‘Therein is a tale and half, indeed. One quick thing, though,’ Laz said. ‘Little Wynni, is she well? As well as she can be, I mean.’
‘She’s deep in her mourning, but she’s young, and she’ll recover, sooner or later. Evan’s doing his best to cheer her a bit.’
‘He told me,’ Calonderiel put in, ‘that he was going to take her to meet her step-mother today.’
‘Step-mother?’ Laz hesitated, thinking, then grinned. ‘The black dragon, you mean?’
‘Just that.’
‘Well, I’ve heard women describe their step-mothers as dragons before, but this is the first time I’ve ever known it to be true.’
Calonderiel laughed, but Dallandra spun around to look back at the elven camp.
‘That could be dangerous,’ she said, then took off running, ploughing through the tall grass.
‘What?’ Laz said.
‘I don’t know.’ Calonderiel shrugged, then turned and trotted after Dallandra.
Laz set his hands on his hips and stood watching them go, cursing silently to himself in a mixture of Gel da’Thae and Deverrian. Warleader, is he? Doubtless he could slit my throat without half-thinking about it, and no one would say him nay.
All his life he’d heard about the fabled Ancients, but he’d never met any until the previous evening. Somehow he’d not expected them all to look so strange and yet so handsome at the same time. Despite her peculiar eyes and ears, Dallandra struck him as more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen, certainly more glamorous than Sidro. Delicate yet powerful, he thought, that’s Dalla. And dangerous – the scent of dangerous knowledge hung about her like a perfume, or so he decided to think of it, the best perfume of all. What was that powerful opal, and who was this Nevyn? She’d been hinting about something. That he knew.
Laz walked back to his camp, which had returned to what semblance of order it had, the shabby, rectangular tents set up randomly, the men lounging on the ground or wandering aimlessly through scattered gear and unopened pack saddles. Beyond the camp their ungroomed horses grazed at tether. One of the men, one of Faharn’s recent recruits, laying snoring on his blankets. Laz kicked him awake.
‘Ye gods!’ Laz snarled. ‘Where’s Faharn? You lazy pack of dogs, this place looks like a farmyard, not a proper camp.’
‘Indeed?’ Krask scrambled up to face him. ‘Who do you think you are, a rakzan?’
Laz raised one hand and summoned blue fire. It gathered around his fingers and blazed, bright even in the sunlight. Krask stepped back fast.
‘No,’ Laz said. ‘Not a rakzan. Something much much worse.’
He flung the illusionary flames straight at Krask’s face. With a squall Krask ducked and went running. The other men watching burst out laughing. A few called insults after Krask’s retreating back, but they got to their feet fast enough when Laz turned toward them.
‘Get this place in order,’ Laz said. ‘Now!’
They hurried off to follow his command. Grumbling to himself, Laz ducked into the tent he shared with Faharn and which, apparently, his second-in-command had already organized. Their bedrolls were spread out on either side; their spare clothing, saddles, and the like were neatly stacked at the foot of each. Faharn himself, however, was elsewhere. Laz sat down on his own blankets and considered the problem of Sidro in the light of what he now knew about his last life.
She was a half-breed, just as he was, an object of scorn among the pure-blooded Gel da’Thae and their human slaves both, no matter how powerful the half-breed mach-fala and how weak the slave. Had she too betrayed her own kind, whichever kind that may have been, back in that other life? We must have been together, he thought. We must have some connection. It occurred to him that Dallandra might know. She might have told me if that lout hadn’t interrupted!
Although he’d not meant to scry, his longing brought him Sidro’s image, so clear that he knew it to be true vision and not a memory. She was kneeling beside a stream in the company of Westfolk women, laughing together, chatting as they washed clothes, their arms up to their elbows in soap and white linen. It suited her, this slave work, or so he tried to tell himself, with her plain face, so different from the elegant Dallandra’s, with those round little eyes and scruffy dark hair. She’d done him a favour, he decided, by leaving him. What would I want with her, anyway? An ugly mutt without any true power for sorcery!
Still, something seemed to have got into his eyes, dust from the camp, maybe, or smoke. Although he managed to stop himself from sobbing aloud, the traitor tears spilled and ran.
Toward noon Berwynna finally overcame her weariness enough to leave the refuge of the tent she shared with Uncle Mic. She emptied their chamber-pot into the latrine ditch at the edge of the encampment, rinsed it downstream, then returned it to the tent. For a few moments she stood just outside the entrance and looked around her. Talking among themselves the strangely long-eared Westfolk passed by. Many of them looked her way, smiled or ducked their heads in acknowledgment, but she could understand none of their words, leaving her no choice but to smile in return, then stay where she was.
Eventually someone she recognized came up to her, Ebañy the gerthddyn. When he hailed her in Deverrian, she could have wept for the relief of hearing something she could understand.
‘Good morrow, Uncle Ebañy,’ Berwynna said. ‘May I call you that?’
‘By all means, though most people in Deverry call me Salamander.’
‘I do like the fancy of calling you Uncle Salamander.’
‘Then please do so.’ He made her a bow. ‘My full name is Ebañy Salamonderiel tran Devaberiel, but I’m your uncle, sure enough.’
‘My father’s brother. Right?’
‘Right again, though we had different mothers. But can I turn myself into a dragon? Alas, I cannot.’
‘Mayhap that be just as well. No doubt one dragon be more than enough for a family.’
‘You have my heart-felt agreement on that. I can, however, turn myself into a magpie.’ The beginnings of a smile twitched at his mouth.
‘Be you teasing me?’ Berwynna crossed her arms over her chest.
‘Not in the least.’
‘Ah, then you be like Laz and the raven. A mazrak.’
‘Just so.’ Yet he looked disappointed, as if perhaps he’d expected her to be shocked or amazed.
‘That be a wonderful thing, truly,’ Berwynna went on. ‘Better than being stuck, like, in one shape or another, such as that sorcerer did to my da. Or be it so that a man can get himself trapped in some other form, all by himself, I do mean?’
‘He can, indeed, and frankly, I worry about Laz. Sidro’s mentioned that he often flies for days at a time.’
‘I ken not the truth of that, but I did see him fly every day, twice at times, when we were travelling.’
‘That’s far too often. Huh, I should have a word with him about it, a warning, like.’
‘Think you he’ll listen?’
‘Alas, I do not. Now, speaking of dragons, did you know that you have a step-mother and a step-sister of that scaly tribe?’
‘I didn’t! Ye gods, here I did think that dragons be only the fancies of priests and story-tellers, and now I do find that my own clan be full of them.’
‘Priests?’
‘Father Colm, the priest we did know back in Alban, did tell me once an old tale, that a dragon did eat a bishop – that be somewhat