The Silver Mage

THESILVER MAGE

BOOK SEVEN OF THEDRAGON MAGE

KATHARINE KERR

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers

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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Copyright © Katharine Kerr 2009

Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007287369

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007301935

Version: 2014-08-04

DEDICATION

For Howard First, Last, and Always

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: The Northlands Summer, 1160

Part I: The Northlands Autumn

Part II: The Northlands Summer, 1160

Epilogue: The Westlands Autumn, 1160

Keep Reading

Author’s Note

Glossary

A Note on Dating

Table of Incarnations

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The Northlands Summer, 1160

The serpent of Time winds itself about the cross of Matter. Some say it has seven heads, some only three, but the difference counts for little. It is the body of the serpent, not the head, that crushes its prey.

The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

Death had turned Dougie’s hair white and his flesh translucent. In the darkness he glowed with a faint silvery light as he stood smiling at Berwynna.

‘Remember me, lass,’ he said in the language of Alban, ‘but live your life, too. I loved you enough to wish you every happiness. Find a new man.’

‘I don’t want to,’ Berwynna said. ‘The only thing I want is for you to come back to me.’

‘This is as far back as I can come, just up to this side of dying. Wynni, live your life!’

He vanished.

Berwynna screamed and sat up, scattering blankets. She found herself in a round tent so unfamiliar that for a moment she thought she still dreamt. The Ancients, she reminded herself. I’m safe among the Ancients, but Dougie’s dead. The first light of dawn fell like a grey pillar through the smoke hole in the centre of the roof. Across from her, on the far side of the tent, a bundle of blankets stirred and yawned. Uncle Mic sat up and peered at her through the uncertain light.

‘Are you all right?’ he said in Dwarvish. ‘Did you make some sort of a sound just now?’

‘I was dreaming,’ she said. ‘In the dream I saw Dougie, and when he disappeared, I screamed.’

‘Ai, my poor little niece!’ Mic paused to rub his face with both hands and yawn prodigiously. ‘It sounded like a moan, here in the waking world.’

‘That would fit, too.’

Mic let his hands fall into his lap. From outside came the noises of a camp stirring awake – dogs barking, people talking in an unfamiliar language, occasionally a child crying or calling out. Distantly a horse whinnied, and mules brayed in answer.

‘We might as well get up,’ Berwynna said.

‘Indeed, and I wouldn’t mind a bit of breakfast, either.’

They’d both slept dressed. Mic pulled on his boots, then got up and left the tent. Berwynna busied herself with rolling up their bedrolls.

‘Berwynna?’ Dallandra pulled back the tent flap and came in. ‘You’re awake, then?’

‘I am, my lady.’

‘There’s no need to call me lady,’ Dallandra said with a smile. ‘I wanted to tell you that your father’s flown off to scout the Northlands. He asked me to give you his love and to tell you he’ll be back again as soon as he can.’

‘My thanks.’ Berwynna bit her lip in disappointment. ‘I’d wanted to say farewell.’

‘Dragons come and go as they please, not as we want, I’m afraid. He also told me about the lost dragon book.’

Berwynna winced. Dallandra sat down opposite her. In the pale light from the rising dawn, she seemed made of silver, with her ash blonde hair, steel grey eyes, and her pale skin, so unexpected in a person who lived most of her life out of doors. Silver or mayhap steel, Berwynna thought, like the pictures on the doors of Lin Serr.

‘In a moment I’ll have to go tend the wounded men,’ Dallandra said. ‘But I wanted to ask you about the book. You’ve seen it, I take it.’

‘I have,’ Berwynna said. ‘Not that I were able to read a word of it, mind. Laz, he did say that it be written in the language of the Ancients, your language, that be.’

‘It was written, then, in letters?’

‘Be not all books written so?’

‘They are, truly.’ Dallandra smiled at her. ‘But some also have pictures in them.’

‘I never did see such, but then, my sister wouldn’t be allowing me to turn its pages, and no doubt she were right about that, too. What little I did see did look to me much like the carvings on our walls.’

