The Shadow Isle

The dragon lay down to allow Dallandra to examine his wound, a thin pink stripe on his silvery-blue side. When she’d first been treating it, she’d cut a piece of leather, boiled it with wax to keep it from stretching, and marked the length of the cut upon it. When she measured the cut against the marked strip, she found the wound the same length as before. Although it looked pink and clean, it still opened into flesh, not scar tissue.

‘Rori, you’ve been licking it!’ Dallandra said.

‘I have not!’

‘Then why hasn’t it healed up?’

‘Arzosah tells me that dragons heal as slowly as they grow, but truly, she’s as puzzled as you are.’

‘Especially slowly, I imagine, when the dragon’s not done what the healer asked of him.’

‘I swear it, Dalla, I’ve not licked it or scratched it or rubbed it against anything. Well, once by accident I did rub it against a rock, but it hurt so much I made sure I’d never do it again.’

Dallandra set her hands on her hips and glared at him. He raised his head and glared right back.

‘At least it’s not bleeding,’ Dallandra said. ‘Does it ever?’

‘No,’ Rori said. ‘But it’s driving me daft, itching itching itching! Ye gods, sometimes I’m tempted to lick it, I have to admit. It’s worse to itch than to ache, I swear it.’

‘I can wash it with willow water for a little relief now that you’re here. It might sting at first.’

‘Stinging’s better than itching.’

Rori sat up while Dallandra got together a leather glove, a little heap of dry horse dung, a kettle of water, and the strips of dried willow bark. She lit the dung for a fire, brought the water to a simmer, tossed in a good handful of bark, then took the kettle off the fire and allowed the mixture to steep. While they were waiting, Valandario came walking out from camp to join them. She was carrying something clasped in her right hand.

‘I was wondering if you could answer me a few questions,’ Val said to the dragon, ‘about this.’ She opened her hand to reveal a chunk of lapis lazuli the size of a crabapple, carved into an egg-shape. A fine gold chain ran through a hole drilled into the smaller end. ‘Dalla told me it belongs to you.’

‘So it does,’ Rori said. ‘Or it did, once. I wondered what had happened to it.’

‘I found it on the ground with your clothes,’ Dallandra said, ‘after the transformation.’

‘Ah, I see.’ He sighed in a long hiss. ‘It’s of little use to me now. Val, it’s yours if you want it.’

‘That’s very generous,’ Valandario said, ‘but I assure you that I wasn’t trying to get it away from you. I was just wondering what it is. It’s got dweomer upon it, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. An old dwarven woman gave it to me – Otho’s mother, in fact.’ He turned his massive head Dallandra’s way. ‘Otho the dwarf, the silver dagger’s smith – I doubt me if you knew him. He’s the one who got me to Haen Marn, in fact, for all the good it did the poor old bastard. I never met a man more sour than Otho, and I hope to all the gods that I never do, either. Be that as it may,’ he turned back to Valandario, ‘his mother told me that no one could scry me out as long as I was wearing that talisman. She may well have been right, too. I know that Raena couldn’t find me when I was wearing it.’

‘No more could Jill,’ Dallandra said.

‘Very powerful, then.’ Val considered the lapis egg with a small frown of concentration. ‘Are you telling me that the Mountain Folk have dweomer? Here I always thought they mocked it.’

‘The men do,’ Rori said. ‘The women don’t. What their men think doesn’t matter a cursed lot to dwarven women.’

‘Good for them,’ Val said. ‘But are you sure that the women used dweomer on this stone? They could have come by this some other way, traded for it or the like.’

‘That’s true, but I’d wager it was made right in Lin Serr. When I met her, Othara was ill and blind with sheer old age, but she still reminded me of Jill. You could feel power around her. And the trip down –’ The dragon paused, looking away as he remembered. ‘She lived in the deep city, you see, where visitors weren’t supposed to go. I was still in human form then, of course. So a friend – Garin it was – led me down hooded like a hawk. Once I was good and confused, he let me take off the hood. We went into a cavern where it was lit with blue light, oozing out of the walls. There were some women standing there, waiting to look me over and make sure it was safe to let me through the next doorway. Garin told me that the name of the cavern was the Hall of the Mothers.’ The dragon shuddered. ‘I went cold all over, just hearing it.’

