The Shadow Isle (4 page)

In the great hall the others had gathered around Marnmara, who had come over to Angmar’s table to look at Dougie’s gift. Angmar sat to her right, the mending unnoticed in her lap, while Tirn stood just behind Marnmara and peered over her shoulder. When no Mainlanders were around, the island folk talked in one of the two languages that Angmar called “our home tongues.” Since Tirn knew no Dwarvish, they spoke the mountain dialect of Deverrian whenever he joined them. In fact, he seemed to know it oddly well, better than any of the rest of them. Berwynna sat down on a bench opposite her mother just as Marnmara opened the sack and slid out its contents: a book, bound in white leather, with a black leather piece in the shape of a dragon upon the cover.

Tirn gasped, tried to choke back the noise, then coughed. Marnmara twisted around to look up at him.

“My apologies,” he said. “For a moment there I thought it was a book I used to own. That one had a black cover with a white dragon upon it.”

“Indeed?” Marnmara said. “What sort of book might it be? A grammarie?”

“What’s that?” Tirn looked puzzled. “I’ve never heard that word before.”

“A book of spells.” Marnmara was trying to suppress a grin.

“Ah.” Tirn hesitated, caught, then shrugged. “Well, it was that, truly.”

Marnmara allowed the grin to blossom. She opened the book randomly, then frowned at the page before her.

“Be somewhat wrong?” Angmar said.

“I did hope I could read this,” Marnmara said, “but I’ve not seen these letters ever before.” She turned round again and looked Tirn full in the face. “Except right there, tattooed on your skin. What language be they?”

“That of the Seelie Host,” Tirn said.

Berwynna made the sign of the Holy Rood.

“Truly?” Angmar quirked one eyebrow. “Now, I myself have seen such letters before, and they were made by someone as much flesh and blood as you are.”

Tirn face’s turned scarlet between his tattoos and scars.

“My apologies,” he said. “You must know about the Ancients, then. Some call them the Westfolk, others the Ancients. Do they dwell in this country, too?”

“I know not,” Angmar said, “but they do dwell in my homeland. Indeed, the father of my daughters did have Westfolk blood in his veins.” She leaned back to study his face. “I think me that you come from the place the Deverry folk call Annwn, not from Alban, no, nor Cymru nor Lloegr, either.”

“You’ve caught me out, my lady.” Tirn smiled and ducked his head in apology. “I didn’t want to say anything at first because I thought you’d never believe me. I didn’t realize that you, too, hail from Deverry.”

“I come not from Deverry proper, but from the north of it, in the country known as Dwarveholt. Now, can you read that book?”

“Alas, I cannot in any true sense. I can read well enough in three languages, but that of the Ancients isn’t one of them.” Tirn raised his bandaged hand and pointed at the tattoo on his left cheek. “These marks? Among my kin they’re thought to bring good luck or the favor of the gods. They’re very old, and their meaning’s been long forgotten.”

Angmar continued studying his face, while Marnmara paged through the book, frowning at a bit of writing here and there and shaking her head over the lot.

“What I can do,” Tirn went on, “is sound out the letters, though I don’t know what many words mean. Well, truly, they’re not letters in the way that the Holy Book of this country is writ in letters. Each one stands for a full sound, what mayhap would take two or three letters in some other tongue.”

Everyone stared, puzzled, except Marnmara, who laid a finger on one mark. “This one?” she said.

“La,” Tirn said, “and the next is sounded drah.”

“Be you a scholar, then, Tirn?” Berwynna said. “Father Colm does warn against the studying of books, saying it leads to sorcery.”

“Does he?” Tirn grinned at her. “He may be right, then, for the first time in his fat life.”

Berwynna began to laugh, then stifled the sound when Angmar glared at her. Tirn shifted his weight from foot to foot, then walked round to sit down on the same bench as Berwynna. She moved over to give him plenty of room. Angmar gave both of them a sour look.

“Is somewhat wrong, my lady?” Tirn said to Angmar.

“There be Horsekin blood in your veins, bain’t?” Angmar said.

Tirn blushed again, then nodded.

“Mam, Mam!” Marnmara looked up from the book with a sigh. “Matters it to you, with all of us so far from home?”

“Not truly,” Angmar said. “I find truth sweeter than lies, is all.”

“It is, and I owe you an apology,” Tirn said, “but I feared you’d have me killed or suchlike if you knew about the Horsekin.”

