The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [68]
‘Quite so,’ Nevyn said. ‘Well, you see, it’s the balance of etheric forces, or the complete lack of the balance, I should say, that should take place between two lovers. A child can’t possibly absorb or return any of the etheric energies released by sexual acts. So those floods of magnetic force burn the astral body the way fire will burn a child’s slender little fingers, and they leave the same sort of scars—deep ones, for life.’
‘Ah. It’s even more loathsome than I thought, then.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘I’d best warn everybody.’
‘I wonder about that.’ Nevyn hesitated, thinking. ‘If I thought one child here would suffer the slightest harm, I’d do the telling myself, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Tirro’s terrified of Gwairyc, and with very good reason. Gwarro’s threatened to kill him at the least sign of trouble.’
‘I’ll wager that Gwairyc would, too, without a moment’s thought.’
‘He would indeed, and Tirro knows it. I find this odd of me, but I rather pity Tirro.’
‘Ye gods, how could you? Why?’
‘Haven’t you noticed the way he grovels the moment a grown man says a harsh word to him? He’s always flattering the men around him, too, as if he’s frightened and will do anything to propitiate them. I suspect that when he was young, someone did foul things to him. As long as he works no harm, I’d rather he not be humiliated.’
‘Humiliation might be the best physick for his disease.’
‘Not truly. With some men, especially the honour-bound, being shamed is their worst fear. Prince Mael made a good comment about that in one of his books: ‘the threat of shame turns an honour-bound man into a paragon of virtue.’ With weak souls, though, humiliation drives them to worse evils. They’ll do anything for revenge, anything to make themselves feel powerful and beyond humiliating again.’
‘I’d not thought of it that way.’ Aderyn was silent for some moments. ‘Tirro strikes me as a very weak soul indeed.’
‘He strikes me the same. Besides, he’ll be leaving soon.’
‘True spoken. Well, I won’t say anything to the alar unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll keep an eye on him myself, though, just in case he outfoxes Gwairyc.’
Nevyn and Aderyn had spent the afternoon strolling along a stream away from camp. They’d been discussing a far more pleasant subject than Tirro, namely Aderyn’s attempt to restore the lost dweomer system of the seven cities, those fabled places in the far western mountains where the Westfolk’s ancestors had lived in civilized splendour. When the Horsekin swept down from the north, destroying everything they found, the refugees who managed to reach safety on the plains had been common folk, mostly farmers and herders. Only a handful of learned persons had come with them, and of those, only a few had studied dweomer. When Aderyn had come to the Westlands, some hundreds of years earlier, he had found dweomer workers who knew only a tattered body of lore, complete in a few areas but utterly torn and gone in others.
‘Still,’ Nevyn told Aderyn that afternoon, ‘you’ve done a truly impressive job of bringing together the fragments. It’s a fine piece of work.’
Aderyn blushed scarlet, and for a brief moment, despite his silver hair and deeply lined face, he looked like the young apprentice Nevyn remembered so well. ‘My thanks,’ he said at last. ‘I’m still missing some important elements at the core, but at least I can teach what we have. The more who learn it, and the more students who write it down, the better chance we’ll have of preserving it.’
Their stroll had taken them close to the Westfolk tents. A soft evening breeze brought them the smell of roasting lamb. In an unspoken understanding, they began walking briskly back. Even the greatest dweomerworkers grow hungry at dinnertime. At the camp’s edge, they came across Evan, playing with a little lad about his own age. The two children were sitting on a stretch of grass and rolling a leather ball back and forth. Morwen stood nearby, smiling a little as she watched them. The lads were giggling and chattering in Deverrian and Elvish both.
‘It won’t