The Shadow Isle (52 page)

Berwynna spun around and looked for her father. A good distance away, Rori was sitting on his haunches like a giant cat, his tail curled around his forelegs. He was looking off to the east, most likely watching for their enemies.

“But the Horsekin!” Mic repeated.

“We’ll have to take our chances with them,” Laz said. “I don’t suppose any of us will be much of a loss should they catch us, after all, since we—”

“You saved our lives,” Berwynna interrupted. “Let me go talk with him.”

Berwynna took off at a trot before Mic or Laz could stop her. She ran to the edge of the barrow, scrambled down the side, and hurried over to the dragon. He lay down with his front legs stretched out in front of him and lowered his head to speak with her.

“Is somewhat wrong?” Rori said. “You look troubled.”

“I be so,” Berwynna said. “Da, you do know that we did nearly die, all of us, when the Horsekin did attack the caravan.”

“I do, truly. And?”

“Know you why I didn’t die?”

“I don’t, though I was wondering about that.”

“Some Horsekin, they nearly did capture me. I did fight and nearly get free, but in the end, they would have taken me. There were three of them, and I were cut off from our men. But just then, rescuers did ride up, men we’d not seen before, men who be outlaws among the Gel da’Thae because they worship not the demon Alshandra. They did ride and fight and save us, but two of them, they were slain, Da. They did give their lives to save mine and Uncle Mic’s and the rest of the men, just like my Dougie did die fighting to save us.”

The dragon opened his massive jaws in surprise. “By every god,” he said at last, “then those men are heroes to me, outlaws or not. I wish I had some splendid boon or gift to give them, but alas! All those old tales about dragons having treasure? They’re not true.”

“That does ache my heart, Da. But truly, there be a boon you could grant them.”

“Indeed? And what might that be?”

“I do fear to ask for it, lest you say me nay. There be danger in the asking, you see.”

The dragon rumbled with laughter. “Wynni,” he said, “I’m as sure as I can be that you’re my daughter. You’re as crafty as a dragon hatchling, aren’t you? You want me to promise this boon before I hear what it is.”

“Well, that be true, Da.” Berwynna heaved what she hoped was a pitiful sigh. “The boon, it would cost you so little.”

“Oh, very well.” Rori paused to rumble again. “I hereby most solemnly grant your boon.”

“Da, you be so wonderful!” Berwynna would have thrown her arms around his neck, but they would have reached a bare quarter of the way. “I always did dream that my father would be so grand.”

“Enough flattery, hatchling! What’s this boon?”

“There be a Gel da’Thae man with us named Laz Moj. He does tell me that you hate him, and he fears you would slay him on the spot. Please, Da, he did save my life and Uncle Mic’s. Please don’t harm him.”

“Laz Moj?” The dragon’s silvery brow furrowed. “I don’t recognize the name.”

“He be a mazrak, a raven mazrak, from here in the Northlands.”

The dragon growled, a huge sound like a hundred dogs. Berwynna stood her ground and laid a gentle hand on his jaw. When she stroked him, he stopped growling.

“Of all the wretched dweomermen in the blasted Northlands,” Rori said, “it would be him. It’s a good thing you wheedled that boon out of me.”

“But, Da, you’ll not kill him, though, will you?”

“He’s safe from me. I gave my word, and I promised you a boon, and you shall have it. Huh! You remind me of another sister of yours, one you’ve not met. Alas, you won’t meet her, either, because she’s gone to the Otherlands. Rhodda, her name was, and she could charm anything out of me when she was a little lass.” He growled again, but it was a wistful sort of sound. “It’s just as well you can’t join forces against your poor old father.”

“Poor old father? And you a dragon?”

“I wasn’t a dragon back when Rhodda was young, and it’s a pity, too. She might have been more tractable.”

Berwynna felt a cold touch of regret, that she’d never be able to meet this sister. She’d just found out that Rhodda existed only to hear that she was dead.
Just like Dougie,
she thought, and to her horror the memory picture of his broken body rose again in her mind.

“Here!” Rori said. “What’s so wrong?”

“I did just remember how the man I did love so much died.” Berwynna gasped for breath and managed to choke back her tears. She refused to let her father see her weep. “I’ll be going back to camp and telling Laz that he be safe from you.”

