Kitabı oxu: «The Shadow Isle»

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Prologue: In a Far Country

Part I: The Westlands Spring, 1160

Part II: The Northlands Spring, 1160

Part III: The Northlands Summer, 1160

Keep Reading

Glossary

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Despite what you may have heard or read elsewhere, The Shadow Isle is not the last book in the Deverry sequence. It is, however, the beginning of the end, Part I of the last Deverry book, as it were. The true end will be published soon as The Silver Mage, also from HarperCollins.

PROLOGUE

In a Far Country

You say that the three Mothers of All Roads run tangled beyond your power to map them. Why then would you ask to travel the seven Rivers of Time? Their braiding lies beyond even the understanding of the Great Ones, so be ye warned and stay safely upon their banks.

The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

Laz woke to darkness and noise. Gongs clanged, men shouted. Not one word made sense to him, and no more did the sound of water lapping and splashing. He could smell nothing but water. Pain – his hands burned, but the rest of him felt cold, soaked through, he realized suddenly, sopping wet. How his hands could burn when he was sopping wet lay beyond him. The gongs came closer, louder. Waves lifted him and splashed him back down. Floating, he thought. I’m floating on water.

The shouting came from right over his head. Hands suddenly grabbed him, hauled, lifted him into the air while the shouting and the gongs clamoured all around. Hands laid him down again on something hard that rocked from side to side. The shouting stopped, but the gongs clanged on and on. Through the sound of gongs he heard a dark voice speaking. Not one word of it!

The voice tried yet another incomprehensible language, then a third. ‘Here, lad, speak you this tongue?’

Lijik Ganda, he thought. Just my luck. ‘I do,’ Laz said aloud. ‘A bit, anyway.’

‘Splendid! Who are you?’

‘I don’t know.’ Laz put panic into his voice. ‘I don’t remember. Where are we? Why is it so dark?’

‘It’s not dark, lad. There’s a lantern shining right into your face.’

‘I’m blind? I don’t remember being blind.’

Voices murmured in one of the languages he couldn’t understand. Someone patted his shoulder as if trying to comfort him. The rocking continued, the splashing and the gongs.

‘Here!’ Laz said. ‘Are we on a boat?’

‘We are, and heading for the island. Just rest, lad. The ladies of the isle know a fair bit about healing. It may be that they can do somewhat about your eyes, I don’t know. I’d wager high that they can heal your hands at the very least.’

‘They do pain me.’

‘No doubt! Black as pitch, they are. You just rest. We’re coming up to the pier.’

‘My thanks. Did you save my life?’

‘Most likely.’ The voice broke into a wry laugh. ‘The beasts of the lake nearly got a meal out of you.’

Beasts. Lake. Blind. None of it made sense. He fainted.

Laz woke next to light, only a faint fuzzy reddish glow, but light nonetheless. Most of him felt dry and warm, but his burning hands lay in water, and water dripped over his face. The scent of mixed herbs overwhelmed him; he could smell nothing beyond plant matter and spices. He could hear, however, women talking. Two women, he realized, though he understood not one word of what they were saying. The pain in his left hand suddenly eased. A woman laughed and spoke a few triumphant words, then lifted the hand out of the water and laid it down on something dry and soft.

‘I think me he wakes,’ the other woman said in Deverrian.

‘I do,’ Laz said.

‘Good,’ Woman the First said, ‘but there be a need on you to stay quiet till we get the burnt skin free from your right hand.’

‘Is it that you see light?’ Woman the Second said.

‘Some, truly.’

‘Try opening your eyes.’

With some effort – his lids seemed stuck together with pitch – he did. What he saw danced and swam. Slowly the motion stopped. The view looked strangely blurred and smeared, but he could distinguish shapes at a distance and objects nearby. In a pool of lantern light two women leaned over him, one with grey-streaked yellow hair and a tired face, and one young with hair as dark as a raven’s wing and cornflower-blue eyes.

‘My name be Marnmara.’ The young woman pointed at her elder. ‘This be Angmar, my mam. The boatmen tell me you remember not your own name.’

Laz considered what to say. He’d not wanted to tell the boatmen his name until he knew more about them, but these women were doing their best to heal him. He owed them the courtesy of a better lie. ‘I didn’t, not right then, but it’s Tirn. I think I have a second name, too, but I can’t seem to remember it.’

‘There be no surprise on me for that,’ Marnmara said. ‘Whatever you did endure, it were a great bad thing.’

He started to lift his left hand to look at it, but Angmar grabbed his elbow and pinned it to the bed. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It be not a pleasant sight, with you so burned and all.’

‘Burned.’ He formed the words carefully. ‘How badly?’

Angmar looked at her daughter and quirked an eyebrow.

