The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [224]
Pir had even found himself interested in Westfolk music. Both of them loved to listen to the singing in the evenings, but the Westfolk harp especially fascinated him. ‘It’s got such a clear pure sound,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity I can’t sing.’
‘Here!’ Sidro grinned at him. ‘I never knew you wanted to be a bard.’
‘I didn’t when it meant losing my eyes to the point of a knife. Besides, the gods marked me for something else.’ He frowned, thinking. ‘Or something marked me, anyway.’
One of the harpers, Adariel, was showing Pir how to hold the harp when Prince Daralanteriel strode up to their campfire. No one leapt to their feet; no one knelt. Adariel, however, did fall silent and set the harp aside.
‘Pir, the Wise One and I would like to speak with you,’ Daralanteriel said. ‘Sidro, by all means come along too, if you’d like.’
The prince led them to the tent that Dallandra shared with the banadar. Calonderiel terrified Sidro. He always seemed to be standing, or sitting in this case, at the edge of things, arms crossed, glaring at someone in barely controlled rage. He did offer Pir mead like a host, but his purple eyes were as cold and bleak as always. Fortunately, during the discussion that followed he merely listened as Prince Dar talked, using the Lijik language.
‘Pir,’ Dar said, ‘you and your woman are welcome to stay here among us as long as you’d like. I was wondering if that pleased you.’
‘It does, your highness,’ Pir said. ‘We do have no other place to go except among the Red Reivers, and truly, there we’d rather not go. Exalted Mother Grallezar be an exile here, too, as be my men. If you will shelter us all, you will have Gel da’ Thae to consult about your enemies’ ways.’
‘True spoken, and all of you are welcome. I have a task to offer you alone, however. You’re a horse mage. We’ve heard of such, here in the Westlands. We know that your gifts are rare and immensely valuable—’ He paused, noticing Pir’s puzzled frown. ‘—of great worth, that means.’
Pir nodded with a brief twitch of smile.
‘Do you think you could teach our horses to accept the presence, the nearness that is, of dragons? If so, we’d reward you highly.’
‘And with those horses, you then do wish to slaughter more of my people?’ Pir said.
Daralanteriel looked away, but not quickly enough to hide his grimace of guilt.
‘So I thought,’ Pir went on. ‘An exile I be, but not yet a traitor to my kind.’ He paused, visibly thinking something through. ‘Though truly, I be Gel da’ Thae, not a savage tribesman of the north, and it be the northerners who did ravage our cities and put their false goddess above all others. To them I be an enemy.’
‘We also are their enemies,’ Daralanteriel said.
‘So we did see.’ Pir glanced at Sidro. ‘What say you to this?’
‘Do what you want,’ Sidro said in their own language. ‘It’s your gifts they need, not mine, so I don’t see that I have any right to meddle in your decision either way.’
‘Very well, then.’ Pir continued in the Lijik tongue. ‘So, your highness, if I agree, what be this reward you speak of?’
‘Your own herd of Western Hunters, I was thinking,’ Dar said. ‘A golden stud, two golden brood mares, four other mares, ten geldings of whatever colour coat you’d like.’
‘You do know how to tempt a man.’ Pir thought for a long while before he spoke again. ‘The northerners, they would put both me and Sidro to death, did they catch us. They do hate witchery.’
‘We honour it here,’ Dallandra put in.
‘So we do see.’ Pir nodded at her, then looked away, staring across the tent as if he were seeing a vision among the tent bags hanging upon its wall. ‘Tell me, Wise One. Do you ken the story of the black stone and Laz Moj?’
‘How your raven mazrak disappeared, you mean?’ Dalla said.
‘Just that.’ He waited until she nodded a yes, then went on. ‘Have you a thought on where he might have gone?’
‘I haven’t. It would gladden my heart to talk with you, Sidro, in fact, about just that, since you were there when it happened.’
‘So I was.’ Sidro felt cold grief