The Shadow Isle (5 page)

“What? Why?”

“The gods have blessed you, she does say, so you must repay them and use your gifts as they wish. If I be the Lady of Haen Marn, then I have many a burden to take up.” Her voice turned unsteady. “Whether I wish to lift them or no.”

“I see. Well, no doubt you’ll be given the strength when you need it.”

She scowled at the surface of the water, then shrugged, as if she’d hoped for a different answer. Laz wanted to ask more, but he hesitated, afraid she’d resent his prying. She touched the surface of the water in the kettle with one finger, then dipped her hand in.

“Just cool enough,” she said. “Here, stretch out your hands, Tirn. We’ll have the bandages off.”

Laz gritted his teeth and did as she asked. Her touch was so light that pulling off the thin cloth caused him no pain, but the sight— both his hands were a mass of shiny pink scars. On his left hand the little finger had burned down to a stub of scar tissue, permanently fastened to the finger next to it, both of them useless. On the right hand the last three fingers formed one throbbing mass that he’d lost the power to move. In between the remaining fingers, and between each thumb and the meat of his hands, the flesh oozed a clear fluid as if it wept for its loss.

“They heal, they heal,” Marnmara said. “But not yet can we leave them be. We’ll do the left hand first.”

Laz plunged his hand into the water. The herb brew stung the oozing wounds like a liquid fire at first, then numbed them, though not quite enough. Marnmara put her own hands in the kettle, caught his, and pried the good fingers apart, one pair at a time, deliberately cracking open the scars to keep the fingers free and usable. As he always did, he swore under his breath the entire time, running through every foul oath he knew in the Gel da’Thae language to keep from fainting and disgracing himself. The right hand took less time and caused him less pain than the left, but by the time she finished, his head was swimming, and the skin of his face felt ice-cold and damp, especially around his mouth.

Marnmara laid his hands on top of the bandages and considered them. A trace of blood oozed between each treated pair of fingers.

“Not much blood,” she announced. “We’ll leave these open to the air for now.” She patted his right arm just above the wrist. “Go rest.”

“Gladly.” Laz got up, steadied himself, and forced out a smile. “My thanks.”

He felt like an old man, hunched and staggering, as he made his way across the hall and up the stairs. His small chamber, bare except for a mattress on the floor and a basket for the extra pieces of clothing the women had made him, stood near the head of the stairs. The dragon book lay on the floor by the basket. He went in, shut the door with a nudge of his foot, then lay down and crossed his arms at the wrist over his chest.

“That’s done for another day,” he remarked to the hands. “Ye gods, I should have listened to Sidro. ‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘don’t touch the crystals together.’ Sound advice, but did I listen? Oh, no! Not that I should complain, I suppose. What was that my charming mother used to say? Walk behind a mule, and you deserve to get kicked, that’s it.”

The worst thing, he decided, was that he could no longer remember why he’d wanted to bring the crystals together. Obviously, it had been a stupid idea, yet he’d felt compelled—the word caught his attention. Compelled. Had some wyrd-dweomer lain inside the pair, waiting for a victim to bring their tips together so they could transport themselves and victim both to this island?

If so, one of them had made the trip safely, though he’d lost the other. He wondered if they might transport him back if he brought them together. They might take him elsewhere, of course, somewhere far less hospitable than Haen Marn, or burn off the rest of his hands even if he did end up back in the Northlands. He sat up and considered his maimed hands. The idea of trusting himself to the crystals again terrified him. Yet curiosity nagged. Where was the white one, anyway?

After Dougie’s strange vision of the other day, he’d had Marnmara remove the pouch with the crystal from around his neck and put it under the clothing in the basket, hidden from curious eyes. When he tried moving his fingers, he found that he could control them, though it hurt whenever they rubbed against one another. He was healing, indeed, and the thought made him almost cheerful. Carefully, slowly, painfully, he managed to tip the basket over, find the pouch, and shake the black crystal out onto his pillow. In the sunlight coming through the tiny window, it gleamed, but sullenly, or so it seemed to him.

