The Shadow Isle

  “Well, no.” He glanced away. “We’ve had this argument before, haven’t we?”

  “Too many times.”

  “All right, I’ll hold my tongue now.” He rose, then stood smiling down at her. “You rest. We can argue after the baby’s born.”

  A pair of boots lay on the floor cloth close at hand. Dallandra was tempted to pick one up and throw it at him as he walked away, but she decided that the effort wouldn’t be worth the effect.

  Valandario was surprised to find how easy it was for her to weep for Javanateriel despite the passage of so many years. She remembered how she’d wept the night of his murder, then realized that after the day of his cremation she’d kept her grief locked inside herself—and her self locked inside the grief. Flooded by old mourning, the remnants of the broken horn washed clean. She wiped her tears away from her face and the pieces of the silver horn and realized that she felt as if she could float away, released from the weight of dead sorrow.

  When she inspected the gleaming silver, she saw that the horn had been shaped from thin sheets of beaten metal. The original craftsman had decorated the pieces with delicate lines of engraved knotwork, then soldered them together, finally adding a lipped mouthpiece. The passing of Haen Marn from the world had smashed the horn to pieces, then squashed the pieces together. Now that she’d freed and cleaned them, she needed to get them back together before she could restore any kind of enchantment.

  Valandario went from tent to tent of the royal alar to ask about jewelers. Everyone knew someone—someone in Aberwyn, someone riding with another alar, someone who had died a few years back, someone who had a cousin who did silver work, and so on.

  “You’d think that there’d be a few craftsmen riding with the prince,” Valandario said to Dallandra.

  “So you would,” Dalla said. “Unfortunately, there’s not.”

  “Though you know, since Haen Marn seems to be linked to the Mountain Folk, perhaps we should try to find a dwarven smith to repair the horn.”

  “Out here? Where? On the other hand, I just thought of something. Dwarven merchants do come to Cengarn. They might bring a jeweler with them or know of one they trust.”

  “Very well, I suppose I can wait till we reach it.”

  “You look disappointed, Val.”

  “Oddly enough, I am, but I think that’s the horn’s own feelings affecting me. It wants to be healed. That’s the only explanation I can come up with. The horn wants to be healed as soon as possible.”

  Dallandra considered this remark while Valandario waited. They were sitting in Dallandra’s tent, or at least, Val was sitting, decorously cross-legged on a leather cushion. Dallandra half-sat, half-sprawled across a pile of them. Now and then she laid her hands on her swollen stomach as if patting the child within.

  “Well,” Dalla said at last, “if we only knew what part of the inner planes Haen Marn really belongs to, we could perhaps fix it by dweomer.”

  “If,” Val said. “We don’t, however. Not even the spirit of the evocation knew it.”

  “That, alas, is true. I’ll try to think of some way to find out. For now, you might meditate upon it.”

  In the event, finding the jeweler turned out to be easier than either Dallandra or Valandario anticipated. The route that the royal alar was taking to Cengarn ran west of Pyrdon and led eventually to the trading ground by the Lake of the Leaping Trout. By the time that the alar reached it, a number of Deverry merchants had arrived for the spring horse fairs. A good number of alarli had joined them. This time when Valandario asked around, she found a Westfolk jeweler, a slight man with the longest, most delicate fingers she’d ever seen, and emerald-green eyes that gleamed like gems themselves.

  He sighed over the beauty of the pieces, then laid them on a cloth and began to fit them together, a few at a time, his fingers moving like spiders over the silver, until he could tell her that they would form a complete horn except for the mouthpiece, irrevocably broken and deformed.

  “I’m not one of the Mountain Folk,” he said. “I couldn’t have done work like this, but I can repair it. I’ll make a new mouthpiece, too, so it’ll sound some notes again. Now, I can’t guarantee that they’ll be the original notes, of course.”

  Val’s heart sank. “Of course,” she said, and she managed a smile. “How much will you want for that?”

  “Nothing but the Wise One’s good wishes.”

  “Those you’ll have, certainly, and my thanks.”

