The Shadow Isle. Katharine Kerr
of this island, but of another. I know not where that lies.’
‘If you do not know, how may I find out?’
‘I know not that, either. You must ask the Lady of the Black Stone Isle, she who dwells on the plane of matter and death.’
‘How may I find her?’
‘Go to the island.’ A trace of annoyance crept into the spirit’s voice. ‘Even a fleshly creature such as you should know this. Go to the island and ask her.’
‘The island has fled. I don’t know where it lies.’
‘Then summon it.’
‘I don’t know how to summon it.’
‘The island has its own summons. You need not ask me. Mospleh, mospleh, mospleh.’
‘I don’t know what mospleh means.’
Inside her pillar, the spirit frowned. ‘Look to the metal of the moon and to the moon herself at her first waxing.’
‘What –’
But the spirit was growing thin, fading, turning back into a strand of violet light, gleaming against silver. The pillar swirled once, then sank slowly back into the island. Valandario felt herself take flight, swooped down, circled round, saw below her the ritual sword, gleaming in the rising sun. She let herself drop, then settled feet first onto the hard metal.
The vision disappeared. She was back, slipping a little on the wet grass as she stepped off the sword blade. She stamped thrice on the ground, then picked up the sword and cut through the circle.
‘May any Wildfolk bound by this ceremony go free! It is over!’ Val called out and stamped again for good measure. With a sigh she wiped the mud on the point of her sword off on the side of her boots.
‘I gather the evocation called something forth,’ Dallandra said. ‘I could hear your questions. Did the spirit ever answer?’
‘Oh yes, but we’re not much farther along than we were before. You know, there are times when I get really tired of spirits and their blasted riddles.’
‘So do I,’ Dallandra paused and glanced back to the spot where the camp had stood. ‘It looks like the alar’s ready to ride out. Tell me what you saw while we walk back, will you? I can’t bear to wait till we make camp again.’
Branna had seen Valandario and Dallandra leave camp for a dweomer working. During that day’s ride she burned with curiosity, but she knew that she had no right to pry. She could only hope that Dallandra would choose to tell her at the evening meal.
As dweomer apprentices, Branna and Neb generally ate with their masters rather than cooking for themselves. The various members of the royal alar took turns feeding the Wise Ones – a good thing, since Branna had never cooked a meal in her life. Calonderiel usually joined them as well. While Branna was expecting Neb as usual that evening, he never arrived.
‘I don’t know where he went,’ she told Dallandra. ‘Do you?’
‘I don’t.’ Dallandra glanced at Calonderiel. ‘Have you seen him?’
His mouth full of herbed greens, Cal nodded and hastily swallowed. ‘I did,’ the banadar said. ‘He told me he was fasting, but he didn’t say why. I assumed you’d set him some practice.’
‘Naught of the sort!’ Dallandra briefly looked sour. ‘Mayhap he doesn’t feel well or suchlike.’
‘Starve a cold, feed a fever,’ Cal said. ‘Or is it the other way round?’
Dallandra mugged disgust, then handed him a piece of soda bread, which he took with a grin.
For the rest of the meal, Dallandra said little. Branna went back to her own tent with her curiosity still burning. Neb returned much later in the evening. Under a pale dweomer light Branna was laying out their blankets when he strode into the tent.
‘You’ve been talking to Dallandra about me, haven’t you?’ Neb said.
‘I haven’t.’ Branna looked up in some surprise. ‘What –’
‘Well, someone told her I was fasting.’
‘It was Calonderiel, not me. It happened at dinner tonight.’
‘Oh.’
‘Did she tell you not to?’
‘She did. I was only trying to sharpen my second sight, but she told me it was dangerous at my stage of development.’
Branna made a noncommittal noise.
‘And another thing.’ Neb folded his arms tightly across his chest and glared at her. ‘If it wasn’t you, why did she bring up Nevyn, then?’
‘When?’ Branna rose to face him.
‘Yesterday afternoon. And then tonight she mentioned somewhat again. It must have come from you.’
‘I don’t even know what she said to you.’
‘Yesterday she mentioned Rhegor.’
‘I – who?’
Neb’s expression suddenly changed to something slack and exhausted. The silver light directly above him filled the hollows of his face with dark shadows. He turned away and shoved his hands in the pockets of his brigga. ‘I don’t suppose you would remember him,’ Neb said. ‘My apologies.’
‘Neb, I don’t understand what you’re going on about.’
He gave her one brief look, then turned and ducked out of the tent. It was some while before he returned, and by then Branna had given up waiting for him and gone to bed. For a few moments he stumbled around in the dark tent.
‘You could make a light,’ she said. ‘Or I could.’
He spoke not a word, merely sat down on the edge of their blankets and began to pull off his boots. The smell of mead hung around him. If he’d been drinking with the other men, she knew, conversation would prove frustrating and little more. Branna turned over and pretended to sleep. Eventually he managed to undress and slip into the blankets beside her, only to fall asleep with a loud snore.
Branna lay awake, wondering if she was sorry she’d married him. She found herself missing Aunt Galla and Cousin Adranna with a real longing to see them again, to sit down and ask them what they would have done, married to a man like Neb. I can never tell them, she reminded herself, not without mentioning dweomer.
With the morning Neb became perfectly pleasant again, charming, even. When he went out to help with the horses, he was whistling. Still, the farther north that the alar travelled, the more thoughts of her kinsfolk came to Branna’s mind. When by Prince Dar’s reckoning they reached the border of Pyrdon, she found herself wondering how the winter had treated them.
‘I’ve been doing those exercises on farseeing that you gave me,’ Branna told Grallezar. ‘Do you think I could practice by trying to see the Red Wolf dun? I do worry about my aunt, up there in the snow for months, and the army took so much food away, too.’
‘That would be a good practice, I do think,’ Grallezar said. ‘You be very familiar with the place, and your worry does lend strength to the seeing. But spend only a short while at each attempt, and bring yourself back to the earth plane when you be finished.’ Grallezar glanced around the tent. ‘In that wood box there on the floor, below the red bag, there be a time glass. Take it. You may practice for as long as it takes the sand to run half out of the upper glass.’
Branna found the box and opened it, then took the glass out with great care. She’d never seen anything as fine as the pale green glass cones in their polished wood stand, about six inches high overall. She turned it over and watched the sand drip from one cone to the other at a slow, steady pace. Her gnome stared at it open-mouthed.
‘Take the box,