“If you realized not that we be from Annwn like you,” Angmar said with some asperity, “why did you think we might know about the Horsekin?”

Tirn blushed again, then spoke hurriedly. “I’m an outlaw among them, you see, and I’ll swear to the truth of that. They’d kill me if they ever got hold of me.”

“Now, that I do believe,” Angmar said, “because of the fear in your voice.”

Her mother and old Lonna had told Berwynna tales of the Horsekin, vicious killers who worshiped an evil demon named Alshandra. Now here was one of them, sitting next to her, a very ordinary man by the look of him, and badly injured to boot.

“Do you believe in Alshandra, then?” Berwynna said to him.

“I don’t,” Tirn said, “and that’s why I’m an outlaw.”

“I see.” Angmar rose and began to collect the mending in a basket. “Well and good, then.”

Berwynna followed her mother out of the great hall and up the stairs to Angmar’s room. She’d been planning on badgering Angmar about Dougie, but her mother’s mood had turned so grim that she thought better of the plan. Alone, they spoke in Dwarvish.

“Mama, do you trust Tirn?” Berwynna asked instead.

“I don’t,” Angmar said. “There’s somewhat more than a bit shifty about him beyond his Horsekin blood. I do believe him about being an outlaw, mind. I wonder, in fact, if his own kind gave him those burns and scars, a-torturing him somehow.”

“Ych!”

“Truly, they’re a cruel lot, the Horsekin. But be that as it may, Tirn knows lore that Marnmara needs if she’s to get us home again.”

“Will we ever really go home,” Berwynna said, “wherever that is?”

“I have my hopes. It may not mean much to you, but I long to see your father again.”

“Well, of course. I wish I knew him, too. My father. It has such a distant ring to it, doesn’t it? Even though you’ve told me about him, it’s not the same as knowing him.”

“It’s not.” Angmar allowed herself a long sigh. “I’ve tried to think of myself as a widow and stop longing for him, but deep in my heart I’m sure he’s still alive back home, if we could only get there. And I miss my homeland, too, the Dwarveholt.”

“Mam, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to slight what you treasure, but the land means naught to me. This is the only home I’ve ever had.”

“I do understand that. But I have hopes that someday you’ll have better and find a better man, too.”

This last was too much to bear. “Please, please, tell me why I mayn’t marry Dougie?” Berwynna said. “I love him ever so much.”

“I know, but ye gods, it would ache my heart to go home but leave you here with your Dougie. You’re young, child. There will be other men—”

“I don’t want any of them.”

“Dougie’s the only handsome lad you’ve ever known.” Angmar managed a smile. “First love is the love that stings, or so they always say. But answer me this. Suppose you did marry your lad and go to live with him, and then we all disappeared without you. How would that feel?”

Berwynna felt the blood drain from her face. The thought of losing her family—

“I see it doesn’t sit well with you,” Angmar said. “Well, it could happen, were you to go live on Alban land. Haen Marn goes where it wills when it wills, and it doesn’t bother with giving fair warning. ”

“Then how come you let Marnmara go over to the mainland to heal the folk and suchlike?”

“Because the island’s not going to go anywhere without her. That I know as surely as I know my own name.”

Berwynna bit back the bitter words that threatened to break free of her mouth.
It’s always Mara, isn’t it?
she thought.
She’s the important one, never me.

Laz had told the truth when he’d told Angmar that he couldn’t read the Westfolk language. He regretted it bitterly, too, thanks to that book of spells. So much dweomer so near—but the book might as well lie on a table in Deverry for all the good it would do him. Wildfolk hunkered down on the table around the book, slender green gnomes, each with a cap made of rose petals. Now and then one of them would stretch out a timid finger and touch the edges of the page. When Marnmara threatened to swat them, they disappeared. For some while Laz watched Marnmara turn pages, her stare as fierce as a warrior’s, as if she could force the meaning from the alien letters by sheer will.

“Not one word can I read,” she announced. “And the whole thing be writ in the same markings.”

“So it looked to me,” Laz said, “and it aches my heart, I tell you.”

“No doubt. Here.” She pushed the heavy book across the table toward him. “Mayhap if you sound out more of the marks, you might find a word or two you know. I do hope that somehow this book holds the dweomer to take us all home again, though I do have this strange feeling in my heart that it be naught of the sort.”

