Читать книгу The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr - Страница 8

Laz woke to darkness and noise. Gongs clanged, men shouted. Not one word made sense to him, and no more did the sound of water lapping and splashing. He could smell nothing but water. Pain – his hands burned, but the rest of him felt cold, soaked through, he realized suddenly, sopping wet. How his hands could burn when he was sopping wet lay beyond him. The gongs came closer, louder. Waves lifted him and splashed him back down. Floating, he thought. I’m floating on water.

The shouting came from right over his head. Hands suddenly grabbed him, hauled, lifted him into the air while the shouting and the gongs clamoured all around. Hands laid him down again on something hard that rocked from side to side. The shouting stopped, but the gongs clanged on and on. Through the sound of gongs he heard a dark voice speaking. Not one word of it!

The voice tried yet another incomprehensible language, then a third. ‘Here, lad, speak you this tongue?’

Lijik Ganda, he thought. Just my luck. ‘I do,’ Laz said aloud. ‘A bit, anyway.’

‘Splendid! Who are you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Laz put panic into his voice. ‘I don’t remember. Where are we? Why is it so dark?’

‘It’s not dark, lad. There’s a lantern shining right into your face.’

‘I’m blind? I don’t remember being blind.’

Voices murmured in one of the languages he couldn’t understand. Someone patted his shoulder as if trying to comfort him. The rocking continued, the splashing and the gongs.

‘Here!’ Laz said. ‘Are we on a boat?’

‘We are, and heading for the island. Just rest, lad. The ladies of the isle know a fair bit about healing. It may be that they can do somewhat about your eyes, I don’t know. I’d wager high that they can heal your hands at the very least.’

‘They do pain me.’

‘No doubt! Black as pitch, they are. You just rest. We’re coming up to the pier.’

‘My thanks. Did you save my life?’

‘Most likely.’ The voice broke into a wry laugh. ‘The beasts of the lake nearly got a meal out of you.’

Beasts. Lake. Blind. None of it made sense. He fainted.

Laz woke next to light, only a faint fuzzy reddish glow, but light nonetheless. Most of him felt dry and warm, but his burning hands lay in water, and water dripped over his face. The scent of mixed herbs overwhelmed him; he could smell nothing beyond plant matter and spices. He could hear, however, women talking. Two women, he realized, though he understood not one word of what they were saying. The pain in his left hand suddenly eased. A woman laughed and spoke a few triumphant words, then lifted the hand out of the water and laid it down on something dry and soft.

‘I think me he wakes,’ the other woman said in Deverrian.

‘I do,’ Laz said.

‘Good,’ Woman the First said, ‘but there be a need on you to stay quiet till we get the burnt skin free from your right hand.’

‘Is it that you see light?’ Woman the Second said.

‘Some, truly.’

‘Try opening your eyes.’

With some effort – his lids seemed stuck together with pitch – he did. What he saw danced and swam. Slowly the motion stopped. The view looked strangely blurred and smeared, but he could distinguish shapes at a distance and objects nearby. In a pool of lantern light two women leaned over him, one with grey-streaked yellow hair and a tired face, and one young with hair as dark as a raven’s wing and cornflower-blue eyes.

‘My name be Marnmara.’ The young woman pointed at her elder. ‘This be Angmar, my mam. The boatmen tell me you remember not your own name.’

Laz considered what to say. He’d not wanted to tell the boatmen his name until he knew more about them, but these women were doing their best to heal him. He owed them the courtesy of a better lie. ‘I didn’t, not right then, but it’s Tirn. I think I have a second name, too, but I can’t seem to remember it.’

‘There be no surprise on me for that,’ Marnmara said. ‘Whatever you did endure, it were a great bad thing.’

He started to lift his left hand to look at it, but Angmar grabbed his elbow and pinned it to the bed. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It be not a pleasant sight, with you so burned and all.’

‘Burned.’ He formed the words carefully. ‘How badly?’

Angmar looked at her daughter and quirked an eyebrow.

‘I doubt me if you’ll have the use of all your fingers,’ Marnmara said. ‘But mayhap we can free the thumb and one other. The right hand’s a bit better, I think me. Mayhap we can free two and the thumb.’

‘Free them? From what?’

‘Scars. They might grow together.’

Panic struck him. Will I be able to fly again? The one question he didn’t dare ask was the only question in the world that mattered.

‘Why is the pain gone?’ he asked instead.

‘The herbs,’ Marnmara said. ‘But the healing, it’ll not be easy.’

‘It’s very kind of you to help me.’

‘I will heal any hurt that I ken how to heal,’ Marnmara said. ‘Such was my vow.’

‘We have your black gem.’ Angmar held up something shiny. ‘Fret not about it.’

‘My thanks.’ Dimly he remembered that he once had owned a pair. ‘Not the white one? I carried a gem in each hand.’

‘The boatmen did find this one clutched in your left hand. Your right hand trailed open in the water. I think me the other be at the bottom of the lake by now.’

‘So be it, then.’

He realized that he could now see Angmar more clearly. Whether because of the herbs or time passing, his eyes were clearing. What had blinded him? The flash of light. He remembered the pure white flash and the sensation of falling a long, long way down. Why didn’t I listen to Sisi? For that he had no answer.

Angmar glanced at her hands, flecked with black. Marnmara picked up a rag from the bed on which he lay and offered it to her mother, who began to wipe her fingers clean.

‘Those cinders are bits of me,’ Laz said.

‘I fear me they are.’ Angmar cocked her head to one side and studied his face. ‘Need you to vomit? I’ve a basin right here.’

Instead he fainted again.

‘I hear that the island witches have a new demon,’ Diarmuid the Brewer said. ‘Maybe he’s that snake-eyed lass’s sweetheart, eh?’

‘They’re not witches,’ Dougie said. ‘Avain’s not a demon, just a mooncalf. And how many times now have I told you all that?’

‘Talk all you want, lad. You’re blind to the truth because of the young one. A pretty thing, Berwynna, truly.’

‘But treacherous nonetheless,’ Father Colm broke in. ‘Never forget that about witches. Fair of face, foul of soul.’

Dougie felt an all too familiar urge to throw the contents of his tankard into the holy man’s face. As for Diarmuid, he wasn’t in the least holy, merely too old to challenge to a fight. Dougie calmed himself with a long swallow of ale. Father Colm set his tankard down on the ground, then pulled the skirts of his brown cassock up to his knees, exposing hairy legs and sandalled feet.

‘Hot today,’ the priest remarked.

‘It is that, truly,’ Diarmuid said.

In the spring sun, the three of them were sitting outside the tumbledown shack that did the village as a tavern. Since most of the local people were crofters who lived out on the land, four slate-roofed stone cottages and a covered well made up the entire village. It was more green than grey, though, with kitchen gardens and a grassy commons for the long-horned shaggy milk cows. From where he sat, Dougie could see the only impressive building for miles around, Lord Douglas’s dun, looming off to the west on a low hill.

‘If this new fellow’s not a demon,’ Diarmuid started in again, ‘then who is he, eh?’

‘He doesn’t remember much beyond his name,’ Dougie said. ‘It’s as simple as that. Tirn, he calls himself. Some traveller who ended up in the lake, that’s all.’

‘Burnt a fair bit, and him with unholy sigils all over his face? Hah!’ Father Colm hauled himself up from the rickety bench. ‘Now, frankly, I don’t think he’s a demon. I think he’s a warlock who was trying to raise a demon and paid for his sinful folly. Speaking of paying –’ He laid a hand on the leather wallet hanging from his rope belt.

‘Nah, nah, nah, Father,’ Diarmuid said. ‘Just say a prayer for me.’

‘I will do that.’ Colm fixed him with a gooseberry eye. ‘For a fair many reasons.’

