The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [192]
“Are you all right?” Mic said in Dwarvish.
“No. Just thinking about Dougie.”
“I wondered. I miss the lad, too.” Mic rose in the stirrups and looked out across the grass. “Empty out here. Rori told me we’d be safe, though, once we reached the plains.”
When Berwynna glanced at the sky, she saw her father, so distant that he looked as small as a white bird. I lost the book. That thought returned to her whenever she looked at her father, despite his apparent indifference to the book’s fate. Thinking about the book was so much less painful than her memories of the man she’d loved that she was willing to dwell on it, as if it were some foul-tasting medicine brewed by her sister to chase away a worse ill. During their ride south, Laz had scried often for the dragon book. He’d never seen anything but the darkness inside its wrappings.
The silver wyrm circled lower, then landed a safe distance from their horses. When Laz and Richt dismounted, Berwynna joined them. Riding a heavy cavalry horse, far too large for her slight frame, had made her legs ache so badly that she dismounted at every pause. She decided that she was beginning to hate horses, all in all, and mules even more. The three of them walked over to the dragon, who was sitting with his front legs stretched out in front of him like a hound at a hearthside. In the sun his scales glittered around the pink stripe of the old wound on his side.
“The Westfolk camp is about two miles ahead,” Rori said. “They’ve seen me, and so I expect someone will come to meet us, probably Dallandra, the Wise One of the royal alar.”
“Does that mean a dweomerwoman?” Laz said.
“Just that. I wouldn’t advise lying to her. Sidro’s mentioned in the past that you have a penchant for that.”
Laz winced and considered the grass growing between the dragon’s paws.
Sure enough, when Berwynna looked to the south, she saw a group of some dozen riders coming, most of them mounted on horses whose coats shone a beautiful golden color, except for one woman’s silvery mare. Behind them trailed a man on a roan.
“There’s Dalla,” Rori said. “And the man in front is Calonderiel, the warleader. Behind them—some of the archers, I suppose. Cal never goes anywhere without an escort. Ah, wait! There’s Ebañy! Wynni, you have another uncle, and here he comes, my brother, that is, there on the roan horse.”
“Evan the gerthddyn?” Laz said.
“He goes by that name, too.”
“Then I have somewhat to give back to him. My apologies, I’ll return straightaway.”
Laz turned and strode off, heading back to his men and the remnants of the caravan, waiting in the tall grass. The Ancients, Berwynna thought, the fabled Ancients! The riders dismounted only a few yards away, because their horses showed no fear of the dragon, much to Berwynna’s surprise. Some of the men stayed with the horses while the rest, led by a woman with ash-blonde hair and gray eyes, walked over to the dragon. The man Rori had called Ebañy stayed a little off to one side and smiled, but Berwynna could see him assessing everyone with a cool gaze. Although her newly-found uncle looked like an ordinary human being, the other Westfolk shocked her. She’d heard about their strange ears, but no one had told her about their cat-slit eyes, their slender height, and the sheer beauty of their alien faces.
Rori spoke to the woman in a language that Berwynna had never heard before, and she answered in the same. He seemed to be telling her who everyone was, judging from the way she looked at each person in turn. Occasionally Berwynna heard names, and eventually her own. The woman smiled at her and spoke in Deverrian. “Welcome, then, Wynni. I’m Dallandra. Your