The Spirit Stone by Katharine Kerr Read Free Book Online

betrothed, not married, but with war looming, there was no time for formal ceremonies and no extra food for feasts. Since Branna’s father and uncle had approved their marrying, everyone who knew them assumed quite simply that they were. Upon their return to the dun, Neb had moved the few things he owned into Branna’s chamber from his own, and that was an end to it.
    With Branna so busy with her cousin and the children, Neb saw little of her during the day. After breakfast he often lingered at table with Salamander, Gerran, and Mirryn, listening to their talk of the coming war. On this particular morning, after Branna and Galla had gone up to their hall, and Tieryn Cadryc had gone out to consult with the grooms, Maelaber, the Westfolk herald, came over to sit with them, though his escort stayed seated with the warband. Maelaber told them in some detail about the preparations the Westfolk were making for the fighting ahead. Gerran listened with the oddly bored expression on his face that meant he was absorbing every scrap of information. Mirryn merely glowered down at the table, so intensely that at last Maelaber fell silent.
    ‘And what’s so wrong with you, Mirro?’ Gerran said. ‘Did the porridge turn your stomach sour or suchlike?’
    ‘You know cursed well what’s wrong,’ Mirryn said.
    ‘Well, you can’t argue with Cadryc’s orders,’ Gerran said. ‘He’s the tieryn as well as your father.’
    Mirryn answered with a string of epithets so foul that Neb, Salamander, and Maelaber all rose at the same moment and left the table. Neb could hear Gerran and Mirryn squabbling as they walked away.
    ‘Waiting for war’s always hard,’ Salamander muttered.
    ‘True spoken,’ Maelaber said. ‘When I left the Westfolk camp, everyone there had thorns up their arses, too.’
    Maelaber returned to his escort and the warband, but Neb and Salamander went outside to the dun wall. They climbed up to the catwalks, where they could catch the fresh summer breeze and lean onto the dun wall. Between the crenellations they could see the green meadows and streams of the tieryn’s rhan. The sun fell warm on their backs, and Neb yawned.
    ‘Tired already, are you?’ Salamander said.
    ‘Being married cuts into a man’s sleep.’
    ‘Oh get along with you! Braggart!’
    Neb grinned and decided to change the subject. ‘Have you heard from Dallandra?’
    ‘I have,’ Salamander said. ‘She shares our wondering about that pestilence, but she doesn’t think it came from one of the Horsekin cities. No more does she think that those priests who took you to her uncle’s have anything to do with it.’
    ‘Well and good, then.’ Neb turned around to lounge back against a crenel. ‘Oh by the gods!’
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Look up!’ With a sweep of his arm, Neb pointed at the sky. ‘He’s back.’
    Far above them, a bird with the black silhouette of a raven circled against the pale blue, far too large for any ordinary bird.
    ‘So he is,’ Salamander said. ‘Our mazrak, home again from wherever his peculiar tunnel led him.’
    ‘He waited to arrive till Arzosah left us, I see. Huh, the coward!’
    ‘I wouldn’t call him that. Would you argue with a dragon thirty times your size? Ah, I see by your expression that you wouldn’t.’
    Neb slid his hands into his brigga pockets and found the weapons he carried, a leather sling and a round pebble. He brought them out as casually and slowly as he could. ‘I wonder if I can get a stone into the air before he notices.’
    The raven floated in a lazy circle over the dun, then allowed himself to drift in closer. Neb could see him tilting his head from side to side as if he was examining everything below him. All at once he swung around and flapped off fast, heading north from the dun, a rapidly disappearing black speck against the clear sky.
    ‘He must have seen your sling,’ Salamander said.
    ‘He’s got good eyes then, blast him!’ Neb slapped the leather loop of the