The Shadow Isle (43 page)

Dallandra had been on the point of admitting that she might not be able to learn the proper dweomers to transform Rori back again, and that even if she did, she might not be able to work them. Just in time she realized that Rori had been keeping a secret of his own.

“Now listen,” Dallandra said instead, “I thought you agreed with me that turning Rhodry into a dragon should never have happened. ”

“Of course I do. But the blunder’s been made, and now that you’re healing that ghastly wound, and he’s sane again, why would I want Rori gone?”

What’s she going to say?
Dalla thought,
if we do manage to turn Rhodry back again?
Worse yet, what would Arzosah do? Dallandra vividly remembered the last time Arzosah thought she’d lost Rhodry, when she’d threatened to waken a sleeping fire mountain and destroy an entire town. Arzosah looked away, her ears still flat and sullen, but she tucked her tail around her haunches in a mannerly gesture.
I’ll have to forbid her to do every nasty thing I can think of
, Dalla thought.
And phrase everything exactly right, too.

“Well and good, then,” Dallandra said. “We’d best get on the road. Sidro, you and I can talk more while we ride. If Laz is back, I hope he still has that crystal.”

“He should have two of them,” Sidro said, “the white as well as the black.”

“I’d forgotten about the white one,” Dalla said. “Arzosah, my thanks for your aid and protection, but remember what I said about Haen Marn.”

“I have no choice but to remember.” The dragon hissed, but only briefly. “That wretched Evandar!”

When they reached the Westfolk camp in the meadow below Cengarn, the journey ended for Dallandra and most of her traveling companions, including the dragons, but Branna accompanied Solla and little Penna up to the dun itself. As they rode through the streets of the town, everyone who saw them called out their best wishes to Lady Solla; the men bowed, the women curtsied. The town remembered her many acts of charity. At the gates of the dun, the guards greeted her as if she’d been the queen herself. They bowed low, they yelled for pages, they helped her dismount and murmured compliments the while. Branna only wished that Drwmigga could see and hear them.

Though Drwmigga stayed elsewhere, Ridvar himself did come striding out of the main broch tower. For a long moment he and Solla stood face-to-face, considering each other.

“You look well, Brother,” Solla said at last.

“So do you, Sister.” Ridvar took a deep breath. “It gladdens my heart that you’re here. We never had a feast to celebrate your marriage. Once your lord’s recovered, I shall give one in your honor.”

Solla smiled, nearly wept, snuffled back the tears, and smiled again. “I’d like that,” she said in a steady voice. “My thanks.”

Ridvar managed to smile, then turned to a waiting page. “Help Lady Solla’s maidservant bring up her things,” the gwerbret said. “Blethry will tell you what chamber to put them in. Come in, Solla, come in. I’ll take you up to your lord.”

Branna followed as they went in arm in arm. She was assuming that she’d find Neb in the same place as Gerran. Indeed, when Ridvar opened the door of an upstairs chamber for Solla, Neb came hurrying out. He’d put back some of the weight he’d lost, and he was grinning at her with the life back in his eyes. Branna rushed to his open arms.

For the rest of that day, they talked but little. In the evening, however, after a meal that a page brought up to their chamber, they sat half-dressed on the bed and discussed Neb’s decision by candlelight.

“It truly started with the plague in Trev Hael,” Neb said, “not that I could see it then. It’s the questions, Branni. I have so many! How does an illness spread so fast? I’ve read all the usual things about humors and corruptions and the like, but none of them ring true. Where did the cursed illness come from, anyway? Townsfolk began falling ill a few days after the big summer market fair, so some visitor might have brought somewhat, the seeds of the illness, or a poison—I don’t know. I thought mayhap the cause was bad air, but it was a lovely summer, that year, and the air was sweet.”

“If you could find out,” Branna said, “it would be a grand thing. Do you remember Salamander telling us that our dweomer was the hope of the border?”

“I do, truly. That’s one reason I was flogging myself to be as powerful as I could.”

“If you could find the root of pestilence, wouldn’t that be powerful, too? I mean, what finally stopped the Horsekin, back when they destroyed the Westfolk cities, was the plague. What if they used a plague against us?”