‘I doubt me if you’ll have the use of all your fingers,’ Marnmara said. ‘But mayhap we can free the thumb and one other. The right hand’s a bit better, I think me. Mayhap we can free two and the thumb.’

‘Free them? From what?’

‘Scars. They might grow together.’

Panic struck him. Will I be able to fly again? The one question he didn’t dare ask was the only question in the world that mattered.

‘Why is the pain gone?’ he asked instead.

‘The herbs,’ Marnmara said. ‘But the healing, it’ll not be easy.’

‘It’s very kind of you to help me.’

‘I will heal any hurt that I ken how to heal,’ Marnmara said. ‘Such was my vow.’

‘We have your black gem.’ Angmar held up something shiny. ‘Fret not about it.’

‘My thanks.’ Dimly he remembered that he once had owned a pair. ‘Not the white one? I carried a gem in each hand.’

‘The boatmen did find this one clutched in your left hand. Your right hand trailed open in the water. I think me the other be at the bottom of the lake by now.’

‘So be it, then.’

He realized that he could now see Angmar more clearly. Whether because of the herbs or time passing, his eyes were clearing. What had blinded him? The flash of light. He remembered the pure white flash and the sensation of falling a long, long way down. Why didn’t I listen to Sisi? For that he had no answer.

Angmar glanced at her hands, flecked with black. Marnmara picked up a rag from the bed on which he lay and offered it to her mother, who began to wipe her fingers clean.

‘Those cinders are bits of me,’ Laz said.

‘I fear me they are.’ Angmar cocked her head to one side and studied his face. ‘Need you to vomit? I’ve a basin right here.’

Instead he fainted again.

‘I hear that the island witches have a new demon,’ Diarmuid the Brewer said. ‘Maybe he’s that snake-eyed lass’s sweetheart, eh?’

‘They’re not witches,’ Dougie said. ‘Avain’s not a demon, just a mooncalf. And how many times now have I told you all that?’

‘Talk all you want, lad. You’re blind to the truth because of the young one. A pretty thing, Berwynna, truly.’

‘But treacherous nonetheless,’ Father Colm broke in. ‘Never forget that about witches. Fair of face, foul of soul.’

Dougie felt an all too familiar urge to throw the contents of his tankard into the holy man’s face. As for Diarmuid, he wasn’t in the least holy, merely too old to challenge to a fight. Dougie calmed himself with a long swallow of ale. Father Colm set his tankard down on the ground, then pulled the skirts of his brown cassock up to his knees, exposing hairy legs and sandalled feet.

‘Hot today,’ the priest remarked.

‘It is that, truly,’ Diarmuid said.

In the spring sun, the three of them were sitting outside the tumbledown shack that did the village as a tavern. Since most of the local people were crofters who lived out on the land, four slate-roofed stone cottages and a covered well made up the entire village. It was more green than grey, though, with kitchen gardens and a grassy commons for the long-horned shaggy milk cows. From where he sat, Dougie could see the only impressive building for miles around, Lord Douglas’s dun, looming off to the west on a low hill.

‘If this new fellow’s not a demon,’ Diarmuid started in again, ‘then who is he, eh?’

‘He doesn’t remember much beyond his name,’ Dougie said. ‘It’s as simple as that. Tirn, he calls himself. Some traveller who ended up in the lake, that’s all.’

‘Burnt a fair bit, and him with unholy sigils all over his face? Hah!’ Father Colm hauled himself up from the rickety bench. ‘Now, frankly, I don’t think he’s a demon. I think he’s a warlock who was trying to raise a demon and paid for his sinful folly. Speaking of paying –’ He laid a hand on the leather wallet hanging from his rope belt.

‘Nah, nah, nah, Father,’ Diarmuid said. ‘Just say a prayer for me.’

‘I will do that.’ Colm fixed him with a gooseberry eye. ‘For a fair many reasons.’

With a wave the priest waddled off down the dirt road in the direction of Lord Douglas’s dun and chapel. Diarmuid leaned back against the wall of the shed and watched the chickens pecking around his feet. Dougie had stopped by the old man’s on his way to Haen Marn to hear what the local gossips were saying – plenty, apparently. Diarmuid waited until the priest had got out of earshot before he spoke.

‘Well, now, lad, you’ve seen this fellow, haven’t you? Do you think he’s a demon?’

‘I do not, as indeed our priest said, too. He must be a foreigner, is all, and most likely from Angmar’s home country.’

‘Imph.’ Diarmuid sucked the stumps that had once been his front teeth in thought. ‘Well, one of these days Father Colm’s going to work his lordship around to burning these witches, and that will be that. I’m surprised he’s not done it already.’ Diarmuid spoke casually, but he was looking sideways at Dougie out of one rheumy eye.

