Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [144]
In the cove something was moving, gliding through the gathering mists, not very large or visible from its distance. At first Rhodry assumed it was another longboat, because he could see the same curved neck, the same tiny head arching above the rippling water, but this head suddenly turned,swiveling on a neck as glossy as snake skin. A massive wave formed and buckled as a body like an overturned boat rose out of the lake. Rhodry yelped and swore. The dwarves all screamed.
“Gong!”
Garin pounded harder, faster. The other dwarves began screaming and swearing at the top of their lungs. The creature hesitated, staring their way, waves rippling round it as, or so it seemed, it kept its place with some subaqueous paddling motion. It swung its head away, swung its body ma jestically after, then arched its neck and dove, heading back toward the distant inlet and cove. As it disappeared under mist and water, Rhodry was for a moment unsure that he’d really seen it, simply because it moved so smoothly, so silently. The others seemed to have no such doubts. They kept up their deliberate cacophony until at last the boat pulled in beside the wooden jetty.
“They hate noise,” Garin yelled at him over the general din. “Or so I’ve been told. The beasts, I mean.”
“I see,” Rhodry yelled back. “Are they common?”
Garin merely shrugged to show his ignorance.
On the jetty someone stood waiting, dressed in a pair of bright blue trousers of fine wool, a Deverry style pullover shirt, belted in at the waist, and a gray cloak, fastened at one shoulder with a dragon-form brooch as big as a man’s hand. Judging his distance the anchorman crouched, then leapt onto the jetty, wrapping his rope round a bollard while the oarsmen backed water. Hawser in hand, the helmsman leapt out as well. The waiting figure strolled over just as they got the boat secure.
It was a woman, standing a bit over five feet tall with the dark narrow eyes and thin slit of lips of the dwarven race, but her mane of pale hair, pulled back into a loose braid, indicated Deverry blood in her veins. In the fading light it was impossible to tell her stage of life, but she stood and looked about with far too much authority to be a lass.
“Angmar!” the helmsman cried. “Guests!”
She nodded, looking his passengers over one at a time, slowly, carefully, while they scrambled out of the boat and got their gear safe on the jetty. Rhodry she saved for last, looking him over coldly even though he bowed to her. Her eyes carried such authority that he wondered if she had dweomer.
“Welcome to Haen Marn.” Angmar spoke in Deverrian of a sort. “You be the man who covets a dragon, bain’t you?”
“I am,” Rhodry said. “I was told that a man named Enj could help me.”
“Enj be my son, not but what I have rule over him no more, not this long score of year or mayhap it be more now. But over Haen Marn I do have rule, and of more import I have knowledge of its ways, and it were a wise thing that you all do remember such.”
“My lady.” Rhodry bowed again.
Garin had already followed his lead several times. Otho and Mic looked back and forth, one to the other, then bowed as well.
“And what do it become me to call you, then?” Angmar said.
“My mother named me Rhodry, but a woman who lived deep in the heart of the earth called me Rori once, saying it was a better sounding name. Which do you prefer?”
She looked him over, smiling a little.
“Then welcome to Haen Marn, Rori, you and your friends both.” She nodded their way. “Envoy Garin, welcome.”
“My lady. It gladdens my heart to see you again.”
Angmar acknowledged his bow with a small nod, then turned and began snapping orders in Dwarvish.