“Let me take a look, then.”

Using his wrists rather than his damaged hands, Laz managed to turn the book right side up in front of him. Marnmara moved to sit next to him and turn the pages when he asked. As he sounded out letters from the syllabary, he did come across words he knew, most of them useless, such as “next,” “then,” “and,” “is,” and the like. Still, Marnmara watched him so admiringly that he kept going.

“Turn all the way back to the first page,” Laz said finally. “If you’d be so kind.”

Marnmara did as he asked.

On the top of that first page a line of symbols, larger than the rest, had been carefully painted in red. Laz sounded them out several times. Thanks to the Westfolk custom of putting dots between words to set them apart, he managed to form them up into something he could guess at.

“Now this first word,” he said, “is a verb of some kind. That is, it’s the name of an act, a thing you do. I can tell by this sound at the beginning. It stands for keh-, and that means an action follows.”

A wide-eyed Mara nodded, taking it all in.

“And this sound at the end,” he continued, “means ‘how’ or ‘why’ one does this action. Alas! I don’t know what the action is. However, I’m fairly sure this next word means ‘a dragon’ because that name sounds much the same in several tongues, drahkanonen among the Westfolk, draeg in Deverrian, and drakonis among the Bardekians.”

“You most certainly be a scholar, Tirn. Here, I think me you should study this book for all of us. Maybe more will come to you if you do contemplate it.”

“Mayhap. We can hope.”

“I—” Mara paused, then turned around. “Be it that you wish somewhat, Wynni?”

Berwynna stood in the doorway, where, Laz realized, she’d been listening for some while, not that he saw anything wrong with her doing so. Marnmara, however, rose, shutting the book with a puff of dust.

“Come take this upstairs to Tirn’s chamber,” Marnmara said. “He can carry it not himself.”

“You might say please, truly, once in a while.” Berwynna walked over to the table.

“Oh, don’t be tedious!” Mara shoved the book at her. “Here!”

With a scowl Berwynna took the book—clasping it to her chest with both arms—and trotted over to the stairs. She hesitated, glancing back, at the foot of them as if she might speak further, then shrugged and went on up.

“Little sneak!” Mara said. “She always be listening and prowling around. Now. We’d best work on your hands before dinner. Rest here a moment. I be going to fetch the medicaments.”

Laz suppressed a sigh. He needed more than a moment to brace himself for what lay ahead. Before Marnmara went upstairs, she spoke briefly to Lonna, the aged maidservant, who merely nodded for answer. Lonna went to the hearth, poured water from a big clay jar into an iron pot, then set the pot in the coals to heat. By the time Marnmara returned, carrying a small cloth sack, the water was steaming. Lonna set it on to the table in front of Laz, then stomped off, muttering to herself. Marnmara took a handful of herbs out of the sack and dropped them into the water.

“Let that cool for a moment,” she said.

“Indeed,” he said. “May I ask you somewhat?”

“You may, though I might not answer.”

“Fair enough. Where did you learn so much about healing?”

“I don’t know.” She paused for a smile at his surprise. “When I were but a child, old Lonna did tell me of a few simples. She did know how to bind a small wound and such crude lore, too. But then, once I did grow into a woman, I did have a dream.” She hesitated, considering him. “Here, Tirn, since you be a scholar, tell me what you do think of this. In the dream I did find a door dug into the dirt of Haen Marn, out among the apple trees, that were. I did open the door and go down the stairs within. At the bottom was another door. I did open that. Herbs came pouring out, a great flood of dried herbs. I did scream, thinking they would smother me, but I woke to find the blanket over my face.” She laughed with a toss of her head. “But here be the strange thing. From that day on, I did know herblore.”

“I’d say you remembered it. The door led to your memory of such things.”

“From a life lived before, mean you? It could well be. I remember naught of this, but my mother does assure me that I was the lady of this isle once before. Avain did recognize me, Mam tells me, on the very day I was born.” She looked at him with her head cocked a little to one side, and her eyes wide, as if she were expecting him to challenge or dismiss her tale.

“I’d believe it of Avain,” Laz said. “She’s got a dweomer air about her.”

Marnmara smiled, perhaps relieved that he’d accepted her tale so easily.

“It’s a great honor,” Laz said, “to have such gifts.”

“That’s what my mam does say. I get a-weary of it.”