‘It’s Mic’s hard coin,’ Dougie said. ‘Who else around here can pay his taxes in anything but kind? A silver penny a year the jeweller gives over, and that buys my Gran a fine warhorse for one of his men.’

‘Well now, you’ve got a point there. The village folk keep wondering, though, if his lordship holds his hand because of your mother.’

‘Are you implying that my mother’s a witch?’ Dougie rose from the bench and laid his free hand on his sword hilt.

‘What?’ Diarmuid nearly dropped his tankard. ‘Naught of the sort, lad! Now, hold your water, like! All I meant was that she’s the lordship’s daughter, and you’re her son, and there’s Berwynna, and uh well er …’ He ran out of words and breath both.

Dougie put his half-full tankard down on the bench.

‘I’ll just be getting on,’ Dougie said. ‘You can finish that if you’d like.’

Dougie strode out of the yard and slammed the rickety gate behind him for good measure. Although he owned a horse, he’d left him behind at the steading. Still glowering, he set out on foot for Haen Marn.

Dougie had good reason to be touchy on the subject of witchcraft. All his young life he’d overheard rumours about his mother and father. In the impoverished loch country of northern Alban, the steading of Domnal Breich and his wife, Jehan, had flourished into a marvel. Every spring their milk cows gave birth to healthy calves, and their ewes had twins more often than not. In the summer their oats and barley stood high; their apple trees bowed under the weight of fruit. When Domnal went fishing he’d bring home a full net every single time.

Some neighbours grumbled that Domnal must have made a pact with the Devil. As those things will, the grumbling had spread, but not as far as you might think, because Jehan was the local lord’s daughter. Lord Douglas, whose name Dougie bore, disliked nasty talk about his kin. No one cared to have their gossip silenced by a hangman’s noose.

The gossip had transferred itself to the mysterious women on the island to the north of Lord Douglas’s lands. Lady Angmar – everyone assumed she was of high birth because she had dwarves in her household – and her twin daughters had spawned ten times the gossip that Domnal and Jehan ever had. Partisan though he was, Dougie could understand why the folk spoke of demons and witchery. The women and their island had turned up some seventeen winters ago, in the year before he’d been born. The older people around remembered its location as a wide spot in a burn, not a loch at all, but when the island arrived, one winter night, it brought its own water with it.

Witchcraft – a house, island, and loch appearing like that out of nowhere! ‘All the way from Cymru they came in the blink of an eye,’ the old people said, ‘and they must have come from Cymru, judging by the way they speak. Foreigners, that’s what they are! What else could they be but witches, them and their flying house?’

The loch that harboured the island lay in a dip of land too shallow to be called a valley, but the dark blue water must have run deep, because the same beasts that dwelled in Loch Ness lived beneath its choppy waves. The small island rose out of the water like the crest of a rocky hill. At its highest point stood a square-built tall tower, surrounded by apple trees. At its lowest point, a sandy cove, stood a wooden pier and a boathouse. In between the two stood the manse, such a solid structure that it was hard to imagine it taking to the air like an enchanted swan from some old tale.

Solid, and yet, and yet – the buildings seemed to move around on the island, just now and then, when no one was looking. Whenever he visited, Dougie made sure to stand on the same spot to view it. Sometimes the manse appeared to be closer to the tower than on others, or the tower presented a corner rather than a flat side, or the entire island seemed a little nearer the shore or farther away. He’d once asked Lady Angmar about the shifting view. She’d scowled and told him he’d been drinking too much dark ale. He’d never got up the courage to ask again.

At the edge of the loch a big granite boulder sat among tall grass. An iron loop protruded from its side, and from the loop dangled a silver horn on a silver chain. Oddly enough, neither silver piece ever tarnished, no matter how wet the weather. This clear evidence of witchcraft – well, clear in the minds of the local folk – had kept them from being stolen. Dougie picked up the horn and blew three long notes, then let it swing free again. While he waited, he took off his boots and hitched up his plaid, tucking the ends into his heavy belt.

Not long after he saw the longboat set out from the pier under oars. He heard the bronze gong clanging, just in case the beasts in the lake were on the prowl for a meal. Fortunately, the water near shore ran too shallow for the beasts. When the boat pulled up, with the oarsmen backing water to hold her steady, Dougie waded out and with the help of the boatmaster, Lon, hauled himself aboard.

‘And a good morrow to you,’ Dougie said.

‘Same to you.’ Lon knew only a few words of the Alban language. ‘Take gong?’

‘I will, and gladly.’ Dougie took the mallet from him.