‘The what?’

‘Forgive me.’ Berwynna smiled briefly. ‘I do forget you’ve not seen Haen Marn. In the great hall, the walls, they be of wood, and there be carvings all over them, letters and such, I do suppose them to be. Laz, he did call some of them sigils, whatever those may be.’

‘They’re a particular type of sign, a mark that stands for the name of a thing or a place or suchlike.’ Dallandra paused. ‘Well, that will do as an explanation, though it’s not a very good one.’

‘’Twill do for me, truly. But the book, it were such a magical thing. It does ache my heart that I had somewhat to do with the losing of it.’

‘No one’s blaming you, Wynni. Try not to blame yourself. You’re exhausted, you’re mourning your betrothed, and every little thing’s going to weigh upon you now. One of these days your mind will be clearer, and you’ll be better able to judge what happened.’

‘I’ll hope that be true.’

‘It is true. I lost a man I loved very much, and I thought at the time that I’d mourn him all my life. In time, I laid my mourning aside and found another love. So I know how you must feel.’

‘You must, truly.’ For the first time since Dougie’s death, Berwynna felt – not hope, precisely, but a rational thought, that one day hope would come. ‘My thanks for the telling of this.’

‘You’re most welcome.’ Dallandra reached over and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Now, about the book, though, I’d like to know how large it was, how thick, how many pages.’

‘As to the pages, well, now, I be not sure of that. It were a great heavy thing –’ Berwynna stopped, struck by a sudden realization. ‘At least, it were at first, when Dougie did bring it to Haen Marn. But it did shrink.’

‘It what?’

‘I did carry it once on Haen Marn, and it were so heavy that there were a need on me to clasp it in both arms.’ Berwynna demonstrated by holding her empty arms out in front of her. ‘But when I did take it from the island, it did fit most haply in one of my saddlebags.’

‘That’s extremely interesting.’

‘Laz did talk of guardian spirits. Think you they do have the power to change it – oh, that sounds so daft!’

‘Not daft at all. That’s exactly what I think must have happened. A person with very powerful dweomer made that book.’ Dallandra got up, stretching her back as if it pained her. ‘My apologies, but I truly do have to go now. Your uncle should be here with your breakfast in a moment, but please, feel free to leave this tent. Come out whenever you’re ready. This will be your first day in a Westfolk alar, so everything’s going to seem strange to you, but your other uncle – Ebañy, his name is – will be glad to introduce you around.’

‘My thanks.’ Berwynna rose and joined her. ‘Be there any help I may give you?’

‘Not needed. I have apprentices.’ Dallandra cocked her head to one side to listen. ‘Ah, here’s Mic now.’ She strode over and held the tent flap open.

‘My thanks,’ Mic said as he ducked inside. He was carrying a basket in one hand and a pottery bowl in the other. ‘Bread and soft cheese, Wynni.’

Berwynna took the bowl from him. When she glanced around, Dallandra had already gone, slipping out in silence.

Dallandra found Neb and Ranadario at work in the big tent that the alar had allocated to its healers. Ranadario was explaining how to bandage a bad wound on the upper arm of one of the Cerr Cawnen men while Neb listened, his head cocked a little to one side as if he were afraid that her words would evade him. Their patient, a beefy blond fellow with the odd name of Hound, kept his eyes shut tight and panted in pain. The wound had cut deep into the side of his upper arm, missing the largest blood vessels but severing muscles and tendons. Dallandra doubted that he’d ever be able to use the arm properly again.

‘Ranadario,’ Dallandra said in Deverrian. ‘Did you give him willow water to drink?’

‘I did, Wise One,’ Ranadario said. ‘This cut is healing so slowly, though.’

Hound opened his eyes and stared at her. His breathing turned ragged, and Neb laid a hand on his unwounded shoulder to steady him.

‘Not slowly for a child of Aethyr.’ Dalla paused for a quick smile to reassure him. ‘It’s doing as well as we can expect. Don’t you worry, now. It’ll heal up soon.’

