The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [229]
‘You don’t owe me anything.’
‘Oh, I know, but we Gel da’ Thae, we dislike feeling like useless guests. Look at Sidro, bustling around, washing my clothes and blankets, and her with dweomer gifts of her own! When the child’s born, I’ll be your nursemaid and help raise her.’
‘Wonderful! She’ll have a splendid start in life.’ Dallandra suddenly laughed. ‘Especially if she wants to be a commander of armies.’
Late on the following day, Salamander rode into the camp with Neb and Branna in tow. Since everyone knew that the two Roundears had come to study with Dallandra as well as write the occasional letter for Prince Dar, a tent stood ready for them on the edge of the encampment near Dallandra and Calonderiel’s. The members of the royal alar crowded round them in friendly curiosity, and that first evening, Dallandra barely saw them. It would take them some days to grow used to the Westfolk way of life, Dallandra knew. In the long tent-bound winter they would have plenty of time to begin the methodical study of the dweomer that they both needed, as she informed them the next morning.
‘It can get tedious, down in the winter camps,’ Dallandra told them. ‘But you’ll have lots to keep you occupied.’
‘No doubt,’ Branna said. ‘Dalla, will the silver dragon be there?’
‘Not in the camps, but he should turn up here soon, once it stops raining. I’ve got to treat his wound.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Branna hesitated, thinking. ‘I keep feeling like there’s somewhat I should say to him, or discuss with him, more like, but I can’t think of what it may be.’
‘Well, you know, other than helping me lift the dweomer upon him, there may be naught for you to say. I’ve learned that at times, saying naught means more than words. It’s a message in itself.’
Branna looked utterly puzzled, but Dallandra merely smiled. Evandar had taught her that some truths needed to be left as riddles so that the persons who needed the answers could find them for themselves. It’s the finding that matters, she thought, not the answer. Dallandra did, however, have a straightforward question for Neb. She’d not forgotten Penna and Tarro.
‘I remember Penna from the village, truly,’ Neb told her. ‘Tarro I only met once, when the gwerbret’s captain let him come home for a visit. Penna was an odd child, but it gladdens my heart that she’s been rescued from the Horsekin.’
‘Odd how?’ Dallandra said.
‘First off, they were stepchildren. Their father was a river fisherman who drowned, and her mother married a farmer—his name was Gutyn—who took her children in and raised them as his own. He was a decent man, truly. The mother died before Clae and I got to Uncle Brwn’s farm, so I never met her.’ Neb suddenly paused. ‘Gutyn must have been killed by the raiders, now that I think of it. Gods, it’s horrible still, remembering all that.’
‘Of course it is. Penna’s still half in shock herself, I think. You could see her grief written on her face.’
‘No doubt!’ He frowned, thinking. ‘She was terrified of the river, too.’
‘Well, that’s understandable, since her father drowned in it.’
‘True spoken, but it had to be somewhat more than that. I found her weeping once because she was supposed to lead the cows down to drink. The river will take me one day, she told me. I thought she meant she’d drown, but she insisted it wasn’t that.’ Neb shrugged and spread his hands. ‘She couldn’t quite say what she meant. So I led the cows down for her, and after that, her half-brother took over the task.’
The half-brother had died in the raid, too, Dallandra supposed. The sudden look of slack-mouthed grief that crossed Neb’s face confirmed it.
The dragon lounged in the lair he’d made in tall grass. The sun gleamed on his silver scales, tipped here and there with blue, as if he were wearing the finest mail in the world, made from some dweomer metal—except for the pink gash of his old wound, spoiling it. Branna could see where Dallandra had cleaned the dead flesh away, but the gash remained, stubbornly