While they rowed across, Dougie smacked the gong to keep it clanging and whistled for good measure. Once, when he looked over to the far side of the loch, he saw a tiny snake-like head on the end of a long neck lift itself out of the water, but at his shout the beast dived, disappearing without a ripple. As they approached the island, Berwynna walked out on the pier to meet the boat. His heart began pounding as loudly as the gong, or so it seemed to him.

A slender lass, she stood barely up to his chest. She wore her glossy raven-dark hair clasped back. Her cornflower-blue eyes dominated her delicate face. To set off her colouring she wore a finely woven plaid in a blue and grey tartan – cloth that Mic the Dwarf had brought home from Din Edin, earned by his trade in gems and jewellery. When she saw Dougie she smiled and hurried forward to help him onto the pier.

‘I’d hoped to see you today,’ Berwynna said.

‘Well, I truly came to see you,’ Dougie said, ‘but I told my mother that I need to see your Mic. I was wondering if he’ll be travelling south soon.’

‘He will.’ Berwynna’s smile disappeared. ‘I hate when you go a trading with Uncle Mic.’

‘He’s got to have some kind of guard on the road.’ Dougie grinned at her. ‘Do you miss me when I’m gone?’

‘That, too. Mostly I wish I could go with you. I want to see Din Edin, and I don’t care how bad it smells.’

‘A journey like ours is no place for a lass.’

‘If you say that again, I’ll kick you. You sound like Mam.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but –’

‘Oh don’t let’s talk about it!’

Berwynna turned on her heel and strode down the pier to the island, leaving Dougie to hurry after, babbling apologies. By the time they reached the door of the manse, she’d forgiven him. Hand in hand they walked into the great hall of Haen Marn.

On either side of the big square room stood stone hearths, one of them cold on this warm spring day. At the other an ancient maidservant stirred a big iron kettle over a slow fire. The smell and steam of a cauldron of porridge spread through the hall. The boatmen came trooping in and sat down at one of the plank tables scattered here and there on the floor. At the head table sat Angmar, her greying pale hair swept back and covered by the black headscarf of a widow. When Dougie and Berwynna joined her, she greeted them with a pleasant smile.

‘Come to talk to Mic, Dougie?’ Angmar spoke the Alban tongue not well but clearly.

‘I have, my lady,’ Dougie said. ‘Will he be needing my sword soon?’

‘Most likely. You can ask him after he’s joining us.’

One of the boatmen brought Dougie a tankard of ale, which he took with thanks. He had a long sip and looked around the great hall. In one corner a staircase led to the upper floors. In the opposite corner old Otho, a white-haired, stoop-shouldered and generally frail dwarf, sat on his cushioned chair, glaring from under white bushy brows at nothing in particular. Berwynna’s sister, Marnmara, stood near the old man while she studied the wall behind him.

The two young woman had been born in the same hour, and they shared the same colouring. Marnmara however was even smaller than her sister, a mere wisp of a woman, or so Dougie thought of her. At times he could have sworn that she floated above the floor by an inch or two, as if she weren’t really in the room at all but a reflection, perhaps, in some invisible mirror. At others she walked upon the ground like any lass, and he would chide himself for indulging in daft fancies about her.

Haen Marn’s great hall tended to breed fancies. The dark oak panels lining the walls were as heavily decorated as the Holy Book in Lord Douglas’s chapel. Great swags of carved interlacements, all tangled with animals, flowers, and vines, swooped down from each corner and almost touched the floor before sweeping up again. In among them were little designs that might have been letters or simply odd little fragments of some broken pattern. Berwynna had told him of her sister’s belief that the decorations had some sort of meaning, just as if they’d been a book indeed. Since Dougie couldn’t read a word in any language, it was all a great mystery to him.

‘Think she’ll ever puzzle it out?’ Dougie said to Berwynna.

‘She tells me she’s very close. Tirn’s been a great help to her. He knows what some of the sigils are.’

‘Sigils?’

‘It means marks like those little ones.’ Berwynna shrugged. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘The townsfolk are saying that Tirn’s a demon.’

‘Are you surprised? They think we’re all witches and demons, don’t they?’

‘Well, true enough, the ingrates! And after all the healing your sister’s done for them, too!’

Tirn came in not long after. Like Dougie himself, he was an unusually tall man, and no doubt he’d once been a strong one, too, judging from his broad shoulders and long, heavily muscled arms, but at the moment he was still recovering from whatever accident had burned him so badly. He walked slowly, a little stooped, and held his damaged hands away from his body. Thin cloth, smelling heavily of Marnmara’s herbal medicaments, wrapped his hands and arms up to the elbows. Peeling-pink scars cut into the tattoos on his narrow face and marbled his short brown hair. He nodded Dougie’s way with a weary smile, then sat down across from him at the table.