When Berwynna climbed the barrow wall, she saw Laz and his men saddling their horses. She ran over to them and caught Laz by the arm.

“It be safe,” she said. “He did promise me that he’d not slay you, Laz, because you did save my life and Uncle Mic’s. So don’t leave.”

Laz stared at her.

“When I did ask,” Berwynna went on, “he did grant me a boon, that he’d not harm you.”

Laz laughed, one good whoop of laughter, and shook his head in amazement. Faharn stepped forward and spoke urgently in their language. Laz shot him a disgusted glance and answered in the same.

“He’s telling me I shouldn’t trust you,” Laz said to her. “By the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell, I owe Haen Marn too great a debt to go around accusing its daughter of lying to me. Very well, Wynni. Let’s go talk your father. He needs to know that the book’s gotten lost, and since he’s promised not to harm me, I’d best be the one to tell him. Don’t say one word about it until I do.”

“Laz!” Faharn snapped in the Mountain dialect. “Be not a fool!”

“That advice comes too late,” Laz said. “Let’s see, I was born some thirty years ago now, and so it’s thirty years too late.” He laughed again, and his eyes gleamed with excitement. “Let’s go, Wynni. I want to see if your father keeps his promises.”

Faharn began talking fast in their language, but Laz slipped his arm through Berwynna’s and marched her off across the barrow with Faharn trailing miserably after them. The dragon lay where Berwynna left him, waiting for them. When they climbed down from the barrow, Rori raised his head and growled, but only faintly.

“So,” the dragon said. “You’re the mazrak, are you? Laz Moj, is it?”

“That’s my name, truly,” Laz said. “May I ask why you’ve always hated me? I honestly cannot remember ever doing you harm.”

The dragon considered him for a long cold moment. “Mayhap you don’t,” he said at last. “But I do. Listen to me, Laz Moj. I made my daughter a promise, and I’ll keep it as long as you treat me and mine as well and faithfully as you’d treat your kin and clan. But if you ever do me or mine the least bit of harm, then the promise ends. I’ll crush you without a moment’s thought.” He lifted one clawed paw from the ground. “Do you understand me?”

“I do, most decidedly.” Laz took a step back. “I promise you I have no intention of doing them any harm.” He held up his maimed hands. “Do you see these? Berwynna’s twin healed them. Your woman Angmar gave me the shelter of her hall. I owe them and, through them, you a great deal of gratitude. Doing them harm is the farthest thing from my mind.”

Rori slapped the ground with his tail, then switched it back and forth like an angry cat. “Good, but you don’t know who else I consider mine. Prince Dar and his royal alar, indeed, the Westfolk, all of them—not one small bit of harm, Laz Moj, not by dweomer, not by the sword, not at all, naught, nothing.” Rori thrust his huge head forward. “Do you understand that?” His upper lip curled to show fang.

“Ye gods, I’ve never even met these people! Why would I harm them?”

Their gazes met and locked. The dragon’s tail slapped the ground again as if it had a life of its own. Berwynna felt afraid to so much as breathe as they stared at one another. He was terrifying, her father, when he wanted to be. Somehow she’d not expected this when she’d longed to find him, that in an instant he could turn so frightening, so wild. With a toss of his head and a half-turn of his body, Laz looked away at last.

“Good,” Rori said softly. “I think me you do understand.”

“I do,” Laz said. “I understand in the marrow of my soul, albeit that marrow’s more than a little frozen at the moment. In terror, that is.”

Rori laughed, his deep good-humored rumble. Laz took a deep breath and managed to smile, then turned to Berwynna.

“Wynni,” Laz said, “you have my undying thanks for this.”

“You owe her your life,” Rori said, “just as she owed you hers. The debt’s been repaid. Remember that.”

“Oh, fear not! I shall.”

“Good.” The dragon lurched to his feet. “Now that we understand each other, Laz, you’d best get your men and what’s left of that caravan on the road. Richt knows where we’re heading. We can talk more later. I’m going to go look for those Horsekin now, so both of you, get back on the barrow. These wings can knock a man over when I take flight.”

Berwynna opened her mouth to ask about the book, but Laz caught her eye.

“Come along,” Laz said. “We’ll talk more tonight, just like your father wants. I agree that we need to get on the road. We’re giving you a horse to ride, Wynni. It wears a thing called a bridle, and you should be able to control it.”

