The Shadow Isle

‘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 hale 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 favour 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, but 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 worshipped 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. ‘Not one word can I read,’ she announced. ‘And the whole thing be writ in the same markings.’

‘So it looked to me,’ Laz said, ‘and it aches my heart, I tell you.’

‘No doubt. Here.’ She pushed the heavy book across the table towards him. ‘Mayhap if you sound out more of the marks, you might find a word or two you know. I do hope that somehow this book holds the dweomer to take us all home again, though I do have this strange feeling in my heart that it be naught of the sort.’

‘Let me take a look, then.’

Using his wrists rather than his damaged hands, Laz managed to turn the book right side up in front of him. Marnmara moved to sit next to him and turn the pages when he asked. As he sounded out letters from the syllabary, he did come across words he knew, most of them useless, such as ‘next’, ‘then’, ‘and’, ‘is’ and the like. Still, Marnmara watched him so admiringly that he kept going.

‘Turn all the way back to the first page,’ Laz said finally. ‘If you’d be so kind.’

Marnmara did as he asked.

On the top of that first page a line of symbols, larger than the rest, had been carefully painted in red. Laz sounded them out several times. Thanks to the Westfolk custom of putting dots between words to set them apart, he managed to form them up into something he could guess at.

‘Now this first word,’ he said, ‘is a verb of some kind. That is, it’s the name of an act, a thing you do. I can tell by this sound at the beginning. It stands for “keh” and that means an action follows.’

A wide-eyed Mara nodded, taking it all in.

‘And this sound at the end,’ he continued, ‘means “how” or “why” one does this action. Alas! I don’t know what the action is. However, I’m fairly sure this next word means “a dragon”, because that name sounds much the same in several tongues, drahkanonen among the Westfolk, draeg in Deverrian, and drakonis among the Bardekians.’

‘You most certainly be a scholar, Tirn. Here, I think me you should study this book for all of us. Maybe more will come to you if you do contemplate it.’

‘Mayhap. We can hope.’

‘I –’ Mara paused, then turned around. ‘Be it that you wish somewhat, Wynni?’

Berwynna stood in the doorway, where, Laz realized, she’d been listening for some while, not that he saw anything wrong with her doing so. Marnmara, however, rose, shutting the book with a puff of dust.

‘Come take this upstairs to Tirn’s chamber,’ Marnmara said. ‘He can carry it not himself.’

‘You might say please, truly, once in a while.’ Berwynna walked over to the table.

‘Oh don’t be tedious!’ Mara shoved the book at her. ‘Here!’

With a scowl Berwynna took the book, so heavy that she clasped it to her chest with both arms, and trotted over to the stairs. She hesitated, glancing back, at the foot of them as if she might speak further, then shrugged and went on up.

‘Little sneak!’ Mara said. ‘She always be listening and prowling around. Now. We’d best work on your hands before dinner. Rest here a moment. I be going to fetch the medicaments.’

Laz suppressed a sigh. He needed more than a moment to brace himself for what lay ahead. Before Marnmara went upstairs, she spoke briefly to Lonna, the aged maidservant, who merely nodded for answer. Lonna went to the hearth, poured water from a big clay jar into an iron pot, then set the pot in the coals to heat. By the time Marnmara returned, carrying a small cloth sack, the water was steaming. Lonna set it on the table in front of Laz, then stomped off, muttering to herself. Marnmara took a handful of herbs out of the sack and dropped them into the water.

‘Let that cool for a moment,’ she said.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘May I ask you somewhat?’

‘You may, though I might not answer.’

‘Fair enough. Where did you learn so much about healing?’

‘I don’t know.’ She paused for a smile at his surprise. ‘When I were but a child, Old Lonna did tell me of a few simples. She did know how to bind a small wound and such crude lore, too. But then, once I did grow into a woman, I did have a dream.’ She hesitated, considering him. ‘Here, Tirn, since you be a scholar, tell me what you do think of this. In the dream I did find a door dug into the dirt of Haen Marn, out among the apple trees, that were. I did open the door and go down the stairs within. At the bottom was another door. I did open that. Herbs came pouring out, a great flood of dried herbs. I did scream, thinking they would smother me, but I woke to find the blanket over my face.’ She laughed with a toss of her head. ‘But here be the strange thing. From that day on, I did know herblore.’

‘I’d say you remembered it. The door led to your memory of such things.’

‘From a life lived before, mean you? It could well be. I remember naught of this, but my mother does assure me that once before I was the lady of this isle. Avain did recognize me, Mam tells me, on the very day I was born.’ She looked at him with her head cocked a little to one side, and her eyes wide, as if she were expecting him to challenge or dismiss her tale.

‘I’d believe it of Avain,’ Laz said. ‘She’s got a dweomer air about her.’

Marnmara smiled, perhaps relieved that he’d accepted her tale so easily.

‘It’s a great honour,’ Laz said, ‘to have such gifts.’

‘That’s what my mam does say. I get a-weary of it.’

