The Shadow Isle (55 page)

Every day at noon Angmar climbed the stairs of Avain’s tower to bring her firstborn daughter a meal. Despite her bulk, Avain ate but little: porridge in the morning, a plate of meat and bread in the middle of the day, a bowl of soup in the evening, a few apples when they were in season, or at times nothing at all before she went to her bed, a heap of straw upon the floor. Angmar had tried to get her to sleep in a proper bed in years past, when Avain was smaller, but she’d always refused. Now no bed in Haen Marn’s manse would have fit her.

Avain was sitting at her table by the window, watching the water dance in her silver basin, when Angmar came in with a plate, covered with a bit of linen to keep off the flies.

“Your meal, my love,” Angmar said.

Avain looked up with her strange round green eyes, lashless and unblinking. “Dougie’s dead,” she said. “Poor Dougie.”

“What?” Angmar set the plate down with shaking hands. “Ah, ye gods, the poor lad, indeed!”

“Wynni, she be with her da. Dragons!” Avain smiled and got up from her stool. “Dragons, Mama! Silver dragon, black dragon, green dragons, lovely dragons.”

“But what about Dougie?”

“He be dead, Mama.” She spoke in a calm, ordinary voice. “Wynni be safe with her da.”

“With Rori, you mean?”

“With her da, truly.”

“If her da flies this way, will you tell me?”

“Of course, Mama.” Avain held her arms out from her shoulders. “Lovely dragons! Avain want to fly, Mama.”

She tossed back her head and roared, then ran around and around the room with her arms outspread. As she watched, Angmar was thinking of her first husband, Enj and Avain’s father, who had loved tales of dragons. He had blamed himself, Marn, son of Marnmara, for his strange daughter’s affliction, sure that somehow he’d attracted a dragon’s soul into her body as it grew in the womb. Everyone had called him daft.
But he was right,
Angmar thought,
may the gods forgive us, he was right!

GLOSSARY

Alar
(Elvish) A group of elves, who may or may not be bloodkin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.

Alardan
(Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.

Astral
The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure-House of Images.

Banadar
(Elv.) A warleader, equivalent to the Deverrian cadvridoc.

Blue Light
Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).

Body of Light
An artificial thought-form constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes.

Cadvridoc
(Dev.) A warleader. Not a general in the modern sense, the cadvridoc is supposed to take the advice and counsel of the noble-born lords under him, but his is the right of final decision.

Captain
(Dev.
pendaely
.) The second-in-command, after the lord himself, of a noble’s warband. An interesting point is that the word
taely
(the root or unmutated form of
-daely,
) can mean either a warband or a family depending on context.

Deosil
The direction in which the sun moves through the sky, clockwise. Most dweomer operations that involve a circular movement move deosil. The opposite, widdershins, is considered a sign of the dark dweomer and of the debased varieties of witchcraft.

Dweomer
(trans. of Dev.
dwunddaevad
.) In its strict sense, a system of magic aimed at personal enlightenment through harmony with the natural universe in all its planes and manifestations; in the popular sense, magic, sorcery.

Ensorcell
To produce an effect similar to hypnosis by direct manipulation of a person’s aura. (True hypnosis manipulates the victim’s consciousness only and thus is more easily resisted.)

Etheric
The plane of existence directly “above” the physical. With its magnetic substance and currents, it holds physical matter in an invisible matrix and is the true source of what we call “life.”

Etheric Double
The true being of a person, the electromagnetic structure that holds the body together and that is the actual seat of consciousness.

Falcata
(Latin) A curved and weighted saber derived from the earlier falx—an ancient weapon, carried in our world by Hispanic tribes of the second and third centuries BC, rediscovered by Gel da’Thae swordsmiths.

Gerthddyn
(Dev.) Literally, a “music man,” a wandering minstrel and entertainer of much lower status than a true bard.

Gwerbret
(Dev.) The name derives from the Gaulish
vergobretes.
) The highest rank of nobility below the royal family itself. Gwerbrets (Dev.
gwerbretion
) function as the chief magistrates of their regions, and even kings hesitate to override their decisions because of their many ancient prerogatives.

Lwdd
(Dev.) A blood-price; differs from wergild in that the amount of lwdd is negotiable in some circumstances, rather than being irrevocably set by law.

Malover
(Dev.) A full, formal court of law with both a priest of Bel and either a gwerbret or a tieryn in attendance.

Mach-fala
(Horsekin) A mother-clan, the basic extended family of Gel da’Thae culture.

Mazrak
(Horsekin) A shapechanger.

Rakzan
(Horsekin) The highest ranking military officer among the Gel da’Thae regiments, a position that bestows high honor on the mach-fala of the man holding it.

Remembrance, Day of
(Elv.) A festival at the spring equinox where bards perform special poems commemorating the ancient cities of the Far West. See “alardan.”

Rhan
(Dev.) A political unit of land; thus, gwerbretrhyn, tierynrhyn, the area under the control of a given gwerbret or tieryn. The size of the various rhans (Dev.
rhannau
) varies widely, depending on the vagaries of inheritance and the fortunes of war rather than some legal definition.

Scrying
The art of seeing distant people and places by magic.

Sigil
An abstract magical figure, usually representing either a particular spirit or a particular kind of energy or power. These figures, which look a lot like geometrical scribbles, are derived by various rules from secret magical diagrams.

Tieryn
(Dev.) An intermediate rank of the noble-born, below a gwerbret but above an ordinary lord (Dev.
arcloedd
.)

Wyrd
(trans. of Dev.
tingedd
.) Fate, destiny; the inescapable problems carried over from a sentient being’s last incarnation.