The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [88]
‘We can ask your da,’ Morwen said. ‘About what made Tirro the way he is, I mean.’
‘Oh, I don’t think we’d better.’ Loddlaen’s voice trembled. ‘I don’t want my father to know about this.’
‘And why not?’ Morwen said.
‘Because I nearly let Alastyr into the alar. I feel like such a cursed fool now, trusting him. I even kind of liked him. I don’t want Da to know how stupid I was. And then there’s Nevyn. I can’t tell you how much I admire him. I don’t want him to know, either, how close I came to making a wretched rotten mistake.’
‘I do see what you mean.’ Morwen glanced at Gwairyc. ‘What do you think?’
‘Doesn’t matter to me.’ Gwairyc shrugged. ‘I won’t mention it if you’d rather I didn’t.’
‘I do wish,’ Loddlaen said. ‘Please, let’s just not let anyone know.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘They all hate me enough already.’
Nevyn and Aderyn, meanwhile, were sitting in the sweeping shade of a willow tree, upstream a good long way from both encampments, where they could examine Jav’s gift privately. Before he opened the box, Aderyn made a warding circle around them, the scroll, and the trees, too, for good measure. Once the pentagrams shone clearly at the cardinal points, he sat down again and took out the scroll. In the dappled shade he spread it out, revealing it to be only a few feet long and torn off towards the end as well. Rows of dark brown symbols marched across the tan-coloured pabrus, whilst all round them in the margins someone had scrawled more symbols in red.
‘That red ink intrigues me,’ Aderyn said. ‘It hasn’t faded like the other, older writing. I’m guessing, anyway, that the main body of writing was black to begin with.’
‘No doubt,’ Nevyn said. ‘Now, that red—they make it in Bardek, but it’s a guild secret.’
‘That’s a pity. Perhaps I can get one of the merchants to bring me some next year. I’ll wager it’s for sale in Aberwyn, what with Wmmglaedd so near. Maybe the pabrus is, too. But be that as it may, the style of the brown writing is much older than the red, so I’m assuming that the scroll was annotated long after it was copied.’
‘That’s reasonable. Do you know by whom?’
‘I don’t.’ Aderyn laid a fingertip on one of the red scrawls. ‘But it must have been by someone with dweomer. This note tells us that at least one word is missing from this formula, because it, and I quote, gave no result.’
‘Fascinating! One of these days I must learn to read Elvish.’
‘Well, the actual formulae aren’t Elvish. They just use the same syllabary, but there’s an Elvish translation given for each one. Let me sound out a bit for you.’
When he read out loud, Aderyn kept his voice deliberately conversational; he even at moments paused to break up the flow of sound. Neither he nor Nevyn wanted to find some powerful being standing in front of them, evoked by accident and furious about it.
‘Bah-zoad-em ay-loh ee-tah,’ Aderyn began, ‘Pee-rip-so-noo obla-noo. Noh-zoad-ak-vah bay-hay—Well, you get the idea.’
‘Ye gods!’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ve never heard anything like that in my life. What does it mean?’
‘According to the translation, it means: the mid-day, the first, is like the third of the highest, made of twenty-six purple –’ Aderyn hesitated briefly ‘—purple pillars. Sorry, the Elvish word the glossor used for pillar here is quite archaic.’
‘I’m not surprised. Read out some more of the originals, if you don’t mind, and let me see what impressions I receive.’
As Aderyn continued reading, one careful syllable at a time, Nevyn allowed himself to sink into a shallow trance. Even though the words sounded like utter nonsense to him, his mind began to form images in response to the sounds. He began to see pieces of buildings and quick flashes of bizarre landscapes, lit by peculiar light. Very occasionally he got a brief impression of a spirit or a being moving through the image.
Aderyn paused to rest his voice and drink from the waterskin he’d brought along. Nevyn shook himself and slapped his hand upon the grassy ground to earth out