The Silver Mage (72 page)

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lose to sunset, Branna, Dallandra, Grallezar, and Valandario went down to the pier. Arzosah carried Avain across on her back, but Lon and his crew of boatmen rowed the women across. Rori waited for them at the verge of the pine forest. The boatmen backed water and turned the boat into the shallows to let the women splash ashore. Branna carried a sack of cloaks as well as the implement she’d use for the ritual. Once she’d gotten the sack safe and dry onto the land, Branna turned back to watch the dragon boat gliding away. Mist rose from the water, just a few curls and tendrils as the evening breeze blew cool after the heat of the day.

Dallandra used her consecrated sword to cut a circle, some thirty yards in diameter, in the grass near the forest verge.

“We’d better mark out the circle now,” Dalla said, “while there’s still a little light.”

Valandario had brought several sacks of ashes from Haen Marn’s hearths. She began to walk the circle, trickling ashes between her fingers as she went. When she’d marked out about two-thirds of the figure, she paused.

“Rori,” she called out. “Come take your place.”

The silver dragon got up and shook himself, spreading his wings as if he would fly away, then folding them tightly against his back and sides. Head held high, he walked over to Valandario, ducked his head as if bowing to her, and walked into the ritual space, all without saying a word.

Dallandra placed Rori in the northwest quarter, facing the center, and Arzosah, facing him, in the southeast. The dragons lay with legs tucked under and tails wrapped around them, a posture that left just enough space for Avain to sit between them. The lass was so excited that she could barely sit still until Arzosah chanted a tuneless sort of lullaby under her breath. Branna found it irritating, but Avain smiled and grew calm, a mood that lasted even after the chant stopped.

Valandario took her second sack of ashes and finished the circle. She put the sack down, wiped her hands on her leather leggings, and picked up her sword. Grallezar had already taken up her ritual falcata. Branna, as a mere apprentice, held only a wooden staff.

“They are enclosed,” Val called out. “It’s time to begin.”

The dweomerworkers lined up behind Dallandra, then walked around the outside of the circle deosil. They made one full circum ambulation, then began another. As they reached each directional point, the woman whose station it was stopped there. Once everyone was in place, Dallandra nodded Branna’s way as a signal to begin.

“I stand in the north,” Branna said, “the station of Earth and darkness.”

“I stand in the south,” Grallezar said, “the station of Fire and light.”

“I stand in the west,” Valandario said, “the station of Water and the setting of the sun.”

“And I stand in the east,” Dallandra said, “the station of Air and the rising of the sun.”

“And I,” Arzosah rumbled, “represent the Aethyr and the Portion of Wyrd.”

Dallandra raised her sword high. “May the Kings of the Elements lend us strength, for we come in the name of the Light that shines behind all the gods. We would set right errors made in its name.” She lowered the sword and pointed it at the ground.

Although the sun had long since gone behind the western hills, the light within the circle suddenly brightened, a pale blue light that glittered on the dragons’ scales and turned Avain’s face a pasty white. The Kings had heard and agreed.

“All powers, you have my thanks.” Dallandra walked into the circle and laid the flat of her sword upon Rori’s neck. “The unwinding begins.”

Branna, Grallezar, and Valandario all knelt to conserve their energies. Besides the maintaining of the ritual circle, their primary task was to lend Dallandra some of their own life force should the senior mage require it. Branna summoned her dweomer sight and saw the auras of the three within the circle: Arzosah’s strong dragon etheric double, Avain’s weak one, and Rori’s human form, hovering uncertainly above him.

Dallandra sent a pulse of blue light along her sword that burrowed into the dragon’s body just at the joining of his spine with his skull. A line of light sprang out from the space just above and between his eyes in answer, a tendril like that of a vine seeking purchase on a wall, waving back and forth, reaching for Dallandra’s aura. She held up the sword and caught it, then turned and tossed it Arzosah’s way.

