The Silver Mage. Katharine Kerr

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 like a head priest, you see – but she did eat a bishop some miles to the south of where we did dwell. But I believed him not.’

      ‘I have the horrid feeling that this Colm might have been right.’ With a slight frown Salamander considered something for a moment, then shrugged the problem away. ‘Ah well, the dragons are sleeping the morning away in the sun, but when they wake, I’ll introduce you. In the meantime, Wynni, come with me, and let’s meet some of the ordinary folk.’

      ‘Ordinary’ was not a word that Berwynna would have applied to the Westfolk. With their cat-slit eyes and long, furled ears, they fitted Father Colm’s descriptions of devils, yet she saw them doing the same daily things that the people of her old world did: cooking food, mending clothes, tending their children. They greeted her pleasantly, and some even spoke the language she now knew as Deverrian. Several woman told her how sorry they were that she’d lost her betrothed. Not devils at all, she thought. Most likely Father Colm never actually knew any of them.

      One odd thing, though, did give her pause. Now and then she saw a person talking to what appeared to be empty air. Once a woman carrying a jug of water tripped, spilling the lot. After she picked herself up, she set her hands on her hips and swore at nothing, or at least, at a spot on the ground that seemed to contain nothing. Another person, a young man, suddenly burst out of a tent and chased – something. Berwynna got a glimpse of an arrow travelling through the air, but close to the ground and oddly slowly. With what sounded like mighty oaths, the man caught up, snatched it from the air, and aimed a kick at an empty spot near where СКАЧАТЬ