The Silver Mage (66 page)

Kov started to speak, rolled his eyes, and sat down suddenly upon the ground.

“Put your head between your knees,” Dallandra said. “And my apologies for startling you.” She knelt beside Kov, whose face had gone white. “Breathe deeply.”

Branna shrugged off her pack, laid it down, then turned to look at Laz. Although he’d seen her from a distance during his time near the Westfolk camp, he’d never been close enough to speak with her. She stared at him with a gaze that seemed to be looking through his eyes and plunging into his mind and memory as if she would pierce his very soul. For a brief moment he saw a lass with dark hair and a twisted harelip; then the image dissolved back into Branna’s face and a scorn that sliced into his pride.

She turned her back on him and walked over to help Kov stand. “He’ll be all right in a bit,” Dallandra said cheerfully. “We’d best go introduce ourselves to Angmar, and I’ve got somewhat to give her as well.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kov said. “I think I need a sip or two of ale.”

Dallandra smiled at Laz as if she expected him to accompany them, but he let them all troop up to the manse without him. He walked along the lakeshore to the little bench under the willow tree and sat down with a sigh. Out on the lake the wind rippled the water, and the sunlight glinted upon it like gold coins, but all he could see was the memory-image of Branna’s face, ice-cold with scorn.

She had looked at him like that once before, but when? Not in the Westfolk camp, certainly. He had not a trace of a memory of knowing her when he’d lived as Lord Tren. That life before—suddenly he saw in vision the different face, the dark-haired lass with a harelip, sneering at him, then laughing with a sound as raucous as the cry of a raven while he wept. Others stood around and stared at him, all men, these shadowy figures of memory.

Loddlaen.
The name rose up and attached itself to one of the men. A friend who’d turned on him, a friend upon whom he’d revenged himself once he’d gathered the power to break Loddlaen’s will. The power came from—

“No.” Laz began to tremble. “No, no, I couldn’t have done that.” But he had done it, whatever it was. His memory balked like a terrified horse and refused to go any further.

Laz sat and watched the sun on the water for hours, that afternoon, until at last Mara came looking for him to tell him that the evening meal was on the table.

“I’ll eat in the kitchen, my thanks,” Laz said.

“What?” She laughed at him. “Why?”

He could never tell her. “Oh, well,” he said. “I thought mayhap you had too many guests already.”

“Be not so foolish! There always be room for my teacher at table.”

Yet Laz made sure to take the place at the foot of the table, because Branna was sitting at Angmar’s right hand up near the head, just across from Dallandra at Angmar’s left. Enj and Kov sat next on either side, a welcome barrier between him and the women. Yet now and then throughout the meal, he noticed Branna glancing his way with a look that might have melted glass, had there been any on the table. When, at the end of dinner, Branna went upstairs with Dallandra, he let out his breath in a long sigh of relief.

“ ranna?”Dallandra said. “Why do you hate Laz?”

“I don’t hate him.”

“Oh, indeed? I saw the way you looked at him. Ye gods, I thought he’d shrivel like a moth in a candle flame.”

“Very well.” Branna gave her a sheepish smile. “I don’t know why I hate him, and that’s the truth.”

“Much better! I suggest you meditate upon it.”

They were sitting in the chamber Angmar had prepared for them, a long narrow room with a window that opened out to the east and a view across the lake to the low hills. The last of the sunset light picked out the oak trees scattered along the far shore.

“This is such an odd house,” Branna said. “I can’t see how this chamber fits into what we see from the outside.”

“Remember that it doesn’t truly exist, which explains a great deal.”

Branna agreed with a laugh.

Dallandra glanced around and saw the basin she’d brought up earlier. “My breasts ache again,” she said. “I’d better express some of this milk. I wish I could have brought Dari, but it would have been too dangerous, traveling on the roads.” She paused, struck by a surprising thought. “I miss her.”

When she was finished, Dallandra returned to the great hall, where Laz was waiting at the honor table. In the sconces at either side of the two hearths, an array of candles burned, or at least, the illusions of candles seemed to be burning. Dallandra noticed that none of them dripped wax nor did they get shorter as time went by.

Laz looked up warily, nodded her way, then craned his neck to glance at the staircase.

“Branna’s staying in our chamber,” Dallandra said.

“Ah. You noticed the way she looked at me.”

“I did.” Dallandra sat down next to him. “So. There’s the book at last.”

“Indeed.” Laz slid it over to her. “I’m cursed glad to hand it over to you. I kept worrying that it would take off on its own one fine night.”

They shared a pleasant laugh.

“I owe you a great many thanks,” Dallandra said. “It must not have been easy, fetching this.” She glanced around. “Where’s Faharn, by the by?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead. As you say, it wasn’t easy.”

Dallandra felt herself gaping at him like a half-wit. “It saddens my heart to hear that,” was all she could find to say.

“We were traveling with the Mountain axemen contingent,” Laz continued. “We were set upon by Horsekin raiders.”

“I see. Truly, my heart aches for your loss.”

“So, oddly enough, does mine.”

“Oddly—”

“Oh, never mind!” Laz snarled, then took a deep breath. “Forgive me. It’s a sore spot.”

“I can understand that. My apologies.”