‘What? Why?’

‘The gods have blessed you, she does say, so you must repay them and use your gifts as they wish. If I be the Lady of Haen Marn, then I have many a burden to take up.’ Her voice turned unsteady. ‘Whether I wish to lift them or no.’

‘I see. Well, no doubt you’ll be given the strength when you need it.’

She scowled at the surface of the water, then shrugged, as if she’d hoped for a different answer. Laz wanted to ask more, but he hesitated, afraid she’d resent his prying. She touched the surface of the water in the kettle with one finger, then dipped her hand in.

‘Just cool enough,’ she said. ‘Here, stretch out your hands, Tirn. We’ll have the bandages off.’

Laz gritted his teeth and did as she asked. Her touch was so light that pulling off the thin cloth caused him no pain, but the sight – both his hands were a mass of shiny pink scars. On his left hand the little finger had burned down to a stub of scar tissue, permanently fastened to the finger next to it, both of them useless. On the right hand the last three fingers formed one throbbing mass that he’d lost the power to move. In between the remaining fingers, and between each thumb and the meat of his hands, the flesh oozed a clear fluid as if it wept for its loss.

‘They heal, they heal,’ Marnmara said. ‘But not yet can we leave them be. We’ll do the left hand first.’

Laz plunged his hand into the water. The herb brew stung the oozing wounds like a liquid fire at first, then numbed them, though not quite enough. Marnmara put her own hands in the kettle, caught his, and pried the good fingers apart, one pair at a time, deliberately cracking open the scars to keep the fingers free and usable. As he always did, he swore under his breath the entire time, running through every foul oath he knew in the Gel da’Thae language to keep from fainting and disgracing himself. The right hand took less time and caused him less pain than the left, but by the time she finished, his head was swimming, and the skin of his face felt ice-cold and damp, especially around his mouth.

Marnmara laid his hands on top of the bandages and considered them. A trace of blood oozed between each treated pair of fingers.

‘Not much blood,’ she announced. ‘We’ll leave these open to the air for now.’ She patted his right arm just above the wrist. ‘Go rest.’

‘Gladly.’ Laz got up, steadied himself, and forced out a smile. ‘My thanks.’

He felt like an old man, hunched and staggering, as he made his way across the hall and up the stairs. His small chamber, bare except for a mattress on the floor and a basket for the extra pieces of clothing the women had made him, stood near the head of the stairs. The dragon book lay on the floor by the basket. He went in, shut the door with a nudge of his foot, then lay down and crossed his arms at the wrist over his chest.

‘That’s done for another day,’ he remarked to the hands. ‘Ye gods, I should have listened to Sidro. Don’t, she said, don’t touch the crystals together. Sound advice, but did I listen? Oh no! Not that I should complain, I suppose. What was that my charming mother used to say? Walk behind a mule, and you deserve to get kicked, that’s it.’

The worst thing, he decided, was that he could no longer remember why he’d wanted to bring the crystals together. Obviously it had been a stupid idea, yet he’d felt compelled – the word caught his attention. Compelled. Had some wyrd-dweomer lain inside the pair, waiting for a victim to bring their tips together so they could transport themselves and victim both to this island?

If so, one of them had made the trip safely, though he’d lost the other. He wondered if they might transport him back if he brought them together again. They might take him elsewhere, of course, somewhere far less hospitable than Haen Marn, or burn off the rest of his hands even if he did end up back in the Northlands. He sat up and considered his maimed hands. The idea of trusting himself to the crystals again terrified him. Yet curiosity nagged. Where was the white one, anyway?

After Dougie’s strange vision of the other day, he’d had Marnmara remove the pouch with the crystal from around his neck and put it under the clothing in the basket, hidden from curious eyes. When he tried moving his fingers, he found that he could control them, though it hurt whenever they rubbed against one another. He was healing, indeed, and the thought made him almost cheerful. Carefully, slowly, painfully, he managed to tip the basket over, find the pouch, and shake the black crystal out onto his pillow. In the sunlight coming through the tiny window, it gleamed, but sullenly, or so it seemed to him.

‘I’ll wager you can tell me where your brother lies,’ Laz said.

Laz set the crystal upright and looked down into its tip. He saw nothing at first, then murky images formed – an expanse of brownish grey, a lump of something that might have been wood. Ripples shimmered in the murk. A long narrow head appeared, two tiny eyes, a row of teeth, a neck. The head drew back. A spray of bubbles covered everything. Laz could draw only one conclusion: the white crystal sat at the bottom of the lake, far and forever out of his reach.

‘Good! Rot, for all I care!’

Getting the obsidian crystal back into its pouch, and the pouch into the basket, made his hands throb. Throbbing or no, he decided to put the dragon book somewhere safe rather than leaving it on the floor where Berwynna had placed it. Lifting such a heavy thing – the thought itself pained him. He glanced at the book, then swore aloud.

