Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [148]
“I do.” Automatically he laid his hand on his shirt over the lapis lazuli. “Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity and naught more. I did think so, when she lost the sight of you. Come up.”
They climbed up to the first landing, all piled up with full sacks and shabby chests, a broken chair, a heap of firewood. Inside the tower the wind moaned and hummed. Angmar pitched her voice louder to carry over it.
“I would not wish you to think she be prisoned here. She herself does cling to the heights and refuse the ground.”
As they were climbing to the next landing, Angmar suddenly paused and called out.
“Avain, Avain!”
Although no one answered they resumed their climb, coming out on the next landing into a proper room (though the stairs continued through it), sunny and bright from big windows, even though the walls were dark, undressed stone. To one side stood a table and a half-round chair. Sitting next to the chair on the floor among clean straw was a lass, no more than fifteen summers, Rhodry supposed, as yellow-haired as her mother, but plump in a soft and puffy way, with a big round face nodding over a round body. In her lap she held a broad but shallow silver basin, filled with water, and she was staring into it and singing to herself, a high tuneless song without words.
“Avain?” Angmar whispered. “We do have a guest, my sweet.”
She looked up at Rhodry with the dragon eyes of his dreams. They were round, nearly lidless, and green, slit vertically like a cat’s or elven eyes, with the yellow iris showing.When she smiled, he was expecting fangs, but all else about her was human enough. She spoke a few words in Dwarvish.
“She says that she did see you in the town where men live,” Angmar said. “Do be forgiving of her. It were a struggle to teach her what little of her own tongue she knows, and any else were beyond her.”
“Of course, my lady. Tell her that when I slept, I saw her watching me.”
“Did you now?”
When Angmar spoke to the lass, she laughed and clapped her hands, joggling the basin. Sunlight flashed on moving water, and the glints speared her attention. With a little contented sigh, she nestled into her straw and stared at the moving patterns. Every now and then she dipped a finger in the basin and touched a drop to her forehead, just above the bridge of her nose.
“I’ll ask her about Enj.”
Angmar knelt beside her in the straw and spoke a few words. For a long moment the lass frowned into her basin, then replied in a singsong of Dwarvish.
“She does see him for away, though he be a-heading in a homewards direction,” Angmar translated. “He does love to wander, our Enj, and all his father’s people do think him dafter than his sister for it, his walking here and there in the light of the sun, just for the seeing of what may lie upon the ground. But what she sees she sees in this water, and if ever the basin spill, then she do weep and carry on until someone brings the filling of it again.”
“Why did you watch me, Avain?”
Angmar laughed and didn’t repeat the question.
“A word such as why will have no meaning for the likes of her, Rori. She sees all that does concern Haen Marn, and so your approaching did appear to her, just as the approaching of a storm or some doings of the beasts in the lake would appear.”
“Oh. Well and good, then.”
So this was why he’d been expected. He could remember how neutral the dragon eyes had felt in his dreams, a simple noting of his presence and naught else, unlike the malice of the other pair. She must have been telling her mother of his progress all along their way, until of course Othara had given him the talisman.
“But the boatmen knew I was hunting a dragon.”
“Avain did say this thing, many times over. I did wonder how she knew, but the poor child could not tell me, though I did ask the question in as many simple ways as I could invent. It distressed her so that I did stop, for she would weep at the mention of you after that.”
“Then my apologies. Here, tell her that I mean this dragon no harm, that I only wish its aid in a grave matter.”