“I be glad to hear that,” Berwynna said. “Not that I know how to ride.”

“You’ll learn,” Rori put in. “You have to. Now go, both of you!”

Rori waited until Laz and Berwynna had gone a safe distance away before he took to the air. He soared high over the barrow and the camp, then turned and headed back east. He saw no sign of the Horsekin raiders on the road except for tracks leading into the forest. When he flew over the trees, he used the road as a guide, still saw nothing, then began to swing back and forth at angles to the road. In the thickest part of the forest, hiding among the old-growth trees, he could just make out a few large shapes that might have been horses.

He dove and flew so close to the treetops that they shook and dropped leaves. When he roared, he heard the panicked neighing of horses and the braying of mules answer him. Men shouted to one another. Although he heard animals moving in a rustle of underbrush and a crack of breaking branches, nothing broke free and tried to run. The Horsekin must have tied and hobbled their stock.

He took another turn over, looking for a spot where perhaps he could break through the canopy or even knock down a few of the smaller trees, but the raiders had chosen their hiding place well. Old-growth timber stood like a dun wall around and over them. And what if he reopened that wound in an attempt at breaking through? He roared a second time. Again he heard panic, but again, their discipline and their ropes both held, keeping them and their animals beyond his reach.

The third time he roared it was out of sheer frustration. He flew up high, turning to wing away from the forest. He would go back to the barrow and wait there for a while, he decided, then swoop back to see if they’d foolishly left their improvised lair. He badly wanted to kill something, to release all the rage he felt at the very thought of Laz Moj, kept as safe by his promise to Berwynna as the Horsekin were by the forest.

As soon as he’d seen the man, Laz’s image had wavered and blurred into three images, shifting from the sharp-faced man in front of him to Lord Tren to Alastyr, the vilest of them all in his fused memories. It had taken his entire will to refrain from raising one huge paw and killing him on the spot.

And all because of his newfound daughter and her begging that boon—although, as he thought about it, Dallandra as well had spoken to him of forgiveness and mercy, back in the summer past. Mercy. Once he’d understood that word. Now—had he forgotten it? Did it mean nothing? Long ago, his ancestor Prince Mael had written that mercy toward a noble lord’s inferiors was a good thing, one of the qualities that marked a man as noble.
I’m not a man any longer,
he thought,
noble or common! And I’m glad of it!

But was he truly? He thought of Berwynna, the daughter he’d never known he had. On Haen Marn she had a twin sister—and a mother. Angmar had returned. He could see her again, if he could face letting her see him in dragon form. Once he got their daughter to safety, he could fly off and find Haen Marn. If he dared.

For a fourth time he roared, a huge trembling of sound that echoed across the barrens. With the roar he sent his thoughts away, troublesome, painful thoughts that vexed him more than spears or arrows ever could. What counted now, he reminded himself, was getting what remained of the caravan to safety and delivering his report to Prince Dar. He refused to let himself think beyond that.

Rori settled down on the barrow to brood and wait, but although he stayed until the sun was low in the sky, the Horsekin never left their refuge in the forest.

Berwynna knelt by Dougie’s grave. Since the wooden cross she’d made would never last beyond the summer, she’d gathered small rocks, which she laid into the dirt to form a cross shape that would endure. She patted the earth down around it with both hands.

“Farewell, beloved,” she whispered in the language of Alban. “May you ride in Lord Jesu’s warband forever, just like you wanted.”

“Wynni!” Mic was calling to her in Dwarvish. “Come mount up!”

Berwynna got up and blew the grave one last kiss, then turned and walked off to join her uncle and the caravan without looking back.

With such a late start, the caravan could travel only a few miles south that day. Still, Richt kept everyone moving as long as possible through the unfamiliar country, until they’d left the road far behind them. If anyone wanted to follow them, Berwynna supposed, they could track them by the trail that the mules and horses trampled into the grass. She doubted if anyone would, thanks to the silver dragon. She kept a watch on the sky, hoping to see him, but it was late afternoon before he rejoined them.

At times he circled high above them; at others, he flew a criss-cross pattern over their line of march; always he stayed within their sight and the sight as well of any possible enemies. When near sunset Richt finally called a halt, the dragon landed nearby, just far enough away to keep from frightening the stock.