The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  Faharn was dead, Sidro gone forever, Dallandra profoundly uninterested—what was left to him? The charity of some Deverry lord? Life among the Westfolk? A line of cold sweat ran down his back. He was maimed, lost, alone—nothing left to him but pleading for shelter somewhere from someone who might or might not grant it. Angmar and Mara would have taken him in, but once the dragon had turned back into Rhodry and claimed his place as lord of the island, what then?

  He might kill me for one wrong word. I’d best get myself gone.

  Laz found his sack, packed up his belongings, then stripped off his clothes and crammed them in, too. By then he hovered on the edge of weeping. As he laid the sack onto the windowsill, it occurred to him that he’d felt happy here in Haen Marn. A few tears came. He wiped them off on his arm and swallowed heavily. It took all his will for him to steady his mind enough to transform into the raven. In bird form he hopped onto the sack, sank his claws in deep, and flew, dropping out of the window and heading for the distant shore.

  Ahead loomed the astral vortex that surrounded and interpen etrated Haen Marn. Laz did think—briefly—of returning to his chamber and man form, then asking to be ferried across, but his old recklessness caught him up. Maybe it’s better if I just die! He made one turn over the peaceful manse below to say farewell to the apple trees and the tower, then banked a wing and turned straight for the loch and its astral matrix.

  With a cackle of raven laughter, he plunged straight into the swirling, snapping lines of light. Blue and silver, gold and brilliant white—they wrapped him round and snared him like a fowler’s net.

  Branna happened to be out walking on the island when she saw Laz in raven form come swooping out of the upper window of the manse. For a moment, when he made his turn around the island, she lost sight of him. He reappeared from behind the tower and headed straight for the open water of the loch. When she realized what he was going to do, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “Laz, don’t! Dalla, Dalla! Laz, stop!”

  Branna took off running, following the raven as he flew toward the water. She’d found him disgusting at first sight, but at the moment she saw only a troubled soul rushing to some unknown disaster.

  “Stop!” she yelled as loud as she could. “Laz!”

  Too late. The raven slammed into an invisible wall high in the air. For a moment he hung there, his wings splayed, his head thrown back. With a flutter he fell, spiraling down like a bird arrow-pierced, to land sprawled on the sandy shore.

  Branna rushed over and flung herself to a kneel beside him. He still lived, because he’d fallen across his sack of clothing, which had broken some of the fall. The raven was gasping for breath and rolling its yellow eyes, its beak open and helpless.

  “Hold still,” Branna said. “Help’s coming.”

  She heard voices behind her, Dallandra and Mara both, and the sound of running footsteps. The raven gasped out a word.

  “I can’t understand,” Branna said. “Just lie still.”

  On impulse she reached out and stroked the ruffled feathers on his head, smoothing them back into place. Laz shut his eyes, and slowly his breathing quieted. Mara dropped to her knees beside Laz and gently lifted a wing. With her help, he folded it close to his body.

  “What happened?” Dalla knelt down beside Branna.

  “He tried to fly through the vortex,” Branna said. “I don’t know why.”

  The raven spoke, and this time she understood him: crazed.

  “You were that!” Dallandra said. “Is somewhat broken? Your wings? Arms, I mean?”

  The raven turned his head and seemed to be thinking.

  “Be the strength to change back be with you, Laz?” Mara said. “We then could see if somewhat be wrong after you did change back.”

  The raven nodded. With Branna’s help, he got to his feet, shaking his wings with a great shudder and flapping to balance himself on one leg.

  “That ankle’s bad, isn’t it?” Dallandra got to her feet then pointed to the dangling leg. “Or more than just the ankle.”

  The raven nodded again.

  “We’ll turn away,” Dalla went on, “to let you concentrate.”

  Branna followed her lead and looked out over the water. From behind them she heard a shriek, a long cackle and croak of pure despair. Branna spun around and saw that Laz had fallen again—still in raven form, sprawled like a black cloak over the pale sand.

  “Can’t! Can’t change.”