“True spoken.” Neb looked away, his eyes wide with remembered horror. “We’d better have shields in store against that kind of weapon. I doubt me if this particular bout came from them. How could it? But it was brutal enough as it was.”

“Oh, it was that, sure enough, judging from everything you’ve told me. It’s no wonder you want to study healing.”

“And so I do.” Neb was silent for a moment, looking away, his face slack with old grief. “Well,” he said briskly. “I know my wyrd, and truly, it’s such a relief, as if I’ve been ill myself. I envied you so much, you know, since you always knew yours.”

“What?” Branna wondered whether to laugh or snarl at him. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you’d gotten so far ahead of me.”

“Here, what is this? Did you think we were running a race or suchlike?”

He had the decency to blush.

“All I know, my dearest darling,” Branna said with some asperity, “is that I’ve set my feet on the dweomer road. I have no idea where it’s leading me.”

“Um, well, my apologies.”

Neb got out of bed and began clearing away the remains of their meal like a page.
You should be embarrassed,
Branna thought. Still, as she considered the past few months, she realized that she might have shared her doubts with him.
Both of us were putting on a good show for the other,
she thought.
Just like a pair of gerthddynion!

Branna saw the actual gerthddyn in the dun later that evening, when she went with Neb to visit Gerran. While Neb discussed his patient with Solla, Branna sat on the windowsill, the only available seat in the crowded room, and watched the candle smoke drift past her and out to the warm night. They had been there some time when Salamander nudged the door open with his foot and walked in with an armload of Westfolk tunics, old ones, judging from the faded embroideries.

“What are you going to do with those?” Branna asked him in Elvish.

“Give them to Canna and her children.” Salamander nodded at the huddle of womenfolk sitting on the floor. “They can’t go on wearing those bloodstained clothes. She can cut these down for dresses and the like.”

“I’d wondered about that, the poor woman!”

Salamander handed over the clothing, spoke briefly with Canna, then gestured to Branna and left. She followed him out to the corridor, dark except for the wedge of candlelight through the open door.

“I take it that you and Neb have talked?” Salamander said in Deverrian.

“We have, truly. His decision seems like a sound one to me. But you know what’s odd? Now that he’s not trying to be Nevyn, he’s a lot more like my memories of Nevyn.”

“No doubt! Have you ever tried to squeeze a handful of water?”

“Of course not. It’ll run right through your fingers—oh! That’s your point, isn’t it?”

“It is. The more Neb forced the issue, the more he failed.”

“Well, I think he sees that now. I hope so.”

“Good.” Salamander reached into his shirt and pulled out a silver message tube. “I need to go give this to the gwerbret. Just as I suspected, Grallezar extracted a great deal of information out of Gerran’s prisoner by sheer force of character alone. None of it is happy news, nor does it give me great hope for a peaceful future.” He tapped the palm of his other hand with the tip of the tube. “Nasty, in short. Roving companies of Horsekin warriors are traveling throughout the Northlands, gathering information, making raids along our border, all to some greater and foul purpose, which he doesn’t understand, alas. Sharak was only a young recruit. No one told him much, of course, and that’s the pity.”

“True spoken.” Branna felt as if a cold wind had swept down the dark corridor. She shuddered and cast the feeling off. “But no one lives up in the Northlands, do they? I always heard that it was wilderness and little more.”

“So did I, but if naught else, there’s Dwarveholt, and various merchants from various towns do go to trade with Lin Serr.” Salamander heaved a deep sigh and contemplated the message tube. “Anyway, since your husband’s become Gerran’s personal chirurgeon, I’ve been pressed into Dar’s service as scribe and messenger both.” He made her a bow. “And so, as much as it pains me to do honest work for my living, I must take my leave of you and go find Ridvar.”

After Grallezar finished questioning Sharak, she asked Sidro to take him to Dallandra. While they stood beside Grallezar’s tent to talk, the exhausted boy knelt between them on the ground. In the flickering light from a campfire, his eyes were unreadable pools of shadow.

“He told me that young Neb rewrapped his wrist and fingers,” Grallezar said in their own language. “I don’t know anything about the healer’s craft, so I’d like her to make sure he did it correctly. I need to go consult with the prince.”

“Very well, I’ll be glad to take him,” Sidro said. “Sharak, come with me.”

He stood up, but he kept his gaze fixed on the ground.