The dragon caught it on a line of light emanating from her own aura. The two began to tangle, but Arzosah’s dweomer had vast strength behind it. As Branna watched the two tendrils separated again and floated downward toward Avain. Arzosah used a spear of light from her own aura to manipulate the thread from Rori’s aura and fasten it to Avain’s solar plexus.

“Now!” Dallandra called out. She used the sword to describe a sigil in the air above Rori’s head. The line of light thickened and began to pulse, unwinding just like the thread of Evandar’s chosen imagery. It flowed to Avain and began to wrap her round, while Arzosah guided it, carefully, patiently, spinning the thread around her just as, indeed, a spindle collects the spun thread from a spinning wheel. Standing beside Rori, Dallandra used her sword, flicking it this way and that, guiding the thread free of the dragon’s body in front of her, to allow Arzosah to catch and claim it for Avain’s etheric double that slowly, ever so slowly, began to take shape and size.

Thanks to the flying threads, the glittering blue light, and the mists of etheric substance flowing and forming between the two dweomermasters, Westfolk and Wyrmish, Branna couldn’t see either of the two physical bodies they worked upon, not even Rori’s massive frame. She planted the end of her staff on the ground in front of her and clutched it with both hands.

When she glanced at Grallezar, she saw golden light pulsing in bursts from her falcata and traveling across the circle to Dallandra’s aura, lending it power and strength. Valandario stood ready to do the same should the Gel da’Thae master tire. Branna would be the last resort, the apprentice who could offer little but who stood ready to give all she could if called upon.

On and on the working continued, unwinding from one, winding again around the other. Branna’s back ached, and her knees as well, but she kept herself unmoving, watching, ready to join the battle in front of her. Once she did glance up at the sky and noticed that the wheel of stars had moved to mark the halfway point of the night. When she brought her gaze back to the working, she saw that Valandario had taken over from Grallezar, who had lain her falcata down in front of her and now merely watched.

I’m ready,
she thought,
ready to fulfill the vow Jill made.
Yet in the end, the only aid she needed to offer had nothing about it of the great and mighty act she wanted. Several hours before dawn, Dallandra suddenly stepped back and lowered her sword.

“It is finished!” she cried out.

From the sky came three great knocks, booming out over Haen Marn’s lake, echoing back and forth from the hills. The blue etheric glow faded, plunging the circle into darkness. Branna flung up her staff and made a golden dweomer light upon it. She staggered to her feet and saw with her normal vision a young dragon, mottled blue and silver, crouching in front of Arzosah. A man with silver hair lay on the ground, sprawled out, naked, and shivering with cold.

Branna tossed her glowing staff to Valandario and grabbed the sack she’d brought across with her. She pulled out a cloak and darted forward to lay it over Rhodry, then brought another for Dallandra, who’d fallen, exhausted, to her knees.

“Val, the silver horn,” Dallandra said. “We’ve got to get him into a warm bed.”

Valandario sounded the silver horn while Branna and Grallezar wrapped the unconscious Rhodry in a second cloak as well. The young dragon, slender enough to walk gracefully, came over to them and bowed her head.

“My thanks,” she said. “Avain wants to fly now.”

“I’ll take her back to my clutch.” Arzosah waddled over and looked at the man lying wrapped on the ground. “Will he live?”

“I hope so,” Dallandra said. “After all of this effort, he’d better!”

Arzosah rumbled in laughter, then touched Rhodry gently with her massive nose. “Sleep well, Rhodry Dragonfriend,” she said. “Soon you’ll see me again, and our young son will have a mate, once he’s grown.”

Ye gods!
Branna thought,
she’s as bad as Aunt Galla!

Avain followed as Arzosah waddled some distance away. They spread their wings, then leaped into the air and flew, heading north and west to rejoin the royal alar. As their wingbeats died away, Branna heard the bronze gong as the dragon boat glided up to the shore.

