The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [196]
Avain was sitting at her table by the window, watching the water dance in her silver basin, when Angmar came in with a plate, covered with a bit of linen to keep off the flies.
“Your meal, my love,” Angmar said.
Avain looked up with her strange round green eyes, lashless and unblinking. “Dougie’s dead,” she said. “Poor Dougie.”
“What?” Angmar set the plate down with shaking hands. “Ah, ye gods, the poor lad, indeed!”
“Wynni, she be with her da. Dragons!” Avain smiled and got up from her stool. “Dragons, Mama! Silver dragon, black dragon, green dragons, lovely dragons.”
“But what about Dougie?”
“He be dead, Mama.” She spoke in a calm, ordinary voice. “Wynni be safe with her da.”
“With Rori, you mean?”
“With her da, truly.”
“If her da flies this way, will you tell me?”
“Of course, Mama.” Avain held her arms out from her shoulders. “Lovely dragons! Avain want to fly, Mama.”
She tossed back her head and roared, then ran around and around the room with her arms outspread. As she watched, Angmar was thinking of her first husband, Enj and Avain’s father, who had loved tales of dragons. He had blamed himself, Marn, son of Marnmara, for his strange daughter’s affliction, sure that somehow he’d attracted a dragon’s soul into her body as it grew in the womb. Everyone had called him daft. But he was right, Angmar thought, may the gods forgive us, he was right!
GLOSSARY
Alar (Elvish) A group of elves, who may or may not be bloodkin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.
Alardan (Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.
Astral The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure-House of Images.
Banadar (Elv.) A warleader, equivalent to the Deverrian cadvridoc.
Blue Light Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).
Body of Light An artificial thought-form constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes.
Cadvridoc (Dev.) A warleader. Not a general in the modern sense, the cadvridoc is supposed to take the advice and counsel of the noble-born lords under him, but his is the right of final decision.
Captain (Dev. pendaely.) The second-in-command, after the lord himself, of a noble’s warband. An interesting point is that the word taely (the root or unmutated form of -daely,) can mean either a warband or a family depending on context.
Deosil The direction in which the sun moves through the sky, clockwise. Most dweomer operations that involve a circular movement move deosil. The opposite, widdershins, is considered a sign of the dark dweomer and of the debased varieties of witchcraft.
Dweomer (trans. of Dev. dwunddaevad.) In its strict sense, a system of magic aimed at personal enlightenment through harmony with the natural universe in all its planes and manifestations; in the popular sense, magic, sorcery.
Ensorcell To produce an effect similar to hypnosis by direct manipulation of a person’s aura. (True hypnosis manipulates the victim’s consciousness only and thus is more easily resisted.)
Etheric The plane of existence directly “above” the physical. With its magnetic substance and currents, it holds physical matter in an invisible matrix and is the true source of what we call “life.”
Etheric Double The true being of a person, the electromagnetic structure that holds the body together and that is the actual seat of consciousness.
Falcata (Latin) A curved and weighted saber derived from the earlier falx—an ancient weapon, carried in our world by Hispanic tribes of the second and third centuries BC, rediscovered by Gel da’Thae swordsmiths.
Gerthddyn (Dev.) Literally, a “music man,” a wandering