A Time of Omens (19 page)

“I can understand that. Mangortinna, huh? Well, if she went back home, we’d probably never find her, even if we did try.”

“What do you want to find her for?”

“Oh, it’s probably just sentimentality on my part, but I feel like I should… well, consult her, I suppose. You see, Salamander wants to marry Marka.”

“Marry her? Actually legally marry her?”

“Yes, just that.”

“Well, that’s wonderful! He’s the kind of man who could take good care of her, and she certainly wants to marry him.”

Jill laughed.

“You were just telling me how awful marriage is.”

“For me, it would be, but I know that the way I’ve chosen to live my life isn’t right for every woman. I was really afraid that Marka was going to end up unmarried and pregnant, no matter what you said about his morals.”

“So far he hasn’t laid a hand on her.”

“So far. She’s a pretty little thing, after all.”

“True, and even more to the point with our Salamander, she worships him.”

“Imph. What’s wrong with them getting married?”

“Well, he’s a good bit older than her, more so than you’d ever think to look at him. And then, well…” She hesitated, unsure of how to explain, of how much she could explain.

Someone called their names. Waving the permit, Salamander came strolling over to them, and Jill let the subject drop. Vinto looked extremely pleased about something, himself.

“We shall be setting up our fabulous cavalcade of wonders on the East Square,” Salamander said. “Not only is said square paved and thus quite level, but it’s in the more prosperous quarter of town. We had best return to camp and tell the others of our good fortune. And I want to see how Delya and Marka are getting on with finishing those new costumes.”

“I’m going to stay in town,” Jill broke in. “I want to go see the bookseller, and then I’m supposed to consult with the priests of Dalae-oh-contremo again.”

Although Inderat Noa sported several grand public squares, most of the streets twisted like tunnels under arcades of houses and shops, built right out over them for the shade. As Jill made her way through this dim warren she attracted a crowd of Wildfolk, the big purple-striped gnomes peculiar to Bardek, scurrying along after her on their fat little legs. Although her usual gray fellow did materialize, he took a smaller form than usual, so that he could ride upon her shoulder and look down upon the purple gnomes with a lordly disdain. None of the other people in the crowded street could see her companions, of course, although every now and then some passerby suddenly looked down and frowned at what seemed empty air as a gnome bumped into him or brushed rudely past.

The bookseller, however, could see them quite well, because he’d studied the dweomer lore for some thirty years. Daeno’s little shop was wedged in between a fruit seller’s and a basket weaver’s down on a dead-end alley perfumed with lemons and drying grass. When Jill and her crew crowded through the door into the blessedly cool shop, the old man came shuffling forward to greet them all, waggling
a finger at the gnomes and warning them to keep their little clawed paws off the rare scrolls and codices stacked up high all round.

“I’ve found the map,” he announced. “My boy just got back with it. Its owner let it go cheap, by the way. It’s not much of a collector’s item.”

The piece of pounded bark paper was about two feet long by a foot and a half wide, all torn and filthy round the edges, and flecked with what looked like ancient wine drops overall. At the very top of the map lay the faded outline of Main Island’s tail and the tiny islands just to the south; off to the left lay the Anmurdian archipelago in somewhat darker ink.

“Now, Anmurdio is much farther off than this map makes it look,” Daeno remarked. “So who knows how far away these are.”

He laid one bony finger on the “these” in question, a group of four islands, drawn entirely too circular to be accurate, floating far to the south of Anmurdio, Out in the middle of the ocean in between, the scribe had drawn a sea serpent and a fat monster with big fangs. Daeno picked up the map and flipped it over to reveal several lines of tiny, spiky writing, faded to a pale brown, on the back.

“Varro the merchant made this map by the grace of the Star Goddesses in the reign of Archon Trono. That was in 977 by Deverry reckoning, Jill, well, give or take a year, anyway.”

“You have my sincere thanks for going to all this trouble.”

“You’re most welcome. I’m afraid it’s not much of a map.”

“It’s better than no map at all, and it’ll be something to show round once we get to Anmurdio.”

“You know, there are supposed to be cannibals in the smaller islands.”

“Just like there’s supposed to be sea serpents out in the southern ocean?”

Daeno laughed, nodding his head in agreement while he rolled up the map.