With a wave the priest waddled off down the dirt road in the direction of Lord Douglas’s dun and chapel. Diarmuid leaned back against the wall of the shed and watched the chickens pecking around his feet. Dougie had stopped by the old man’s on his way to Haen Marn to hear what the local gossips were saying – plenty, apparently. Diarmuid waited until the priest had got out of earshot before he spoke.

‘Well, now, lad, you’ve seen this fellow, haven’t you? Do you think he’s a demon?’

‘I do not, as indeed our priest said, too. He must be a foreigner, is all, and most likely from Angmar’s home country.’

‘Imph.’ Diarmuid sucked the stumps that had once been his front teeth in thought. ‘Well, one of these days Father Colm’s going to work his lordship around to burning these witches, and that will be that. I’m surprised he’s not done it already.’ Diarmuid spoke casually, but he was looking sideways at Dougie out of one rheumy eye.

‘It’s Mic’s hard coin,’ Dougie said. ‘Who else around here can pay his taxes in anything but kind? A silver penny a year the jeweller gives over, and that buys my Gran a fine warhorse for one of his men.’

‘Well now, you’ve got a point there. The village folk keep wondering, though, if his lordship holds his hand because of your mother.’

‘Are you implying that my mother’s a witch?’ Dougie rose from the bench and laid his free hand on his sword hilt.

‘What?’ Diarmuid nearly dropped his tankard. ‘Naught of the sort, lad! Now, hold your water, like! All I meant was that she’s the lordship’s daughter, and you’re her son, and there’s Berwynna, and uh well er …’ He ran out of words and breath both.

Dougie put his half-full tankard down on the bench.

‘I’ll just be getting on,’ Dougie said. ‘You can finish that if you’d like.’

Dougie strode out of the yard and slammed the rickety gate behind him for good measure. Although he owned a horse, he’d left him behind at the steading. Still glowering, he set out on foot for Haen Marn.

Dougie had good reason to be touchy on the subject of witchcraft. All his young life he’d overheard rumours about his mother and father. In the impoverished loch country of northern Alban, the steading of Domnal Breich and his wife, Jehan, had flourished into a marvel. Every spring their milk cows gave birth to healthy calves, and their ewes had twins more often than not. In the summer their oats and barley stood high; their apple trees bowed under the weight of fruit. When Domnal went fishing he’d bring home a full net every single time.

Some neighbours grumbled that Domnal must have made a pact with the Devil. As those things will, the grumbling had spread, but not as far as you might think, because Jehan was the local lord’s daughter. Lord Douglas, whose name Dougie bore, disliked nasty talk about his kin. No one cared to have their gossip silenced by a hangman’s noose.

The gossip had transferred itself to the mysterious women on the island to the north of Lord Douglas’s lands. Lady Angmar – everyone assumed she was of high birth because she had dwarves in her household – and her twin daughters had spawned ten times the gossip that Domnal and Jehan ever had. Partisan though he was, Dougie could understand why the folk spoke of demons and witchery. The women and their island had turned up some seventeen winters ago, in the year before he’d been born. The older people around remembered its location as a wide spot in a burn, not a loch at all, but when the island arrived, one winter night, it brought its own water with it.

Witchcraft – a house, island, and loch appearing like that out of nowhere! ‘All the way from Cymru they came in the blink of an eye,’ the old people said, ‘and they must have come from Cymru, judging by the way they speak. Foreigners, that’s what they are! What else could they be but witches, them and their flying house?’

The loch that harboured the island lay in a dip of land too shallow to be called a valley, but the dark blue water must have run deep, because the same beasts that dwelled in Loch Ness lived beneath its choppy waves. The small island rose out of the water like the crest of a rocky hill. At its highest point stood a square-built tall tower, surrounded by apple trees. At its lowest point, a sandy cove, stood a wooden pier and a boathouse. In between the two stood the manse, such a solid structure that it was hard to imagine it taking to the air like an enchanted swan from some old tale.

Solid, and yet, and yet – the buildings seemed to move around on the island, just now and then, when no one was looking. Whenever he visited, Dougie made sure to stand on the same spot to view it. Sometimes the manse appeared to be closer to the tower than on others, or the tower presented a corner rather than a flat side, or the entire island seemed a little nearer the shore or farther away. He’d once asked Lady Angmar about the shifting view. She’d scowled and told him he’d been drinking too much dark ale. He’d never got up the courage to ask again.

At the edge of the loch a big granite boulder sat among tall grass. An iron loop protruded from its side, and from the loop dangled a silver horn on a silver chain. Oddly enough, neither silver piece ever tarnished, no matter how wet the weather. This clear evidence of witchcraft – well, clear in the minds of the local folk – had kept them from being stolen. Dougie picked up the horn and blew three long notes, then let it swing free again. While he waited, he took off his boots and hitched up his plaid, tucking the ends into his heavy belt.

Not long after he saw the longboat set out from the pier under oars. He heard the bronze gong clanging, just in case the beasts in the lake were on the prowl for a meal. Fortunately, the water near shore ran too shallow for the beasts. When the boat pulled up, with the oarsmen backing water to hold her steady, Dougie waded out and with the help of the boatmaster, Lon, hauled himself aboard.

‘And a good morrow to you,’ Dougie said.

‘Same to you.’ Lon knew only a few words of the Alban language. ‘Take gong?’

‘I will, and gladly.’ Dougie took the mallet from him.

While they rowed across, Dougie smacked the gong to keep it clanging and whistled for good measure. Once, when he looked over to the far side of the loch, he saw a tiny snake-like head on the end of a long neck lift itself out of the water, but at his shout the beast dived, disappearing without a ripple. As they approached the island, Berwynna walked out on the pier to meet the boat. His heart began pounding as loudly as the gong, or so it seemed to him.

A slender lass, she stood barely up to his chest. She wore her glossy raven-dark hair clasped back. Her cornflower-blue eyes dominated her delicate face. To set off her colouring she wore a finely woven plaid in a blue and grey tartan – cloth that Mic the Dwarf had brought home from Din Edin, earned by his trade in gems and jewellery. When she saw Dougie she smiled and hurried forward to help him onto the pier.

‘I’d hoped to see you today,’ Berwynna said.

‘Well, I truly came to see you,’ Dougie said, ‘but I told my mother that I need to see your Mic. I was wondering if he’ll be travelling south soon.’

‘He will.’ Berwynna’s smile disappeared. ‘I hate when you go a trading with Uncle Mic.’

‘He’s got to have some kind of guard on the road.’ Dougie grinned at her. ‘Do you miss me when I’m gone?’

‘That, too. Mostly I wish I could go with you. I want to see Din Edin, and I don’t care how bad it smells.’

‘A journey like ours is no place for a lass.’

‘If you say that again, I’ll kick you. You sound like Mam.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but –’

‘Oh don’t let’s talk about it!’

Berwynna turned on her heel and strode down the pier to the island, leaving Dougie to hurry after, babbling apologies. By the time they reached the door of the manse, she’d forgiven him. Hand in hand they walked into the great hall of Haen Marn.

On either side of the big square room stood stone hearths, one of them cold on this warm spring day. At the other an ancient maidservant stirred a big iron kettle over a slow fire. The smell and steam of a cauldron of porridge spread through the hall. The boatmen came trooping in and sat down at one of the plank tables scattered here and there on the floor. At the head table sat Angmar, her greying pale hair swept back and covered by the black headscarf of a widow. When Dougie and Berwynna joined her, she greeted them with a pleasant smile.

‘Come to talk to Mic, Dougie?’ Angmar spoke the Alban tongue not well but clearly.

‘I have, my lady,’ Dougie said. ‘Will he be needing my sword soon?’

‘Most likely. You can ask him after he’s joining us.’

One of the boatmen brought Dougie a tankard of ale, which he took with thanks. He had a long sip and looked around the great hall. In one corner a staircase led to the upper floors. In the opposite corner old Otho, a white-haired, stoop-shouldered and generally frail dwarf, sat on his cushioned chair, glaring from under white bushy brows at nothing in particular. Berwynna’s sister, Marnmara, stood near the old man while she studied the wall behind him.