“You look familiar,” Sidro said. “Do I know you?”

“I’m from Taenbalapan.” He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him. “I saw you in the temple there, Holy One.”

“I do remember. Your mother was very poor and came to us for charity. Is that why you enlisted so young? So she could draw your salary?”

He nodded. “I’m the second son. It was the First Son’s duty to stay with Mother and my sisters.”

“Well, she’ll have your death boon now,” Grallezar said. “No one’s going to know you’re still alive.”

His mouth twitched in the beginning of a smile, but he continued studying the ground at his feet. Would his mother mourn him, the expendable extra son? Sidro wondered. No doubt the coin would ease any grief she felt.

“You’re not really a slave, you know,” Sidro said. “You can look at me. No one keeps slaves among the Ancients.”

He did look up then, his eyes wide with surprise.

“You could even go back, if you wanted,” Sidro went on.

“I don’t want to.” He clenched his good hand into a fist. “They’ve betrayed our goddess, killing women like that.”

“
Your
goddess!” Grallezar snapped. “She never was mine. But that doesn’t matter now. Go along with Sidro, boy. I want to make sure that broken wrist’s going to heal.”

When Sidro walked off, Sharak followed her obediently, some three steps behind. It was going to take him a while to understand that he truly was a free man still. Later she’d make it plain to him that she no longer served Alshandra, Sidro decided. At the moment he appeared too dazed from all that had happened to him to understand subtleties.

They found Dallandra, who immediately agreed to look over Sharak’s injuries.

“Come over to this fire here,” Dalla said to the boy. “So I can see better.”

He stared bewildered until Sidro translated, then smiled. He turned to Sidro and bent one knee as a sign of his lower status. “Thank you, Holy One,” he said softly. “It’s so good of you to help such as me.”

“You’re very welcome,” Sidro said. “I’ll wait here in case the healer needs to tell you something.”

He knelt before her, then leaned forward and kissed the toe of her boot. With a bob of his head, he rose and followed Dallandra to the fire.

Sidro felt her eyes fill with tears, just a few and briefly. The boy’s obvious respect had touched her, a respect she’d not received in a long while. With Laz so much on her mind, she found herself remembering how he’d seduced her away from her sacred vows. She’d come to believe that he’d been right to do so, come to see that Alshandra was no true goddess at all, but his utter contempt for a devotion she’d cherished more than life itself hurt her still. What had he said? Something like, “I thought you’d throw that asinine vow off like a cloak.”

Had it been so asinine, to hope for something so grand, so much larger than herself, so much more wonderful than the handful of names and half-understood rituals offered by the old gods? That night she felt her loss of faith as keenly, as painfully, as she’d felt the loss of her first child. Either of them might have given her life a meaning that it had lacked, her, a mere slave-born half-citizen.

I have the dweomer now,
she reminded herself. She might have another child as well, of course. She hoped for such every day, now that she had a man who wanted a child. She remembered telling Laz that their son had died of fever. He’d looked at her with such blank eyes, hesitated so long, and then finally said, “I’m so sorry.” That was all. “I’m so sorry.” For her, perhaps. For himself, he was relieved.
He didn’t even bother to deny it.

Why would I want him back?
The thought hung in her mind like a sudden moonrise, casting strange shadows rather than clear light.

On the morning that Aethel’s caravan left Lin Serr, Berwynna and Dougie went down the long flights of stairs to the parkland below the main entrance to the city. While the sun climbed higher in the sky, a crowd of men and pack animals milled around, seemingly aimlessly at first. The mules brayed, the men swore, and Aethel trotted back and forth, sorting them out into a decent order. Mic took the chance to remind Berwynna that Cerr Cawnen lay a long journey away—about a month, depending upon the weather.

“Now, once we get there,” Mic said, “I’ll look over this job of theirs. If I like it, I’ll stay, but you should go back to Lin Serr with the last trading run. I’ll arrange things with Aethel. Your grandfather will make sure that you and Dougie get safely back to Haen Marn.”

“If you say so, Uncle Mic,” Berwynna said. “By then, I’ll doubtless be ever so glad to see Mam again, especially if we find my da. Everything’s been so splendid so far. Even ordinary things are marvels to me after being shut up on that wretched little island.”