  Dallandra’s eyes suddenly went unfocused; Branna could assume that she was studying him with the Sight.

  “Just rest now,” Dallandra said. “Later you’ll have more energy, and you can try again. You’re exhausted, Laz. Here, Mara—will you go back to the manse and fetch the boatmen? We’ll need them to carry him back.”

  With a nod Mara turned and ran. Dallandra knelt down next to the raven and began to stroke his injured leg with gentle fingers, assessing the damage. As she watched, Branna realized that something far worse than a broken bone was wrong with Laz, just from the limp way he sprawled. He tried to lift his head, then let his eyes roll back and slumped again. Dallandra, however, went on speaking in a quiet soothing voice to her patient, a sure sign that she, too, saw some more serious injury.

  Enj, Kov, Lon, and the one real boatman carried the raven up to his chamber, where Mara waited with splints and other supplies for Laz’s broken leg. Branna squatted down in a corner out of the way and watched as Dallandra set and bound the leg with Mara’s help. Now and then Laz made a croaking sound and tossed his head from side to side, but he kept himself remarkably still.

  “That should do it,” Dallandra said. “Mara, I’ll leave soothing the patient to you. He’s been in a lot of pain, and he’s absolutely got to rest.”

  “Well and good, then,” Mara said. “I’ll be trying to calm him.”

  Dallandra gestured to Branna to follow and led her out to the corridor. They walked to the head of the stairs and paused there to speak in whispers.

  “Shouldn’t you have waited to set that break until he’s back in man form?” Branna said.

  “He may never return to it,” Dallandra said. “What’s happened is truly horrible. Getting caught in the astral vortex—it stripped away his etheric double, the human part of him, that is. It should have killed him. Fortunately, his body of light is strong enough to replace the double and keep him alive. Unfortunately, it exists in the shape of a raven. As far as I can tell, he’ll be trapped in that form until he dies.”

  Unthinkingly, Branna laid her hand over her mouth, fearing she’d vomit.

  “He always did fly too much,” Dalla continued. “Over the years, his body of light must have taken over some of the functions of the etheric double, or perhaps warped it, somehow. I don’t understand exactly what happened.”

  “But the end result be obvious enough.” Mara spoke from behind them. “He does ken the truth, Dalla, and he does agree with you.”

  They turned to include her in a circle.

  “He does talk of killing himself,” Mara went on. “But I doubt me if he will. The talk, his voice—they convinced me not of true despair.”

  “You can understand him, then?” Branna said.

  “Mostly. He be my teacher, and there be a bond between us.” She tried, briefly, to smile. “I did tell him that it were his wyrd to live, for much remains for me to learn.”

  “Excellent!” Dallandra said. “That’s exactly what he’ll need, some reason or purpose for his life, since he’ll be the raven until he dies.”

  “But how much longer will that be?” Mara said. “Birds, they do live but a short time.”

  “I have no idea, but I’d wager he’ll live out a long span of years if he stays here. The island will give him strength. That’s its purpose, isn’t it? To act as a talisman of healing.”

  “I kenned that not. Truly, there be so much dweomer yet to learn.”

  “Well, Laz can teach you some of it, and I can help as well. For now, though, your
task is to help Laz heal.”

  “Well and good, then. He be welcome as long as he wishes to stay.”

  “And our task, Dalla?” Branna said.

  “Is to understand the carvings on the walls. Now that I’ve seen them, I’ve no doubt that they’ll teach us everything we need to know about the island, if we can only read them.”

  “Well and good, then. Will it take long?”

  Branna was all wide eyes and enthusiasm. Dallandra suppressed a laugh. “I have no idea,” she said. “I hope not.”

  “I was just thinking of poor Rori, waiting for our aid.”

  “The best time for unwinding the dweomer will be at the dark of the moon, but Rori’s been a dragon for nearly fifty years. I don’t suppose waiting another month will strike him as unreasonable, if we should have to.”

  “Well, true spoken.” Yet Branna looked saddened by the thought of such a wait.

  When Dallandra considered the moon that night, she saw that it had reached its third quarter.