  As she walked back to her own tent, Val was cursing her ill luck. She should have realized that the sound of the horn might be different once mended. Would it still summon Haen Marn? She could only hope. Perhaps the summoning dweomer lay elsewhere in the horn, she reminded herself. It would be part of her working to find out.

  When the jeweler returned the repaired horn, she decided that she’d best pay him something, no matter how he protested. Dweomer workings always require a price. She preferred it to be a gemstone, not some subtle personal sacrifice that would only appear when she least expected it. She reached into her bag of divination gems and pulled out one randomly—a chunk of lapis lazuli that made his eyes grow wide and greedy.

  “My thanks.” She dropped the chunk into his outstretched palm. “You’ve done a splendid job.”

  “My thanks to you, Wise One! This stone will make a splendid brooch to tempt a merchant with.”

  As the alar made its slow way north, Valandario kept the horn with her at all times. While she was riding, she hung it from a chain around her neck and tucked it inside her tunic. At night it slept on a pillow next to hers. She began to see it in her dreams, and finally it was a dream that gave her the secret of its healing. She saw a dwarven woman holding the horn in her arms and singing a lullaby while she rocked it like a baby.

  “Of course!” Val woke suddenly and found herself sitting up in the dawn gloom inside her tent. “It’s born of Earth, so I’ll ask the Lords of Earth.”

  That evening, when the alar was making its night camp, Valandario found Dallandra outside her folded tent, waiting for the alar to put it together. Dalla sat slumped on a high pile of cushions, her knees spread, her hands dangling between them.

  “You look pale,” Val said. “You need to eat and rest.”

  “Rest, certainly,” Dalla said. “I’m not so sure about eating. Did you want to ask me something?”

  “I was going to ask you to be the sentinel for a working, but not after seeing you!”

  “I’d better not, no. How about Grallezar?”

  “Excellent idea!”

  Grallezar was not only willing to come along and stand guard, she brought her apprentice with her so that Branna might see a ritual of evocation. The women walked about a mile away into the grassland. In the red-gold light of sunset they found a reasonably flat area where the new grass grew short and even.

  As she had before, Valandario cleared her place of working, drew and consecrated a circle, and invoked the light. This time, however, she laid the newly restored silver horn down in the circle’s center, then drew a pentagram around it. Once the star burned with blue astral fire, she called upon the Lords of Earth.

  From where she stood, facing north, she could look past the fiery pentagram into the gathering twilight. At first she saw only the grass, burgeoning with reddish etheric force, waving gently in the sunset wind. The wind itself streamed blue and silver. The color told her that she was seeing on the etheric. An instant later, she saw a point of light form just inside the circle. The point stretched, became a line, then swelled into a towering pillar of multicolored light, shot through with swirls and rays of russet, olive, and citrine. The tower solidified upon a glittering black base.

  “Child of Air, why do you summon us?” The voices came from inside the pillar, but she heard them as thought, not sound, a chorus of voices speaking as one. “Where did you get this talisman you lay before us?”

  “It was given to me as a dead and broken thing,” Val said aloud. “I have tried to heal
it, but I know not how to give it power.”

  “Do you know from whence it came?”

  “It came from Haen Marn.”

  The voices sighed and chattered. One strong voice, female, sang out from their midst. “You speak the truth,” she said. “And it be well for you that you do so.”

  “Never would I lie to the great Lady of the North upon Earth.”

  “You know my name, and thus you have the right to summon me. Why do you wish to heal this horn?”

  “To bring Haen Marn back to its rightful place. I was told this horn might do so.”

  “Very well. Lift up the horn.”

  Valandario picked up the horn and held it out, flat on both palms. Inside the pillar the multicolored lights swirled, brightened, turned into a blaze of colors, as russet as apples in the autumn, as olive as new leaves upon the trees in spring, shot through with the clear citrine of gemstones. The light swelled into a sphere that enveloped Valandario and the horn both. For what seemed a timeless space of time she could see nothing but the dance of colored light.