“I’ll wager you can tell me where your brother lies,” Laz said.

Laz set the crystal upright and looked down into its tip. He saw nothing at first, then murky images formed—an expanse of brownish gray, a lump of something that might have been wood. Ripples shimmered in the murk. A long narrow head appeared, two tiny eyes, a row of teeth, a neck. The head drew back. A spray of bubbles covered everything. Laz could draw only one conclusion: the white crystal sat at the bottom of the lake, far and forever out of his reach.

“Good! Rot, for all I care!”

Getting the obsidian crystal back into its pouch, and the pouch into the basket, made his hands throb. Throb or no, he decided to put the dragon book somewhere safe rather than leaving it on the floor where Berwynna had placed it. Lifting such a heavy thing— the thought itself pained him. He glanced at the book, then swore aloud.

Just above the cover hovered a thickening in the air. A sprite, perhaps, only half-materialized? Yet the thing had a glow to it that sprites lacked, and an abstract shape. He could discern a disk of some color that lay just beyond the ordinary colors of the world, an icy lavender? No, stranger still. Was it a spirit at all or some odd vortex of force? He lay down on the mattress to consider it at eye level. As if it knew he studied it, the glow sank into the book and was gone.

Once, perhaps, Laz might have called to that spirit and inquired about its nature. Now he was afraid, quite simply afraid, to attempt even the most basic dweomer. What if he failed, what if he learned that the enormous power he’d treasured had deserted him? He’d been wounded by the pair of crystals, he realized, his confidence broken as badly as his hands. He’d done a rash, stupid thing that had resulted in the worst pain he’d ever suffered. Worse yet, though, was thinking that the crystals had somehow compelled him, had gained power over him.
A sorcerer, are you?
he told himself.
A pitiful fool, more like!
On a tide of such dark thoughts he eventually fell asleep.

Laz woke long after the dinner hour, when the manor of Haen Marn already lay wrapped in silence for the night. During his convalescence, hunger had deserted him, not that he’d ever eaten much in any given day. When he sat up, he noticed that the dragon book was glowing again. Ice-white flames, tipped in a peculiar blue, danced on its surface. Spirits. He had to be seeing spirits of Aethyr, he realized, and of a rank far more powerful than any Wildfolk.

“I want that thing out of here!”

The glow disappeared. They had heard him. He felt sick, not with physical pain, but with shame that he’d turned into a coward. He got up and walked over to the window. Outside, the night lay clear and still. Moonlight streaked the water of the loch with an illusionary road, heading west.
If only I could run along that back to the Northlands!
Laz thought.
Or if I could fly.
He decided that the time had come for him to cast his cowardice aside and see what he could—or could not—do.
It’s the only way you’ll ever heal,
he told himself.

He stripped off his clothes with some difficulty, then stood naked at the window. When he called it forth, the mental image of the raven came to him. He worked with it, imagining the details of wing and head, until it seemed to live apart from his working as it stood on the windowsill. With a snap of will, he transferred his consciousness over to it. There he had an unexpected struggle, but at last it seemed that he looked out from the bird’s eyes at his body, slumped as if asleep on the floor.

Now came the hardest step, drawing the physical substance of his body into this new form. Once, the process had come easily to him. That night he tried three times and failed at every attempt. No matter how hard he concentrated, how carefully he recited the working, his stubborn lump of flesh stayed where it was, and the raven remained an image, a body of light, only. His mind kept slipping back, as well. At one moment he would be looking out of the raven’s eyes; at the next, he’d be seeing the strip of wall in front of his body. Finally, he realized that his body was panting for breath and dripping with sweat. He withdrew the raven image from the windowsill, banished it with the proper seal, and sat up, turning to lean against the wall while he let his breathing slow to normal.

