LITMIR.BIZ

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it is. Swallow spoonfuls of honey mixed with butter or some other kind of fat. It will soothe the pains and sop the dregs up. Since the benmarono plant kills quickly, and you aren’t dead already, we may conclude that they gave you a less than fatal dose.’

      ‘My thanks. Ai! Baruma is one of your northern demons, I swear it.’

      ‘The son of one, at least.’

      With great effort Brindemo raised his head to stare into Salamander’s eyes.

      ‘You!’ he hissed. ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’

      ‘One of whom?’

      He fell back, panting from his exertion, and looked away. Salamander smiled gently.

      ‘I won’t force any truths out of you, my friend. If you mean what I suspect you mean, they’d kill you for certain. But in return, I shan’t tell you one word about myself, so they won’t be able to pry it out of you.’

      ‘A fair bargain.’ For a moment Brindemo lay still, gathering his strength to speak further. ‘Ease a sick man’s curiosity, good sir, if you can. The barbarian lad, the one they called Taliaesyn, who was he truly?’

      ‘He didn’t tell you?’

      ‘He didn’t know. His memory was gone, completely gone.’

      Jill muttered a foul and involuntary oath.

      ‘I see.’ Salamander turned grim. ‘Well, my friend, you had the honour of feeding a very important man. He was Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, kidnapped and sold by his enemies.’

      Brindemo made a deep gurgling sound, choked, and coughed in spasms of sweating.

      ‘Calm yourself,’ Salamander said. ‘You didn’t know the truth, so no doubt no further harm will befall you. I take it you know where Aberwyn is.’

      ‘I don’t.’ Brindemo could barely choke out the words. ‘Doesn’t matter. Know what a gwerbret is. Ai ai ai.’

      At this his son stepped into the chamber, a big kitchen knife clutched in one hand and his face set in hard determination. When Brindemo muttered a few Bardekian words, he blushed in embarrassment and set the knife down on the windowsill.

      ‘This Baruma?’ Jill said to him. ‘Tell me what he looked like. Your father can’t keep talking. He needs to rest.’

      ‘He was a fat man, you would say pork-like, I believe, in your tongue. Very, very strange skin, very smooth, and his black hair and beard are always shiny and oiled down. He wore a silver beard-clip, too, and his eyes were like a snake’s, very narrow and glittery and nasty.’

      ‘What do you remember about the slave called Taliaesyn?’ Salamander turned to the boy. ‘Everything you know.’

      ‘There was little to know, sir. We thought he was noble-born because he moved like a knife-fighter, and all your lords are soldiers. He remembered he was a thing called a silver dagger, but naught else about himself.’ He glanced at his father, who whispered out Zandar’s name. ‘Oh, truly, the caravan. It was going south. That was ten days ago. Zandar works his way through all the villages and so on to the south coast. He sells spices to the cooks.’ He thought for a moment, apparently struggling with the not very familiar language. ‘The name of the drug in your tongue, it is … um, opium, that’s it! Baruma was giving him opium. Taliaesyn was very thin when we bought him, too.’

      ‘Baruma is going to pay for all this,’ Jill said quietly. ‘He is going to pay and pay and pay until he whines and screams and begs me to kill him and put an end to it.’

      ‘Jill!’ Salamander gasped in honest shock.

      Brindemo laughed, a tormented mutter.

      ‘My blessing to you, lass,’ he whispered. ‘My humble but honest blessing.’

      Salamander started for the door, then paused, looking back at Brindemo.

      ‘One last thing. Why did Baruma do this to you?’

      ‘I disobeyed him. He said to sell Taliaesyn to the mines or the galleys. I sold him instead to the decent master.’

      ‘I see. Well, that act of mercy’s cost you dear, but you have my thanks for it.’

      All the way back to their inn Jill burned with rage, and that burning translated itself to her vision, until it truly seemed that pillars of flame danced ahead of them through the streets. Although he kept giving her worried looks, Salamander said nothing until they were back in their chamber and the door safely barred behind them. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

      ‘Stop it! I don’t even know what you’re doing, but stop it right now! I can feel power pouring out of you.’

      ‘I was just … well, seeing things again. I don’t know how to stop it.’

      Yet the shaking and his very real fear had already snapped her mind back to a more normal state. The flames were gone, although the edges of everything in the room still shimmered with silver energy.

      ‘Then don’t start it in the first place.’ Salamander let her go. ‘Jill, you get to brooding on things, though I can’t truly say I blame you, mind. But, well, how can I explain it? When you brood, you summon power, because you have a dweomer mind, deny it all you want. When most people brood over things, they see pictures in their mind or hear the voice that they consider their self talking, but it all stays in the mind where it belongs. When you’ve got this raw power pouring into you, you begin to see the pictures and so on outside of your mind, don’t you?’

      ‘I do.’ She made the admission reluctantly. ‘I saw fire running before us down the street.’

      ‘Well, that’s cursed dangerous. Dweomerfolk see images, too, and work with them, but we’ve learned how to control them. If you go on blundering around this way, you could go stark raving mad. Images and voices will come and go around you of their own free will, and you won’t be able to stop them.’

      Since she could barely control them even then, she went cold all over at the prospect. With a dramatic sigh Salamander sprawled onto the cushioned divan.

      ‘Food,’ he said abruptly. ‘Eating somewhat generally helps shut things down. It’s tediously difficult to work any dweomer on a full stomach. Drink dulls the mind right down, too. But I doubt me if that’s going to be enough. I’ve no right to do anything of the sort, but I’m going to have to teach you some apprentice tricks of the exalted trade.’

      ‘And what makes you think I want to learn them?’

      ‘Your basic desire to stay sane and alive, that’s what. Don’t be a dolt, Jill! You’re like a wounded man who’s afraid to have the chirurgeon stop his bleeding because pressing on the wound might hurt.’ He paused, and he seemed to be studying the air all around her. ‘Well, you’re too worked up now to try a lesson. How about food, indeed? The Great Krysello is famished. If you wouldn’t mind assuming your guise of beauteous barbarian handmaiden, go down and ask the innkeep to send up a tray of meats and fruits. And a flagon of wine, too.’

      ‘I’m hungry myself.’ She managed to smile. ‘Oh mighty master of mysterious arts.’

      Salamander was certainly right about the effects of food on her visionary state of mind. As soon as she’d eaten a couple of pieces of meat and some cracker-bread she felt a definite change, the dulling, as he’d called it, which she needed so badly. Although the colours in the room seemed unusually intense, the constant shimmerings disappeared. A couple of glasses of sweet white wine finished her involuntary dweomer-working completely.

      ‘When are we getting on the road?’ she asked. ‘I wouldn’t mind leaving tomorrow, when the city gates open at dawn, say.’

      ‘I know your heart burns with impatience, Jill my turtledove, but we must consider what Zandar, prince of the spice trade, is going to do next. Mayhap he’s heading home to Danmara, mayhap he’s travelling this way and that about

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