The Shadow Isle

by Katharine Kerr

  “You’re lairing inside a living fire mountain? I thought that you’d choose a dead one.”

  “What good would that be in the snows? But it’s only a sleeping mountain. We’ll be able to tell if it’s beginning to wake. It takes a mountain a long time to wake. It groans, it shudders, and slowly its fires rise.” The dragon rumbled again. “Unless, of course, it gets a bit of help from dragonish dweomer.”

  Dallandra shuddered at the thought. Arzosah raised her head and looked over Dallandra’s shoulder to the meadow beyond.

  “Who’s that?” the dragon asked.

  Dallandra turned to see Sidro trotting across the meadow toward them. “Sidro, a friend of mine,” Dalla said. “She looks awfully excited about something. Here, she only knows a little Eluish, so if you could lower yourself to speak the language of men—”

  The dragon heaved a massive, vinegar-scented sigh, but she did comply. “Here, Sidro,” Arzosah called out in Deverrian. “I won’t eat you. You may come closer.”

  With a hesitant smile, Sidro joined them. “Dalla, my apologies, but I did have the strangest feeling just now. Laz is back, I be sure of it in my heart, back and thinking of me. I did feel the touch of his mind on mine.”

  “Oh, did you now?” Dallandra said. “You’re certain?”

  “I am, and deep in my very soul. I thought I’d best tell you straightaway.”

  “And I’m glad you did. I wonder if this means that Haen Marn’s back?”

  The dragon growled under her breath. “Haen Marn? Is that where that slimy little sorcerer was, off in Alban with Haen Marn?”

  “What? Alban? Where’s that?” Dallandra felt like growling herself. “Are you telling me that you knew where Haen Marn was?”

  “Um, well, not precisely.” Arzosah’s normally huge voice had dwindled to a hatchling’s chirp.

  “You knew!” Dallandra snarled. “You knew, and you didn’t tell anyone!”

  “No one asked me.” Arzosah curled a paw and studied her claws. “Besides, I didn’t precisely know. I was guessing, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I might have been wrong.”

  “You weaselly wyrm!”

  “I truly wasn’t sure.” Arzosah spoke quickly, as if trying to change the subject. “I hoped it wasn’t there. It’s an awful place, Alban. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, not even Haen Marn.”

  “You must have been in this Alban country, then.”

  “I have, and an even nastier country called Lloegr. Alban’s a few miles north of it. Them and their wretched Lord Yaysoo! I never want to see either place again. Don’t you try to order me to go there, either, because it would mean my death.”

  “I have no intention of ordering you to do anything of the sort if the island really is back, so you’d better hope it is.” Dallandra’s curiosity fought with her anger, then won. “Yaysoo? Is he their king or suchlike?”

  “No, their god. He’s a sheep. The Lamb of God, they call him, so I assume his father’s a sacred ram. Yaysoo’s mother was a human woman called Miriam, and the ram got her with child somehow or other. It’s a very complicated story, and I only heard bits of it. The high priest carries a shepherd’s crook, probably to summon Yaysoo with.” Arzosah paused for a snort. “They weren’t particularly sheeplike themselves, those worshipers, persecuting poor innocent dragons, chasing us with spears and trying to kill us for no particular reason.”

  “No particular reason, hmm?”

  “Well, perhaps a few small ones.” Arzosah flattened her ears like an angry cat. “Now, once I figured out that these people worshiped sheep, I tried to parley with them. I was quite willing to never kill a sheep again. There’s not much meat on them, anyway, for a dragon, and that nasty wool gets stuck in your teeth. Unfortunately, the only language we had in common was the Rhwman tongue, and they spoke it very badly. I’m not sure they understood what I was offering. They started throwing stones at me, and the high priest actually hit me on the nose with his stupid crook.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I ate him, of course. What would you have done in my situation? ”

  “I certainly wouldn’t have eaten the high priest.”

  “Probably not.” Arzosah considered this for a moment. “He was awfully tough. But after that, the persecutions only got worse. So we dragons left the sheep to Yaysoo and came here.”