“Squittering shits!” he said in the Gel da’Thae tongue. They were the only words that seemed appropriate.

Once he felt steady again, he got up and struggled back into his clothes.
Why, oh, why, didn’t I listen to Sisi?
The question was going to torment him for the rest of his life.

Moving as quietly as he could, he went downstairs and out to the cooler air of the apple grove. White blossoms hung thick on the branches like trapped moonlight. That morning the trees had barely begun to bud. He stared at the blossoms while his heart pounded in terror.

“How long did I sleep?” he whispered.

“Naught but a few hours,” Marnmara said from behind him. “Time on Haen Marn runs at its own pace.”

Laz spun around to find her holding up a pierced tin lantern. He could see her smiling in its dappled light.

“You’ve not been here long, Tirn,” Marnmara continued. “The island still has tricks to show you.”

“So it seems. No wonder my hands are healing so quickly.”

“That may be so, indeed.”

“May I ask you a question? Where are we? How does this island move itself?”

“As to the first, we be in a land called Alban. As to the second, I know not, nor do I know which is its true dwelling place. If we could return to the land that you and my mam call home, then mayhap I would know. My own dweomer should kindle then, like a flame shielded from the wind.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It be weak here.”

“What makes you think I have dweomer?”

“Oh, come now!” She laughed aloud. “Did you not send the dragon book to my chamber just now?”

“I—uh—” Laz felt his face burn with a blush that, he hoped, the darkness would cover. Had the spirits taken his words as a command? Or had he merely hurt their tender feelings? Spirits could be extremely touchy. He had no idea which it was, although he wasn’t about to admit his ignorance. “So, the spell worked, did it?”

“It did. The book did appear on white wings and settle onto a coffer in my chamber. So I did put it safely away inside.”

“I thought it would be best if you kept it with you.”

“Well and good, then.” She hesitated briefly. “Oft have you told me you wished to make some repayment for my healing.”

“I do, truly, if there’s aught of mine that you’d want.”

“You know dweomer, don’t you? Teach me some.”

“I could do that, certainly. But you must have knowledge of your own.”

Marnmara shook her head. “I have bits and shreds of such knowledge only. It comes to me in dreams or now and again in memory. I do feel—nay, I do know in my heart that if I did know the first steps of the dweomer way, then I might walk far. But I know them not.”

“Well and good, then. I can certainly teach you those.”

In the lantern light her smile turned soft, flickering, it seemed, like the candle flame itself. Although he’d always thought of her as beautiful, that night the thought carried a sexual interest that had escaped him when he’d been weak and in constant pain. He realized that he had started emitting the betraying scent of his interest, too, but he could take comfort in knowing that she’d not understand it, if indeed she could smell it at all.

Perhaps the look in his eyes had told her enough.

“Tirn,” she said, “there’s somewhat you need to know about me. I wear this body the way you wear a shirt. Don’t be taken in by it.”

She patted him on the shoulder with the same affection with which she’d pat one of her cats, then walked away, disappearing into the manse.

And what, by the gods, does she mean by that?

As he followed her inside, Laz felt both sad and profoundly weary in a way he’d never experienced before. At last he identified the sensation. He wanted to go home.

PART 1

THE WESTLANDS SPRING, 1160

Some say that the ancient mages of the Seven Cities, those long-dead fortresses of beauty and magic, left a record of their secret work not in words or images but in stones and earth. Yet I, for one, call such a foolish tale because I see not how it may be possible, no, not in the least.

—The Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll

"
THE CRUX OF THE PROBLEM,”
Valandario said, "is Laz. We want the pair of crystals. As far as we know, he still has them. Finding them means finding him.”

“You’re right, of course,” Dallandra said. “I wish I knew whether or not he’s worth the effort of finding.”

“Sidro says he is.”

“Sidro loves him or thinks she does. She’s not a reliable advocate. From everything she’s told me about him, I certainly don’t understand how she could care so much about him.”