The two young woman had been born in the same hour, and they shared the same colouring. Marnmara however was even smaller than her sister, a mere wisp of a woman, or so Dougie thought of her. At times he could have sworn that she floated above the floor by an inch or two, as if she weren’t really in the room at all but a reflection, perhaps, in some invisible mirror. At others she walked upon the ground like any lass, and he would chide himself for indulging in daft fancies about her.

Haen Marn’s great hall tended to breed fancies. The dark oak panels lining the walls were as heavily decorated as the Holy Book in Lord Douglas’s chapel. Great swags of carved interlacements, all tangled with animals, flowers, and vines, swooped down from each corner and almost touched the floor before sweeping up again. In among them were little designs that might have been letters or simply odd little fragments of some broken pattern. Berwynna had told him of her sister’s belief that the decorations had some sort of meaning, just as if they’d been a book indeed. Since Dougie couldn’t read a word in any language, it was all a great mystery to him.

‘Think she’ll ever puzzle it out?’ Dougie said to Berwynna.

‘She tells me she’s very close. Tirn’s been a great help to her. He knows what some of the sigils are.’

‘Sigils?’

‘It means marks like those little ones.’ Berwynna shrugged. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘The townsfolk are saying that Tirn’s a demon.’

‘Are you surprised? They think we’re all witches and demons, don’t they?’

‘Well, true enough, the ingrates! And after all the healing your sister’s done for them, too!’

Tirn came in not long after. Like Dougie himself, he was an unusually tall man, and no doubt he’d once been a strong one, too, judging from his broad shoulders and long, heavily muscled arms, but at the moment he was still recovering from whatever accident had burned him so badly. He walked slowly, a little stooped, and held his damaged hands away from his body. Thin cloth, smelling heavily of Marnmara’s herbal medicaments, wrapped his hands and arms up to the elbows. Peeling-pink scars cut into the tattoos on his narrow face and marbled his short brown hair. He nodded Dougie’s way with a weary smile, then sat down across from him at the table.

Angmar asked him a question in the language that the locals took for Cymraeg, and Tirn answered her in the same. Berwynna leaned forward and joined the conversation. Here and there Dougie could pick out a word or phrase – Berwynna had been teaching him a bit of her native tongue – but they spoke too quickly for him to follow. Tirn considered whatever it was she’d said, then smiled and nodded.

‘Mam’s asking him if Marnmara can take another look at this gem he brought with him,’ Berwynna told Dougie. ‘Uncle Mic says it’s a bit of cut firestone. I’ve not seen anything like it before.’

Angmar got up and went round to where Tirn sat. With his burnt hands still so bad, he could touch nothing. She pulled a leather pouch on a chain free of Tirn’s shirt. From the pouch she took out a black glassy gem, shaped into a pyramid about six inches tall. The tip had been lopped off at an angle.

‘I’ve not seen anything like that before, either.’ Dougie shook his head in bafflement. ‘It looks like glass, though.’

‘It’s got no bubbles in it,’ Berwynna said. ‘So Uncle Mic said it can’t be glass. It comes from fire mountains, whatever they are.’

‘Well, he’s the one who’d know.’ Dougie turned to Angmar. ‘Could I have a look at that, my lady? I’m curious, is all.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Angmar said.

When Angmar set the pyramid down in front of him, Dougie picked it up and examined it, turning it around in his fingers. Tirn made a comment, which Angmar translated.

‘Don’t look into it too closely,’ she said. ‘It’s a rather odd thing. You don’t want to stare at it for too long.’

Dougie glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and saw the ordinary daylight in the great hall shining through black crystal. There’s naught to this, he thought, and looked directly down into the black depths through the squared-off tip. He heard Marnmara’s voice, coming nearer, sounding annoyed at something. He wanted to look up and ask her what the matter was, but the stone had trapped his gaze. He simply could not look away. Inside the black glow something appeared, something moved – a man, a strange slender man with pale skin, hair of an impossibly bright yellow, eyes of paint-pot blue, and lips as red as cherries.

The fellow was standing in the kitchen garden of Dougie’s family steading. He seemed to be staring right at Dougie, then turned and walked through the rows of cabbages till he reached the pair of apple trees by the stone wall, but the trees, Dougie realized, were young, barely strong enough to bear a couple of branches of fruit. The strange fellow stopped and pointed with his right hand at the ground between them. Over and over he gestured at the ground, then began to make a digging motion, using both hands like a hound’s front paws.

‘Dougie!’ Marnmara shouted his name. She grabbed his shoulder with one hand and shook him.

The spell broke. He looked up, dazed, unsure of exactly where he might be for a few beats of a heart. Marnmara turned to her mother and Tirn, set her hands on her hips, and began to lecture them in their own tongue. Tirn spoke a few feeble sounding words, then merely listened, staring at the table. Angmar, however, argued right back, waving a maternal finger in her daughter’s face. When Dougie put the pyramid onto the table, Marnmara stopped arguing long enough to snatch up the gem.

‘What did you see in it, Dougie?’ Marnmara said.

‘A strange-looking fellow standing between two apple trees. You might have warned me that the thing could work tricks like that.’

‘I didn’t know it could.’ Marnmara smiled briefly, then spoke to Tirn in their language. He looked utterly surprised and spoke a few words in reply. ‘He says he told you not to look into it.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Dougie said. ‘My apologies.’

Dougie decided that he didn’t like the way everyone was staring at him. He stood up and held out his hand to Berwynna.

‘I’ll be needing to go home soon.’

Together they walked down to the pier. Although he’d never seen the boatmen leave the great hall, there they were, manning the oars, ready to take him back across. Dougie shook his head hard. He felt drunk, but he’d only had half a tankard of Diarmud’s watered ale, and then another half of Angmar’s decent brew – hardly any drink at all.

‘Are you well?’ Berwynna said. ‘You’ve gone pale.’

‘I saw the strangest damned thing in that stone of Tirn’s. It was like a dream, some fellow pointing to the ground over and over. He seemed to think it was important, that bit of earth.’

‘Do you think it was a spirit?’ Berwynna turned thoughtful. ‘They say that spirits know where treasures are buried.’

‘Well, so they do – in old wives’ tales and suchlike. I wouldn’t set your heart on me finding a bucketful of gold.’

She laughed, then raised herself up on tip-toe and kissed him farewell.

The kiss kept Dougie warm during his long walk home, but the memory of his peculiar experience kept the kiss company. After he’d brooded on what he’d seen for a mile or two, the look of the fellow in the vision jogged his memory. He knew something about that fellow, he realized, but he’d forgotten the details.

Domnal Breich’s steading lay in a narrow valley twixt wooded hills. Over the years he’d built his family a rambling stone house and barn, surrounded by kitchen gardens and set off from the fields by a stone wall. The two apple trees of Dougie’s vision stood by the gate, at least twice as high as they’d appeared in the black gem. When he let himself in, he paused for a moment to look at the ground between them – ordinary enough dirt, as far as he could tell, soft from the recent rain and dusted with spring grass.

Domnal himself came out of the barn and hailed him. Although he still walked with a swagger, and his broad work-worn hands were as strong as ever, his dark brown hair sported grey streaks, and his moustache had gone grey as well.

‘Been at the island?’ Domnal said.

‘I have,’ Dougie said. ‘Here, Da, a thing I want to ask you. Do you remember a tale you told me – it was on my saint’s day, a fair many years ago now, and we went riding up to Haen Marn’s loch?’

‘The tale about Evandar, you mean, and how he saved my life?’

‘That’s the one! It was a snowy night, you said, and you were lost.’

‘Lost and doomed, I thought, truly. But he was a man of the Seelie Host. The cold meant naught to him. He took me to Haen Marn, where they kept me safe for the night.’