  “Let me see if I understand you.” Dallandra made herself speak calmly. “You can travel back and forth between these two worlds, ours and the sheep people’s. That’s why you think Haen Marn may have been able to do the same.”

  “I could once. Not now. Evandar’s dead, and his lands destroyed, and I wouldn’t care to get lost in what remains, thank you very much.”

  “Well, to be honest, no more would I. So you knew about Evandar’s lands back then, did you?”

  “We knew Evandar. He and his people used to go back and forth twixt here and Lloegr, probably to cause as much trouble as possible in both worlds. I will say one good thing about that nasty little clot of ectoplasm. When he realized that we dragons were in danger, he offered to bring us to a new home. Little did I know that he’d someday trick me out of my true name! How like him!”

  Dallandra had heard her complain about Evandar so often that she saw no need to defend him, especially with more pressing matters in hand.

  “But surely Rori told you we were trying to find Haen Marn,” Dalla said. “You might have told him. Why didn’t you?”

  Arzosah squirmed, slapping her tail this way and that so viciously that cut grass sprayed up around it. Sidro took a few cautious steps back.

  “Why?” Dallandra repeated. “Tell me!”

  “Because of Angmar, of course. Do you think I don’t know that she’s my rival for Rori’s heart?” Arzosah’s tail arched up over her back, and she rose on her forefeet.

  Sidro screamed. Arzosah flopped back, then swung her head around to look at her.

  “Oh, do stop making that noise!” Arzosah returned to speaking with Dallandra. “I’m tempted to eat Angmar and put an end to her.”

  Dallandra drew herself up to full height. “Arzosah Sothy Lorez oh Haz!” She intoned the name with dweomer power behind every syllable. “By the power of your true name, I forbid you to do any such thing. I forbid you from bringing the least harm to Angmar, to her kin, to those who befriend her, to her island. I forbid you from threatening, frightening, or harassing them in any manner.”

  Arzosah whined like a kicked dog. Her head drooped almost to her paws. “So be it,” Arzosah said. “I hate it, but I shall obey.”

  “Good!” Dallandra paused to gather her breath and her wits. “Besides, as things stand now, she’s hardly a rival at all. What would she want with a dragon for a husband? She’s what? A bare hundredth of Rori’s size, and that’s just to begin with. How would she feed him? Where would he lair on her island?”

  “Oh.” Arzosah turned her head and clacked her jaws. Her tail twitched, but only at the tip. If ever a dragon could be embarrassed, it seemed she was. “Humph, here I’ve been vexing myself for naught.”

  Dallandra had been on the point of admitting that she might not be able to learn the proper dweomers to transform Rori back again, and that even if she did, she might not be able to work them. Just in time she realized that Rori had been keeping a secret of his own.

  “Now listen,” Dallandra said instead, “I thought you agreed with me that turning Rhodry into a dragon should never have happened. ”

  “Of course I do. But the blunder’s been made, and now that you’re healing that ghastly wound, and he’s sane again, why would I want Rori gone?”

  What’s she going to say? Dalla thought, if we do manage to turn Rhodry back again? Worse yet, what would Arzosah do? Dallandra vividly remembered the last time Arzosah thought she’d lost Rhodry, when she’d threatened to waken a sleeping fire mountain and destroy an entire town. Arzosah looked away, her ears still flat and sullen, but she tucked her tail around her haunches in a mannerly gesture
. I’ll have to forbid her to do every nasty thing I can think of, Dalla thought. And phrase everything exactly right, too.

  “Well and good, then,” Dallandra said. “We’d best get on the road. Sidro, you and I can talk more while we ride. If Laz is back, I hope he still has that crystal.”

  “He should have two of them,” Sidro said, “the white as well as the black.”

  “I’d forgotten about the white one,” Dalla said. “Arzosah, my thanks for your aid and protection, but remember what I said about Haen Marn.”

  “I have no choice but to remember.” The dragon hissed, but only briefly. “That wretched Evandar!”