Yet she wondered if she did understand it or much of anything that Laz might be thinking or feeling. His knife-sharp face betrayed no feeling whatsoever when he looked at her. She’d been planning on simply taking the book upstairs to examine it in private, but Faharn’s death made her feel that she owed Laz a debt. At the very least, she decided, she should satisfy his curiosity about the dweomers Evandar had woven.

As soon as she laid her hand on the cover, she felt the tingle and snap of astral spirits. She opened her sight and perceived the pair as geometric shapes, one a blazing white, the other a peculiar turquoise color that reminded her of Evandar’s eyes. Laz leaned onto the table on folded arms to watch.

“My thanks for your aid,” she said to the spirits. “I come in the name of Evandar.”

The wards glowed brightly, then shrank and disappeared. Under her fingers the cover felt like ordinary leather. When she opened it, she saw a page of elven script, just as Laz had described. The next page, and the next—the same digraphs in the same order on every page—she stared at the writing and wondered why she was so surprised.

“Uh, is somewhat wrong?” Laz said.

“This is utter nonsense,” Dallandra said.

“What?” Laz straightened up and slammed his maimed hands palm down on the table.

“Except for the occasional word, like drahkonen, it means nothing at all.”

Laz swore under his breath in a mix of several languages.

“I agree,” Dalla said. “How like Evandar! He never could do anything simply. I wonder what sort of lock he’s put on this? An elaborate one, most like.”

“Oh.” Laz leaned back in his chair. “You mean there’s some sort of meaning under all of that.”

“So I hope, anyway.”
Ye gods,
Dalla thought,
if poor Faharn died for no reason!
“I’ll have to work with this. I just hope it doesn’t take me days and days.” She stood and picked up the book. “I’ll let Branna have a look at it, too. She seems to have a good mind for symbols. The key might well be hidden in this welter of runes, for all I know.”

“Very well. If you could tell me eventually what it says, I’d be quite grateful.”

“Of course. Tonight I’m truly weary from traveling the roads and all, or I’d try to open the lock right now.”

She hurried to the staircase before he could ask any questions. At the top of the stairs, she glanced back to see Laz still sitting at the table, staring at the place where the book had once lain.

Branna could make no more out of the writing in the dragon book than Dallandra had. Dalla sprawled in a cushioned chair and watched as Branna examined each page by dweomer light. Finally, she looked up and shut the book with a snap.

“I can’t make any sense out of this,” Branna said. “Maybe Val can. My Elvish still isn’t very good.”

“That’s true,” Dallandra said. “I keep hoping there’s some sort of cipher hidden among the runes, but, of course, it would be in Elvish. If there is one! Maybe Val’s right about Evandar and his wretched riddles.”

“Well, he really did make things difficult, I must say.” Branna frowned at the book in her hands. “Omens tucked here and there, and dragon rings. And that scroll, the one in the strange language.”

“It was very strange, indeed. The ritual we worked with it did have some effect on the island, I think. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

“And then there’s the crystal, the black one, I mean, with the visions in it. And—”

“Wait!” Dallandra leaned forward. “The black crystal held a vision of the book and Haen Marn. Salamander saw it there. He must have mentioned it to you.”

“He did, one day when he was helping me with one of the lore lessons.”

“Good. We’ve all been assuming that the point of the vision was to tell us that the book was on Haen Marn. But what if the crystal itself is part of the vision’s meaning?”

Branna blinked at her, then suddenly grinned. “What if the crystal holds the key to the book, you mean?”

“Just that!”

“I hope we don’t need both of them. Salamander told me that Laz lost the white one.”

Dallandra’s excitement disappeared as fast as it had arrived. “Oh, by the Black Sun!” she said. “Let’s hope we don’t, indeed! I also hope that Val hasn’t smashed the black one. She wanted to at one time.”

“Can you contact her from here?”

“Let’s hope so! If I have to go across to the mainland, it’ll mean waiting till morning, which will drive me daft.”

Dallandra got up and walked over to the window. Outside, the stars glimmered high above in the moonless night. She leaned a little way out of the window and used the Snowy Road as her focus, then let her mind reach out to Valandario. Although Haen Marn’s astral forces turned the vision fuzzy and small, eventually she saw Val sitting in her tent and studying her array of scrying gems.

“Dalla?” Valandario looked up suddenly. “I can barely see you.”

“Yes, it’s because I’m on Haen Marn.” Dallandra thought to her in Elvish. “Do you still have that wretched black crystal?”

“The spirit stone, you mean? Yes, I do. I was going to smash it, but somehow I just couldn’t. I kept thinking that it still had secrets inside it.”

“It does, and thank every god that you still have it! When you come here, bring it, will you? It might be the key to one of Evandar’s wretched riddles.”

“Very well, I won’t let anything happen to it. Wretched riddles, are they? I’m glad you can see—”

Dallandra broke the link. She was in no mood for one of Val’s little lectures, even though she had to admit that on this occasion at least, Val was right.

“She still has it,” Dallandra told Branna. “And I’m exhausted.”

“You need to sleep.” Branna stifled a yawn. “And so do I. You take that big bed. I’m the apprentice, so I’ll take the trundle.”

W
hen Laz woke, just after dawn on the next morning, he dressed and left his chamber, then hesitated at the head of the stairs to look down into the great hall. He saw no sign of Branna, but Dallandra was standing at the wall near the main hearth and studying the carvings. He trotted down the stairs and strolled over to join her.