‘What did he look like? I can’t remember.’

‘He was tall and thin with bright yellow hair and eyes of the strangest blue, more like the sky just at twilight than an ordinary colour. A well-favoured fellow, but there was somewhat odd about his ears. They were long and curled like the bud of a lily. Ye gods! It’s been seventeen years now, but I can still see him as clear as clear in my memory.’

‘No doubt, since he saved your life.’

‘He did that, indeed, by getting me to Haen Marn and its hearth.’ Domnal paused to chew his moustache in thought. ‘You know, there’s somewhat that I still don’t understand. That night, I could have sworn that the island and its loch lay south of Ness. But the next time I saw it – in the spring, it was – it lay to the north, where it is now.’

‘If it could fly here from Cymru, why couldn’t it move itself again? Maybe it didn’t like its first nest.’

Domnal shrugged. ‘Mayhap so,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t explain it any other way.’

‘No doubt. My thanks, Da,’ Dougie said. ‘I was just wondering.’

That’s who I saw, Dougie thought, Evandar! He was frightened enough by the magical gem to consider avoiding Haen Marn from that day on, but he knew that he never could. For one thing, there was Mic and the profitable trips down to Din Edin. And of course, for another, there was Berwynna.

That night, when the family lay asleep, Dougie still waked, thinking over the vision in the gem. His curiosity had been well and truly roused. Through the narrow slit of window he could see the moon, full and bright in a clear sky, its light a further temptation. He wondered, in fact, if somehow Evandar had meant him to look into the gem at the full moon. The wondering prodded him to action. Although he shared a bed with his two younger brothers, Dougie as the eldest had the privilege of the spot on the edge. He slid out of bed without waking them, put his plaid on over his nightshirt, then climbed quietly down the ladder of their loft.

The dogs, asleep at the kitchen hearth, roused enough to sniff the air and recognize him. With a wag of tails they settled themselves again and went back to sleep. Dougie crept through the dark kitchen, barked his shins on a bench, stopped himself from swearing, and very carefully unbarred the door. It creaked, but no one called out at the sound. He slipped out into the moonlit farmyard, then took his boots from the doorstep and put them on.

A shovel stood leaning against the hen house. Dougie fetched it, then strode over to the apple trees. In the shadows cast by their branches, he found it hard to see, but he dug as carefully as he could to avoid damaging the tree roots. He’d not gone more than a foot down when the shovel clanked on metal. Dougie laid it aside, then dropped to his knees and felt around with one hand in the damp chilly dirt. His fingers touched something cold, hard, and dirt-encrusted. By feeling around he found its edges, then dug with both hands. Finally he managed to pull free a casket, about three feet long and two wide.

Behind him lantern light bloomed. Dougie twisted around to see Domnal, dressed only in his long nightshirt, walking over, a candle lantern held high.

‘What damned stupid thing are you –’ Domnal said, then stopped, staring. ‘God’s wounds! What’s that?’

‘I don’t know, Da.’ Dougie scrambled up, carrying the casket. ‘I had a dream, you see, about Evandar. He was telling me to dig here between the trees. I tried to ignore it, but it kept gnawing at me, like.’

‘Oh.’ Domnal lowered the lantern. ‘Well, let’s take it into the barn. I don’t want to wake your mother.’

His father’s sudden meekness troubled Dougie’s heart. He’d just lied to his Da, he realized, but somehow he hadn’t wanted to tell him about Tirn’s strange gem on Haen Marn – he just hadn’t, though he couldn’t say why.

In the barn Domnal hung the lantern on a nail above a little bench. Dougie laid the casket on the bench, then found an old sack and used it to wipe away the dirt. Its long time buried in the wet earth had turned the casket so green and crusty that he couldn’t tell if it were silver or pot metal. When he tried lifting it, the lid came away in his hands. Domnal took it from him.

‘What’s inside?’ Domnal said. ‘It looks like old rags.’

‘So it does,’ Dougie said. ‘I wonder if there’s somewhat inside them?’

One at a time Dougie peeled away the swaddlings – wads of rotten cloth on the outside, then a layer of oiled cloth, then layers of stained but sound cloth, until finally he came to a sack of boiled leather. Inside lay something solid and flat. Another casket? But when he slid it out, he found a book, bound in white leather, stained here and there from its internment. A black dragon decorated the front cover.

Dougie was too disappointed to swear. ‘I was hoping for a bit of treasure, Da.’ He opened the book, but in the candlelight all he could see was page after page of writing.

‘I wasn’t,’ Domnal said. ‘When Evandar’s involved, you never know what you’ll get, but you can wager it’ll be a strange thing.’ He took the empty casket and held it up to the light, twisting it this way and that as if he were looking for a maker’s mark. ‘It’s too filthy to see anything.’ He set the book down on the bench. ‘Put that book back in, lad, and we’ll hide it under some straw for the morrow.’

‘Well and good, then. Do you think this belongs to Haen Marn?’

‘I do. The night he saved me, Evandar told me that he needed a messenger, and it was going to be my son, when I had one. I’m supposing he meant someone to bring them this.’

‘And why couldn’t he have taken it over himself?’

‘Witches can’t travel across water, nor the Folk of the Seelie Host, either, or so I’ve always heard.’

‘So he needed a man to do his ferrying for him. I suppose that makes sense of a sort.’

‘Naught about Haen Marn makes sense.’ Domnal smiled with a bare twitch of his mouth. ‘I think me it might be dangerous to forget that.’

Dougie went back to bed. He woke just before sunrise, got up and dressed for the second time, then went out to the barn in the cold grey light to feed the cows. His brother Ian arrived soon after with his milking stool and pails. Dougie fed the horses, turned them out into pasture, then returned to the house to talk with Jehan. He found her in the kitchen, kneading a massive lump of bread dough.

Over the years she’d borne eight children and done plenty of farm work as well. She was stout and her hands were a mass of callouses, but despite the grey in her red hair and the lines around her green eyes, Dougie could see how beautiful she must have been when his father had won her.

‘I was thinking of going back out to Haen Marn today, Dougie said. ‘Will you be needing me for aught?’

‘Not truly,’ Jehan said. ‘But you know, it’s time you married your Berwynna and brought her home.’

‘I’d like naught better, Mother. Berwynna says she wants to marry me as well. It’s Lady Angmar who’s dead-set against it. She doesn’t want Berwynna to ever leave the island, not for a single day. She keeps saying it’s too dangerous.’

‘It is the local folk she fears? Once you two were married by Father Colm in the chapel, then all this stupid talk about witches would stop.’

‘It’s not that. She won’t explain why.’

‘You’re sure she has a real reason, then?’ Jehan frowned at him. ‘Or does she look upon us with scorn?’

Dougie shrugged to show that he didn’t know. He was suddenly afraid, wondering if his Wynni was a witch, after all. His father had told him that witches couldn’t cross water, hadn’t he? Jehan paused to push a stray lock of grey hair back behind her ear with her little finger.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Dougie said. ‘This very day, I’ll ask Lady Angmar about claiming my Berwynna. If she says me nay again, I’ll keep after her and see if I can find out if she truly doesn’t want the lass to leave the island or if she thinks I’m not worthy or suchlike.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Jehan looked up from the kneading. ‘You might as well know the truth.’

Before he left, Dougie put a clean shirt on under his plaid, then fetched the mysterious book from the barn. Since he was going to Haen Marn anyway, he figured, he might as well run Evandar’s errand for him.

Towards noon Lon brought a bucket of fish into the kitchen hut behind the manse. Berwynna put on her oldest tunic, wrapped a fragment of stained, fraying plaid around her for a skirt, and set to work cleaning the catch. Marnmara’s six cats rubbed round her ankles and whined. The orange brindle leapt up onto the workbench with its usual dirty paws. When she yelled and swatted, it jumped down again. Berwynna chopped off the fish heads and tails with efficient strokes of her long knife, then tossed them down at varying distances to give every cat a chance at this bounty. She gutted the fish, then threw the innards to the mewling horde as well.

