Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [146]
All at once Mic swore and slewed round on the bench. When Rhodry looked toward the door, he saw the woman in white, her silver tore gleaming in the candlelight, leaning on her spear and watching them while tears ran down her cheeks. Although the dwarves sat stunned, Rhodry swung himself free of the bench.
“My lady,” he said. “We meet again. My sword is at your service if you have need of it.”
She smiled and, smiling, disappeared.
Openmouthed and gaping the dwarves exchanged troubled glances on the edge of words, but Angmar merely picked up her tankard and had a sip of ale in such an ordinary way that Rhodry felt abruptly foolish. He sat down again, looking her way. She merely smiled vaguely, then attended to her meal. Rhodry decided that following her lead was the best idea. The dwarves seemed to agree as well, and for a while they all ate in silence.
“Be there enough food on my table for you?” Angmar said at last.
“There is, my lady,” Garin said. “And you have our humble thanks indeed for so splendid a meal.”
She rose and walked out of the room without another word. The servant bustled in with a bowl of apples, then withdrew. For a few moments they all waited, but when there was no sign of Angmar, Mic could stand it no longer.
“What was that woman with the spear?” he burst out. “A ghost?”
“I’ve no idea,” Garin said. “I didn’t see any apparitions before, when I was here the other two times, I mean.”
“I was going to ask you that,” Rhodry said. “You saw naught so weird?”
“Naught, except, well, for Haen Marn itself, and the road to it. I came on strict business from our merchant guilds, of course, on some mundane affairs, not hunting dragons in the midst of a dweomer war.”
“Bound to be a bit of a difference,” Otho sighed. “These cursed bizarre things seem to hover round our Rori here like flies round horseshit.”
“Otho!” everyone snapped at once.
Otho mugged dignity and poured himself more ale. Though they lingered by the fire a long time that evening, drinking and wondering about the woman in white, Angmar never returned.
Although the servants brought her guests everything they needed, the lady kept herself hidden all the next day as well. It was sunny, too humid for sitting in the great hall, and Rhodry and the dwarves walked round the island, though none of them went too close to the waterline for fear of the long-necked beasts. The wind lapped at the water and drove waves on the pale sand of the island’s shore, rustled in the trees, whined and sighed through the warren of buildings clustering round the stone tower. Every now and then Rhodry thought he heard a woman weeping, but most likely, or so he told himself, it was only the wind.
“Tell me somewhat, Garin,” Rhodry said. “Well, if you can, anyway. What does the name Haen Marn mean? Old what?”
Garin laughed.
“Haen may sound like the hen in your tongue, but in ours it means black. Haen Marn. Black stone.”
“Ah. My apologies.”
Their circuit brought them back round to the boathouse and the jetty, where the oarsmen of the day before were sit’ ting, legs dangling over the edge, and fishing. When Garin hailed them, they spoke up in Dwarvish, beckoning for the guests to join them. Rather than listen to talk he couldn’t understand, Rhodry decided to head back to the manse. He wouldn’t mind a tankard of ale, he decided, and the servants had made it clear that it was theirs for the asking.
He began following the path that had led, the night before, through the kitchen garden and to the door. Ahead, through the trees, he could see the peaked roof of the manse and beyond that the stone tower. He walked along, thinking that the path was a bit longer than he’d been remembering, rounded a little bend, and found himself