Hound returned the smile, then shut his eyes again.

With her apprentices to help her, Dallandra tended the wounds of the two Cerr Cawnen men and did what she hoped was right for the wounds of the others, four of them Horsekin and one a half-blood fellow. Since those who’d sustained the worst cuts in the fight to save the caravan had all died during their journey south, she could be fairly confident that those who’d lived to reach her would recover.

When she left the tent, Neb followed her with his fat-bellied yellow gnome trailing after. For a moment he merely looked up at the sky as if he were expecting rain. The gnome kicked him hard in the nearer shin.

‘Dalla,’ Neb said, ‘I owe you an apology.’

The gnome grinned and vanished.

‘You do, truly.’ She kept her voice gentle. ‘I wondered when it would come.’

‘Pride’s an infection in itself.’ He was studying the ground between them. ‘I should have spoken before this. I never should have tried to ride away like that.’

‘Well, it’s not like you’re the only man or woman either to kick like a balky horse during training. It’s a common enough stage in the apprenticeship, especially among the lads.’

Neb winced, his shoulders a little high, as if he expected a blow. ‘Common, is it?’ His voice choked on the words.

‘Very, actually.’ Dallandra felt genuinely sorry for his humiliation, but he’d earned every moment of it. ‘I take it you’re no longer so confused. Your decision about becoming a healer who incorporates dweomer into his work is a truly good one.’

At that he looked up again.

‘Now, I’m a healer, certainly,’ Dallandra continued, ‘but it’s only a craft for me. You’re hoping to try somewhat new.’

‘Hoping is about right. I don’t know if I can or not.’

‘No more do I, but I wager you’ll succeed. At this stage you’ve got to learn both crafts down to the last jot.’

‘I know that now.’ Neb’s voice rang with sincerity. ‘And I promise you that I’ll gather every scrap of knowledge that I possibly can.’

‘Good! That’s all anyone can ask of you. Now we’d both best clean up. I’ve got gore all over my hands, and your tunic is a fearsome sight.’

Dallandra had just finished washing her blood-stained hands in a bucket of water when one of the Cerr Cawnen men walked over, another beefy blond with narrow blue eyes, a common type among the Rhiddaer men, who were descended from the northern tribes of ‘Old Ones’, as the original inhabitants of the Deverrian lands used to be known. This particular fellow introduced himself as Richt, the caravan master.

‘You do have all my thanks, Wise One,’ he said, ‘for the aid you and your people do give me and my men. I would gift you with somewhat of dwarven work. It be a trinket I did trade for in Lin Serr.’ From the pocket of his brigga he brought out a leather pouch.

‘I don’t need any payment, truly,’ Dallandra began, then stopped when he shook a pendant out of the pouch onto his broad palm. ‘That’s very beautiful.’

‘As you are, and I would beg you to take it.’

The pendant hung by a loop from a fine silver chain. Two silver dragons twined around a circle of gems, set in silver. The jeweller had arranged three petal-shaped slices of moonstone and three of turquoise around a central sapphire.

‘Are you sure you want to part with this?’ Dallandra said.

‘I be sure that I wish you to have it.’ Richt smiled, a little shyly.

‘Then you have my profound thanks.’

When Dallandra held out her hand, he passed the pendant over, then bobbed his head in respect and walked away. The more she studied the pendant, the happier she was that she’d accepted the gift. Rarely did she like jewellery enough to wear any of it, but this particular piece made her think of the moon and its magical tides. A bevy of sprites materialized in the air and hovered close to look at it. She could hear their little cries of delight, a sound much like the rustling of fine silks.

‘Who gave you that?’ a normal elven voice said.

Dallandra looked up to see Calonderiel watching her with his arms crossed over his chest.

‘The caravan master,’ she said. ‘In thanks for tending his wounded men. He told me it’s dwarven work.’

‘Oh.’ Cal relaxed with a smile. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Thus, it suits you.’

‘Shall I put it on?’

‘Please do.’