Valandario managed to shield her thought just in time.
You’re a fine one to talk about her, Dalla, running off with that awful Evandar the way you did!
They were communicating through the fire, Valandario in her chamber in Mandra, Dallandra in her tent some miles east.

“So you’re convinced he’s still alive,” Valandario said.

“Not I.” Dallandra’s image, floating above the bed of coals in the brazier, paused for a wry smile. “My guess would be that he’s dwelling on the spirit plane, waiting to be reborn. It’s Vek who’s convinced he’s still alive.”

“Vek? Oh, yes, that Horsekin boy prophet.”

“A Gel da’Thae boy prophet. There really is a difference.”

“Very well, if you say so. Now, consider the vision Ebañy saw in the crystal, Evandar standing on Haen Marn. Do you think that means the crystal’s linked to the island?”

“It might, but you can’t trust Evandar’s riddles to be logical. It certainly indicates that the book he was holding is linked to Haen Marn. But the crystal—I can’t say either way.”

“Blast! I was afraid of that. Can we definitely say that wherever Haen Marn may be, it’s not the physical plane?”

“Again, maybe. It’s surrounded by water, after all. Maybe it’s enough water to make scrying impossible.”

“If it’s surrounded by water, how could Evandar even reach it? The play of forces in the water veil should have torn him apart.”

“That’s a very good question. He probably couldn’t, and the view of Haen Marn that Salamander saw is just an image of the place. Probably. I don’t really know.”

“In short, we can’t say anything useful about the wretched island at all, and I’m starting to think the beastly thing should just stay gone.”

Dallandra laughed. “Val, your image looks so sour! Not that I blame you, mind.”

“Thank you, I suppose. The omens are so tangled! It’s enough to drive one daft.”

“I couldn’t agree more about that. But tell me, how are you surviving the winter?”

“Well, I miss everyone in the alar, but I have to admit that I’ve never been so comfortable in my life.”

For a while they spoke of trivial things, then broke the link between them. Valandario leaned back in her chair and considered the set of rough shelves across from her, a precious library of some fifty books protected by the solid walls of her chamber. For the first time in her life, Valandario had spent the winter inside a house rather than a tent.

In the winter the Westfolk and their herds usually moved south, until, by the shortest day in the year, they camped along the seacoast. Although it snowed only rarely that far south, it did rain three or four days out of every five. In a Westfolk tent, Grallezar’s library of dweomer books would have stood in as much danger as it had faced from the devotees of Alshandra back in Braemel, its original home, although the danger would have come from water, not fire.

Another place, however, had offered it shelter—Linalavenmandra, the new town that returning elven refugees had built at a natural harbor near the Deverry border. Although the name meant “sorrow but new hope,” its eight hundred inhabitants generally called it Mandra, simply “hope.” They were young people, by and large, fleeing the minutely structured life of the far distant Southern Isles where they’d been born. To them, having a Wise One, as the Westfolk term their dweomermasters, among them was not merely an honor, but a sign that their town had achieved the same status as the ancient cities they’d left behind.

So, when Valandario had volunteered to live in Mandra and tend Grallezar’s library, the townsfolk had responded by finding a house with room for her and the books both. She had moved all her belongings into a big upstairs chamber with a view of the sea from its window. Elaborately patterned Bardekian rugs covered the floor, her red-and-blue tent bags hung along the walls, embroidered cushions of green and purple lay piled on the narrow bed. The townsfolk had added a wooden table and chair so the Wise One could study her books in comfort and a small wooden coffer to keep her supply of oil, wicks, and clay lamps handy.

“Wise One?” Lara, the woman who owned the house with her husband, appeared in the doorway to the chamber. “We’re preparing dinner. Would you like some meat with your bread and soup?”

“No, thank you. I’m not very hungry.”