Angmar asked him a question in the language that the locals took for Cymraeg, and Tirn answered her in the same. Berwynna leaned forward and joined the conversation. Here and there Dougie could pick out a word or phrase – Berwynna had been teaching him a bit of her native tongue – but they spoke too quickly for him to follow. Tirn considered whatever it was she’d said, then smiled and nodded.

‘Mam’s asking him if Marnmara can take another look at this gem he brought with him,’ Berwynna told Dougie. ‘Uncle Mic says it’s a bit of cut firestone. I’ve not seen anything like it before.’

Angmar got up and went round to where Tirn sat. With his burnt hands still so bad, he could touch nothing. She pulled a leather pouch on a chain free of Tirn’s shirt. From the pouch she took out a black glassy gem, shaped into a pyramid about six inches tall. The tip had been lopped off at an angle.

‘I’ve not seen anything like that before, either.’ Dougie shook his head in bafflement. ‘It looks like glass, though.’

‘It’s got no bubbles in it,’ Berwynna said. ‘So Uncle Mic said it can’t be glass. It comes from fire mountains, whatever they are.’

‘Well, he’s the one who’d know.’ Dougie turned to Angmar. ‘Could I have a look at that, my lady? I’m curious, is all.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Angmar said.

When Angmar set the pyramid down in front of him, Dougie picked it up and examined it, turning it around in his fingers. Tirn made a comment, which Angmar translated.

‘Don’t look into it too closely,’ she said. ‘It’s a rather odd thing. You don’t want to stare at it for too long.’

Dougie glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and saw the ordinary daylight in the great hall shining through black crystal. There’s naught to this, he thought, and looked directly down into the black depths through the squared-off tip. He heard Marnmara’s voice, coming nearer, sounding annoyed at something. He wanted to look up and ask her what the matter was, but the stone had trapped his gaze. He simply could not look away. Inside the black glow something appeared, something moved – a man, a strange slender man with pale skin, hair of an impossibly bright yellow, eyes of paint-pot blue, and lips as red as cherries.

The fellow was standing in the kitchen garden of Dougie’s family steading. He seemed to be staring right at Dougie, then turned and walked through the rows of cabbages till he reached the pair of apple trees by the stone wall, but the trees, Dougie realized, were young, barely strong enough to bear a couple of branches of fruit. The strange fellow stopped and pointed with his right hand at the ground between them. Over and over he gestured at the ground, then began to make a digging motion, using both hands like a hound’s front paws.

‘Dougie!’ Marnmara shouted his name. She grabbed his shoulder with one hand and shook him.

The spell broke. He looked up, dazed, unsure of exactly where he might be for a few beats of a heart. Marnmara turned to her mother and Tirn, set her hands on her hips, and began to lecture them in their own tongue. Tirn spoke a few feeble sounding words, then merely listened, staring at the table. Angmar, however, argued right back, waving a maternal finger in her daughter’s face. When Dougie put the pyramid onto the table, Marnmara stopped arguing long enough to snatch up the gem.

‘What did you see in it, Dougie?’ Marnmara said.

‘A strange-looking fellow standing between two apple trees. You might have warned me that the thing could work tricks like that.’

‘I didn’t know it could.’ Marnmara smiled briefly, then spoke to Tirn in their language. He looked utterly surprised and spoke a few words in reply. ‘He says he told you not to look into it.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Dougie said. ‘My apologies.’

Dougie decided that he didn’t like the way everyone was staring at him. He stood up and held out his hand to Berwynna.

‘I’ll be needing to go home soon.’

Together they walked down to the pier. Although he’d never seen the boatmen leave the great hall, there they were, manning the oars, ready to take him back across. Dougie shook his head hard. He felt drunk, but he’d only had half a tankard of Diarmud’s watered ale, and then another half of Angmar’s decent brew – hardly any drink at all.

‘Are you well?’ Berwynna said. ‘You’ve gone pale.’

‘I saw the strangest damned thing in that stone of Tirn’s. It was like a dream, some fellow pointing to the ground over and over. He seemed to think it was important, that bit of earth.’

‘Do you think it was a spirit?’ Berwynna turned thoughtful. ‘They say that spirits know where treasures are buried.’

‘Well, so they do – in old wives’ tales and suchlike. I wouldn’t set your heart on me finding a bucketful of gold.’

She laughed, then raised herself up on tip-toe and kissed him farewell.

The kiss kept Dougie warm during his long walk home, but the memory of his peculiar experience kept the kiss company. After he’d brooded on what he’d seen for a mile or two, the look of the fellow in the vision jogged his memory. He knew something about that fellow, he realized, but he’d forgotten the details.