“The thing is,” Jill went on. “I’m never going to get a merchant here on Main Island to risk his ship and his fortune on some daft scheme of sailing to the far south. Or
well, there was one, but he has a wife and three children, and I couldn’t let him. I just couldn’t.”

“Of course not.” Daeno paused to swat at the gnomes, who were scurrying this way and that on the counter. “I’m surprised you found anyone at all. Who was it, by the bye? A local man?”

“No, a merchant up in Orysat, Kladyo by name.”

“Elaeno’s boy?”

“The very one! Do you know—oh, of course you’d know Elaeno!”

“Well, not intimately or anything, but we’ve met in the flesh and then, of course, out on the etheric we run into one another from time to time. Hum, am I right in this? I heard that his master in the dweomer was a Deverry man.”

“That’s true, and it was the same person who taught me. Nevyn, his name was.”

Daeno whistled under his breath. The gnomes all went dead-still to listen.

“Not
the
Nevyn?” the old man said. “Oh, listen to me! There could only be one!”

“You’ve heard of him, then?”

“What?” Daeno laughed aloud. “Every dweomerworker in these parts has heard of Nevyn! He spent years and years in the islands, you know, over the last two hundred years or so. He’d turn up for twenty, thirty years at a time, then disappear again for even longer. Probably sailed back home to your kingdom. You must know all about it.”

In fact, Jill didn’t, and she was rather surprised to find it out now. Daeno went blithely on.

“But to get back to the problem in hand, if you want to sail south, I suppose that Anmurdio’s the best place to look for a ship.”

When Jill arrived back at the caravanserai, she found the troupe hard at work, readying costumes and props for the evening show. Salamander himself was sitting on the bed of a wagon with his feet dangling over the edge like a farm boy and whittling like one as well. On a piece of driftwood shaped much like a bird, he was carving details.

“It’ll be a fine thing to juggle with.” In illustration he tossed it spinning and caught it again in the same hand. “And I know what you’re thinking, O Mistress of Magicks Marvelous, that if only I spent this much time and ingenuity,
to say naught of cleverness, craft, wit, and willingness upon the dweomer, I should soon match you.”

“Surpass me, more like. You’ve got the fluid natural talent that I never had.”

“Oh, please, tease me not and mock me neither.”

“Naught of the sort. I’ve had to work blasted hard for everything I’ve accomplished, while it comes easy to you. I suppose—no, I know—that’s why I get so sour with you.”

“Oh.” He considered the wooden bird with a frown. “Well, that does put a different complexion on things truly. Jill, you have my apologies. I try to control my frivolous nature, but it’s just somewhat I was born with, I fear me.”

“It’s somewhat that could be overcome,”

He shrugged and went back to reining a small burl that resembled a wing,

“Ebañy, I just don’t understand you,”

“I don’t understand myself.”

“Would you please not put me off?”

He looked up, abruptly solemn, yet she couldn’t tell if he were sincere or merely arranging the expression she wanted to see.

“Dweomer means everything to you, doesn’t it?”-he said.

“It does. More than meat and drink, more than life.”

“More than love.”

“Unquestionably, considering,”

“Alas, my poor brother! I don’t suppose he’ll ever understand why you chose the dweomer over him. No more do I suppose that you particularly care if he does or not.”

“That’s not fair.”

He winced at the bite in her voice,

“Look.” Jill tried another tack. “I know the basic exercises and suchlike can be tedious. Why, when I was learning all the proper calls and salutes for the elemental kings and lords, I thought I’d go out of my mind from sheer boredom. But it’s been more than worth it. Now I can travel where I will in their worlds and see the marvels there. But you know about that. You’ve had a taste of it yourself. I simply can’t understand how you wouldn’t want more.”

“I don’t have your devotion to the art,”

“Oh, horseshit!”

“Ah, the silver dagger’s daughter still!” He looked up from his work with a grin, then let it fade. “But horseshit it’s not, my friend, my dear and treasured companion. Jill, when you want somewhat, you’re so single-minded that it takes my breath away. The rest of the world’s not like that.”

“I’m not talking about the rest of the world.”

“Oh, very well, then. I’m not like that.”

Jill hesitated, struggling to understand.

“Well,” he went on. “You had your own doubts about taking up the art, didn’t you?”