Lara smiled, made a little bow, then silently shut the door again. Laradalpancora, to give her her full name, and her husband, Jinsavadelan, insisted on acting as if they were servants in Valandario’s house rather than the owners of the house in question, cooking, cleaning, mending her clothes, and generally fussing over her. They also fussed over each other.

“They never would have let us marry back home,” Lara told her one evening. “Even though we’d loved each other for years. So we had to come here.”

“I don’t understand,” Val said. “Who’s they, and why would they forbid it?”

“The Council, of course. Jin’s birth-clan was too far above mine in rank.” She held her head high with a defiant lift to her chin. “That doesn’t matter here.”

Jin smiled at her with such a depth of feeling that Val quietly got up and left the room. Seeing them so happy had woken an old grief. At times after that conversation, she missed Jav as badly as if he’d been murdered only a few years past.

Val used her work to blot her memories from her mind, reading for hours on end by pale sun or flickering candlelight until her eyes watered and ached. She was searching for information concerning a particularly powerful act of dweomer, one beyond the capabilities of any living dweomermaster, elven or human. Any one of Grallezar’s books might have held a clue. Fortunately, most of them were bilingual, with a roughly-translated elven text on one page and the Gel da’Thae text facing it. Grallezar had wanted to make the knowledge they contained accessible to Westfolk dweomermasters as well her own people.

As Valandario read through each book, she copied any relevant passages onto a scroll made of pabrus, a writing material that had come over from the islands with the new settlers. One book in particular she kept on the table near her, but not for its information. Bound in black leather, decorated with a white applique of a dragon, it contained a translation into Gel da’Thae of a familiar work on dweomer, one she knew practically by heart. Its importance lay in its links to its previous owner, Laz Moj. According to Sidro, he’d made the translation and written it out in the book as well. Now and then Val would lay a hand upon it and try to pick up some impression of its absent scribe. Very slowly, an insight grew in her mind. Once she could articulate it, she presented it to Dallandra.

“It’s about Laz’s book. It’s the antithesis of the one Evandar showed Ebañy in the vision crystal. The binding’s in the opposite colors, and the information inside it is well-known, while we don’t have any idea what may be in Evandar’s.”

“That’s all true,” Dallandra said.

“So if the two books are linked by antithesis, they might echo the pair of crystals, the black and the white.”

“In which case,” Dalla continued the thought, “the missing book might also tell us about the crystals.”

“Exactly! Furthermore, both the crystals and the island are shadows from some higher plane. Could it be that Haen Marn’s their real home, and they wanted to take Laz there for some reason? ”

“Or else they used him to get there. Salamander was planning on smashing the black one. I wonder if it was trying to escape.”

“How would it have known?” Val asked. “You don’t think it had some kind of consciousness, do you?”

“I can’t say either way. I didn’t get to study it for very long.”

“That’s not exactly helpful.”

Dallandra’s image grinned at her. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not thinking very clearly these days. It’s the baby, I suppose. I’m sinking to the level of a pregnant animal, all warm and broody like a mother dog.” Her smile disappeared. “I hate it.”

“At least it’s only temporary.”

“That’s very true, and I thank the Star Goddesses for it.”

Dallandra’s image, floating over the glowing coals, suddenly wavered, faded, then returned to clarity.

“Val, I have to leave,” Dallandra said. “Someone’s calling for me, and they sound panicked.”

"Dalla! Dalla!” Branna was standing right outside the tent. "Vek’s having a seizure, and it’s a bad one.”

Dallandra grabbed the tent bag of medicinals she kept ready for these occasions and hurried outside. Wrapped in a heavy cloak, Branna stood waiting for her. A mist that fell just short of rain swirled around her in the gray light and beaded her blonde hair. Her gray gnome hunkered down next to her and squeezed handfuls of mud through its twiggy fingers.

“He’s in Sidro and Pir’s tent,” Branna said. “Over this way.”

