The Silver Mage by Katharine Kerr Read Free Book Online

city’s been taken back by the forest. The walls are split, the streets crumbled, the towers fallen, and over everything grows trees and ivy and the like. I was poking around, pulling off a vine here, a cluster of weeds there, and along one wall I poked too hard. It started to collapse, and when the dust cleared, lo! I saw the remains of a wooden casket. Inside was the white crystal.”
    “You found it just like that?” Salamander said. “By chance?”
    “Not chance.” Laz frowned, remembering. “Someone or something had left a trail. Some of the underbrush was cleared away or trampled down, so it was easier to walk up to that particular wall. And the casket itself looked big enough to hold a pair of crystals, but only one remained.”
    “I think we can guess who made that trail.”
    “Evandar?”
    “So I suspect. Very well, you found the crystal he left for you—”
    “Oh, ye gods!” Laz stared, the grin gone. “How would he have known I was going to go there?”
    “From what Dalla’s told me,” Salamander said, “Evandar knew a great many things about the future. Unfortunately, they were all small details, mere glances, glimpses, and flashes of things to come, like lines snatched randomly from a long poem. So he saw naught wrong with trying to arrange those fragments into the tale he wanted told. I’d wager high that he saw someone finding that crystal. Whether or not he saw you in particular, who knows?”
    “Very well, then.” Laz’s grin came back, but as brittle as glass. “And here I thought I was being so clever!”
    “Evandar played a great many tricks on a great many clever people. Don’t let it trouble your heart.”
    For some while they discussed the crystal and the dragon book, until Salamander felt he knew everything Laz had learned about them—not that such amounted to a great deal. Laz, however, seemed pleased with their talk. When Salamander stood up to leave, Laz joined him and invited him to come back whenever he wanted.
    “It’s a relief to find people who’ll talk openly of dweomer matters,” Laz told him.
    “No doubt, after being surrounded by Alshandra’s believers.”
    Laz laughed and agreed.
    When Salamander left the camp, two of the men followed him, both pure Gel da’thae from the look of their long black hair, braided with charms, and the brightly colored tattoos on their milk-white skin. His heart pounded briefly in fear, but they bowed to him then knelt at his feet.
    “Big sir,” one of them said in a language that was more or less Deverrian. “I speak little words, but we—” he paused to gesture at the other man”—now want leave Laz. Go with Drav. We ask, safe?”
    “It is. The prince has taken Drav into his service.”
    The man stared at him in desperation. Salamander tried again.
    “Safe,” he said. “Come see Drav with me.”
    At that they both smiled.
    As they followed him back to the Westfolk tents, Salamander saw Grallezar and hailed her. She took these new recruits to Drav while Salamander sought out Dallandra to give her his report.
    “Laz thinks the spirits of the book may be aware of his mind trying to reach them, but he couldn’t be sure,” Salamander finished up. “And they wouldn’t know if he were a friend or an enemy.”
    “That’s very much too bad,” Dallandra said. “I keep wishing I’d seen the wretched thing myself.”
    “Me, too. You know, it’s an odd thing about Laz. Is Rori truly sure he knew this soul as Alastyr?”
    “Well, he’s told me so a couple of times now. Why?”
    “He doesn’t seem as horrible as he should.” Salamander shrugged with an embarrassed laugh. “I suppose that’s what I mean.”
    “You know, some people do learn from their lives. It’s one of the things that keeps my faith in the Light strong, actually, that some people really do see the evil they’ve done and do their best to redeem themselves. The opportunity’s offered to every soul in the Halls of Light.”
    “Of