Feeding the island took hard work. Despite the presence of so many large beasts in its water, the loch supplied netsful of fish all year long. Berwynna suspected that some sort of dweomer made the loch unusually productive, but neither her mother nor her sister would confirm her suspicion nor deny it, either. Man and dwarf, however, do not live by fish alone, as old Otho was fond of saying. The local villagers and farmers paid for Marnmara’s healing services with produce and what little grain they could spare. Mic’s coin bought beef, oats, and barley from the farmers on the richer lands to the south. Occasionally the boatmen managed to kill a deer. As well as medicinal herbs, Marnmara raised vegetables in her garden, and apple trees grew around Avain’s tower.

‘Wynni!’ Marnmara stood in the door of the kitchen hut. ‘Dougie’s just come across to the pier.’

‘Oh ye gods!’ Berwynna said. ‘Here I stink of fish.’

‘That won’t bother him. He’s besotted.’

Still, Berwynna scrubbed her hands with a scrap of soap and rinsed them in a bucket of well water. She wanted to change her filthy old clothes, but as she was hurrying towards the manse, she saw Dougie, just coming up the path, his tousled red hair gleaming in the sun. Under one arm he carried a bulky packet, wrapped in cloth.

‘There you are!’ Dougie said, smiling. ‘Ah, you look beautiful today, lass!’

‘My thanks!’ He is besotted, Berwynna thought. Thank God! ‘It gladdens my heart to see you, too.’

‘Good. I’m hoping to have a bit of a talk with you and your mother.’ He paused for a grin. ‘About us.’

Berwynna’s heart leapt and pounded. ‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know what there is to talk about.’

He merely grinned and reached out to catch her hand.

They found Angmar in the great hall, where she was sitting at a window with mending spread out on the low table in front of her. Dougie laid his parcel on the table, then bowed to her.

‘What’s all this?’ Angmar raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Usually you just sit yourself down without so much as a by-your-leave.’

‘Uh, my apologies, my lady.’ Dougie’s face turned a faint pink. ‘I’ve brought you a very strange gift, and I was hoping that we, I mean Wynni and I and you, could have a bit of a chat.’

‘If you’re going to ask me if you may marry her, save your breath. I’ll not agree.’

Dougie winced.

‘I don’t want her living off the island,’ Angmar continued.

‘Truly?’ Dougie said. ‘Or is that me and my kin aren’t grand enough for you?’

‘What? Naught of the sort! Dougie, I know not how or why, but in my soul I do know that me and mine will cause you grief one day. I’d beg you to put my daughter out of your heart.’

‘Mam!’ Berwynna could stay silent no longer. ‘But I love him. I want to marry Dougie.’

He turned her way and grinned. When Berwynna held out her hand, he clasped it and drew her close.

‘Wynni, heard you not one word of what I said?’ Angmar flopped her mending onto the table and scowled at both of them. ‘Avain did see much grief –’

‘What she sees in the water isn’t always true,’ Berwynna said. ‘Sometimes it’s wrong, or else it comes true in some odd way that’s more of a jest than anything. Well, doesn’t it?’

‘True enough.’ Angmar paused for a long sigh. ‘But –’

‘Besides,’ Berwynna hurried on before her mother could finish, ‘if you won’t let me leave the island, why can’t Dougie come live here?’

‘And what would your family say to that, then?’ Angmar glanced at Dougie. ‘With you the eldest son and all?’

‘They’d take a bit of persuading,’ Dougie said. ‘But I’d keep at it and wear them down in the end.’

‘Still, most like it be too dangerous. The isle be a jealous place, and I doubt me if you belong to it the way we do.’

Berwynna felt tears gathering just behind her eyes. She gave her mother the most piteous look she could manage and willed the tears to run. Her mother sighed with a shake of her head.

‘Wynni, Wynni! You children don’t understand, and there’s no way I can make you understand, truly.’ Angmar hesitated for a long moment. ‘But whist, whist, child, don’t weep so! Here, let me discuss this with Marnmara. But I’d not hope too much, either of you.’

She picked up the mending again and frowned at it with such concentration that Berwynna knew they’d been dismissed. She snuffled back her tears and wiped her eyes on her sleeve while Dougie patted her shoulder to comfort her. Hand in hand they went outside and sat down together on a wooden bench under an apple tree. Above them the white flowers were just peeking from their pale green buds.

‘Well now,’ Dougie said at last. ‘So much for the grand speech I’d stored up in my mind. I never got a chance to speak any of it.’

‘It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Mam’s got one of her ideas, and my dear sisters are dead-set against us, too, from what she said.’

‘I don’t understand. What did she mean about Avain seeing things?’

‘Oh, she sees visions in a bowl of water.’ Berwynna looked down, saw a pebble on the path, and kicked it viciously away. ‘Since she’s a mooncalf, Mam and Marnmara say that the angels or the saints are sending her messages that way. I don’t understand, and I don’t agree, but you heard Mam.’

‘I did, and a nasty thing it was to hear. I’m willing to risk a fair lot of grief for you, but I don’t want you sharing it.’

‘Bless you! But I’m willing to run the risk, too.’

Dougie threw his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed her. She laughed in sheer pleasure and took another kiss, but just as he reached for a third, she heard a warning snarl of a cough behind her. Dougie let her go. Berwynna turned on the bench and saw old Lonna, arms akimbo, glaring at her. Dougie rose and bowed to the elderly dwarf.

‘I’ll just be leaving, then,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Fare thee well, my lady.’

‘I’ll walk with you to the landing.’ She spoke to Lonna in Dwarvish. ‘Could you tell the boatmen to make ready?’

Lonna made a sound that might have been yes, then turned and stomped off towards the manse.

‘Ye gods!’ Dougie lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I’m beginning to understand why you want to get out of this place, truly.’

‘Well, I don’t want to leave it forever. I just want to see more of the world than Haen Marn.’ Berwynna paused, glancing around her. ‘There’s not much of it, is there? Just one small island, and every now and then I get to go over to the mainland with Marnmara when she gathers wild herbs or if someone’s ill in the village. Once we got to go to your grandfather’s dun, too, when the groom’s wife was so ill. That’s all I’ve ever seen, and all I’ve ever known, and oh Dougie, I’m sick to my heart of it!’

‘I can understand that.’ Dougie patted her hand, then raised it to his lips and kissed it, fish stains and all. ‘Let me think about this, lass. Mayhap I can come up with some scheme to get us married.’

Berwynna walked him down to the jetty and saw him off. For a brief while she lingered on the pier and considered the boathouse, a roof and walls with lake water for a floor. A narrow walkway ran along one side to give the boatmen access to the ladder that led up to the loft where they slept. Besides the magnificent dragon boat, the island owned two coracles, a large one for the fishing, and a small craft that Marnmara and Berwynna used for their rare trips to the mainland. These hung out of the water from pegs on the boathouse walls.

The question, Berwynna decided, was whether she could creep into the boathouse at night, get the coracle down, and lower it into the water without making a splash or other noise that would wake the boatmen. Not likely, she thought. If only she could, she could row across and meet Dougie, and perhaps Father Colm would marry them before her family caught her. Even less likely, since he thinks I’m a witch. She picked up a stone and hurled it into the water as hard as she could, then turned on her heel and stalked back to the manse.

In the great hall the others had gathered around Marnmara, who had come over to Angmar’s table to look at Dougie’s gift. Angmar sat to her right, the mending unnoticed in her lap, while Tirn stood just behind Marnmara and peered over her shoulder. When no Mainlanders were around, the island folk talked in one of the two languages that Angmar called ‘our home tongues.’ Since Tirn knew no Dwarvish, they spoke the mountain dialect of Deverrian whenever he joined them. In fact, he seemed to know it oddly well, better than any of the rest of them. Berwynna sat down on a bench opposite her mother just as Marnmara opened the sack and slid out its contents: a book, bound in white leather, with a black leather piece in the shape of a dragon upon the cover.