Just above the cover hovered a thickening in the air. A sprite, perhaps, only half-materialized? Yet the thing had a glow to it that sprites lacked, and an abstract shape. He could discern a disc of some colour that lay just beyond the ordinary colours of the world, an icy lavender? No, stranger still. Was it a spirit at all or some odd vortex of force? He lay down on the mattress to consider it at eye level. As if it knew he studied it, the glow sank into the book and was gone.

Once perhaps Laz might have called to that spirit and inquired about its nature. Now he was afraid, quite simply afraid, to attempt even the most basic dweomer. What if he failed, what if he learned that the enormous power he’d treasured had deserted him? He’d been wounded by the pair of crystals, he realized, his confidence broken as badly as his hands. He’d done a rash, stupid thing that had resulted in the worst pain he’d ever suffered. Worse yet, though, was thinking that the crystals had somehow compelled him, had gained power over him. A sorcerer, are you? he told himself. A pitiful fool, more like! On a tide of such dark thoughts he eventually fell asleep.

Laz woke long after the dinner hour, when the manor of Haen Marn already lay wrapped in silence for the night. During his convalescence hunger had deserted him, not that he’d ever eaten much in any given day. When he sat up, he noticed that the dragon book was glowing again. Ice-white flames, tipped in a peculiar blue, danced on its surface. Spirits. He had to be seeing spirits of Aethyr, he realized, and of a rank far more powerful than any Wildfolk.

‘I want that thing out of here!’

The glow disappeared. They had heard him. He felt sick, not with physical pain, but with shame that he’d turned into a coward. He got up and walked over to the window. Outside the night lay clear and still. Moonlight streaked the water of the loch with an illusory road, heading west. If only I could run along that back to the Northlands! Laz thought. Or if I could fly. He decided that the time had come for him to cast his cowardice aside and see what he could – or could not – do. It’s the only way you’ll ever heal, he told himself.

He stripped off his clothes with some difficulty, then stood naked at the window. When he called it forth, the mental image of the raven came to him. He worked with it, imagining the details of wing and head, until it seemed to live apart from his working as it stood on the windowsill. With a snap of will, he transferred his consciousness over to it. There he had an unexpected struggle, but at last it seemed that he looked out from the bird’s eyes at his body, slumped as if asleep on the floor.

Now came the hardest step, drawing the physical substance of his body into this new form. Once the process had come easily to him. That night he tried three times and failed at every attempt. No matter how hard he concentrated, how carefully he recited the working, his stubborn lump of flesh stayed where it was, and the raven remained an image, a body of light, only. His mind kept slipping back, as well. At one moment he would be looking out of the raven’s eyes; at the next, he’d be seeing the strip of wall in front of his body. Finally he realized that his body was panting for breath and dripping with sweat. He withdrew the raven image from the windowsill, banished it with the proper seal, and sat up, turning to lean against the wall while he let his breathing slow to normal.

‘Squittering shits!’ he said in the Gel da’Thae tongue. They were the only words that seemed appropriate.

Once he felt steady again, he got up and struggled back into his clothes. Why oh why didn’t I listen to Sisi? The question was going to torment him for the rest of his life.

Moving as quietly as he could, he went downstairs and out to the cooler air of the apple grove. White blossoms hung thick on the branches like trapped moonlight. That morning the trees had barely begun to bud. He stared at the blossoms while his heart pounded in terror.

‘How long did I sleep?’ he whispered.

‘Naught but a few hours,’ Marnmara said from behind him. ‘Time on Haen Marn runs at its own pace.’

Laz spun around to find her holding up a pierced-tin lantern. He could see her smiling in its dappled light.

‘You’ve not been here long, Tirn,’ Marnmara continued. ‘The island still has tricks to show you.’

‘So it seems. No wonder my hands are healing so quickly.’

‘That may be so, indeed.’

‘May I ask you a question? Where are we? How does this island move itself?’

‘As to the first, we be in a land called Alban. As to the second, I know not, nor do I know which is its true dwelling place. If we could return to the land that you and my mam call home, then mayhap I would know. My own dweomer should kindle then, like a flame shielded from the wind.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It be weak, here.’

‘What makes you think I have dweomer?’

‘Oh come now!’ She laughed aloud. ‘Did you not send the dragon book to my chamber just now?’

‘I – uh –’ Laz felt his face burn with a blush that, he hoped, the darkness would cover. Had the spirits taken his words as a command? Or had he merely hurt their tender feelings? Spirits could be extremely touchy. He had no idea which it was, although he wasn’t about to admit his ignorance. ‘So, the spell worked, did it?’

‘It did. The book did appear on white wings and settle onto a coffer in my chamber. So I did put it safely away inside.’

‘I thought it would be best if you kept it with you.’

‘Well and good, then.’ She hesitated briefly. ‘Oft have you told me you wished to make some repayment for my healing.’

‘I do, truly, if there’s aught of mine that you’d want.’

‘You know dweomer, don’t you? Teach me some.’

‘I could do that, certainly. But you must have knowledge of your own.’