“True spoken. But that’s when I didn’t know what it offered. You do know. I honestly don’t see how you could get so far and then give it up.”

“Ah. It’s because you do the work out of love, while I have only duty and grim obligation as my whip and spur.”

“You honestly and truly don’t love the dweomer work?”

“I should have thought that such would be obvious after all these years.”

She knew him well enough to know that he was skirting the edge of a lie.

“Well here, consider this.” Salamander spoke quickly, before she could pin him down. “Wasn’t your father the greatest swordsman in all Deverry? Didn’t he gain great glory for himself wherever he rode—the silver dagger, the lowly outcast of a silver dagger, who put the best fighting men in the kingdom to shame? But did he relish that life? Did he revel in his glory and his position? Far from it!”

“Well, true spoken. What are you driving at?”

“Only that a man may have great skill and talent and not give a pig’s fart about the life they lead him to.”

“And do you feel that way about the dweomer?”

“Not exactly, literally, precisely, or even in substance. A mere example only.”

But at that exact moment his thumb slipped on the knife, and he sliced his hand. With a yelp he tossed both bird and blade onto the wagon bed and started cursing himself and his clumsiness. Blood welled and ran.

“You’d better let me bind that for you,” Jill said. “I hope that wretched knife was clean.”

“Doesn’t matter. The cut’s deep enough to wash itself out.”

It was, too, though mercifully not deep enough to cause permanent harm. Later Jill was to remember that accident and its unconscious confession only to curse herself for not seeing the meaning at the time,

Among the Host, Evandar’s people, Dallandra searched on a sunny day through a meadow, bright with flowers of red and gold. In their bright clothes and golden jewelry, the Host too bloomed like flowers amid the tall green grass, ‘and as always, their exact numbers eluded her. Even in the sunlight of a summer noon, shadow wrapped them round, blurring the boundaries that define a person for us in our world. Out of the corner of her eye she would see a pair of young girls, sitting gossiping on the grass, turn to look and find a bevy giggling together, then rising to run away like a flock of birds taking flight. Or it would seem that under the shade of an enormous tree a band of minstrels played, their conjoint music so sweet that it pierced her heart, yet she would find but one man with a single lute. Like flames in a fire or ripples in a stream, they became distinct and separate only to fall back again and meld.

Some of the Host, though, remained discrete, with minds and personalities of their own. Evandar himself, of course, and his daughter, Elessario, were the two she knew best, but there were others, men and women both, who wore names and faces like a mark of honor. In the dancing sunlight they waved in greeting or called out some pleasant remark as she made her way across.

“Have you seen Elessario?” she would ask, but always the answer was no.

By the meadow’s edge a river flowed, and at that moment it flowed broad and smooth. At other times she had seen it narrow and churning with white water or come upon it to find a swamp and nothing more, but at the moment the broad water sparkled in the sun, and green rushes stood at the bank like sword blades stuck into a treaty ground. Out among them on one leg stood a white heron.

“Elessario!”

The heron turned its head to consider her with one yellow eye, then rippled like the water and became a young woman with impossibly yellow hair, wading naked to the bank. Dallandra offered a hand and helped her clamber
out. Elessario picked up a tunic from the grassy bank and pulled it over her head. Although at first glance she seemed beautiful, with human ears but elven eyes, at second glance one noticed that the eyes were as yellow as her hair, cat-slit with emerald-green, and that her smile revealed sharp-pointed teeth.

“Did you need me for something, Dalla?”

“I did. Come see something with me.”

Hand in hand like mother and child they wandered downriver, looking for Bardek. Here in the world of the Guardians, as the elves named Evandar’s people, images could become real rather easily, that is, for those with minds trained to build them. First Dallandra created an image of Jill in her mind, as clear and as detailed as possible; then she moved this image out through her eyes onto the landscape—a mental trick, that, and not true dweomer, strange though it sounds to those who don’t know how to do it. These mental images were lifeless things, even in this world, and broke up fast like a picture imagined in a cloud or a fire. Every now and then, though, one image would linger for a while longer or seem brighter and more solid. With a fascinated Elessario trailing after, Dallandra would walk to that spot and cast another round of images. Every time, one of the new crop would become solid and endure long enough to point out the next step of their journey.