  When they reached the Westfolk camp in the meadow below Cengarn, the journey ended for Dallandra and most of her traveling companions, including the dragons, but Branna accompanied Solla and little Penna up to the dun itself. As they rode through the streets of the town, everyone who saw them called out their best wishes to Lady Solla; the men bowed, the women curtsied. The town remembered her many acts of charity. At the gates of the dun, the guards greeted her as if she’d been the queen herself. They bowed low, they yelled for pages, they helped her dismount and murmured compliments the while. Branna only wished that Drwmigga could see and hear them.

  Though Drwmigga stayed elsewhere, Ridvar himself did come striding out of the main broch tower. For a long moment he and Solla stood face-to-face, considering each other.

  “You look well, Brother,” Solla said at last.

  “So do you, Sister.” Ridvar took a deep breath. “It gladdens my heart that you’re here. We never had a feast to celebrate your marriage. Once your lord’s recovered, I shall give one in your honor.”

  Solla smiled, nearly wept, snuffled back the tears, and smiled again. “I’d like that,” she said in a steady voice. “My thanks.”

  Ridvar managed to smile, then turned to a waiting page. “Help Lady Solla’s maidservant bring up her things,” the gwerbret said. “Blethry will tell you what chamber to put them in. Come in, Solla, come in. I’ll take you up to your lord.”

  Branna followed as they went in arm in arm. She was assuming that she’d find Neb in the same place as Gerran. Indeed, when Ridvar opened the door of an upstairs chamber for Solla, Neb came hurrying out. He’d put back some of the weight he’d lost, and he was grinning at her with the life back in his eyes. Branna rushed to his open arms.

  For the rest of that day, they talked but little. In the evening, however, after a meal that a page brought up to their chamber, they sat half-dressed on the bed and discussed Neb’s decision by candlelight.

  “It truly started with the plague in Trev Hael,” Neb said, “not that I could see it then. It’s the questions, Branni. I have so many! How does an illness spread so fast? I’ve read all the usual things about humors and corruptions and the like, but none of them ring true. Where did the cursed illness come from, anyway? Townsfolk began falling ill a few days after the big summer market fair, so some visitor might have brought somewhat, the seeds of the illness, or a poison—I don’t know. I thought mayhap the cause was bad air, but it was a lovely summer, that year, and the air was sweet.”

  “If you could find out,” Branna said, “it would be a grand thing. Do you remember Salamander telling us that our dweomer was the hope of the border?”

  “I do, truly. That’s one reason I was flogging myself to be as powerful as I could.”

  “If you could find the root of pestilence, wouldn’t that be powerful, too? I mean, what finally stopped the Horsekin, back when they destroyed the Westfolk cities, was the plague. What if they used a plague against us?”

  “True spoken.” Neb looked away, his eyes wide with remembered horror. “We’d better have shields in store against that kind of weapon. I doubt me if this particular bout came from them. How could it? But it was brutal enough as it was.”

  “Oh, it was that, sure enough, judging from everything you’ve told me. It’s no wonder you want to study healing.”

  “And so I do.” Neb was silent for a moment, looking away, his face slack with old grief. “Well,” he said briskly. “I know my wyrd, and truly, it’s such a relief, as if I’ve been ill myself. I envied you so much, you know, since you always knew yours.”

  “What?” Branna wondered whether to laugh or snarl at him. “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you’d gotten so far ahead of me.”

  “Here, what is this? Did you think we were running a race or suchlike?”

  He had the decency to blush.

  “All I know, my dearest darling,” Branna said with some asperity, “is that I’ve set my feet on the dweomer road. I have no idea where it’s leading me.”

  “Um, well, my apologies.”

  Neb got out of bed and began clearing away the remains of their meal like a page. You should be embarrassed, Branna thought. Still, as she considered the past few months, she realized that she might have shared her doubts with him. Both of us were putting on a good show for the other, she thought. Just like a pair of gerthddynion!

  Branna saw the actual gerthddyn in the dun later that evening, when she went with Neb to visit Gerran. While Neb discussed his patient with Solla, Branna sat on the windowsill, the only available seat in the crowded room, and watched the candle smoke drift past her and out to the warm night. They had been there some time when Salamander nudged the door open with his foot and walked in with an armload of Westfolk tunics, old ones, judging from the faded embroideries.