  They spent several days studying the vast and elaborate carvings to fix them in their minds. Dallandra drilled Branna mercilessly until they both knew the position of every cluster of design, every sigil that they recognized, every digraph, and every unknown mark. Dallandra had been hoping that the digraphs would identify the various portions of the designs, but they seemed to be mere abbreviations, perhaps well known to the founders of Haen Marn, a mystery to her.

  In between their sessions of study, Dallandra would look in on Laz. His delicate leg, turned hollow as bird bones are, would heal very slowly, she realized.

  “You’ll have to be patient,” she told him one day.

  He answered with a croak that might have meant anything. Only Mara could truly understand him, though she had hopes that in time, as he worked on speaking more clearly, others would be able to as well.

  “He does say that he wishes not for you to see him in this pass,” Mara told her.

  Laz croaked out a fairly clear, “That’s true.”

  “Very well,” Dallandra said. “Mara can do everything for you that can be done.”

  When Dallandra left his chamber, Mara followed her out. They stood at the head of the stairs to talk.

  “Think you that you may ken the secrets of the isle?” Mara said.

  “Eventually, perhaps,” Dalla said. “It’s a very tangled puzzle.”

  “No doubt. I do think me, though, that the isle will go nowhere till all its people come home. You should call my father to us.”

  “I know you’re eager to meet him, but I doubt me if the time is right for that.”

  Mara smiled, but her eyes flashed anger. With a toss of her head she strode away, followed by half-a-dozen cats. You may be the lady of this place one fine day, Dallandra thought, but that doesn’t mean you can give me orders.

  Berwynna discovered that she enjoyed flying on dragonback, even though Uncle Mic’s constant shrieks, moans, groans, and heavy sighs did detract from much of the pleasure during the first two days’ traveling. By the time they found Haen Marn, though, he had lapsed into a welcome if abject silence. Although Medea had worried about her ability to find the island, with Wynni along, a true daughter of Haen Marn, they flew straight to the river that led to Lin Serr. From there, following it upstream to the island itself proved simple.

  Through wisps of mist, Berwynna saw the lake and in its center the island. The sight of the familiar manse and Avain’s tower moved her to tears. Only then did she realize how badly she’d missed her mother and Avain and Lonna and even, she had to admit, her sister. I’ll see my brother Enj again, too, she thought. It be good to be home!

  “Down we go!” Medea called out.

  With a swoop of wings the green dragon sailed through the mists, made a wide turn over the lake, and landed with a graceful flapping onto the shore by the boathouse. Berwynna and Mic slid from her back just as Avain came running with a howl of joy.

  “Wynni bring a dragon!” Avain was chanting the words in Dwarvish as she lumbered along. “Wynni bring a dragon!”

  Behind her came Angmar, walking with some dignity, but smiling like the sun itself, breaking through clouds. Berwynna rushed to her mother’s arms and, holding her, wept again in sheer joy.

  A smiling Dallandra turned from the window. “Let’s just stay inside,” she said. “I don’t want to intrude on the family. They all look so happy to have Wynni back, even Mara.”

  “Well and good, then,” Branna said. “It gladdens my heart that Medea could fly through the vortex—safely, I mean.”

  “She’s a true dragon, that is, ‘dragon’ is her natural body form. It’s not like the situation with Rori or Laz.”

  “Of course! I should have thought of that. Mara’s not the only one with much to learn.”

  “All of us have much to learn.” With a sigh Dallandra walked over to join Branna. “Especially about Haen Marn.”

  They had spent the morning studying a particular section of the carvings on the east wall. In the center of an oval, delineated by an arrangement of small sigils of Aethyr, stood a depiction of a tree, half of which had stylized leaves on its branches but the other half, stylized flames. Across the room behind them, on the west wall, stood another, similar design but with its oval defined by repeated sigils of Air. The trees had to refer to the tree that stood by the gate between the worlds, Dallandra realized, but the realization had not gotten her much farther.