The three elder dweomermasters picked up Rhodry and carried him out to the boat. Branna watched as Lon helped them lie him down in the bow. The three women knelt around Rhodry as with a shout, the rowers turned the boat and bent to the oars. Branna watched them as they glided into the mists that shrouded the island and disappeared.

Even though Valandario would be contacting Salamander and Niffa to tell them, and thus the royal alar, how things had gone with the working, Branna decided that she wanted to tell Neb herself. She’d stayed behind since she lacked the skill to contact him through Haen Marn’s vortex. When she sent her mind out to Neb, she found him awake. His image, bright with candlelight, built up fast, floating on the dark waters.

“We’ve done it,” she said. “Rori’s Rhodry again, and we’ve all survived.”

“That gladdens my heart,” Neb said, “but not half as much as seeing you unharmed gladdens it. Are you truly well?”

“I am, just tired.” She stifled a yawn. “Well, exhausted, actually. Where are you?”

“Still some miles from the Melyn. You know how alarli travel, and the Cerr Cawnen folk are worse. Still, we’ll be there soon, by my reckoning.”

“I’ll join you there. It’s only been a few days, but I’ve missed you so much!”

“I’ve missed you, too. And worried as well. I managed to see a bit of the ritual, you see, by scrying. It went on for a truly long time. I hate to admit this, but I finally fell asleep.”

Branna laughed, and she could feel his laughter join hers.

“One thing,” Neb said. “That child they were turning into a dragon. Did she survive?”

“She did, and truly, she must have been a dragon in her soul, because she leaped into the air and flew. She was born to the air, I swear it!”

“Splendid! You can tell me more when we’re together. But I need to ask, is it truly all right with you, that we’ll be spending the winter with the Cerr Cawnen folk?”

“It is. Dalla told me that we can learn much from their dweomer-woman and their spirit talker.”

“That gladdens my heart! I hated to think we’d have to stop our studies.”

“So did I. And I’m looking forward to getting to know them all, the folk from the town, that is. It was their land, after all, before our folk came here. Somehow that seems truly important to me, that we all understand what our people did, even if it was ever so long ago.”

They spoke for a while more, mostly about how much they loved and missed each other. Exhaustion finally got the better of Branna, though, and she broke the link.

She blew the silver horn to summon Lon and the dragon boat, then walked down to the shore. She could hear the gong answering the horn’s call, coming closer and closer, and the splash of oars in the water. Far off to the east a thin silver line appeared in the sky as the sun announced that it was intending to rise.
I’m free of him,
she thought,
of Rhodry and everything he meant to me.
Although she didn’t know how she knew, she did know, and that, she decided, would have to do for now.

W
ith the morning light Rhodry woke and realized that he was lying in Angmar’s chamber on Haen Marn. The wide window across from the foot of the bed stood open. He could see the figure of a woman sitting on the window ledge, silhouetted against the brightening sunshine. Angmar, was it? His dreams still clung to him, confused images of flying among dragons, of pillars of smoke reaching to the sky, and ruined towers and vast caves inside fire mountains. He sat up and remembered that the Horsekin were marching upon Cengarn.

“Raena, the mazrak,” he said in Elvish, “and that cursed false goddess of hers! I’ve got to get to Cengarn.”

The woman by the window stood up fast, as if she were alarmed.

“Don’t I?” Rhodry went on. “I’ve fetched the dragon like Jill told me—” He remembered suddenly that Jill was long dead. “Or, no, wait, that all happened years ago.”

“Over forty years ago, truly,” Dallandra said. “Rhodry, do you recognize me?”

“Of course I do! Ye gods, Dalla, I had the strangest dreams last night . . .” He let his voice trail away. “Not dreams.”

“No. Not dreams at all.” She stood by the edge of the bed. “You’ve been ensorcelled for a very long time. It’s going to take you months to get everything clear in your mind. You’ve got Angmar and your daughters to help you. Do you remember meeting your daughters?”