Edith Pattou - Fire Arrow

The farmer's wife, Lotte, greeted Hanna warmly. She spoke fast, in Dungalan, and Brie understood only a few words. Hanna introduced Brie as Eirrenian, translating the woman's words. Lotte looked a little surprised, her eyes caught by the faol. But she was welcoming to Brie and tried to speak more slowly so that Brie could follow what she said.

Her husband was out in the barley field, Lotte said, and had just been saying this morning that he wished the Traveler would come soon. "It seems as though harvesttime comes earlier every year," Lotte commented. "And Garmon believes there will be an early frost." She pressed warm buttered bread into their hands, and together they made their way to the barley field.

Farmer Garmon was a prosperous-looking man with gray side-whiskers and an open smile. He embraced Hanna warmly, said his crops were well nigh bursting. Then he welcomed Brie, saying that any friend of the Traveler was a friend to him, and did she know any good tales from Eirren?

"How is your daughter in Dungloe? And your son in Mira? And my friend Lom?" asked Hanna.

"They are all well. I have another grandbairn, Sophe's second son. And as for Lom, he is spending more and more time working on that boat of his. I'll be lucky to tear him away come harvest day," Garmon said. Hanna explained to Brie that Lom was the youngest of Garmon's sons and daughters and the only one still living in Ardara.

"A fine son he is, too, though I lost him to the sea long ago." Brie could see disappointment on the man's face, but acceptance as well.

"You will like Lom," said Hanna to Brie. "He works with Jacan and his son on their fishing boat until his own is built."

Garmon showed them to the barn where they would sleep. "But treat the farmhouse as your home," he said.

"Shall we call on Jacan?" Hanna said when the farmer had left them.

Brie nodded.

***

The fisherman Jacan had a lean, weathered face, dark copper hair and beard, and the keen blue eyes Brie recognized from Rilla's panner work. He wore a leather fishing apron and smelled of fish.

His son, Ferg, was almost the duplicate of Rilla—copper hair, pale skin—but Jacan's other daughter, Hyslin, had fair hair and rose-colored cheeks. She had been paring potatoes, her sleeves pushed up over her elbows, when Brie and Hanna arrived.

They greeted Hanna warmly, but were wary of Brie, and of Fara, who sat on her haunches by the front door, eyes half closed. When Brie entered the cheerful, comfortable room with its smells of fresh bread and fish, she felt like an ill dark wind blowing cold through the house.

"There is bad news," Hanna said in Dungalan.

"Go on," replied Jacan, his face suddenly taut.

"Rilla is dead."

Hyslin let out a cry, dropping her paring knife. Ferg's pale skin went a shade paler.

"How?" asked Jacan.

"By goat-men. Murdered." Brie stepped forward, speaking low in halting Dungalan.

"The gabha?" Jacan looked disbelieving.

"I was there," Brie said. "I saw. She bade me bring you the news. And I brought her panners as well." She handed Jacan the leather pouch.

He stared down at it. "What of Ladran?"

"Dead, too. He ... died going to Rilla."

"She never should have married that raff," said Ferg, anguished.

Jacan was silent. Hyslin lifted her apron to her face and cried into it.

"We stay with Farmer Garmon until harvest," Hanna said to the fisherman, then added, "I am grieved for you, Jacan."

Brie, Hanna, and the faol left the house. Brie touched the panner around her neck.

"There is another I would have you meet," Hanna said as they walked along the harbor.

"Who?" asked Brie without interest.

"Sago. He is a Sea Dyak sorcerer, like Yldir. He is not as powerful as Yldir, though perhaps he is even older. With Yldir gone, I believe Sago is the last of the Sea Dyak sorcerers in Dungal. Some say he has little draoicht left and even fewer wits. But they still come to him for advice on fishing. Indeed, there is none better."

The Sea Dyak sorcerer lived south of Ardara's harbor in a secluded inlet. His home was a small, round, one-room building, called a mote, made of white stone and seashells. At the top were lodgings for seabirds.

Sago stood waiting in the shell-lined doorway, as if he was expecting them. He wore a tunic the color of seawater, and Brie was struck by how thin he was: His arms and legs looked to be no more than bone with skin stretched over them. The dome of his head was covered by a close-fitting cap of the same seawater color as his tunic; feathery wisps of white hair protruded from the cap. His skin was worn by weather and age, but his green eyes were unclouded, and they watched intently as Brie and Hanna approached.

"So," the sorcerer said to Brie with a wink, "the arrow finds its mark."

ELEVEN

Ardara

Brie gave a start, her hand going to the panner at her neck. The sorcerer had spoken in Eirrenian. Brie looked sideways at Hanna. The older woman shrugged.

"Come." Sago led them inside.

After the brightness of water and sun, the inside of the mote seemed dim, but a window of green glass provided some light. Brie had the sensation of being underwater: Green-hued light rippled on the surfaces of things. The walls of the mote were lined with shelves made of driftwood, and each shelf was jammed with flotsam cast up by the sea—shells of all shapes and sizes, feathery sprays of seaweed, frosted sea-glass, smooth sand-coins, brittle sea stars, and many other oddments.

Inside the mote were several seabirds. One tern settled onto Sago's shoulder and ate bread crumbs from his hand.

"Some sepoa?" asked the sorcerer, holding up an empty cup encrusted with bits of many shells.

"It's a kind of tea made of seaweed, sweetened with " honey and cinnamon," explained Hanna. "It's actually very good."

"Yes, please," Brie said.

They sat on cushions and drank the seaweed tea. Sago did not speak, but gazed steadily at Brie. She began to be uncomfortable under his scrutiny, and yet, as had been true with Yldir, she felt an odd Tightness about being here in this cluttered, dim mote. She sipped the sepoa tea thinking it tasted almost like ginger cake.

"Yldir is dead," said Hanna.

The bird on Sago's shoulder let out a cry, sounding almost human, and beat its powerful wings.

Sago's eyes were bright, staring out the dim green window. "The water went dark, almost black, as if a cloud had passed overhead. But there was no cloud. We knew it was Yldir." His eyes suddenly twinkled, and he said,

" There was an old man

And nothing he had,

And so this old man

Was said to be mad. "

Hanna gave Brie a look, then asked Sago how the fishing was today. He did not reply, just hummed the melody to the rhyme under his breath with a benign smile.

When they had finished their tea, Sago took them to a bucket hidden in the shadows at the corner of the room.

"Sumog," he said, carrying the bucket closer to the window so they could see its contents more clearly.

Coiled in the wooden pail a dead snakelike sea creature lay. It looked greenish brown in the wavery light, and its staring eyes were large and bulging, rimmed with a delicate line of orange. There was evil in the blunt snout. Brie shivered.

"What is sumog?" she asked.

"Eats all the little fishies, heigh-ho," Sago sang.

"Sago," Hanna said sternly. "Is this true? Is that why the fish supply has been poor of late?"

Sago bobbed his head several times. "Oh, yes, and yes, and yes. This is only one, but there are many more. Out there." The seabird on his shoulder squawked.

"Do the fishermen know?"

"They don't believe."

"Why not?"

"Crafty, the sumog are. Kill at night. Swift and silent. Almost invisible." Sago carried the bucket back to the shadows.