The Silver Mage (36 page)

In the morning they set off again, heading north through the tunnels. At each ventilation shaft either Leejak or Kov would climb up and look at the river, which stubbornly flowed deep and fast at the edge of the view. On the third day, however, they found a surprise: a bridge. Just at sunset Kov spotted it, a ramshackle affair of planks laid on pilings, thrown up hastily out of timber so green that the roadbed was already pulling apart. Judging from the stumps of trees he saw all along the bank, whoever had built the bridge had cut their raw materials on site. He climbed back down to report what he’d seen.

“Think it hold us?” Leejak said.

“If we’re careful,” Kov said. “The Horsekin must have built it to get horsemen across the river.”

“Ah. Maybe the ones that burn huts.”

“It could be, indeed. After we bring down the fortress, we can retreat back here, cross the bridge, and burn it behind us.”

“Good plan. If we live so long.”

“There is that.” Kov tried to smile and failed. “Well, all we can do is hope for the best. To that end, we need to send a scout up. See if Horsekin are guarding the thing.”

Leejak snorted profoundly. “I go myself. These—” he jerked a thumb in the direction of the other Dwrgwn, “—be useless.”

Kov agreed, but he said nothing aloud.

When twilight grew thick outside, Leejak climbed up to the vent, pulled out the wooden grating, and hauled himself over the edge to the ground above. Kov stayed on the ladder and watched as the spearleader ran, half-crouching, to the riverbank. He made his way among a scatter of bushes, where he paused to take off his clothes. When Leejak slipped into the water, Kov saw a brief glimmer of blue light, then lost track of the spearleader completely in the dark ripples of water.

Twilight turned to night. The stars came out and began their slow wheeling climb toward zenith. Kov’s legs began to ache on his awkward perch, but he kept watch. Without Leejak, he felt, the expedition would fail, which meant he himself would end up sacrificed to the Water gods by a gloating Gebval.
My throat slit and my blood given to the river,
he decided.
Or bound to one of those stone pillars and knifed.

Down below him, he could hear the Dwrgwn squabbling over who had received more of their diminishing rations of stale flatbread. He considered climbing out and disappearing into the night, but what would happen to him then? As much as he hated to admit it, his safety lay with Leejak and his followers.

After what seemed like half the night, though the wheel of the stars had only marked out an eighth of its journey, a damp Leejak returned. Kov climbed down to let the spearleader swing himself onto the ladder and follow.

“No guards,” Leejak said. “I round up our men. We hurry across now. Who knows who comes later?”

“Just so,” Kov said. “What do we do once we’ve crossed?”

“Hide in trees to west. Then dig.”

“Dig tunnels south, down to the fortress, you mean?”

“That, too. Place to hide, place to think.” Leejak paused to look up at the opening of the shaft. “Too strange up there. Too wide, too many stars.”

Getting all the Dwrgwn up and out, as well as hauling up all the gear, took far too much time and made too much noise for Kov’s peace of mind. He kept expecting that at any moment a Horsekin barge would drift downriver and see them, or a mounted patrol would come bursting out of the woods to run them down with sa bers flashing in the starlight. At last everyone had assembled in a reasonably straight line. With Kov leading, and Leejak at the rear to ensure that no one stopped or strayed from the line of march, they headed for the bridge.

When they reached it, even in the uncertain light, Kov could see that it had been built on the ruins of an older structure. Stone pilings, cracked and mossy, rose a few feet out of the water. New wooden pilings had been driven next to these ancient supports only in the center of the structure, where the bridge arched high enough for a barge to slip through. Near each shore the Horsekin had laid their rough-cut planks over the old stones.

“We go few at time,” Leejak said.

“Good idea,” Kov said. “The gods only know how they got horses across this thing!”

“Slowly,” Leejak said then laughed.

Despite Kov’s fears, the entire expedition got across safely, though certainly not silently. The wood creaked and groaned under any greater weight than a single Dwrgi. The men kept slipping and cursing, snapping at those closest to them as if the slip were someone else’s fault. Kov could only pray that the sound of water rushing along under the bridge would cover the noise, assuming that any Horsekin laired near enough to hear it.By the first gray light of dawn, they all reached the stand of virgin forest that Leejak had spotted off to the west. In among the underbrush they could hide their supplies and themselves. The Dwrgwn spread out, nestling down to sleep in the bracken among the trees.

“No horses come through here,” Leejak remarked. “Too thick.”

“You’re right.” Kov felt greatly relieved. “As long as we’re quiet, no one on the river can spot us, either.”

“True. Tomorrow we dig.”

“Or maybe we can find another tunnel system. Surely some gatherers must have investigated the long barrow.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We see soon.”

Yet despite these rational reassurances, it took Kov a long time to fall asleep, even though he felt exhausted from the long day’s march and the night’s danger. Just as the sun broke above the horizon, he got up from his improvised bed and made his way to the forest verge. Overhead a stipple of gray clouds was sailing in from the south.
Rain!
he thought.
Ye gods, just what we don’t need!

He looked back at the bridge, some two hundred yards away across ground mostly open, though littered with tree stumps. On one of the ancient pillars he could see what appeared to be a carved design, though it stood too far for him to distinguish what it might be—dwarven runes, perhaps, cut on a bridge made by refugees from Lin Rej as they made their way east to found Lin Serr.