  It vanished, leaving her blind and blinking in an afterglow of gold. When she heard Grallezar shouting the ritual words, “It is finished!” Val stamped three times upon the ground. Slowly her sight eased back to normal. The tower had vanished with the fading of the light. The astral fire had disappeared and taken the etheric silver with it. Night lay heavy on the grasslands. The horn in her hands glowed like a candle lantern.

  “Well, well,” Grallezar said briskly. “No doubt the Lady did somewhat, I’d say. We’d best consult with Dalla. That bit of silver you hold will light our way back to camp well enough.”

  Branna was staring at the horn with her mouth open like a fish’s gape. She shut it and shook her head.

  “I could hear her,” she said in a trembling voice. “When she spoke, I could hear her.”

  “Splendid!” Val said, with a glance at Grallezar. “Your apprentice seems to be doing well.”

  “I’d say so.” Grallezar was suppressing a grin. “But she’d best not be getting above herself. Let’s go back now.”

  By the time they returned, Dallandra had woken from her nap. Valandario found her in her tent, where Calonderiel and Neb were finishing their dinner.

  “I could use your advice,” Valandario said. “But I don’t mean to interrupt.”

  “I’ve eaten all I can choke down,” Dalla said. “Let’s go to your tent. I’d like to see the horn now.”

  “May I come, too?” Neb got to his feet fast.

  Dallandra hesitated. Val shook her head no, ever so slightly.

  “Not this time,” Dallandra said.

  “But Branna was allowed—”

  “That doesn’t concern you, Neb.” Dallandra fixed him with a cold look that silenced him. “Finish your dinner.”

  “I will, then.” Neb sat down opposite Calonderiel, who gave Valandario a broad wink. Fortunately, Neb seemed not to notice.

  Valandario and Dallandra went to Val’s tent, where Branna and Grallezar were waiting. When Val made a silver dweomer light, Dalla held the horn under it and examined it with a little gasp of surprise.

  “It looks new,” Dallandra said at last, “and I can feel the dweomer quivering upon it. You’ve done a splendid job, Val.”

  “My thanks,” Valandario said. “But it wasn’t me. The Lady of the North upon Earth did the working. I’m not even sure what she did, but she did seem to want Haen Marn back again.”

  “May I ask somewhat?” Branna said.

  “Of course.” Grallezar showed pointed teeth with a grin. “But we may not answer.”

  “North of Earth,” Branna asked. “Does that correspond to Earth of Earth?”

  “It does,” Grallezar said. “Each direction hath its element, and each element its place.”

  Branna nodded, thinking this over.

  Dallandra handed Valandario the horn. “Have you sounded it?”

  “I haven’t. Enj is most likely the only person who can blow the summoning. He belongs to the island by blood.”

  “True, but we should make sure it’s not all sour or suchlike.”

  Val raised the horn to her lips, took a deep breath, and blew. The horn sang with one long note of the purest music, not loud, but so sweet that the four women smiled to hear it. Val started to speak, then realized that the horn was glowing brighter than the dweomer light above them. As the silver gleam swelled, the horn became longer, thinner, but at the same time weightless. It became a tangle of lines of light, wending around on themselves, until Valandario held a ball of blazing white light in her hands. All at once the sphere turned into a long ray of light and shot through the tent like an arrow. Dallandra yelped in surprise, and Branna made a futile grab in the direction of the ray of light just as it slid through the doorway and disappeared into the night outside. The four of them stared at each other until at last Valandario could speak.

  “What have I done?” Val said with a little moan. “We’ll never get the wretched island back now!”

  “You’ve not done anything I wouldn’t have done,” Dallandra said, “so don’t berate yourself. Didn’t I tell you to try it out?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “Besides,” Grallezar put in, “why be you so sure that this does mean disaster? The horn may well be flown off to its true home. For all we know, this be part of the working.”

  “For all we know.” Val made a sour face in her direction. “Well, I’ll hope and pray that you’re right.”

  “That’s all we can do,” Dallandra said. “But oddly enough, I feel right about this. Somewhat’s on the move, Val. Don’t despair just yet.”