The pendant hung just below Dallandra’s collarbone. As it touched the magical nexus at that spot, she felt emanations.

‘There’s dweomer on this piece,’ she said to Cal. ‘I’m not sure what, though. I’ll have to show it to Val later.’

‘Maybe you’d better show it to her now. Are you sure it’s safe to wear it?’

‘Yes, actually. Cal, you sound so worried.’

‘I keep thinking about the spell over Rori.’ He paused, glancing away, biting his lower lip. ‘And how dangerous it’s going to be to lift. I’ve got suspicious of everything dweomer, I guess.’

‘Reversing the spell may not be dangerous at all. We don’t know that.’

Cal did his best to smile. ‘If it turns out to be dangerous, then,’ he said, ‘warn me.’

‘I will, I promise. I’ve been thinking about what happened to Evandar. He wasn’t incarnate, don’t forget, which meant there was nothing truly solid about him. He could appear to have a body, but at root he was nothing but pure spirit, pure vital force. After he drained himself of most of that power, there was nothing left for him to fall back on, as it were.’

‘Ah.’ Cal paused, visibly thinking this through. ‘I do see what you mean. But I’ve heard you talk of the – what did you call that? the rule of compensation or suchlike.’

‘The law of compensation, yes. Any great pouring out of dweomer force is going to have an equal reaction of some kind. The problem is knowing what it will be.’ Dallandra smiled briefly. ‘I may never be able to fly in my own bird form again. That’s my best guess.’

‘You’re willing to do that?’

‘Flying comes in handy, but it doesn’t mean a great deal to me any more. I have you, I have our child, and the ground seems like a very pleasant place to be.’

He smiled so softly, so warmly, that she felt as if she’d worked some mighty act of magic.

‘I do love you,’ he said. ‘I’m terrified of losing you.’

‘Don’t worry, and don’t forget, I’ll have a great deal of help – Val, Grallezar, Branna, and for all I know, the lass on Haen Marn knows enough to take part in whatever the ritual is.’

‘That’s right! I tend to forget about them. It’s not like you’ll be fighting this battle by yourself.’

Dallandra smiled and said nothing more. At the very beginning of a ritual she always asked that any harm it might evoke would fall upon her alone, but that Cal didn’t need to know.

‘I’m not just worrying for my own sake and for Dari’s,’ Cal went on. ‘If you –’ he hesitated briefly ‘– went away, what would happen to the changelings?’

‘There are other dweomer workers. Look at Sidro. She’s amazingly patient with those poor little souls, much more than I can be.’

‘True.’ He suddenly smiled. ‘Oh very well, I’m truly worried if I can forget things like that. I’ll do my best to stop, but I make no promises.’

Richt and his gift reminded Dallandra that she had an extremely unpleasant task ahead of her, telling her fellow dweomermaster in Cerr Cawnen about the fate of the caravan. As she went to her tent for privacy, she wondered if Niffa might already know, since Niffa had lost a great-nephew in that attack. The plight of bloodkin had a way of reaching a dweomermaster’s mind. Indeed, as soon as Dallandra contacted her, she could feel Niffa’s grief, as strong as a drench of sudden rain.

‘My heart aches for your loss,’ Dallandra said.

‘My thanks,’ Niffa said. ‘Jahdo’s the one who’s suffering the more, alas. Aethel was always his favourite grandchild.’

Dallandra let a wordless sympathy flood out from her mind. Niffa’s image, floating in a shaft of dusty sunlight, displayed tears in her dark eyes. Her pale silver hair hung dishevelled around her face, a sign of mourning.

‘The men who’ve survived this long are likely to live,’ Dallandra said. ‘I just tended them and spoke with Richt. They won’t be able to get back on the road for some while, though.’

‘My thanks for the telling. With my mind so troubled, it’s been a hard task to focus upon their images and read such things from them.’

‘No doubt! Here, I’ll let you go now. I’ll contact you again to let you know how they’re faring.’

Niffa managed a faint smile, then broke the link between them.

