The Silver Mage (44 page)

“I’ll go up in a bit,” she remarked, “to make sure she’s safe and well. I gather, good sir, that you’re a friend of my father’s.”

“I am that, my lady.”

Kov bowed to her, and she curtsied in return with a shy bob of her head.

“My name is Kov,” he said. “In Lin Serr, I serve as one of their envoys.”

“Then it gladdens my heart to meet you.” She paused, looking across the lake. “I’d hoped to meet him as well.”

“I don’t know why he stayed on the shore, but I think he feels too shamed to land here.”

“That’s so sad!” Her voice carried genuine grief. “No one here holds aught to his shame.”

“Mayhap your mother will be able to tell him so. I don’t mean to intrude upon you. I’ll camp across the water with the dragon, but I fear me I have to beg you for some food. Your father rescued me from captivity, you see, and I came away with naught but these clothes.”

“No need to beg,” she said. “Come in and take the hospitality of our hall. Haen Marn welcomes everyone who finds it. A man from Lin Serr is always particularly welcome.”

“My humble thanks.”

Kov followed Mara into the manse and sat down with her at the long table. An aged servant bustled in, carrying plates. As well as bread, she brought fish, pot-roasted with wild mushrooms in the coals of the big hearth. The scent made Kov swallow hard to keep from drooling.

“My thanks,” he said to the servant woman. “You’re very kind.”

“Humph! You stink of wyrm, young man!”

Before he could answer, she took herself off again. Mara hid a soft laugh behind one hand.

“My apologies,” Kov said. “I cut a very poor figure at the moment.”

“It’s of no matter,” Mara said. “Do eat before your meal grows cold.”

After so many days of near-starving, Kov made himself eat slowly and sparingly. He had no desire to become sick in front of this beautiful woman. She asked him polite questions, mostly centering on how he knew her father, and why her father had brought him to the isle. As he talked, she listened, resting her delicate chin on one graceful hand, with deep attention.

“Truly, Kov,” she said when he’d finished. “You’ve suffered so much! War with the Horsekin last summer, then taken by the Dwrgwn this! What splendid tales you have to tell, though I’ll wager that you’d just as soon have led a less interesting life.”

“My thanks, my lady,” Kov said. “And you’re quite right about my longing for a little less excitement.”

Distantly Kov heard the sound of the gong, approaching across the lake. He rose from his seat with a half-bow.

“It’s doubtless time for me to leave you,” he said, “but a thousand thanks for your hospitality.”

Mara walked with him down to the pier. When Kov shaded his eyes with one hand, he could see the glimmering white shape of the dragon, waiting across the lake. They arrived just as the boat was pulling up. With a shout, Lon tossed a hawser over one of the bollards. The rowers feathered oars and drew the ship up snug into her berth. With Lon’s help, Angmar climbed up onto the pier.

“Envoy Kov,” she said, “you’re welcome to stay here rather than fly off with the dragon. He tells me that he needs must take urgent news back to the prince of the Westfolk, and he doubts that you want to go to their camp.”

“I don’t, truly, but I’d not intrude—”

“It would be no intrusion. A man from Lin Serr’s always welcome on the isle. Enj is off hunting on the shore, but he should return in a day or two, so you’d not lack for company.”

“Then my thanks, my lady.” Kov bowed to her. “I’ll stay gladly.”

Angmar turned back to the boat and called up the news to Lon. He smiled then began to strike the gong hard in a regular rhythm. The sound rippled across the lake. On the farther shore, the silver wyrm stood and seemed to bow. As Kov watched, Rori took flight. His wing beats drummed as Lon let the gong quiver into silence. The sound faded as he turned in a graceful arc and flew off to the west. Angmar watched him go in utter silence. At last, when not even Kov’s dwarven eyes could find the silver point in the sky, she sighed, but only once.

“I’d best go tend Avain in her tower,” Angmar said. “Mara, if you’ll tend to our guest?”

“I will, Mam,” Mara said. “Lonna’s already fed him.”

