The Shadow Isle

  “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.

  Toward 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 leaped up onto the workbench with its usual dirty paws. When she yelled and swatted the animal, 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 full nets 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. 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 toward 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 leaped 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 toward 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 know
n, 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, hail 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 favor 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, except 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 worshiped 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.