Tirn gasped, tried to choke back the noise, then coughed. Marnmara twisted around to look up at him.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I thought it was a book I used to own. That one had a black cover with a white dragon upon it.’

‘Indeed?’ Marnmara said. ‘What sort of book might it be? A grammarie?’

‘What’s that?’ Tirn looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never heard that word before.’

‘A book of spells.’ Marnmara was trying to suppress a grin.

‘Ah.’ Tirn hesitated, caught, then shrugged. ‘Well, it was that, truly.’

Marnmara allowed the grin to blossom. She opened the book randomly, then frowned at the page before her.

‘Be somewhat wrong?’ Angmar said.

‘I did hope I could read this,’ Marnmara said, ‘but I’ve not seen these letters ever before.’ She turned round again and looked Tirn full in the face. ‘Except right there, tattooed on your skin. What language be they?’

‘That of the Seelie Host,’ Tirn said.

Berwynna made the sign of the Holy Rood.

‘Truly?’ Angmar quirked one eyebrow. ‘Now, I myself have seen such letters before, and they were made by someone as much flesh and blood as you are.’

Tirn face’s turned scarlet between his tattoos and scars.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘You must know about the Ancients, then. Some call them the Westfolk, others the Ancients. Do they dwell in this country, too?’

‘I know not,’ Angmar said, ‘but they do dwell in my homeland. Indeed, the father of my daughters did have Westfolk blood in his veins.’ She leaned back to study his face. ‘I think me that you come from the place the Deverry folk call Annwn, not from Alban, no, nor Cymru nor Lloegr, either.’

‘You’ve caught me out, my lady.’ Tirn smiled and ducked his head in apology. ‘I didn’t want to say anything at first because I thought you’d never believe me. I didn’t realize that you too hale from Deverry.’

‘I come not from Deverry proper, but from the north of it, in the country known as Dwarveholt. Now, can you read that book?’

‘Alas, I cannot in any true sense. I can read well enough in three languages, but that of the Ancients isn’t one of them.’ Tirn raised his bandaged hand and pointed at the tattoo on his left cheek. ‘These marks? Among my kin they’re thought to bring good luck or the favour of the gods. They’re very old, and their meaning’s been long forgotten.’

Angmar continued studying his face, while Marnmara paged through the book, frowning at a bit of writing here and there and shaking her head over the lot.

‘What I can do,’ Tirn went on, ‘is sound out the letters, though I don’t know what many words mean. Well, truly, they’re not letters in the way that the holy book of this country is writ in letters. Each one stands for a full sound, what mayhap would take two or three letters in some other tongue.’

Everyone stared, puzzled, but Marnmara, who laid a finger on one mark. ‘This one?’ she said.

‘La,’ Tirn said, ‘and the next is sounded drah.’

‘Be you a scholar, then, Tirn?’ Berwynna said. ‘Father Colm does warn against the studying of books, saying it leads to sorcery.’

‘Does he?’ Tirn grinned at her. ‘He may be right, then, for the first time in his fat life.’

Berwynna began to laugh, then stifled the sound when Angmar glared at her. Tirn shifted his weight from foot to foot, then walked round to sit down on the same bench as Berwynna. She moved over to give him plenty of room. Angmar gave both of them a sour look.

‘Is somewhat wrong, my lady?’ Tirn said to Angmar.

‘There be Horsekin blood in your veins, bain’t?’ Angmar said.

Tirn blushed again, then nodded.

‘Mam, Mam!’ Marnmara looked up from the book with a sigh. ‘Matters it to you, with all of us so far from home?’

‘Not truly,’ Angmar said. ‘I find truth sweeter than lies, is all.’

‘It is, and I owe you an apology,’ Tirn said, ‘but I feared you’d have me killed or suchlike if you knew about the Horsekin.’

‘If you realized not that we be from Annwn like you,’ Angmar said with some asperity, ‘why did you think we might know about the Horsekin?’

Tirn blushed again, then spoke hurriedly. ‘I’m an outlaw among them, you see, and I’ll swear to the truth of that. They’d kill me if they ever got hold of me.’

‘Now, that I do believe,’ Angmar said, ‘because of the fear in your voice.’

Her mother and old Lonna had told Berwynna tales of the Horsekin, vicious killers who worshipped an evil demon named Alshandra. Now here was one of them, sitting next to her, a very ordinary man by the look of him, and badly injured to boot.

‘Do you believe in Alshandra, then?’ Berwynna said to him.

‘I don’t,’ Tirn said, ‘and that’s why I’m an outlaw.’

‘I see.’ Angmar rose and began to collect the mending in a basket. ‘Well and good, then.’

Berwynna followed her mother out of the great hall and up the stairs to Angmar’s room. She’d been planning on badgering Angmar about Dougie, but her mother’s mood had turned so grim that she thought better of the plan. Alone, they spoke in Dwarvish.

‘Mama, do you trust Tirn?’ Berwynna asked instead.

‘I don’t,’ Angmar said. ‘There’s somewhat more than a bit shifty about him beyond his Horsekin blood. I do believe him about being an outlaw, mind. I wonder, in fact, if his own kind gave him those burns and scars, a-torturing him somehow.’

‘Ych!’

‘Truly, they’re a cruel lot, the Horsekin. But be that as it may, Tirn knows lore that Marnmara needs if she’s to get us home again.’

‘Will we ever really go home,’ Berwynna said, ‘wherever that is?’

‘I have my hopes. It may not mean much to you, but I long to see your father again.’

‘Well, of course. I wish I knew him, too. My father. It has such a distant ring to it, doesn’t it? Even though you’ve told me about him, it’s not the same as knowing him.’

‘It’s not.’ Angmar allowed herself a long sigh. ‘I’ve tried to think of myself as a widow and stop longing for him, but deep in my heart I’m sure he’s still alive back home, if we could only get there. And I miss my homeland, too, the Dwarveholt.’

‘Mam, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to slight what you treasure, but the land means naught to me. This is the only home I’ve ever had.’

‘I do understand that. But I have hopes that someday you’ll have better and find a better man, too.’

This last was too much to bear. ‘Please, please, tell me why I mayn’t marry Dougie?’ Berwynna said. ‘I love him ever so much.’

‘I know, but ye gods, it would ache my heart to go home but leave you here with your Dougie. You’re young, child. There will be other men –’

‘I don’t want any of them.’

‘Dougie’s the only handsome lad you’ve ever known.’ Angmar managed a smile. ‘First love is the love that stings, or so they always say. But answer me this. Suppose you did marry your lad and go to live with him, and then we all disappeared without you. How would that feel?’

Berwynna felt the blood drain from her face. The thought of losing her family –

‘I see it doesn’t sit well with you,’ Angmar said. ‘Well, it could happen, were you to go live on Alban land. Haen Marn goes where it wills when it wills, and it doesn’t bother with giving fair warning.’

‘Then how come you let Marnmara go over to the mainland to heal the folk and suchlike?’

‘Because the island’s not going to go anywhere without her. That I know as surely as I know my own name.’

Berwynna bit back the bitter words that threatened to break free of her mouth. It’s always Mara, isn’t it? she thought. She’s the important one, never me.

Laz had told the truth when he’d told Angmar that he couldn’t read the Westfolk language. He regretted it bitterly, too, thanks to that book of spells. So much dweomer so near – but the book might as well lie on a table in Deverry for all the good it would do him. Wildfolk hunkered down on the table around the book, slender green gnomes, each with a cap made of rose petals. Now and then one of them would stretch out a timid finger and touch the edges of the page. When Marnmara threatened to swat them, they disappeared. For some while Laz watched Marnmara turn pages, her stare as fierce as a warrior’s, as if she could force the meaning from the alien letters by sheer will. ‘Not one word can I read,’ she announced. ‘And the whole thing be writ in the same markings.’

