The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [168]
“Never,” Kov said. “I cannot escape you, but I’m a man of earth, and earth will dam up a river when it’s stubborn enough.”
Everyone in the crowd gasped aloud, and Lady’s smile disappeared.
“Think of the gold, Kov,” she said. “The gold will be yours as well as ours, you know, for those who belong to a river own the fish in it.” She stroked the front of her dress. “We have so much gold, and you shall have a share of it.”
The dazzle from the golden scales got into his eyes, and through them, he felt, into his brain. He wanted to touch it, to stroke the dress itself, not the woman underneath, to feel those golden scales under his fingertips. With a shake of his head, he shut his eyes. He heard her chuckle to herself.
“They say that the lust for the sun’s blood runs strong in the blood of the Mountain Folk,” she said, “and I think they speak the truth.”
Kov crossed his arms over his chest and kept his eyes shut. He could hear the dress jingle as she walked up to him, then felt her fingers touch his hair. She separated out a lock; then he felt the sawing of a small knife. The lock of hair came away in her hand, and she stepped back again.
She spoke first in her own language, then in Deverrian. “Look at me, Kov, because what I am about to do with this hair concerns you greatly.”
The urgency in her voice opened his eyes. A man in a green tabard was handing her a small glass vial filled with some sort of liquid. When she held it up to the sun, he could see that it was oil. Solemnly she stuffed the lock of his hair into the vial, then stoppered it. The man in green took it from her with a bow.
“Should you try to escape from our river,” Lady said solemnly. “I shall burn this hair, and your soul shall burn within you. Better you should stay among us!”
A man in a yellowish tabard stepped forward, bowed, and knelt down. With a small key he unlocked the shackle from Kov’s ankle.
“Let the dance begin!” Lady called out.
The villagers answered her call in their own language. Someone out of sight began to pound on a drum; a flute player joined in. All those in the circle began a solemn dance, moving a few steps in one direction, bobbing their heads, then moving back in the other, yet they always moved more steps deosil than widdershins, so that the circle did make progress around the pillar. As they danced, Lady chanted in her own language, swaying back and forth, first calling out, then murmuring softly, moving her hands in the air as if she were weaving some sort of ensorcelment.
It should have been impressive, but Kov was remembering Dallandra, with her beautiful face and cold-steel eyes, picking up his staff and talking about the dweomer upon it as casually as she would have told him that coltsfoot herb would ease dropsy. With as little fuss she could call forth rain out of a clear sky. She would have no need of stamping feet and silly chants to bind a man to her. There’s no true dweomer here! he thought, not that I’d better let them know I know it. At last the music ended, the dancers stopped, and Lady stood smiling at him, her face flushed, her eyes wide under their fan-shaped brows.
“You may have the freedom of our river,” she said.
“My humble thanks, my lady,” Kov said. “I shall serve you always.”
Her grin widened into triumph. Apparently she couldn’t tell a lie when she heard one, either. Kov silently worked a small spell of his own, not that real dweomer lay behind it. Earth is stubborn, earth is slow, he told himself, rocks will stop the river’s flow. He now knew, deep in his heart, that the threat to his soul would come not from her and her people, but from the gold itself, all that gold, piled up, glittering, waiting for him like a pouty lover.
“Since I belong to the river now,” Kov said, lying solemnly, “I crave a boon. I wish to learn to swim.”
“You don’t know?” Her smile vanished into a wonder almost comical. “Well, then, by all means, you shall learn! The very best of our young men shall teach you.”
“Well and good, then.” Kov bowed as low and as humbly as he could. “My heartfelt thanks!”
Learning