoise eyes and all.’
Dallandra leaned closer. ‘Is he holding something?’ She kept her voice low. ‘Val told me that he was carrying something when you saw him.’
‘It’s a book, bound in white leather. On the cover’s a black figure of a dragon—it must be Arzosah! He’s opening the book now, and I can see writing in it. It’s the instructions for some sort of dweomer working. Blast and curses! The vision’s fading. I can’t read it.’ He looked up from the crystal.
Dallandra was gazing into some far distance. ‘Haen Marn,’ she said.
‘Um, what?’
‘Not what. Where. That island and its lake are named Haen Marn. Rhodry told me about it, years and years ago. A woman he loved lived there at the beginning of the Cengarn wars. Her son, Enj, was the man who helped him find Arzosah, but when they returned to the place where the island had been, it was gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Yes, disappeared, and its lake with it. It can move itself, apparently, in times of danger.’ Dallandra turned back to look at him. ‘And it certainly was in danger, with a Horsekin army heading for it. No one has the slightest idea of where it might be.’
‘Which means no one knows where that book is, either.’
‘Unfortunately, you’re right. I wonder what that working was. Something important enough for Evandar to enchant this crystal with a message.’
‘Why by all the hells couldn’t he just say outright what he meant? Dalla, you’ve told me many a time that he loved riddles and jests and all sorts of tangled prophecies, but by the silver shit of the Star Gods, if I may