The Spirit Stone (Deverry: Silver Wyrm) by Kerr Katharine

Author:Kerr, Katharine [Kerr, Katharine]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2008-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Every evening after dinner, Salamander would entertain the great hall with his patter and sleight-of-hand tricks. Gerran enjoyed them as much as anyone. At Tieryn Cadryc’s insistence, during these shows he stayed with the noble-born at the table of honor. He was thus close enough to see Salamander’s slip that evening. The gerthddyn was prattling away as usual when he reached up and plucked an egg out of midair—only to drop it. His audience laughed, thinking he’d done it on purpose, but Gerran noticed how troubled he looked. For a moment Salamander stared out at nothing. While it was hard to be sure in the uncertain candlelight, Gerran thought he turned a little pale.

“Ye gods!” Salamander recovered himself with a sickly grin. “My apologies, one and all! I seem to be oddly clumsy tonight, and now I’ve quite forgotten what I was saying.” He jumped down from the table that he’d been standing on. “If you’ll forgive me?” He bowed to the tieryn and Lady Galla, then strode off to the staircase without another word.

In a stunned silence everyone watched him hurry upstairs. Finally, Cadryc shook his head and shrugged.

“And what was all that about, I wonder?” Cadryc said. “He looked so startled that I thought mayhap he was seeing a ghost stroll in the door.”

“This dun’s too new to have ghosts,” Galla said. “I hope he’s not been taken ill.”

Neb swung himself free of the bench and stood up with a half-bow in her direction. “I’ll go see, my lady,” he said, “with your permission, of course.”

“You have it,” Galla said, “and my thanks.”

Neb returned some while later with the news that Salamander was suffering from headache. “Councillor Dallandra left me some medicinals,” Neb told Galla, “so I gave him some willow bark to chew upon.”

“That should help, certainly,” Galla said. “Don’t tell me you’re an herbman as well as a scribe.”

“I’m not, my lady, not yet. Those books she sent? One of them’s an herbal, so I’ve been studying.”

“A very accomplished young man!” Galla favored Neb with a smile.

Gerran, however, had the uneasy feeling that Neb was hiding something about Salamander’s condition. If so, he suspected that dweomer, not headache, lay at the root of the gerthddyn’s strange behavior. Late that evening, when the great hall was clearing out, he had a chance at a private word with Neb.

“Did the gerthddyn truly have a headache?” Gerran said.

“He didn’t,” Neb said with a slight smile. “You’ve got good eyes, Gerro.”

“Dweomer?”

“Just that. I’ll explain more if you like.”

“No need, no need! Don’t trouble yourself.”

“Answer me somewhat. Why are you fighting men so troubled by talk of dweomer?”

Since it was a serious question, asked with no hint of mockery, Gerran considered his answer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I’ll wager it’s because we don’t understand it, and we can’t understand it, no matter how hard we try. It doesn’t seem real, because we can’t see it or touch it, and yet it is real. How can a man fight an enemy he can’t even see? It creeps my flesh, it does.

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