His curiosity would have to wait, he realized. In the light of day, going back to examine the carving struck him as infinitely foolish. What if a barge came downriver? As he made his way back through the forest to warn the others about the coming rain, he told himself that he’d try to see the carving on the return journey—if he lived so long.

D
own to the south and east, the warm summer storm had already broken over the grasslands. Life in the Westfolk camp moved indoors to wait out the rain. Branna had been assiduously following her teacher’s advice and centering her meditations on the problem of returning Rori to human form. Late one drizzly afternoon, when Neb was working in the healers’ tent, she stumbled across a memory knot from Jill’s life, the moment when that dweomermaster had seen dark wings of wyrd enfolding the man she’d once loved.

Although Jill knew she’d be unable to turn the wyrd aside, she’d sworn a vow to undo whatever it brought upon him, no matter what the risk to herself. It was enough reason, Branna supposed, for her desire to set things right for the man inside the dragon—and yet something more lay hidden at the center of the knot. She could feel it but not identify it.

The problem reinforced another that troubled her these days. Neb had found his true wyrd when he’d resolved to use dweomer to further the healing arts. She envied the clear focus it gave him, the power it had released for his studies. She had no idea why she was studying dweomer, except that she loved it and had the gifts to master it.

“There must be some reason I’m doing this,” Branna told Grallezar. “Something specific, I mean. I swore a vow that I’d use it to help others, but that’s all kind of vague, isn’t it?”

“It is—now,” Grallezar said. “You be young yet. Wait till you reach your third nine of years, and then will you be working a ritual that tells of your true wyrd.”

“But Neb—”

“Neb be not you, and you be not Neb.” Grallezar fixed her with a narrow-eyed glare. “And this be not some race or mock combat with lords to set a prize.”

“True spoken. My apologies. It’s just so hard to wait.”

“That be because of what I did say: you be young yet.”

Branna felt a profound temptation to sulk, but she shoved it aside.
I’ve almost reached two nines,
she told herself.
It’s not all that long till I can work the ritual. It only seems like it’ll be forever.

D
allandra had been using her tent-bound rainy days for meditation, as well, and on the same subject of dragon dweomer. She’d discovered little in these astral forays. When she discussed them with Valandario, she learned that Val had been doing the same, with the same disappointing results.

“You’d think we’d come up with something,” Val said, “with the four of us all worrying about that wretched spell.”

“The four? Right, you’re including Branna, as well we should. I suppose we can start by assuming that Evandar’s dragon spell is merely a particular instance of transformation dweomer.”

“Then the problem is, how do we reverse it from the outside, as it were.” Val paused for a frown. “It’s going to take a tremendous amount of power.”

“Just that, and let’s hope we don’t kill the man inside the dragon if we can’t earth the forces properly. Now, I’ve been studying Rori’s etheric double ever since he reappeared last year. He seems to have two doubles, actually, one of them dragonish, the other the same shape he had before. They’re somehow tied to the cycle of the moon.”

“Which one is dominant? Can you tell?”

“Fortunately, yes.” Dallandra considered for a moment. “The mannish shape is generally stronger, but during the second quarter, the dragon double appears. It’s at its peak when the moon is full.”

“So we’d best do the working when the moon’s dark.”

“I’d think so, yes.”

“I really do wish that Evandar had left the wretched book in your tent or some such place instead of in Alban, wherever that may lie! Why couldn’t he ever do anything simply?” Val held up one hand to prevent a reply. “Oh, I know, I know, it’s because of what he saw in his omens. You explained all that. It just really irks me.”

“It irks me, too, to be honest.”

Valandario smiled at the admission, so brightly that Dallandra wished she’d never made it.

“You did the right thing when you convinced him to incarnate,” Val went on.

“I didn’t convince him, exactly. He made the decision the only way he ever made decisions, by backing into it.”

“Like getting a balky horse into a paddock, eh? Arse first.”

Dallandra was about to make a nasty reply when Calonderiel, for probably the first time in his life, averted an argument rather than caused one. He ducked under the tent flap and came in, shaking water drops from his hair.

“Am I interrupting some working?” he said. “I can take myself out again if so.”

“No, no.” Valandario stood up. “I was just thinking of leaving, actually. I need to cast the omens for the day.”

You and your omens!
Dallandra thought.
You’re a fine one to talk about Evandar!
She managed to hold her tongue until Valandario had left. Cal flopped down on the heap of leather cushions that her fellow dweomermaster had just vacated.

“I wanted to ask you to scry out something for me, beloved,” he said. “Assuming you don’t mind and all that. I keep wondering what Voran’s up to, because of the Boars, mostly. I’d like to see them brought to justice. Those priests of Bel were a loathsome lot, as arrogant as a ram in spring, but they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Let’s see if I can find him. This rain is a nuisance.”

Despite the water veil falling around the tent, the image of the prince built up fast. Voran was sitting at a long table inside some sort of room with wood paneled walls. At his right hand sat Envoy Garin of the Mountain Folk, and between them on the table lay heaps of parchments, some splitting and yellowed with age, others fresh and smooth. Sunlight fell across them from a window. The rain had yet to arrive at their location, if indeed the storm was even heading their way.