A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [65]
“I’ve found the map,” he announced. “My boy just got back with it. Its owner let it go cheap, by the way. It’s not much of a collector’s item.”
The piece of pounded bark paper was about two feet long by a foot and a half wide, all torn and filthy round the edges, and flecked with what looked like ancient wine drops overall. At the very top of the map lay the faded outline of Main Island’s tail and the tiny islands just to the south; off to the left lay the Anmurdian archipelago in somewhat darker ink.
“Now, Anmurdio is much farther off than this map makes it look,” Daeno remarked. “So who knows how far away these are.”
He laid one bony finger on the “these” in question, a group of four islands, drawn entirely too circular to be accurate, floating far to the south of Anmurdio, Out in the middle of the ocean in between, the scribe had drawn a sea serpent and a fat monster with big fangs. Daeno picked up the map and flipped it over to reveal several lines of tiny, spiky writing, faded to a pale brown, on the back.
“Varro the merchant made this map by the grace of the Star Goddesses in the reign of Archon Trono. That was in 977 by Deverry reckoning, Jill, well, give or take a year, anyway.”
“You have my sincere thanks for going to all this trouble.”
“You’re most welcome. I’m afraid it’s not much of a map.”
“It’s better than no map at all, and it’ll be something to show round once we get to Anmurdio.”
“You know, there are supposed to be cannibals in the smaller islands.”
“Just like there’s supposed to be sea serpents out in the southern ocean?”
Daeno laughed, nodding his head in agreement while he rolled up the map.
“The thing is,” Jill went on. “I’m never going to get a merchant here on Main Island to risk his ship and his fortune on some daft scheme of sailing to the far south. Or well, there was one, but he has a wife and three children, and I couldn’t let him. I just couldn’t.”
“Of course not.” Daeno paused to swat at the gnomes, who were scurrying this way and that on the counter. “I’m surprised you found anyone at all. Who was it, by the bye? A local man?”
“No, a merchant up in Orysat, Kladyo by name.”
“Elaeno’s boy?”
“The very one! Do you know—oh, of course you’d know Elaeno!”
“Well, not intimately or anything, but we’ve met in the flesh and then, of course, out on the etheric we run into one another from time to time. Hum, am I right in this? I heard that his master in the dweomer was a Deverry man.”
“That’s true, and it was the same person who taught me. Nevyn, his name was.”
Daeno whistled under his breath. The gnomes all went dead-still to listen.
“Not the Nevyn?” the old man said. “Oh, listen to me! There could only be one!”
“You’ve heard of him, then?”
“What?” Daeno laughed aloud. “Every dweomerworker in these parts has heard of Nevyn! He spent years and years in the islands, you know, over the last two hundred years or so. He’d turn up for twenty, thirty years at a time, then disappear again for even longer. Probably sailed back home to your kingdom. You must know all about it.”
In fact, Jill didn’t, and she was rather surprised to find it out now. Daeno went blithely on.
“But to get back to the problem in hand, if you want to sail south, I suppose that Anmurdio’s the best place to look for a ship.”
When Jill arrived back at the caravanserai, she found the troupe hard at work, readying costumes and props for the evening show. Salamander himself was sitting on the bed of a wagon with his feet dangling over the edge like a farm boy and whittling like one as well. On a piece of driftwood shaped much like a bird, he was carving details.
“It’ll be a fine thing to juggle with.” In illustration he tossed it spinning and caught it again in the same hand. “And I know what you’re thinking, O Mistress of Magicks Marvelous, that if only I spent this much time