Just as Dallandra got up to leave, Sidro brought her the baby to nurse. They sat together, discussing the changeling children, until little Dari fell asleep. Dallandra settled the baby in the leather sling-cradle hanging in the curve of the tent wall. Westfolk infants sleep more or less upright, settled on beds of fresh-pulled grass, rather than wearing swaddling bands as we Deverry folk wrap our babies.

‘I was just going to talk with Valandario,’ Dallandra said. ‘Do you think you could watch the baby for me?’

‘Gladly, Wise One,’ Sidro said. ‘I’ll take her with me to my tent, if that pleases you.’

‘It does, and my thanks. Ah, here’s Val now! I thought she might have heard me thinking about her.’

Val had, indeed. After Sidro left them, they spoke in Elvish. Valandario exclaimed over the pendant when Dallandra handed it to her, rubbed it between her fingers, and pronounced the dweomer upon it safe enough to wear.

‘Someone’s turned it into a talisman to attract good health, is all.’ Val handed it back. ‘Huh, and the dwarves claim they don’t believe in dweomer!’

‘Probably one of the women did the enchanting.’

‘I suppose so.’ Valandario settled herself on a leather cushion. ‘I’ve been thinking about the dragon book, and I don’t understand how Evandar could have written it. He couldn’t read and write, could he?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘What? The subject never came up in all those hundreds of years?’

‘There’s something you don’t understand. Hundreds of years passed in this world, yes. For me it was only a couple of long summers with barely a winter in between. That first time when I went to Evandar’s country, I thought I’d spent perhaps a fortnight away.’

Valandario pursed her lips as if she were clamping them shut.

‘Don’t you believe me?’ Dallandra went on.

‘Of course I do.’ Val stayed silent for a moment more, then let the words burst out. ‘But how could you love a man who’d trick you that way? He trapped you in his little world, and by the Star Goddesses themselves, the grief he caused in this one!’

‘Tricked me?’ Dallandra found that words had deserted her. She sat down opposite Val, who apparently mistook her silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ Val said. ‘A thousand apologies.’

‘No, no, no need.’ Dallandra managed to find a few words. ‘I’d never – I don’t think I ever thought of it – of him – that way before.’

‘As what? A trickster? He had to be the consummate trickster, the absolute king of them all, from everything I know about him. This book – it’s another of his tricks, isn’t it? Like the rose ring and the black crystal. I hope it’s the last of the bad lot.’

‘Well, so do I.’

The silence hung there, icy in the pale silver light. Abruptly Val flung one hand in the air. The dweomer light above them changed to a warmer gold.

‘About the book,’ Val said. ‘So Evandar could have written it.’

‘Yes, perhaps he might have.’ Dallandra let out her breath in a long sigh. ‘Though it seems like it would have taken a long time, just from its size, I mean, and he had so little patience.’

Valandario quirked an eyebrow. Dallandra kept silent.

‘What about the archives in the Southern Isles?’ Val went on. ‘Could it be a copy of something there?’

‘I had hopes that way, but no,’ Dallandra said. ‘Meranaldar was a librarian there, you know, and he knew every single volume that survived the Great Burning. Before he left last autumn, I asked him about the book that Ebañy saw in the crystal. He didn’t recognize it, and yes, he remembered all the covers of the books, too.’

‘He would.’ Valandario grinned at her. ‘But boring or not, he was a useful sort of man to know. You were already wondering, last summer, if the book contained dragon lore, too.’

‘So I was. He told me that the only dragon lore they had was the occasional comment or passage in books about other things.’

‘Didn’t you say that Jill had books from the Southern Isles?’

‘Yes, and when she died, Evandar reclaimed them. Meranaldar told me that he brought them back to the archive. I’ve got her other books, and the only dragon lore in them is what she wrote in the margins.’

‘So much for that, then. Now, what about Laz’s book, his copy of the Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll? It has such a similar cover. Sidro told me that he bought it already bound but with blank pages up in Taenbalapan. Do you suppose the dragon book came from there, too?’