“Good, good.” At that, Angmar smiled, though briefly. “I’ll fetch Avain her dinner.”

Kov bowed again, and she walked off, heading inside the manse. He turned to Mara. “Your servant’s right. I must stink of wyrm.”

“Well, that most certainly is true!” Mara smiled wryly. “You may heat yourself a bath at our fire. We have only the one servant—Lonna, that is—and she really can’t haul water anymore.”

“I can bathe in the lake. I can swim, you see.”

“Truly?” She looked at him as if he were a great marvel. “Well, around the back of the manse there’s a little bench that marks a shallow cove. You can bathe safely there. The beasts don’t come right up to the shore.”

“My thanks, I’ll do that. But when I’m done, I’ll heat myself some water to shave, if you have a razor here I could borrow?”

“I do, one that my father left behind, all those years ago.”

Besides the razor, Mara found him a clean shirt that had once belonged to Otho. Bathed, with his neck shaved and his beard neatly trimmed, in general, respectable again, Kov joined Mara at the table in the great hall.

“You cut a much better figure now,” she pronounced.

“My thanks,” Kov said. “A lovely woman like you deserves no less and a great deal more.”

Smiling, she reached out with one hand, as if she were about to take his, then hurriedly drew it back with a blush. All of Kov’s weariness vanished at the gesture.
There’s hope,
he thought.
Oh, by Gonn himself, maybe I can gain her favor!
He felt like bursting into song.

“
I
’m somehow sure that Haen Marn has somewhat to do with this,” Branna said. “In my meditations, I keep seeing a golden bird, a piece of jewelry, I mean, not a live bird. It’s flat with outstretched wings, a brooch, I think it is.”

“And this does make you think of Haen Marn?” Grallezar said.

“It does, but I can’t understand why.”

Grallezar considered, sucking a thoughtful fang. They were sitting in the dweomermaster’s tent, early on a wet afternoon, with the rain drumming on the leather roof above them. Now and then a drop made its way through the smoke hole in the roof and splashed on the cooking stones set on the floor.

“I feel like there’s knowledge trying to reach me,” Branna said, “a flood of it, like the rain outside, but all I get is the occasional drop or trickle.”

“Meditating does seem that way often. Your dreams—see you the golden bird in them?”

“Only once. In the dream I knelt by a stream and dropped the bird into it. In the Dawntime, my people gave gifts to the gods by putting things in streams and rivers. That’s what my father’s bard told us, anyway, when he was telling an ancient story.”

“No doubt a bard would know such things,” Grallezar said. “But I think me there be more to it. This bird, it like to be your key to this lock. When next you sit to meditate, make you a picture in your mind of the bird. Hold it there and think the name of Haen Marn. Maybe somewhat else will rise around the image.”

“I’ll do that. I’ll have time alone when Neb goes to tend the wounded.”

“How be the man called Hound?”

“His wound is healing clean.” Branna smiled in deep pride. “Neb was right about things living on wounds. Kill them, and the wound heals.”

“Splendid! Now let us hope that he does find the truth of illnesses, too, and some way to kill those tiny enemies, if truly that be the cause of illness.”

“He will. I have every faith in him. I know he will.”

That evening the rain stopped. When Branna stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, she saw stars shining through long drifts of ragged clouds. As the wind blew, the stars would disappear under the scudding gray darkness, only to reemerge and shine as before when the clouds moved on.
That’s what the knowledge is like, too,
she thought.
Bits of the old days shine through.

As she was falling asleep that night, Branna tried to keep the golden bird in her thoughts, in hopes that she’d dream about it again. When she woke in the morning, however, she could remember little of her dreams except a confused image of weeping women, dressed in rags. That image was so strong that it stayed with her all morning. The more she meditated upon it, the more she felt the desire to help them. In her meditation, the golden bird seemed to speak and accuse her of somehow deserting them. It all seemed so important that Branna decided she’d best ask for help with untangling the images. She darted through rain to Grallezar’s tent, only to find Dallandra there as well. The two masters, however, told her to come in.

