The Shadow Isle

As she walked back to Valandario’s tent, Dallandra was thinking more about Neb than the scroll. He was not exactly disrespectful around her, his master in dweomer, but still, at moments his behaviour was a little too free and familiar, as if he’d known her for a long time. In a way, he had, of course, in his previous life, when as a young woman she’d been very much his inferior in dweomer workings. That was a long time ago, she reminded herself. I’d better make that clear to him. At these moments she was grateful to Grallezar all over again, for warning her about his wish that he was Nevyn still.

Inside her tent, Val had put away her scrying gems and cloth. Dallandra knelt under the dweomer light and brought out the wooden box holding the scroll. She laid the bag down, sketched out a circle of warding around it, then opened the box and brought out the scroll. The pabrus had turned brown over the years, and it threatened to split along the creases where it had been first rolled, then squashed into a box. Very carefully indeed she unrolled it and laid it down on the tent bag.

‘I should have left this in Mandra with Grallezar’s books,’ Dallandra said. ‘To be honest, I’d forgotten I had it.’

‘It’s just as well you did,’ Val said, smiling. ‘Since we need it.’

They leaned closer, nearly head to head, to look it over.

‘As I remember,’ Valandario said, ‘there’s one invocation that’s incomplete. That may be what the scrying meant. So let’s start there. Ah, here it is!’

Valandario cleared her throat, then read the call aloud in a deliberately colourless voice. ‘Olduh umd nonci do a dooain de Iaida, O gah de poamal ca a nothoa ah avabh. Acare, ca, od zamran, lap ol zirdo noco olpirt de olpirt.’

‘Is that supposed to mean something?’ Dallandra said.

‘Oh yes. Although –’ Valandario frowned at the scroll. ‘Master Aderyn read these out in an odd way. He sounded every letter as the syllable it represents. Ol-de oo-me-deh deh-oh – like that.’

‘It doesn’t make any sense that way, either.’

‘It’s not in Elvish, that’s why. There’s a translation of everything down at the bottom –’

Dallandra looked where Val was pointing. ‘Right! Here it is!’ Dallandra read from the scroll. ‘I do call you in the name of the Highest, oh spirit of the palace on the in the midst of hyancith seas. Come, therefore, and show yourself to me for I serve the same Light of Lights.’

‘I’d say that the missing word has to come right here, “palace on the in the midst of hyacinth seas”.’ Valandario laid a delicate finger on the fragile scroll. ‘The palace on what? Could it be an island?’

‘It certainly could, and look! right here in the gloss, it says: “some say that the spirit word for island is hanmara”.’ Dallandra nearly choked on the name. ‘Hanmara,’ she repeated. ‘But Rori told me once that haen marn means black stone in the Dwarvish tongue.’

‘Oh, does it?’ Valandario broke into a grin. ‘Well, why can’t hanmara mean both? The island might appear to be made of black stone if we saw it on the spirit plane.’

‘Yes, that’s plausible.’

‘The palace on the black stone in the midst of hyacinth seas. I like the way that echoes in my mind.’

‘One of us needs to vibrate this call.’

‘I don’t want you to risk the child.’

The generosity of this simple statement – considering who that child had been in her previous life – left Dallandra speechless. Valandario misunderstood the silence.

‘Something nasty might answer, you know,’ Val said. ‘Aderyn was very careful about that, when he first had the scroll. So it had best be me.’

‘You’re probably right, but I’m going to come along when you do the working. Just in case.’

‘Good. I had no intentions of keeping you away, mind. Just stay outside the circle.’ Valandario paused, listening to the noise filtering through the tent walls. ‘We’re going to have to get away from camp, so we need to wait for a break in the rain.’

The rain fell all the next day, keeping everyone in camp. Dallandra took the opportunity to bring Neb into her tent for a private talk. She spoke in Deverrian to make sure that he understood her. When his yellow gnome followed him in, Dallandra shooed it out again. Even though the gnome lacked a true consciousness, she wanted no witnesses to what Neb might well find shaming.

‘Neb,’ she began, ‘there’s a common problem with dweomer apprentices, that they don’t work hard enough at their studies.’ She paused for a smile. ‘But I’d say you have the opposite problem. You need to work a little less and do more of the physical work around the camp, like helping with the horses.’

‘Indeed?’ Neb’s eyes flared in rebellion. ‘But I’ve got so much work to do already.’

‘Are the exercises I set you too much to finish in a day?’

‘They’re not. I’m studying herbcraft, too, is all, and I want time for that.’

‘You’ve got years ahead of you for all of that.’

‘You know, I’m human. I’ll only have a short life this time. I don’t see why I should waste any of it when I’ve got so much to learn.’

‘Why are you so sure your life will be short?’

“Well, because –’ Neb stopped, startled. ‘Well, won’t it be? Compared to a Westfolk life, I mean.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But those who give their heart to dweomer, and you obviously have, tend to live a fair bit longer than ordinary folk. You of all people should know that.’

‘True spoken.’ He ducked his head and looked only at the floor cloth.

‘Now, I’ve taught several apprentices in my day, and for that matter, I was an apprentice myself once. I know how hard it is to hold back when you’re so eager to learn.’ She paused, as if thinking. ‘That was so long ago, truly. Nevyn only knew me as an apprentice, you know. Why, it must have been over four hundred years ago, now.’

‘I take your point.’ Neb looked up, and the rebellion came back into his eyes. ‘You’ve lived a cursed lot longer than I have, and you know a cursed lot more, too.’

‘Then why don’t you listen to what I say?’ Dallandra dropped any pretence of jollying him along. ‘I’m your master in dweomer now. You refused to listen to the last one, too, Rhegor that was, so long ago. Do you remember what came of that?’

Neb turned white around the mouth, and his hands clenched hard into fists.

‘I see you do,’ Dalla went on. ‘Well?’

Their gazes met and locked. The drip and patter of the rain outside sounded as loud as drumbeats until at last, he looked away.

‘I’ll help with the horses,’ Neb whispered. ‘Morning and night.’

‘Splendid!’ Dallandra arranged a friendly smile. ‘That gladdens my heart to hear.’

‘May I leave now?’ He was staring at the floor cloth.

‘You may, certainly.’

Neb got up and rushed out without looking her way. Stubborn colt! she thought. But he’ll grow into a splendid stallion one day.

In the late afternoon the rain slackened. A strong south wind sprang up, chivvying the fading storm and driving it off. Dallandra and Valandario walked to the edge of the camp and stood studying the sky. The damp wind felt pleasantly cool, not biting or chilly, and it carried the scent of new grass.

‘We could go out now, I suppose,’ Dallandra said. ‘I do love the feel of a spring wind.’

‘So did I,’ Val said, ‘but the ground’s still too wet. The grass will be soaked.’

‘Well, if this wind keeps up, it will dry out quickly. We should be able to do the ritual just at sunrise, once the astral tide turns toward Aethyr. We’ll probably travel all day tomorrow, and I’d like to experiment with that evocation before too long.’

‘Me too.’ Val grinned at her. ‘Sunrise it is. I’ll memorize the words tonight.’