The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [201]
‘Because he was so afraid of being wrong.’ Dallandra smiled, just faintly. ‘He couldn’t truly see the future, not whole, anyway. It took me years to understand that. He saw hints of the future—images, voices, bits of visions, nothing clear and nothing fixed. So he passed them along as riddles.’
‘Riddles that he knew might have three or four possible answers.’
‘Exactly. But that way he couldn’t be wrong and mislead those he told them to.’
‘And in a way, they were riddles, merely riddles to him as well as to the rest of us.’ Salamander sighed and shook his head. ‘When you consider it—’ He stopped in mid-sentence.
In the obsidian pyramid an image was forming. When he returned his gaze to it, he thought at first that he was seeing his own reflection, because a pair of eyes looked straight back at him, but then he realized that the eyes were brown. Slowly the smoky image clarified until he saw the face in which the eyes were set, a sharp, slender man’s face half-covered in blue tattoos. Salamander yelped in surprise and heard, very distantly, an answering squawk, very much like a raven’s croak. The face disappeared. Salamander set the pyramid down.
‘I think I’ve just seen the raven mazrak,’ Salamander said, ‘and he’s as much human as he is Gel da’ Thae.’
Dallandra grabbed the crystal and stared into it, then shook her head in frustration. She muttered an invocation under her breath, then revoked it and tried another, staring all the while into the black stone. Finally she set it down again with an oath so foul that she must have learned it from Calonderiel.
‘Lost him,’ she said, ‘or more likely, he’s covered his showstone with a bit of cloth. I’m assuming he’s got some sort of stone. It might be a mirror, of course, or some other object he can use for scrying.’
‘I think that’s a safe assumption,’ Salamander said. ‘He must be looking for me, or wait! He may be looking for this stone, if we’re right and Sidro’s with him. She knows what used to sit on the altar in the shrine.’
‘So she does. Now, didn’t you tell me that Valandario wanted the pyramid destroyed?’
‘Eventually, yes, but she also told me not to do so until I’d learned everything I could from it.’
‘That’s sensible.’ Dallandra weighed the crystal in her palm like a housewife judging a baker’s loaf. ‘If it really is a link to the raven mazrak, then it’s going to be useful. Here’s an idea! We’ll study it until we meet up with Val. Then we’ll hand it over to her and let her have the joy of smashing it to bits.’
‘Now that sounds like a splendid plan, oh princess of powers perilous! I’ve no doubt that joy is exactly what she’ll feel when she contemplates its shards.’
When Dallandra returned it to him, Salamander wrapped the stone back up in his old shirt, then wound and tied it with a leather thong to keep the pyramid from slipping out. He tucked the entire bundle into one of his saddlebags. If the stone had an inkling of the evil fate awaiting it, it gave no sign.
‘They’re going to destroy it, the frothing rabid idiots!’ Laz looked up from the white crystal. ‘They’re planning on smashing the black twin to bits. They think it’s evil.’
‘If they do, it probably is,’ Sidro said. ‘They know as much wizardry as you do, and they have the pyramid in hand.’
‘Sisi, I want that crystal. I want it very badly.’
Laz got to his feet and began to pace back and forth in what little space the cabin allowed him.
‘Why?’ Sidro said.
‘What do you mean why?’ He stopped pacing and glared at her. ‘It’s a gem of great and sorcerous powers, that’s why.’ The glare faded into confusion. ‘But there’s something more, even though I’m embarrassed to admit it. I’m suffering from the irrational conviction that it belongs to me. It doesn’t, of course. I know that. But somehow or other, in my soul I feel it’s mine. I gave over a small fortune for it, and I want it back. Don’t bother to tell me I’m being stupid.’
Sidro slipped the white pyramid back into its multiple cloth bags and