Domnal Breich’s steading lay in a narrow valley twixt wooded hills. Over the years he’d built his family a rambling stone house and barn, surrounded by kitchen gardens and set off from the fields by a stone wall. The two apple trees of Dougie’s vision stood by the gate, at least twice as high as they’d appeared in the black gem. When he let himself in, he paused for a moment to look at the ground between them – ordinary enough dirt, as far as he could tell, soft from the recent rain and dusted with spring grass.

Domnal himself came out of the barn and hailed him. Although he still walked with a swagger, and his broad work-worn hands were as strong as ever, his dark brown hair sported grey streaks, and his moustache had gone grey as well.

‘Been at the island?’ Domnal said.

‘I have,’ Dougie said. ‘Here, Da, a thing I want to ask you. Do you remember a tale you told me – it was on my saint’s day, a fair many years ago now, and we went riding up to Haen Marn’s loch?’

‘The tale about Evandar, you mean, and how he saved my life?’

‘That’s the one! It was a snowy night, you said, and you were lost.’

‘Lost and doomed, I thought, truly. But he was a man of the Seelie Host. The cold meant naught to him. He took me to Haen Marn, where they kept me safe for the night.’

‘What did he look like? I can’t remember.’

‘He was tall and thin with bright yellow hair and eyes of the strangest blue, more like the sky just at twilight than an ordinary colour. A well-favoured fellow, but there was somewhat odd about his ears. They were long and curled like the bud of a lily. Ye gods! It’s been seventeen years now, but I can still see him as clear as clear in my memory.’

‘No doubt, since he saved your life.’

‘He did that, indeed, by getting me to Haen Marn and its hearth.’ Domnal paused to chew his moustache in thought. ‘You know, there’s somewhat that I still don’t understand. That night, I could have sworn that the island and its loch lay south of Ness. But the next time I saw it – in the spring, it was – it lay to the north, where it is now.’

‘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.’

Marnmara shook her head. ‘I have bits and shreds of such knowledge only. It comes to me in dreams or now and again in memory. I do feel – nay, I do know in my heart – that if I did know the first steps of the dweomer way, then I might walk far. But I know them not.’

‘Well and good, then. I can certainly teach you those.’

In the lantern light her smile turned soft, flickering, it seemed, like the candle flame itself. Although he’d always thought of her as beautiful, that night the thought carried a sexual interest that had escaped him when he’d been weak and in constant pain. He realized that he had started emitting the betraying scent of his interest, too, but he could take comfort in knowing that she’d not understand it, if indeed she could smell it at all.

Perhaps the look in his eyes had told her enough.

‘Tirn,’ she said, ‘there’s somewhat you need to know about me. I wear this body the way you wear a shirt. Don’t be taken in by it.’

She patted him on the shoulder with the same affection with which she’d pat one of her cats, then walked away, disappearing into the manse.

And what by the gods does she mean by that?

As he followed her inside, Laz felt both sad and profoundly weary in a way he’d never experienced before. At last he identified the sensation. He wanted to go home.

PART I

The Westlands Spring, 1160

Some say that the ancient mages of the Seven Cities, those long dead fortresses of beauty and magic, left a record of their secret work not in words or images but in stones and earth. Yet I for one call such a foolish tale, because I see not how it may be possible, no, not in the least.

The Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll

‘The crux of the problem,’ Valandario said, ‘is Laz. We want the pair of crystals. As far as we know, he still has them. Finding them means finding him.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ Dallandra said. ‘I wish I knew whether or not he’s worth the effort of finding.’

‘Sidro says he is.’

‘Sidro loves him or thinks she does. She’s not a reliable advocate. From everything she’s told me about him, I certainly don’t understand how she could care so much about him.’

Valandario managed to shield her thought just in time. You’re a fine one to talk about her, Dalla, running off with that awful Evandar the way you did! They were communicating through the fire, Valandario in her chamber in Mandra, Dallandra in her tent some miles east.

‘So you’re convinced he’s still alive,’ Valandario said.

‘Not I.’ Dallandra’s image, floating above the bed of coals in the brazier, paused for a wry smile. ‘My guess would be that he’s dwelling on the spirit plane, waiting to be reborn. It’s Vek who’s convinced he’s still alive.’

‘Vek? Oh, yes, that Horsekin boy prophet.’

‘A Gel da’Thae boy prophet. There really is a difference.’

‘Very well, if you say so. Now, consider the vision Ebañy saw in the crystal, Evandar standing on Haen Marn. Do you think that means the crystal’s linked to the island?’

‘It might, but you can’t trust Evandar’s riddles to be logical. It certainly indicates that the book he was holding is linked to Haen Marn. But the crystal – I can’t say either way.’

‘Blast! I was afraid of that. Can we definitely say that wherever Haen Marn may be, it’s not the physical plane?’

