The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [57]
‘You’ve got a healthy-looking lad there,’ Nevyn said.
‘I do, and I thank the gods for it,’ the smith said. ‘We’ve got an older daughter, too, and she seems to be a strong lass, so again, may the gods be praised.’
‘I don’t mean to pry, but it sounds like you’ve had illness in your family before.’
‘Terrible illness, good sir. My poor Lanni!’ He shook his head with a sigh. ‘Our first-born, but she died of a consumption of the lungs, and her just old enough to marry.’
‘Truly, that saddens my heart!’
‘Her mother’s not got over it yet. It was just two winters ago, you see.’
‘Recently, then. Was there a fair bit of fever in the town?’
‘There wasn’t. It came on her sudden-like.’ He paused to frown, and his voice tightened with old anger. ‘I’ll wager that wretched witch lass had somewhat to do with it, too. A friend of my daughter’s, good sir, if you can call a deformed get like her a friend. I told our Lanni to stop seeing her a hundred times if I told her once, but here she was sneaking round to see her on the sly!’
‘Did this lass have the consumption, too?’
‘She didn’t. She’s healthy to this day, which is why I’m sure as sure she cursed Lanni somehow. I wanted to go to our local lord and have the ugly little creature dealt with, but my wife, she talked me out of it. She was afraid the witch would curse us, too.’ He spat onto the ground. ‘Women!’
Naught more to learn here, Nevyn decided. He bade the smith farewell and led his mule away.
The Westfolk arrived just as the innkeep was serving yet another meal of boiled meat and stale bread. Nevyn, Wffyn, and their two apprentices were eating at a table near the hearth when three men strode into the tavern room. Gwairyc looked up from his plate, glanced at the men, and stared, his table dagger forgotten in his hand. They were tall and slender, as most of the Westfolk men seemed to be, all blond as well, and they moved with an easy grace even though they carried bedrolls and travellers’ bundles. One of them had a longbow slung across his back and a quiver of arrows at one hip; another carried an elaborate leather case that could only contain a small harp.
‘That must be our bard,’ Nevyn said.
The putative bard was looking around the crowded tavern room. Finally he spoke to the innkeep, who pointed at Nevyn. The bard smiled and led his two companions over to their table. As they came close, Nevyn heard Gwairyc swear under his breath, and Tirro gasp in surprise. The Westfolk looked much like ordinary men, except for their ears, as long and delicately curled as a flower petal emerging from a bud, and their deep-set eyes, marked by vertical pupils like a cat’s. A gaggle of gnomes materialized to dance around them, but those, of course, no one at the table but Nevyn saw.
‘Good morrow,’ Nevyn said. ‘Are you Devaberiel?’
‘I am.’ The bard smiled pleasantly. ‘And this is Jennantar and Yannadariel. Here, let us pile these things up somewhere, and then we’ll join you at table.’ He glanced at Wffyn. ‘And a good eve to you, too, good merchant. There’ll be an eager crowd waiting for you at the trading ground.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Wffyn said. ‘I’ve got many a fine thing to show you all.’
With a bard in the tavern room, the evening went by fast and pleasantly. He may have been tired from his long ride, but Devaberiel, like any true bard, couldn’t pass up a willing audience. He knew songs in Deverrian as well as in the Westfolk’s own language, and he’d barely finished the first one before the tavern room began to fill up. The news and the music had spread through the village. When the room could hold no more, townsfolk stood outside the windows and at the doors, so quietly