Katharine Kerr - The Shadow Isle

‘Wise One?’ Lara, the woman who owned the house with her husband, appeared in the doorway to the chamber. ‘We’re preparing dinner. Would you like some meat with your bread and soup?’

‘No, thank you. I’m not very hungry.’

Lara smiled, made a little bow, then silently shut the door again. Laradalpancora, to give her her full name, and her husband, Jinsavadelan, insisted on acting as if they were servants in Valandario’s house rather than the owners of the house in question, cooking, cleaning, mending her clothes, and generally fussing over her. They also fussed over each other.

‘They never would have let us marry back home,’ Lara told her one evening. ‘Even though we’d loved each other for years. So we had to come here.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Val said. ‘Who’s they, and why would they forbid it?’

‘The Council, of course. Jin’s birth-clan was too far above mine in rank.’ She held her head high with a defiant lift to her chin. ‘That doesn’t matter here.’

Jin smiled at her with such a depth of feeling that Val quietly got up and left the room. Seeing them so happy had woken an old grief. At times after that conversation, she missed Jav as badly as if he’d been murdered only a few years past.

Val used her work to blot her memories from her mind, reading for hours on end in pale sun or flickering candlelight until her eyes watered and ached. She was searching for information concerning a particularly powerful act of dweomer, one beyond the capabilities of any living dweomermaster, elven or human alike. Any one of Grallezar’s books might have held a clue. Fortunately, most of them were bilingual, with a roughly translated elven text on one page and the Gel da’Thae text facing it. Grallezar had wanted to make the knowledge they contained accessible to Westfolk dweomermasters as well her own people.

As Valandario read through each book, she copied any relevant passages onto a scroll made of pabrus, a writing material that had come over from the islands with the new settlers. One book in particular she kept on the table near her, but not for its information. Bound in black leather, decorated with a white appliqué of a dragon, it contained a translation into Gel da’Thae of a familiar work on dweomer, one she knew practically by heart. Its importance lay in its links to its previous owner, Laz Moj. According to Sidro, he’d made the translation and written it out in the book as well. Now and then Val would lay a hand upon it and try to pick up some impression of its absent scribe. Very slowly, an insight grew in her mind. Once she could articulate it, she presented it to Dallandra.

‘It’s about Laz’s book. It’s the antithesis of the one Evandar showed Ebañy in the vision crystal. The binding’s in the opposite colours, and the information inside it is well-known, while we don’t have any idea what may be in Evandar’s.’

‘That’s all true,’ Dallandra said.

‘So if the two books are linked by antithesis, they might echo the pair of crystals, the black and the white.’

‘In which case,’ Dalla continued the thought, ‘the missing book might also tell us about the crystals.’

‘Exactly! Furthermore, both the crystals and the island are shadows from some higher plane. Could it be that Haen Marn’s their real home, and they wanted to take Laz there for some reason?’

‘Or else they used him to get there. Salamander was planning on smashing the black one. I wonder if it was trying to escape.’

‘How would it have known?’ Val asked. ‘You don’t think it had some kind of consciousness, do you?’

‘I can’t say either way. I didn’t get to study it for very long.’

‘That’s not exactly helpful.’

Dallandra’s image grinned at her. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not thinking very clearly these days. It’s the baby, I suppose. I’m sinking to the level of a pregnant animal, all warm and broody like a mother dog.’ Her smile disappeared. ‘I hate it.’

‘At least it’s only temporary.’

‘That’s very true, and I thank the Star Goddesses for it.’

Dallandra’s image, floating over the glowing coals, suddenly wavered, faded, then returned to clarity.

‘Val, I have to leave,’ Dallandra said. ‘Someone’s calling for me, and they sound panicked.’

‘Dalla! Dalla!’ Branna was standing right outside the tent. ‘Vek’s having a seizure, and it’s a bad one.’

Dallandra grabbed the tent bag of medicinals she kept ready for these occasions and hurried outside. Wrapped in a heavy cloak, Branna stood waiting for her. A mist that fell just short of rain swirled around her in the grey light and beaded her blonde hair. Her grey gnome hunkered down next to her and squeezed handfuls of mud through its twiggy fingers.

‘He’s in Sidro and Pir’s tent,’ Branna said. ‘Over this way.’

The gnome dematerialized as they hurried through the maze of round tents, as strangely silent as winter camps always were, with life moved so resolutely inside. As usual, the winter rains had washed off their painted decorations, leaving strange ghostly stains on the leather, outlines to be repainted once the weather turned towards summer. In the grey light it seemed that the camp lay caught between two worlds of water and earth, scarcely there. Since Branna was striding along just ahead of her, Dallandra noticed that the girl’s dress hung thick with yellow-brown mud about her ankles. Her clogs sank into the ground with every step.

‘You really need to wear leggings and boots,’ Dallandra said. ‘I’ll get the women to make you some.’

‘I suppose so,’ Branna said. ‘I’m just so used to dresses, but truly, it’s impossible to keep them clean out here.’ She paused for a sigh. ‘It sounded so exciting, coming to live among the Westfolk. I didn’t realize what the winters would be like.’

‘They can be a bit grim, truly.’

‘I understand now why Salamander wintered with my uncle. I thought he was daft for it, until the rains started.’

‘Do you want to go home?’

‘I don’t. There’s too much to learn here. I just wish I could get really dry and warm.’

‘Well, it’s almost spring. Things will be better then.’

‘The days are getting longer, truly.’ Branna paused to extricate a clog from a particularly sticky lump of mud.

‘And in a few days we’ll move camp,’ Dallandra continued. ‘The ground will be cleaner in the new site.’

Sidro and Pir had pitched their newly made tent on the edge of the camp, not far from the horse herd. When Dallandra ducked inside, she saw Vek kneeling on the floor cloth and leaning, face forward, onto a supporting heap of leather cushions. He’d come of age the summer past, and as was usual among the Horsekin, he’d been bald until that point in his life. Still short and straight, his black hair clung to his dead-white skin. Sidro knelt beside him and wiped his sweaty face with a damp rag. Drool laced with pink stained the neckline of his dirty linen tunic.

‘I do think the worst be done with,’ Sidro said. ‘But he did bite his tongue afore I could get him turned over and sitting up like this.’

Branna hovered back in the curve of the wall to watch. Dallandra laid her bag down, then knelt at Vek’s other side. When she laid her hand on his face, she found it cold and clammy. He looked at her out of one dark eye.

‘I’ve brought your drops,’ Dallandra said. ‘Let me just get them out.’

In response he let his mouth hang open. She rummaged through the tent bag and found the tiny glass vial, filled with an extremely potent tincture of valerian. It smelled horrible and must have tasted worse, but Vek neither squirmed nor made a face when she used the glass stopper to drip a small quantity into his mouth. She could see the cut on the side of his tongue – not big enough to worry about, she decided.