The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [154]
“Good!” Dallandra paused to gather her breath and her wits. “Besides, as things stand now, she’s hardly a rival at all. What would she want with a dragon for a husband? She’s what? A bare hundredth of Rori’s size, and that’s just to begin with. How would she feed him? Where would he lair on her island?”
“Oh.” Arzosah turned her head and clacked her jaws. Her tail twitched, but only at the tip. If ever a dragon could be embarrassed, it seemed she was. “Humph, here I’ve been vexing myself for naught.”
Dallandra had been on the point of admitting that she might not be able to learn the proper dweomers to transform Rori back again, and that even if she did, she might not be able to work them. Just in time she realized that Rori had been keeping a secret of his own.
“Now listen,” Dallandra said instead, “I thought you agreed with me that turning Rhodry into a dragon should never have happened. ”
“Of course I do. But the blunder’s been made, and now that you’re healing that ghastly wound, and he’s sane again, why would I want Rori gone?”
What’s she going to say? Dalla thought, if we do manage to turn Rhodry back again? Worse yet, what would Arzosah do? Dallandra vividly remembered the last time Arzosah thought she’d lost Rhodry, when she’d threatened to waken a sleeping fire mountain and destroy an entire town. Arzosah looked away, her ears still flat and sullen, but she tucked her tail around her haunches in a mannerly gesture. I’ll have to forbid her to do every nasty thing I can think of, Dalla thought. And phrase everything exactly right, too.
“Well and good, then,” Dallandra said. “We’d best get on the road. Sidro, you and I can talk more while we ride. If Laz is back, I hope he still has that crystal.”
“He should have two of them,” Sidro said, “the white as well as the black.”
“I’d forgotten about the white one,” Dalla said. “Arzosah, my thanks for your aid and protection, but remember what I said about Haen Marn.”
“I have no choice but to remember.” The dragon hissed, but only briefly. “That wretched Evandar!”
When they reached the Westfolk camp in the meadow below Cengarn, the journey ended for Dallandra and most of her traveling companions, including the dragons, but Branna accompanied Solla and little Penna up to the dun itself. As they rode through the streets of the town, everyone who saw them called out their best wishes to Lady Solla; the men bowed, the women curtsied. The town remembered her many acts of charity. At the gates of the dun, the guards greeted her as if she’d been the queen herself. They bowed low, they yelled for pages, they helped her dismount and murmured compliments the while. Branna only wished that Drwmigga could see and hear them.
Though Drwmigga stayed elsewhere, Ridvar himself did come striding out of the main broch tower. For a long moment he and Solla stood face-to-face, considering each other.
“You look well, Brother,” Solla said at last.
“So do you, Sister.” Ridvar took a deep breath. “It gladdens my heart that you’re here. We never had a feast to celebrate your marriage. Once your lord’s recovered, I shall give one in your honor.”
Solla smiled, nearly wept, snuffled back the tears, and smiled again. “I’d like that,” she said in a steady voice. “My thanks.”
Ridvar managed to smile, then turned to a waiting page. “Help Lady Solla’s maidservant bring up her things,” the gwerbret said. “Blethry will tell you what chamber to put them in. Come in, Solla, come in. I’ll take you up to your lord.”
Branna followed as they went in arm in arm. She was assuming that she’d find Neb in the same place as Gerran. Indeed, when Ridvar opened the door of an upstairs chamber for Solla, Neb came hurrying out. He’d put back some of the weight he’d lost, and he was grinning at her with the life back in his eyes. Branna rushed to his open arms.
For the rest of that day, they talked but little. In the evening, however, after a meal that a page brought up to their chamber, they sat half-dressed on the bed and discussed Neb’s decision by candlelight.
“It truly started