“We were speaking about various things,” Grallezar pointed to a leather cushion. “But none be pressing matters.”

“My thanks.” Branna sat down on the cushion. “I might have received a hint of my true wyrd, and it does seem to involve Haen Marn. I was meditating on the golden bird, just like you told me to. The images that rose were all of the Old Ones, the people who lived in Deverry before the Deverrians came, I mean, not the Westfolk. I saw women weeping and holding out their hands to me. So I thought, I’m meant to help them. Does that sound right?”

“It does,” Grallezar said. “But you do have much work ahead before you do understand those weeping women fully.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. They seemed to have somewhat to do with Haen Marn. I saw glimpses of the island, or rather, an island that my mind called Haen Marn.”

“That be an important difference, truly. Tis good that you do see it.”

“Well, what I see doesn’t match what Laz and Wynni told us. I see the island in a big lake, not a small one, and when I looked to the shore, I saw pine forests, not oaks.” Branna frowned, considering. “And this is silly, I know, but when I was meditating on what the island looked like, I kept thinking ‘trout.’ I’m sure a lake like the one I saw would have trout in it, but still, it seemed, well, silly.”

Grallezar considered, sucking a thoughtful fang. Outside the wind howled and shook the leather walls in a summer rainstorm.

“Tell me,” Grallezar went on. “Saw you any new thing about the lore behind Haen Marn?”

“The one detail I remember,” Branna said, “is that it could move. Not just to protect itself, I mean. We all knew that. But the Westfolk dweomermasters somehow or other could make it move where they wanted it to go.”

Dallandra had so far kept silent, but now she cleared her throat, just quietly. Grallezar glanced her way and nodded to give her permission to join this discussion twixt master and pupil.

“That’s utterly fascinating and very important, I should think,” Dallandra said. “Back before he became a dragon, Rhodry told me about his time on Haen Marn, and now Laz has, as well. Both of them mentioned the great hall of the manse. It has carvings on the walls, great swags of carvings, some of which seemed to them to be Elvish digraphs. Others, Laz told me, looked like the sigils of the various Lords of Aethyr, and still others were sigils that he didn’t recognize.”

“I do wonder, then,” Grallezar said, “if the secrets of the isle be graved on those walls for all to see but few to read.”

Dallandra looked at Branna and raised a questioning eyebrow. Branna shuddered, suddenly cold in the warm and stuffy tent. She had, she realized, just felt an omen-touch. “I think that’s true,” she said. “If I read the omen a-right.”

“An omen, eh? So!” Grallezar clapped her hands together. “I think me you be linked to this isle more deeply than we did think before.”

“Indeed,” Dallandra said. “When the time’s right, you and I will go there and see if we can read the walls—well, of course, if your master allows.”

“Huh! Kind of you to ask.” But Grallezar was smiling. “I think me it would be an acceptable thing if my apprentice did get a glimpse of grand secrets. Truly, then she might even devote herself to her beginner’s studies with a bit more zeal.”

Branna felt her cheeks burn with a blush. The two older women laughed, just gently, as if they, too, were remembering how it felt to be young.

That evening, when they were discussing their day’s work, Branna told Neb about the carved walls of Haen Marn.

“I wonder what those other sigils are,” she finished up. “The ones Laz couldn’t recognize.”

“I wonder, too,” Neb said. “The healer who lived in Trev Hael used some odd-looking symbols for various minerals, like brimstone and quicksilver. She wrote them on labels and suchlike. She told me once that they were ancient, maybe Rhwmani or even Greggyn.”

“Do you think they might have been Elvish?”

“It could well be. I’ll write them out and ask Dalla in the morning.”

By a golden dweomer light, Neb found a scrap of pabrus and mixed up some ink. Branna watched as he drew the symbols. At first they looked like meaningless squiggles and naught more, but once he’d finished a row of them, she noticed that they were all composed of some dozen marks arranged in different orders.