Katharine Kerr - The Shadow Isle

‘You know this will help. Good lad!’ Dallandra made her voice soothing and soft, as if she were speaking to a small child instead of a boy who was at least thirteen summers old. She was never sure how much he understood when he was in this condition. Afterwards he could never remember.

Sidro handed her a cup of spiced honey water. Dallandra helped Vek drink a few sips to wash the medicine down and the taste out of his mouth. She gave the cup back to Sidro, then patted him on the shoulder.

‘You just rest now,’ Dallandra said. ‘Sidro, will it be all right if he stays here with you?’

‘Of course. Help me lie him down on those blankets over there. Pir be out with the horses, but he’d not mind anyway were he here.’

‘I’ll help.’ Branna stepped forward. ‘Dalla, you shouldn’t lift anything heavy.’

‘Perhaps not.’ Dallandra laid her hands on her swollen stomach, hanging over the waist of her leather leggings – she no longer bothered to lace them up in front. ‘This is the part about being with child that I hated before, feeling so bloated and awkward.’

‘True spoken,’ Sidro said. ‘But I’d put up with that again gladly to give Pir a child. He does so want one.’ She smiled. ‘He’s not like Laz.’

‘I’ve no doubt you’ll get your wish soon. You’re both in good health.’

‘So did Exalted Mother Grallezar say. She did tell me that when one woman in a circle be with child, the rest be sure to follow. The smell in the air does induce fertility.’ Sidro grinned and took a deep breath. ‘I do hope she be right.’

‘She generally is,’ Dalla said.

As if she’d heard, the female child in Dallandra’s womb kicked her, an unpleasant sensation though not precisely a pain, as she’d missed the kidneys – this time. Soon, little one, Dallandra thought, soon you’ll be out, and we’ll both be free of this.

Between them Branna and Sidro hauled Vek to his feet. He threw an arm over each of their shoulders and let them drag him to the heap of blankets over by the wall of the tent. Once he was lying down comfortably, the two women came back to distribute the leather cushions and sit with Dallandra. Sidro ran both hands through her raven-dark hair, still too short to braid thanks to her humiliation of the summer before, and pushed it back from her face.

‘And what about you, Branna?’ Sidro said. ‘Do you too long for a child?’

Branna’s grey gnome popped into materialization and shook its head in a resounding no.

‘What’s this?’ Branna said to the gnome. ‘You’d be jealous, I suppose.’ She brought her attention back to Sidro. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean I’m an awful unnatural woman, but I don’t really want a child just now. I want to keep studying dweomer. A baby would be a nuisance.’

‘Not here,’ Dallandra said, ‘not among the Westfolk. We prize our children so much that you’ll have plenty of help when you do give birth.’

‘Good. If he got me with child, Neb doubtless would gloat over it, but I’ll wager he wouldn’t be any help with the baby. Although I might be doing him a disservice. He’s not like the men I grew up with.’

‘I’m glad you can see that.’ Dallandra smiled at her. ‘An honour-bound warrior he’s not.’

Over on the blankets Vek let out a long snore, then turned over on his side and nestled down, his back to the women.

‘Good, he’s asleep,’ Dallandra said. ‘That’s the best thing for him.’

‘So it is,’ Sidro said, then lowered her voice to a murmur. ‘He had one of his visions during the fit.’

‘Did he see Laz or the black stone?’ Dallandra leaned closer and spoke softly.

‘Alas, he did not. He spoke of a tower that reached to the sky, but it turned to smoke.’

‘The tower did?’

‘It turned to a pillar of smoke whilst it sent out flames, he did say. Do you think his mind did fasten on the burning of Zakh Gral? The men here have talked of little else all winter long.’

‘It seems likely, truly. Did he say anything about where this tower was?’

‘He did not, but many of our people – the Gel da’Thae, that be – did die in the flames. He wept to see it. Then spirits came down from heaven and spread snow upon the burning, and the snow did fall everywhere and ruin a harvest. The oats and barley in the field do die, he cried out. The snow were ashes, I suppose.’ Sidro frowned, thinking. ‘But there were no tilled fields near Zakh Gral. The rakzanir did speak of settling slave farmers around it to feed the soldiers stationed there, but that were to happen the next year. Our food did come from the cities.’

‘Well, I don’t think we can expect every detail of his visions to make perfect sense.’ Dallandra glanced at Vek to make sure that he was still sound asleep. ‘This one seems clearer than the others, though, so I can see why you’re trying to puzzle it out.

‘So it be.’ Sidro paused for a sigh. ‘I think me, Wise One, that we’ll be having a harvest of omens this summer.’

‘And few of them good.’ Dallandra had meant to speak lightly, but her words sprang to life in her mouth and burned.

Branna and Sidro both turned towards her and waited, studying her face. ‘More trouble, I suppose,’ Dallandra said. ‘The Star Goddesses only know what, though I’ve no doubt we’ll find out for ourselves soon enough.’

‘True spoken,’ Branna said, ‘or too soon.’

Branna’s grey gnome grinned and nodded, then slowly, one bit at a time, disappeared.

On the morrow the rain slackened. A wind sprang up from the south and brought not warmth but the promise of it as it drove the clouds from the sky. Prince Daralanteriel gave the order to his royal alar to break camp. Besides his wife, Carra, and their children, the prince travelled with his banadar or warleader, his bard, his dweomermasters, and a hundred warriors, most of them archers, along with their wives and children, or in the case of the women archers, their husbands and children. Getting this mob on the road took time.

As well as the crowd of Westfolk, the alar travelled with herds of horses, flocks of sheep, and packs of dogs, trained for herding or hunting. Although the People were adept at packing up their goods, their livestock, and their tents, by the time they got moving along the predetermined route, the sun would be well on its way to midday. They’d travel until some hours before sunset, when everyone would stop to allow the stock to graze before night fall. In the short days of winter’s end, they managed perhaps ten miles a day.

Dallandra thanked the Star Goddesses for the slow pace. She was too pregnant to ride astride for long. Walking would have tired her after a few miles, and sitting on a travois to be dragged along would have shaken her bones and the baby both. With the ground still saturated from the winter rains, using a wagon would have been out of the question even if the Westfolk had possessed such a thing. Fortunately Grallezar had a solution.

‘Among my people,’ the Gel da’Thae said, ‘we have a thing called a mother’s saddle. It be long from pommel to cantle, and both stirrups, they hang on one side.’

‘I saw something similar in Deverry,’ Dallandra said. ‘I’d be afraid to use one. What if something frightens my horse, and it tries to throw me? I couldn’t get free in time to save myself and the child.’

‘With Pir leading your horse, think you it will spook at shadows?’

Dallandra grinned at her. ‘I’d forgotten about Pir. Do you think we can put together one of those saddles?’

‘Something like it at the least.’

It took Dallandra some days to grow used to the new saddle. She had to sit extremely straight to keep her back from hurting, which meant counterbalancing the weight of her pregnancy. She felt her posture as awkward and ugly both. By the afternoons she wanted nothing more than to call an early halt, but with the memory of omens burning in her mouth, she set her teeth against the discomfort and said nothing. At least with the horse mage walking along beside her, she knew that she could trust her mount, who seemed to view Pir as a wiser sort of horse. A tall lean fellow, Pir’s dark hair hung in an odd style all his own. He’d cropped most of it off short but left a wide stripe down the middle of his head from brow to neck that was long enough to braid like a horse’s mane. At moments Dallandra’s mare would snuffle into the mane or onto Pir’s shoulder, as if reassuring herself that he was still there.