  “What are you going to do with those?” Branna asked him in Elvish.

  “Give them to Canna and her children.” Salamander nodded at the huddle of womenfolk sitting on the floor. “They can’t go on wearing those bloodstained clothes. She can cut these down for dresses and the like.”

  “I’d wondered about that, the poor woman!”

  Salamander handed over the clothing, spoke briefly with Canna, then gestured to Branna and left. She followed him out to the corridor, dark except for the wedge of candlelight through the open door.

  “I take it that you and Neb have talked?” Salamander said in Deverrian.

  “We have, truly. His decision seems like a sound one to me. But you know what’s odd? Now that he’s not trying to be Nevyn, he’s a lot more like my memories of Nevyn.”

  “No doubt! Have you ever tried to squeeze a handful of water?”

  “Of course not. It’ll run right through your fingers—oh! That’s your point, isn’t it?”

  “It is. The more Neb forced the issue, the more he failed.”

  “Well, I think he sees that now. I hope so.”

  “Good.” Salamander reached into his shirt and pulled out a silver message tube. “I need to go give this to the gwerbret. Just as I suspected, Grallezar extracted a great deal of information out of Gerran’s prisoner by sheer force of character alone. None of it is happy news, nor does it give me great hope for a peaceful future.” He tapped the palm of his other hand with the tip of the tube. “Nasty, in short. Roving companies of Horsekin warriors are traveling throughout the Northlands, gathering information, making raids along our border, all to some greater and foul purpose, which he doesn’t understand, alas. Sharak was only a young recruit. No one told him much, of course, and that’s the pity.”

  “True spoken.” Branna felt as if a cold wind had swept down the dark corridor. She shuddered and cast the feeling off. “But no one lives up in the Northlands, do they? I always heard that it was wilderness and little more.”

  “So did I, but if naught else, there’s Dwarveholt, and various merchants from various towns do go to trade with Lin Serr.” Salamander heaved a deep sigh and contemplated the message tube. “Anyway, since your husband’s become Gerran’s personal chirurgeon, I’ve been pressed into Dar’s service as scribe and messenger both.” He made her a bow. “And so, as much as it pains me to do honest work for my living, I must take my leave of you and go find Ridvar.”

&nbs
p; After Grallezar finished questioning Sharak, she asked Sidro to take him to Dallandra. While they stood beside Grallezar’s tent to talk, the exhausted boy knelt between them on the ground. In the flickering light from a campfire, his eyes were unreadable pools of shadow.

  “He told me that young Neb rewrapped his wrist and fingers,” Grallezar said in their own language. “I don’t know anything about the healer’s craft, so I’d like her to make sure he did it correctly. I need to go consult with the prince.”

  “Very well, I’ll be glad to take him,” Sidro said. “Sharak, come with me.”

  He stood up, but he kept his gaze fixed on the ground.

  “You look familiar,” Sidro said. “Do I know you?”

  “I’m from Taenbalapan.” He spoke so softly that she could barely hear him. “I saw you in the temple there, Holy One.”

  “I do remember. Your mother was very poor and came to us for charity. Is that why you enlisted so young? So she could draw your salary?”

  He nodded. “I’m the second son. It was the First Son’s duty to stay with Mother and my sisters.”

  “Well, she’ll have your death boon now,” Grallezar said. “No one’s going to know you’re still alive.”

  His mouth twitched in the beginning of a smile, but he continued studying the ground at his feet. Would his mother mourn him, the expendable extra son? Sidro wondered. No doubt the coin would ease any grief she felt.

  “You’re not really a slave, you know,” Sidro said. “You can look at me. No one keeps slaves among the Ancients.”

  He did look up then, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “You could even go back, if you wanted,” Sidro went on.

  “I don’t want to.” He clenched his good hand into a fist. “They’ve betrayed our goddess, killing women like that.”

  “Your goddess!” Grallezar snapped. “She never was mine. But that doesn’t matter now. Go along with Sidro, boy. I want to make sure that broken wrist’s going to heal.”