‘So it looked to me,’ Laz said, ‘and it aches my heart, I tell you.’

‘No doubt. Here.’ She pushed the heavy book across the table towards him. ‘Mayhap if you sound out more of the marks, you might find a word or two you know. I do hope that somehow this book holds the dweomer to take us all home again, though I do have this strange feeling in my heart that it be naught of the sort.’

‘Let me take a look, then.’

Using his wrists rather than his damaged hands, Laz managed to turn the book right side up in front of him. Marnmara moved to sit next to him and turn the pages when he asked. As he sounded out letters from the syllabary, he did come across words he knew, most of them useless, such as ‘next’, ‘then’, ‘and’, ‘is’ and the like. Still, Marnmara watched him so admiringly that he kept going.

‘Turn all the way back to the first page,’ Laz said finally. ‘If you’d be so kind.’

Marnmara did as he asked.

On the top of that first page a line of symbols, larger than the rest, had been carefully painted in red. Laz sounded them out several times. Thanks to the Westfolk custom of putting dots between words to set them apart, he managed to form them up into something he could guess at.

‘Now this first word,’ he said, ‘is a verb of some kind. That is, it’s the name of an act, a thing you do. I can tell by this sound at the beginning. It stands for “keh” and that means an action follows.’

A wide-eyed Mara nodded, taking it all in.

‘And this sound at the end,’ he continued, ‘means “how” or “why” one does this action. Alas! I don’t know what the action is. However, I’m fairly sure this next word means “a dragon”, because that name sounds much the same in several tongues, drahkanonen among the Westfolk, draeg in Deverrian, and drakonis among the Bardekians.’

‘You most certainly be a scholar, Tirn. Here, I think me you should study this book for all of us. Maybe more will come to you if you do contemplate it.’

‘Mayhap. We can hope.’

‘I –’ Mara paused, then turned around. ‘Be it that you wish somewhat, Wynni?’

Berwynna stood in the doorway, where, Laz realized, she’d been listening for some while, not that he saw anything wrong with her doing so. Marnmara, however, rose, shutting the book with a puff of dust.

‘Come take this upstairs to Tirn’s chamber,’ Marnmara said. ‘He can carry it not himself.’

‘You might say please, truly, once in a while.’ Berwynna walked over to the table.

‘Oh don’t be tedious!’ Mara shoved the book at her. ‘Here!’

With a scowl Berwynna took the book, so heavy that she clasped it to her chest with both arms, and trotted over to the stairs. She hesitated, glancing back, at the foot of them as if she might speak further, then shrugged and went on up.

‘Little sneak!’ Mara said. ‘She always be listening and prowling around. Now. We’d best work on your hands before dinner. Rest here a moment. I be going to fetch the medicaments.’

Laz suppressed a sigh. He needed more than a moment to brace himself for what lay ahead. Before Marnmara went upstairs, she spoke briefly to Lonna, the aged maidservant, who merely nodded for answer. Lonna went to the hearth, poured water from a big clay jar into an iron pot, then set the pot in the coals to heat. By the time Marnmara returned, carrying a small cloth sack, the water was steaming. Lonna set it on the table in front of Laz, then stomped off, muttering to herself. Marnmara took a handful of herbs out of the sack and dropped them into the water.

‘Let that cool for a moment,’ she said.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘May I ask you somewhat?’

‘You may, though I might not answer.’

‘Fair enough. Where did you learn so much about healing?’

‘I don’t know.’ She paused for a smile at his surprise. ‘When I were but a child, Old Lonna did tell me of a few simples. She did know how to bind a small wound and such crude lore, too. But then, once I did grow into a woman, I did have a dream.’ She hesitated, considering him. ‘Here, Tirn, since you be a scholar, tell me what you do think of this. In the dream I did find a door dug into the dirt of Haen Marn, out among the apple trees, that were. I did open the door and go down the stairs within. At the bottom was another door. I did open that. Herbs came pouring out, a great flood of dried herbs. I did scream, thinking they would smother me, but I woke to find the blanket over my face.’ She laughed with a toss of her head. ‘But here be the strange thing. From that day on, I did know herblore.’

‘I’d say you remembered it. The door led to your memory of such things.’

‘From a life lived before, mean you? It could well be. I remember naught of this, but my mother does assure me that once before I was the lady of this isle. Avain did recognize me, Mam tells me, on the very day I was born.’ She looked at him with her head cocked a little to one side, and her eyes wide, as if she were expecting him to challenge or dismiss her tale.

‘I’d believe it of Avain,’ Laz said. ‘She’s got a dweomer air about her.’

Marnmara smiled, perhaps relieved that he’d accepted her tale so easily.

‘It’s a great honour,’ Laz said, ‘to have such gifts.’

‘That’s what my mam does say. I get a-weary of it.’

‘What? Why?’

‘The gods have blessed you, she does say, so you must repay them and use your gifts as they wish. If I be the Lady of Haen Marn, then I have many a burden to take up.’ Her voice turned unsteady. ‘Whether I wish to lift them or no.’

‘I see. Well, no doubt you’ll be given the strength when you need it.’

She scowled at the surface of the water, then shrugged, as if she’d hoped for a different answer. Laz wanted to ask more, but he hesitated, afraid she’d resent his prying. She touched the surface of the water in the kettle with one finger, then dipped her hand in.

‘Just cool enough,’ she said. ‘Here, stretch out your hands, Tirn. We’ll have the bandages off.’

Laz gritted his teeth and did as she asked. Her touch was so light that pulling off the thin cloth caused him no pain, but the sight – both his hands were a mass of shiny pink scars. On his left hand the little finger had burned down to a stub of scar tissue, permanently fastened to the finger next to it, both of them useless. On the right hand the last three fingers formed one throbbing mass that he’d lost the power to move. In between the remaining fingers, and between each thumb and the meat of his hands, the flesh oozed a clear fluid as if it wept for its loss.

‘They heal, they heal,’ Marnmara said. ‘But not yet can we leave them be. We’ll do the left hand first.’

Laz plunged his hand into the water. The herb brew stung the oozing wounds like a liquid fire at first, then numbed them, though not quite enough. Marnmara put her own hands in the kettle, caught his, and pried the good fingers apart, one pair at a time, deliberately cracking open the scars to keep the fingers free and usable. As he always did, he swore under his breath the entire time, running through every foul oath he knew in the Gel da’Thae language to keep from fainting and disgracing himself. The right hand took less time and caused him less pain than the left, but by the time she finished, his head was swimming, and the skin of his face felt ice-cold and damp, especially around his mouth.

Marnmara laid his hands on top of the bandages and considered them. A trace of blood oozed between each treated pair of fingers.

‘Not much blood,’ she announced. ‘We’ll leave these open to the air for now.’ She patted his right arm just above the wrist. ‘Go rest.’

‘Gladly.’ Laz got up, steadied himself, and forced out a smile. ‘My thanks.’

He felt like an old man, hunched and staggering, as he made his way across the hall and up the stairs. His small chamber, bare except for a mattress on the floor and a basket for the extra pieces of clothing the women had made him, stood near the head of the stairs. The dragon book lay on the floor by the basket. He went in, shut the door with a nudge of his foot, then lay down and crossed his arms at the wrist over his chest.

‘That’s done for another day,’ he remarked to the hands. ‘Ye gods, I should have listened to Sidro. Don’t, she said, don’t touch the crystals together. Sound advice, but did I listen? Oh no! Not that I should complain, I suppose. What was that my charming mother used to say? Walk behind a mule, and you deserve to get kicked, that’s it.’

The worst thing, he decided, was that he could no longer remember why he’d wanted to bring the crystals together. Obviously it had been a stupid idea, yet he’d felt compelled – the word caught his attention. Compelled. Had some wyrd-dweomer lain inside the pair, waiting for a victim to bring their tips together so they could transport themselves and victim both to this island?