The gnome dematerialized as they hurried through the maze of round tents, as strangely silent as winter camps always were, with life moved so resolutely inside. As usual, the winter rains had washed off their painted decorations, leaving strange ghostly stains on the leather, outlines to be repainted once the weather turned toward summer. In the gray light it seemed that the camp lay caught between two worlds of water and earth, scarcely there.

Since Branna was striding along just ahead of her, Dallandra noticed that the girl’s dress hung thick with yellow-brown mud about her ankles. Her clogs sank into the ground with every step.

“You really need to wear leggings and boots,” Dallandra said. “I’ll get the women to make you some.”

“I suppose so,” Branna said. “I’m just so used to dresses, but truly, it’s impossible to keep them clean out here.” She paused for a sigh. “It sounded so exciting, coming to live among the Westfolk. I didn’t realize what the winters would be like.”

“They can be a bit grim, truly.”

“I understand now why Salamander wintered with my uncle. I thought he was daft for it, until the rains started.”

“Do you want to go home?”

“I don’t. There’s too much to learn here. I just wish I could get really dry and warm.”

“Well, it’s almost spring. Things will be better then.”

“The days are getting longer, truly.” Branna paused to extricate a clog from a particularly sticky lump of mud.

“And in a few days we’ll move camp,” Dallandra continued. “The ground will be cleaner in the new site.”

Sidro and Pir had pitched their newly-made tent on the edge of the camp, not far from the horse herd. When Dallandra ducked inside, she saw Vek kneeling on the floor cloth and leaning, face forward, onto a supporting heap of leather cushions. He’d come of age the summer past, and as was usual among the Horsekin, he’d been bald until that point in his life. Still short and straight, his hair clung to his dead-white skin. Sidro knelt beside him and wiped his sweaty face with a damp rag. Drool laced with pink stained the neckline of his dirty linen tunic.

“I do think the worst be done with,” Sidro said. “But he did bite his tongue afore I could get him turned over and sitting up like this.”

Branna hovered back in the curve of the wall to watch. Dallandra set her bag down, then knelt at Vek’s other side. When she laid her hand on his face, she found it cold and clammy. He looked at her out of one dark eye.

“I’ve brought your drops,” Dallandra said. “Let me just get them out.”

In response he let his mouth hang open. She rummaged through the tent bag and found the tiny glass vial, filled with an extremely potent tincture of valerian. It smelled horrible and must have tasted worse, but Vek neither squirmed nor made a face when she used the glass stopper to drip a small quantity into his mouth. She could see the cut on the side of his tongue—not big enough to worry about, she decided.

“You know this will help. Good lad!” Dallandra made her voice soothing and soft, as if she were speaking to a small child instead of a boy who was at least thirteen summers old. She was never sure how much he understood when he was in this condition. Afterward he could never remember.

Sidro handed her a cup of spiced honey-water. Dallandra helped Vek drink a few sips to wash the medicine down and the taste out of his mouth. She gave the cup back to Sidro, then patted him on the shoulder.

“You just rest now,” Dallandra said. “Sidro, will it be all right if he stays here with you?”

“Of course. Help me lie him down on those blankets over there. Pir be out with the horses, but he’d not mind anyway were he here.”

“I’ll help.” Branna stepped forward. “Dalla, you shouldn’t lift anything heavy.”

“Perhaps not.” Dallandra laid her hands on her swollen stomach, hanging over the waist of her leather leggings—she no longer bothered to lace them up in front. “This is the part about being with child that I hated before, feeling so bloated and awkward.”

“True spoken,” Sidro said. “But I’d put up with that again gladly to give Pir a child. He does so want one.” She smiled. “He’s not like Laz.”

“I’ve no doubt you’ll get your wish soon. You’re both in good health.”

“So did Exalted Mother Grallezar say. She did tell me that when one woman in a circle be with child, the rest be sure to follow. The smell in the air does induce fertility.” Sidro grinned and took a deep breath. “I do hope she be right.”