  “So far,” Dallandra said, “we’ve got four places on the walls that seem to refer to traveling, the patches of sigils of Aethyr and Air that Laz pointed out to me, and then these two trees. And then—” She paused to walk along the wall until she reached another set of symbols that at first glance looked like a design element and naught more. “And then there’s these. They’re the key to the egregore, I’d wager. Mara mentioned how the healing lore began to come into her mind the night after she’d been studying this bit of the wall.”

  “If you say so.” Branna frowned at the designs. “Oh, wait, I think I do see. Birds plucking things from a garden? Is that it?”

  “In a very stylized way. Now, over here—”

  Laughing, calling out to one another, the inhabitants of Haen Marn came trooping in, Berwynna arm in arm with her mother, and behind them Mara, Avain, and Enj, with Mic and Kov bringing up the rear. From the east door Lonna hurried in and Lon after her to greet Berwynna. Even Medea joined in by the simple expedient of sticking her green-and-gold head through the window closest to the long table. So much for study and meditation, Dallandra decided.

  “We’d best pick this up again later,” Dallandra told Branna.

  “True spoken,” Branna said. “Though I can’t say I begrudge them their joy.”

  Yet at dinner that night, in the midst of laughter and the noisy telling of tales, Dallandra found herself glancing over at the huge swags of carving that swooped across the walls of the great hall. Somewhere among them lay the secrets she needed.

  In the middle of the night, Branna woke from a dream too strange and unfocused to be one of her true dreams, yet she felt that she’d been given a kernel of important lore. She got up and made a small dweomer light, shielding it with her body to keep from waking Dallandra, only to realize that the master had already gotten up and gone before her. Branna allowed the light to swell, then dressed and went downstairs. Dallandra was standing in the great hall beside the door in the west wall.

  “Did I wake you?” Dalla said. “My apologies, if so.”

  “You didn’t,” Branna said. “I had a dream. I was looking at a part of the wall and a voice said, this bit was made to be yours. Or something like that. You know how dreams are with words. So I woke and felt I had to come look for the piece that’s mine before the memory faded.”

  “Very good! Which bit is it?”

  “The pair of Aethyr sigils in the midst of some animals that might be horses. It’s on the east wall by the other door.”

  “Very good! I’ve been looking at this pai
r of Air sigils here. Look, they’re surrounded by what look like ships. It must have somewhat to do with motion and travel.” Dallandra touched one of the ships with her forefinger. “I have the feeling that maybe this piece is mine, somehow, now that you mention it.”

  Branna ran across the room to the back door. When she tossed her dweomer light on to the wall, she saw the sigils and the animals, clearly horses now that she was awake.

  “Here they are!” she called out to Dalla.

  “Good!” Dalla called back. “I see the two groups are on an east-west axis, and both of them are near the burning trees.”

  “So they are!”

  Branna reached out and ran her fingertips along the sigils, then glanced back just in time to see Dallandra laying a casual hand on the sigils by the other door. The entire manse lurched and trembled. Branna yelped and nearly fell, but her hand seemed to have become stuck to the wall—or into the wall. She stared openmouthed as her hand sank into the astral illusion up to her wrist. When she heard Dallandra call out, she glanced over her shoulder to see Dalla similarly pinned.

  “The tree, Branna! Put your other hand on the tree!”

  By stretching, Branna could just reach the carving of the tree. Half of it began to flicker with red and orange light as if it burned, whilst the other half glowed green with fresh leaves. One again her hand sank into the wall.

  “We’re moving,” Dallandra called out. “Pray to every god we don’t end up in Alban!”

  Branna tried to speak and failed. A cool lavender mist was seeping through the great hall. The sigils of Aethyr were glowing brightly. Beside them two Elvish digraphs gleamed a turquoise flecked with a poisonous-looking green. She could just see out of the nearby window to the space between manse and kitchen hut. Even though the purple mist drifted around her, Medea lay curled up, asleep and apparently unaware that the entire island was flying like a dragon itself.

  At the far end of the hall, Dallandra began to chant but not in Elvish. Branna could only pick out the occasional phrase, not that she understood any of them.