  In the far-off land of Alban, a howl of wind woke Dougie in the middle of the night. He sat up in bed just as the wind slammed into the side of the house and made it shudder. A flash of lightning lit the room with a blue glow. Thunder roared directly overhead. With a yelp his brothers woke and sat up next to him. Dougie heard his mother scream, and his father’s voice, loudly soothing, right through the wall.

  “What in God’s name?” Gavin said.

  “Just a storm,” Dougie said, “but a strong one.”

  For some while the wind howled around the steading. Now and again lightning split the sky and cast an eerie pattern of light through the shutters, banging hard at the loft window, on the opposite wall. Thunder followed, louder at first, then softer as the peak of the storm moved off to the north. Both Gavin and Ian fell asleep once the thunder slacked, but Dougie lay awake, worrying about Berwynna, out on an island with the wind kicking up big waves all around her.

  With dawn the rain slacked, and the sky began to clear. When the family gathered around the table to eat breakfast and discuss the storm, Dougie gobbled down a bowl of porridge. He did his chores, then left the steading. Rather than argue about his destination, he told no one that he was going out to Haen Marn.

  At the lake, the silver chain hung from its boulder on the shore, but from the chain dangled—nothing. One bent loop of metal marked where the silver horn usually hung. He swore aloud, then squatted down to examine the ground. Not there, either. He straightened up and glanced around, but no glint of silver lay among the scrubby bushes and new grass. Had someone stolen the thing? A cold ripple of fear ran down his back. What if he couldn’t reach the island? What if he never saw Berwynna again?

  Dougie cupped his hands around his mouth and called out a long halloo. Only the lapping of waves answered him. He tried again, louder. When he finally saw the boat heading out from the pier, his eyes filled with tears of relief. He shook his head hard and wiped them away with the edge of his plaid.

  When the boat arrived, Lon greeted him with a bare wave of one hand. Dark pouches under his eyes and a bleary smile marked him as exhausted.

  “Up all night, were you?” Dougie said.

  Lon merely nodded and handed him the mallet for the gong. Dougie hit it as hard and as fast as he could. He’d never seen so many beasts in the lake; the water roiled and
splashed as they rose to the surface, swung their heads this way and that, then dove again to disappear. Somewhat’s frightened them, Dougie thought. They’re acting like netted fish.

  Berwynna was pacing back and forth at the end of the wooden pier. She looked pale, and her uncombed hair fell untidily around her shoulders. When he caught her hand and kissed it, she smiled, but her eyes showed traces of weeping.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Something peculiar’s happening. ”

  “That storm was peculiar enough for me!”

  “Beyond that. I can feel some baleful thing in the air. It’s all around us.”

  “Oh, is it now?” Dougie glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing but the lake. “Did you know that someone’s stolen the silver horn?”

  “I didn’t.” Her eyes grew wide. “Come up to the manse. We’d best tell Mam that.”

  Angmar met them at the door of the manse and raised a gentle hand to keep them from entering. “Keep your voices down,” she said. “Marnmara’s studying the patterns on the walls and can’t be disturbed.”

  Dougie glanced through the open door of the manse. At the far wall Marnmara was standing with Tirn, both of them facing the wall and waving their hands as they pointed to this mark or that. On a table behind them, Evandar’s book lay open.

  “Dougie,” Angmar continued, “you’d best leave us straightaway. I’ll tell the boatmen.”

  “What?” Berwynna clutched his arm with both hands. “Mam, why?”

  Angmar gave her daughter a black look. “There’s no time to argue,” she said, “if Dougie wants to see his mother and clan ever again. The boat—”

  “Wait,” Dougie broke in. “I shan’t stay if you’d rather not have me here, but let me tell you one quick thing. Your silver horn’s been stolen. It’s not chained to the rock anymore.”

  Angmar muttered something in a language he didn’t understand. “Then it’s too late,” she said at last. “My heart aches for you, Dougie, truly it does.”

  “Mam!” Berwynna snapped. “What are you talking about?”