‘Again, maybe. It’s surrounded by water, after all. Maybe it’s enough water to make scrying impossible.’

‘If it’s surrounded by water, how could Evandar even reach it? The play of forces in the water veil should have torn him apart.’

‘That’s a very good question. He probably couldn’t, and the view of Haen Marn that Salamander saw is just an image of the place. Probably. I don’t really know.’

‘In short, we can’t say anything useful about the wretched island at all, and I’m starting to think the beastly thing should just stay gone.’

Dallandra laughed. ‘Val, your image looks so sour! Not that I blame you, mind.’

‘Thank you, I suppose. The omens are so tangled! It’s enough to drive one daft.’

‘I couldn’t agree more about that. But tell me, how are you surviving the winter?’

‘Well, I miss everyone in the alar, but I have to admit that I’ve never been so comfortable in my life.’

For a while they spoke of trivial things, then broke the link between them. Valandario leaned back in her chair and considered the set of rough shelves across from her, a precious library of some fifty books protected by the solid walls of her chamber. For the first time in her life, Valandario had spent the winter inside a house rather than a tent.

In the winter the Westfolk and their herds usually moved south, until, by the shortest day in the year, they camped along the seacoast. Although it snowed only rarely that far south, it did rain three or four days out of every five. In a Westfolk tent, Grallezar’s library of dweomer books would have stood in as much danger as it had faced from the devotees of Alshandra back in Braemel, its original home, although the danger would have come from water, not fire.

Another place, however, had offered it shelter – Linalavenmandra, the new town that returning elven refugees had built at a natural harbour near the Deverry border. Although the name meant ‘sorrow but new hope’, its eight hundred inhabitants generally called it Mandra, simply ‘hope’. They were young people, by and large, fleeing the minutely structured life of the far distant Southern Isles where they’d been born. To them, having a Wise One, as the Westfolk term their dweomermasters, among them was not merely an honour, but a sign that their town had achieved the same status as the ancient cities they’d left behind.

So, when Valandario had volunteered to live in Mandra and tend Grallezar’s library, the townsfolk had responded by finding a house with room for her and the books both. She had moved all her belongings into a big upstairs chamber with a view of the sea from its window. Elaborately patterned Bardekian rugs covered the floor, her red and blue tent bags hung along the walls, embroidered cushions of green and purple lay piled on the narrow bed. The townsfolk had added a wooden table and chair so the Wise One could study her books in comfort and a small wooden coffer to keep her supply of oil, wicks, and clay lamps handy.

‘Wise One?’ Lara, the woman who owned the house with her husband, appeared in the doorway to the chamber. ‘We’re preparing dinner. Would you like some meat with your bread and soup?’

‘No, thank you. I’m not very hungry.’

Lara smiled, made a little bow, then silently shut the door again. Laradalpancora, to give her her full name, and her husband, Jinsavadelan, insisted on acting as if they were servants in Valandario’s house rather than the owners of the house in question, cooking, cleaning, mending her clothes, and generally fussing over her. They also fussed over each other.

‘They never would have let us marry back home,’ Lara told her one evening. ‘Even though we’d loved each other for years. So we had to come here.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Val said. ‘Who’s they, and why would they forbid it?’

‘The Council, of course. Jin’s birth-clan was too far above mine in rank.’ She held her head high with a defiant lift to her chin. ‘That doesn’t matter here.’

Jin smiled at her with such a depth of feeling that Val quietly got up and left the room. Seeing them so happy had woken an old grief. At times after that conversation, she missed Jav as badly as if he’d been murdered only a few years past.

Val used her work to blot her memories from her mind, reading for hours on end in pale sun or flickering candlelight until her eyes watered and ached. She was searching for information concerning a particularly powerful act of dweomer, one beyond the capabilities of any living dweomermaster, elven or human alike. Any one of Grallezar’s books might have held a clue. Fortunately, most of them were bilingual, with a roughly translated elven text on one page and the Gel da’Thae text facing it. Grallezar had wanted to make the knowledge they contained accessible to Westfolk dweomermasters as well her own people.

As Valandario read through each book, she copied any relevant passages onto a scroll made of pabrus, a writing material that had come over from the islands with the new settlers. One book in particular she kept on the table near her, but not for its information. Bound in black leather, decorated with a white appliqué of a dragon, it contained a translation into Gel da’Thae of a familiar work on dweomer, one she knew practically by heart. Its importance lay in its links to its previous owner, Laz Moj. According to Sidro, he’d made the translation and written it out in the book as well. Now and then Val would lay a hand upon it and try to pick up some impression of its absent scribe. Very slowly, an insight grew in her mind. Once she could articulate it, she presented it to Dallandra.

