The Silver Mage (68 page)

“You’ll have to be patient,” she told him one day.

He answered with a croak that might have meant anything. Only Mara could truly understand him, though she had hopes that in time, as he worked on speaking more clearly, others would be able to as well.

“He does say that he wishes not for you to see him in this pass,” Mara told her.

Laz croaked out a fairly clear, “That’s true.”

“Very well,” Dallandra said. “Mara can do everything for you that can be done.”

When Dallandra left his chamber, Mara followed her out. They stood at the head of the stairs to talk.

“Think you that you may ken the secrets of the isle?” Mara said.

“Eventually, perhaps,” Dalla said. “It’s a very tangled puzzle.”

“No doubt. I do think me, though, that the isle will go nowhere till all its people come home. You should call my father to us.”

“I know you’re eager to meet him, but I doubt me if the time is right for that.”

Mara smiled, but her eyes flashed anger. With a toss of her head she strode away, followed by half-a-dozen cats.
You may be the lady of this place one fine day,
Dallandra thought,
but that doesn’t mean you can give me orders.

B
erwynna discovered that she enjoyed flying on dragonback, even though Uncle Mic’s constant shrieks, moans, groans, and heavy sighs did detract from much of the pleasure during the first two days’ traveling. By the time they found Haen Marn, though, he had lapsed into a welcome if abject silence. Although Medea had worried about her ability to find the island, with Wynni along, a true daughter of Haen Marn, they flew straight to the river that led to Lin Serr. From there, following it upstream to the island itself proved simple.

Through wisps of mist, Berwynna saw the lake and in its center the island. The sight of the familiar manse and Avain’s tower moved her to tears. Only then did she realize how badly she’d missed her mother and Avain and Lonna and even, she had to admit, her sister.
I’ll see my brother Enj again, too,
she thought.
It be good to be home!

“Down we go!” Medea called out.

With a swoop of wings the green dragon sailed through the mists, made a wide turn over the lake, and landed with a graceful flapping onto the shore by the boathouse. Berwynna and Mic slid from her back just as Avain came running with a howl of joy.

“Wynni bring a dragon!” Avain was chanting the words in Dwarvish as she lumbered along. “Wynni bring a dragon!”

Behind her came Angmar, walking with some dignity, but smiling like the sun itself, breaking through clouds. Berwynna rushed to her mother’s arms and, holding her, wept again in sheer joy.

A
smiling Dallandra turned from the window. “Let’s just stay inside,” she said. “I don’t want to intrude on the family. They all look so happy to have Wynni back, even Mara.”

“Well and good, then,” Branna said. “It gladdens my heart that Medea could fly through the vortex—safely, I mean.”

“She’s a true dragon, that is, ‘dragon’ is her natural body form. It’s not like the situation with Rori or Laz.”

“Of course! I should have thought of that. Mara’s not the only one with much to learn.”

“All of us have much to learn.” With a sigh Dallandra walked over to join Branna. “Especially about Haen Marn.”

They had spent the morning studying a particular section of the carvings on the east wall. In the center of an oval, delineated by an arrangement of small sigils of Aethyr, stood a depiction of a tree, half of which had stylized leaves on its branches but the other half, stylized flames. Across the room behind them, on the west wall, stood another, similar design but with its oval defined by repeated sigils of Air. The trees had to refer to the tree that stood by the gate between the worlds, Dallandra realized, but the realization had not gotten her much farther.

“So far,” Dallandra said, “we’ve got four places on the walls that seem to refer to traveling, the patches of sigils of Aethyr and Air that Laz pointed out to me, and then these two trees. And then—” She paused to walk along the wall until she reached another set of symbols that at first glance looked like a design element and naught more. “And then there’s these. They’re the key to the egregore, I’d wager. Mara mentioned how the healing lore began to come into her mind the night after she’d been studying this bit of the wall.”

“If you say so.” Branna frowned at the designs. “Oh, wait, I think I do see. Birds plucking things from a garden? Is that it?”

“In a very stylized way. Now, over here—”

Laughing, calling out to one another, the inhabitants of Haen Marn came trooping in, Berwynna arm in arm with her mother, and behind them Mara, Avain, and Enj, with Mic and Kov bringing up the rear. From the east door Lonna hurried in and Lon after her to greet Berwynna. Even Medea joined in by the simple expedient of sticking her green-and-gold head through the window closest to the long table. So much for study and meditation, Dallandra decided.