‘That makes me shiver even now,’ Dallandra said.

Valandario nodded her agreement and went on studying the talisman. Dallandra tested the willow water and found it pleasantly warm. She put on her glove, picked up a linen bandage, wrapped it around a big handful of lamb’s wool, then dipped the lump into the water to soak.

‘Lie down again,’ Dalla said to Rori. ‘And remember, it might sting.’

The dragon flopped onto his side, making the ground shudder and the water in the kettle slop back and forth. With her gloved hand, Dallandra laid the wet bandage over the wound and squeezed to let the medicinal seep into the cut. He flinched, then relaxed with a ripple of scales.

‘Much better than itching,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Dallandra glanced at Valandario, who had closed her hand over the talisman and was staring off at the horizon. ‘Val? Are you still with us?’

‘Hmm?’ Valandario looked at her. ‘My apologies. Now, about Haen Marn. Rori, I know that it disappeared. Do you know why, exactly?’

‘It had the best reason in the world. Horsekin. One of their armies was marching straight for it.’

‘I just thought of something.’ Dallandra put the lump of cloth back into the herbwater to refresh. ‘At the time I assumed that the army was heading for Cengarn and that Haen Marn was merely on the way. Do you think they could have been planning to attack the island?’

‘I have no idea,’ Rori said. ‘I never saw them, only the trail they left behind. The tracks started and stopped by dweomer, Raena’s dweomer, or so you told me.’

‘Why bring an army up to the Northlands and then take it away again?’ Valandario sounded puzzled. ‘If they were actually going somewhere else?’

‘No reason at all,’ Rori said. ‘I wonder why Alshandra wanted to destroy Haen Marn?’

‘She may have simply wanted to capture it,’ Dallandra said, ‘though she did tend to destroy the things she coveted. I wonder if Evandar made some prophecy about the island that had to do with Elessario? She was determined to get Elessi back before she could be born.’

‘That was the whole point of the wretched war.’ Rori moved uneasily. ‘Could you put a bit more of that water on the cut? It’s better, but I can feel it still.’

Dallandra fished the sop out of the kettle and went back to work.

‘You’re missing something,’ Valandario said suddenly. ‘Evandar made a prophecy about the island, most assuredly, but it didn’t have anything to do with Elessi. It was about Rori, and the spell book – the vision Ebañy saw in the black crystal.’

‘Of course.’ Dallandra tossed the sop back into the bucket again – the medicinal water had soaked through the glove and her fingertips were turning numb. ‘It’s another hint that the crystal somehow belongs to the island.’

‘More than a hint.’ Val hesitated, then spoke calmly of what must have been painful things. ‘After Jav was murdered, Alshandra appeared to me. She was party to the theft, and that means she must have seen the message in the crystal.’

‘Maybe not.’ Dallandra paused to pull off the wet glove. ‘Evandar most likely locked it against her. Although for all we know, Loddlaen may have been able to see it and tell her.’

‘It seems more and more likely that the crystal’s on that island. So what we need to do, obviously, is bring Haen Marn back.’

‘Obviously, she says.’ Rori’s voice hovered near a growl. ‘And how, my dear Valandario, do you propose to bring it back?’

‘Dweomer, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Rori slapped his tail hard on the ground. ‘Just like that, eh?’

‘Will you stop that?’ Dallandra snapped. ‘The tail banging, I mean. It makes the water in the kettle slop around.’ She knelt down to rummage through her supplies, then brought out a pair of tongs to use instead of the glove.

‘My apologies.’ The dragon sounded less than apologetic.

Valandario once again gazed off at the distant horizon, using the lapis talisman for some sort of scrying or so Dallandra assumed. She used the tongs to fish the sop out of the herbwater and apply it to Rori’s wound. The dragon hissed with a long sigh of relief.