If so, one of them had made the trip safely, though he’d lost the other. He wondered if they might transport him back if he brought them together again. They might take him elsewhere, of course, somewhere far less hospitable than Haen Marn, or burn off the rest of his hands even if he did end up back in the Northlands. He sat up and considered his maimed hands. The idea of trusting himself to the crystals again terrified him. Yet curiosity nagged. Where was the white one, anyway?

After Dougie’s strange vision of the other day, he’d had Marnmara remove the pouch with the crystal from around his neck and put it under the clothing in the basket, hidden from curious eyes. When he tried moving his fingers, he found that he could control them, though it hurt whenever they rubbed against one another. He was healing, indeed, and the thought made him almost cheerful. Carefully, slowly, painfully, he managed to tip the basket over, find the pouch, and shake the black crystal out onto his pillow. In the sunlight coming through the tiny window, it gleamed, but sullenly, or so it seemed to him.

‘I’ll wager you can tell me where your brother lies,’ Laz said.

Laz set the crystal upright and looked down into its tip. He saw nothing at first, then murky images formed – an expanse of brownish grey, a lump of something that might have been wood. Ripples shimmered in the murk. A long narrow head appeared, two tiny eyes, a row of teeth, a neck. The head drew back. A spray of bubbles covered everything. Laz could draw only one conclusion: the white crystal sat at the bottom of the lake, far and forever out of his reach.

‘Good! Rot, for all I care!’

Getting the obsidian crystal back into its pouch, and the pouch into the basket, made his hands throb. Throbbing or no, he decided to put the dragon book somewhere safe rather than leaving it on the floor where Berwynna had placed it. Lifting such a heavy thing – the thought itself pained him. He glanced at the book, then swore aloud.

Just above the cover hovered a thickening in the air. A sprite, perhaps, only half-materialized? Yet the thing had a glow to it that sprites lacked, and an abstract shape. He could discern a disc of some colour that lay just beyond the ordinary colours of the world, an icy lavender? No, stranger still. Was it a spirit at all or some odd vortex of force? He lay down on the mattress to consider it at eye level. As if it knew he studied it, the glow sank into the book and was gone.

Once perhaps Laz might have called to that spirit and inquired about its nature. Now he was afraid, quite simply afraid, to attempt even the most basic dweomer. What if he failed, what if he learned that the enormous power he’d treasured had deserted him? He’d been wounded by the pair of crystals, he realized, his confidence broken as badly as his hands. He’d done a rash, stupid thing that had resulted in the worst pain he’d ever suffered. Worse yet, though, was thinking that the crystals had somehow compelled him, had gained power over him. A sorcerer, are you? he told himself. A pitiful fool, more like! On a tide of such dark thoughts he eventually fell asleep.

Laz woke long after the dinner hour, when the manor of Haen Marn already lay wrapped in silence for the night. During his convalescence hunger had deserted him, not that he’d ever eaten much in any given day. When he sat up, he noticed that the dragon book was glowing again. Ice-white flames, tipped in a peculiar blue, danced on its surface. Spirits. He had to be seeing spirits of Aethyr, he realized, and of a rank far more powerful than any Wildfolk.

‘I want that thing out of here!’

The glow disappeared. They had heard him. He felt sick, not with physical pain, but with shame that he’d turned into a coward. He got up and walked over to the window. Outside the night lay clear and still. Moonlight streaked the water of the loch with an illusory road, heading west. If only I could run along that back to the Northlands! Laz thought. Or if I could fly. He decided that the time had come for him to cast his cowardice aside and see what he could – or could not – do. It’s the only way you’ll ever heal, he told himself.

He stripped off his clothes with some difficulty, then stood naked at the window. When he called it forth, the mental image of the raven came to him. He worked with it, imagining the details of wing and head, until it seemed to live apart from his working as it stood on the windowsill. With a snap of will, he transferred his consciousness over to it. There he had an unexpected struggle, but at last it seemed that he looked out from the bird’s eyes at his body, slumped as if asleep on the floor.

Now came the hardest step, drawing the physical substance of his body into this new form. Once the process had come easily to him. That night he tried three times and failed at every attempt. No matter how hard he concentrated, how carefully he recited the working, his stubborn lump of flesh stayed where it was, and the raven remained an image, a body of light, only. His mind kept slipping back, as well. At one moment he would be looking out of the raven’s eyes; at the next, he’d be seeing the strip of wall in front of his body. Finally he realized that his body was panting for breath and dripping with sweat. He withdrew the raven image from the windowsill, banished it with the proper seal, and sat up, turning to lean against the wall while he let his breathing slow to normal.

‘Squittering shits!’ he said in the Gel da’Thae tongue. They were the only words that seemed appropriate.

Once he felt steady again, he got up and struggled back into his clothes. Why oh why didn’t I listen to Sisi? The question was going to torment him for the rest of his life.

Moving as quietly as he could, he went downstairs and out to the cooler air of the apple grove. White blossoms hung thick on the branches like trapped moonlight. That morning the trees had barely begun to bud. He stared at the blossoms while his heart pounded in terror.

‘How long did I sleep?’ he whispered.

‘Naught but a few hours,’ Marnmara said from behind him. ‘Time on Haen Marn runs at its own pace.’

Laz spun around to find her holding up a pierced-tin lantern. He could see her smiling in its dappled light.

‘You’ve not been here long, Tirn,’ Marnmara continued. ‘The island still has tricks to show you.’

‘So it seems. No wonder my hands are healing so quickly.’

‘That may be so, indeed.’

‘May I ask you a question? Where are we? How does this island move itself?’

‘As to the first, we be in a land called Alban. As to the second, I know not, nor do I know which is its true dwelling place. If we could return to the land that you and my mam call home, then mayhap I would know. My own dweomer should kindle then, like a flame shielded from the wind.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It be weak, here.’

‘What makes you think I have dweomer?’

‘Oh come now!’ She laughed aloud. ‘Did you not send the dragon book to my chamber just now?’

‘I – uh –’ Laz felt his face burn with a blush that, he hoped, the darkness would cover. Had the spirits taken his words as a command? Or had he merely hurt their tender feelings? Spirits could be extremely touchy. He had no idea which it was, although he wasn’t about to admit his ignorance. ‘So, the spell worked, did it?’

‘It did. The book did appear on white wings and settle onto a coffer in my chamber. So I did put it safely away inside.’

‘I thought it would be best if you kept it with you.’

‘Well and good, then.’ She hesitated briefly. ‘Oft have you told me you wished to make some repayment for my healing.’

‘I do, truly, if there’s aught of mine that you’d want.’

‘You know dweomer, don’t you? Teach me some.’

‘I could do that, certainly. But you must have knowledge of your own.’

Marnmara shook her head. ‘I have bits and shreds of such knowledge only. It comes to me in dreams or now and again in memory. I do feel – nay, I do know in my heart – that if I did know the first steps of the dweomer way, then I might walk far. But I know them not.’

‘Well and good, then. I can certainly teach you those.’

In the lantern light her smile turned soft, flickering, it seemed, like the candle flame itself. Although he’d always thought of her as beautiful, that night the thought carried a sexual interest that had escaped him when he’d been weak and in constant pain. He realized that he had started emitting the betraying scent of his interest, too, but he could take comfort in knowing that she’d not understand it, if indeed she could smell it at all.

Perhaps the look in his eyes had told her enough.

‘Tirn,’ she said, ‘there’s somewhat you need to know about me. I wear this body the way you wear a shirt. Don’t be taken in by it.’

She patted him on the shoulder with the same affection with which she’d pat one of her cats, then walked away, disappearing into the manse.

And what by the gods does she mean by that?

As he followed her inside, Laz felt both sad and profoundly weary in a way he’d never experienced before. At last he identified the sensation. He wanted to go home.