“We’d best pick this up again later,” Dallandra told Branna.

“True spoken,” Branna said. “Though I can’t say I begrudge them their joy.”

Yet at dinner that night, in the midst of laughter and the noisy telling of tales, Dallandra found herself glancing over at the huge swags of carving that swooped across the walls of the great hall. Somewhere among them lay the secrets she needed.

I
n the middle of the night, Branna woke from a dream too strange and unfocused to be one of her true dreams, yet she felt that she’d been given a kernel of important lore. She got up and made a small dweomer light, shielding it with her body to keep from waking Dallandra, only to realize that the master had already gotten up and gone before her. Branna allowed the light to swell, then dressed and went downstairs. Dallandra was standing in the great hall beside the door in the west wall.

“Did I wake you?” Dalla said. “My apologies, if so.”

“You didn’t,” Branna said. “I had a dream. I was looking at a part of the wall and a voice said, this bit was made to be yours. Or something like that. You know how dreams are with words. So I woke and felt I had to come look for the piece that’s mine before the memory faded.”

“Very good! Which bit is it?”

“The pair of Aethyr sigils in the midst of some animals that might be horses. It’s on the east wall by the other door.”

“Very good! I’ve been looking at this pair of Air sigils here. Look, they’re surrounded by what look like ships. It must have somewhat to do with motion and travel.” Dallandra touched one of the ships with her forefinger. “I have the feeling that maybe this piece is mine, somehow, now that you mention it.”

Branna ran across the room to the back door. When she tossed her dweomer light on to the wall, she saw the sigils and the animals, clearly horses now that she was awake.

“Here they are!” she called out to Dalla.

“Good!” Dalla called back. “I see the two groups are on an east-west axis, and both of them are near the burning trees.”

“So they are!”

Branna reached out and ran her fingertips along the sigils, then glanced back just in time to see Dallandra laying a casual hand on the sigils by the other door. The entire manse lurched and trembled. Branna yelped and nearly fell, but her hand seemed to have become stuck to the wall—or into the wall. She stared openmouthed as her hand sank into the astral illusion up to her wrist. When she heard Dallandra call out, she glanced over her shoulder to see Dalla similarly pinned.

“The tree, Branna! Put your other hand on the tree!”

By stretching, Branna could just reach the carving of the tree. Half of it began to flicker with red and orange light as if it burned, whilst the other half glowed green with fresh leaves. One again her hand sank into the wall.

“We’re moving,” Dallandra called out. “Pray to every god we don’t end up in Alban!”

Branna tried to speak and failed. A cool lavender mist was seeping through the great hall. The sigils of Aethyr were glowing brightly. Beside them two Elvish digraphs gleamed a turquoise flecked with a poisonous-looking green. She could just see out of the nearby window to the space between manse and kitchen hut. Even though the purple mist drifted around her, Medea lay curled up, asleep and apparently unaware that the entire island was flying like a dragon itself.

At the far end of the hall, Dallandra began to chant but not in Elvish. Branna could only pick out the occasional phrase, not that she understood any of them.

“Hanmara, Hanmara, ol duh um duh non ci ol zir doh no co. Ol pir tay day ol pir tay, Hanmara.”

Dallandra chanted these phrases over and over, with other words in between that Branna’s mind simply could not parse. A spirit voice, very high and clear, began to sing the words in descant harmony with Dallandra’s chant. After some little time, it faded away, and Dallandra fell silent as well.

Branna had no idea of how long they traveled. Trapped as she was by the astral forces of the illusory wall, she was forced to stand still, unable even to lean against the carvings to rest for fear of starting off some other dweomer process. The construct shook so hard at moments that she nearly fell. Her outstretched arms first pained her, then became numb. Her legs began to ache in their stead, and she felt shivering cold from the lavender mist that swirled around her.

At moments, the mist grew so thick that she could no longer see Dallandra. She became so terrified then that it took all her will to keep from screaming. Eventually the mist would thin. Once she could see Dallandra again, the fear would leave her.

After some long while, Branna became aware of noises, the muffled sounds of people calling out, the croak of a raven voice, the sounds of footsteps running back and forth, all of them coming from above her. She could guess that the other inhabitants of the manse had woken up and realized what was occurring around them. When she glanced out of the window, she saw that Medea, too, was awake. She’d sat up, and Avain huddled between the dragon’s front legs.