‘It’s about Laz’s book. It’s the antithesis of the one Evandar showed Ebañy in the vision crystal. The binding’s in the opposite colours, and the information inside it is well-known, while we don’t have any idea what may be in Evandar’s.’

‘That’s all true,’ Dallandra said.

‘So if the two books are linked by antithesis, they might echo the pair of crystals, the black and the white.’

‘In which case,’ Dalla continued the thought, ‘the missing book might also tell us about the crystals.’

‘Exactly! Furthermore, both the crystals and the island are shadows from some higher plane. Could it be that Haen Marn’s their real home, and they wanted to take Laz there for some reason?’

‘Or else they used him to get there. Salamander was planning on smashing the black one. I wonder if it was trying to escape.’

‘How would it have known?’ Val asked. ‘You don’t think it had some kind of consciousness, do you?’

‘I can’t say either way. I didn’t get to study it for very long.’

‘That’s not exactly helpful.’

Dallandra’s image grinned at her. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not thinking very clearly these days. It’s the baby, I suppose. I’m sinking to the level of a pregnant animal, all warm and broody like a mother dog.’ Her smile disappeared. ‘I hate it.’

‘At least it’s only temporary.’

‘That’s very true, and I thank the Star Goddesses for it.’

Dallandra’s image, floating over the glowing coals, suddenly wavered, faded, then returned to clarity.

‘Val, I have to leave,’ Dallandra said. ‘Someone’s calling for me, and they sound panicked.’

‘Dalla! Dalla!’ Branna was standing right outside the tent. ‘Vek’s having a seizure, and it’s a bad one.’

Dallandra grabbed the tent bag of medicinals she kept ready for these occasions and hurried outside. Wrapped in a heavy cloak, Branna stood waiting for her. A mist that fell just short of rain swirled around her in the grey light and beaded her blonde hair. Her grey gnome hunkered down next to her and squeezed handfuls of mud through its twiggy fingers.

‘He’s in Sidro and Pir’s tent,’ Branna said. ‘Over this way.’

The gnome dematerialized as they hurried through the maze of round tents, as strangely silent as winter camps always were, with life moved so resolutely inside. As usual, the winter rains had washed off their painted decorations, leaving strange ghostly stains on the leather, outlines to be repainted once the weather turned towards summer. In the grey light it seemed that the camp lay caught between two worlds of water and earth, scarcely there. Since Branna was striding along just ahead of her, Dallandra noticed that the girl’s dress hung thick with yellow-brown mud about her ankles. Her clogs sank into the ground with every step.

‘You really need to wear leggings and boots,’ Dallandra said. ‘I’ll get the women to make you some.’

‘I suppose so,’ Branna said. ‘I’m just so used to dresses, but truly, it’s impossible to keep them clean out here.’ She paused for a sigh. ‘It sounded so exciting, coming to live among the Westfolk. I didn’t realize what the winters would be like.’

‘They can be a bit grim, truly.’

‘I understand now why Salamander wintered with my uncle. I thought he was daft for it, until the rains started.’

‘Do you want to go home?’

‘I don’t. There’s too much to learn here. I just wish I could get really dry and warm.’

‘Well, it’s almost spring. Things will be better then.’

‘The days are getting longer, truly.’ Branna paused to extricate a clog from a particularly sticky lump of mud.

‘And in a few days we’ll move camp,’ Dallandra continued. ‘The ground will be cleaner in the new site.’

Sidro and Pir had pitched their newly made tent on the edge of the camp, not far from the horse herd. When Dallandra ducked inside, she saw Vek kneeling on the floor cloth and leaning, face forward, onto a supporting heap of leather cushions. He’d come of age the summer past, and as was usual among the Horsekin, he’d been bald until that point in his life. Still short and straight, his black hair clung to his dead-white skin. Sidro knelt beside him and wiped his sweaty face with a damp rag. Drool laced with pink stained the neckline of his dirty linen tunic.

‘I do think the worst be done with,’ Sidro said. ‘But he did bite his tongue afore I could get him turned over and sitting up like this.’

Branna hovered back in the curve of the wall to watch. Dallandra laid her bag down, then knelt at Vek’s other side. When she laid her hand on his face, she found it cold and clammy. He looked at her out of one dark eye.

‘I’ve brought your drops,’ Dallandra said. ‘Let me just get them out.’

In response he let his mouth hang open. She rummaged through the tent bag and found the tiny glass vial, filled with an extremely potent tincture of valerian. It smelled horrible and must have tasted worse, but Vek neither squirmed nor made a face when she used the glass stopper to drip a small quantity into his mouth. She could see the cut on the side of his tongue – not big enough to worry about, she decided.

‘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.’