The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [48]
“Should I leave you?” Laz said to Mara.
“Nah, nah, nah, for I would hear your advice about this.” Mara hesitated briefly. “I did have the strangest sensation just now. It were hope, a sudden hope, like the sun coming in the window here. And I thought, mayhap we’ll go home soon.”
“Be you sure?” Angmar leaned forward a little in her chair.
“I be not, Mam, and I’d not have you put too much upon it. But then, I’d not dismiss it, either. I did think, mayhap my teacher here might tell us somewhat about it.”
“I’m not sure there’s much to tell,” Laz said. “Was this like a dream, or even a daydream?”
“It were not, just a sudden flood of feeling. I did go tell Avain about it, but she did make me no answer.”
“My sweet,” Angmar said, “Avain understands little unless it come to her as pictures in the water.”
“Then her silence means naught.” Mara glanced at Laz. “It were for that moment or two a glorious feeling.”
“Did you feel that it came from outside your self?” Laz said.
“I did, truly, but I did see no spirits about or suchlike.”
“Then it might have come from far away, through some powerful dweomer.” Laz raised a quick hand. “Note, however, that I said ‘might have,’ not ‘it most assuredly did.’ ”
“Very well. I’ll think on’t.”
Angmar sighed and settled back in her chair. The bright sun picked out the fine lines around her mouth and turned the gray in her hair to silver. She glanced out the window, then pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. When Laz followed her glance, he saw Berwynna and Dougie walking among the apple trees, holding hands, laughing together.
“Huh!” Mara snapped. “Wynni’s lout be here again!”
“So he is,” Angmar said. “I do like the lad, mind, but truly, he belongs not here. Ai, when I were young, never did I heed the warnings of my elders, and so I do suppose he be much the same.”
“Wynni should be sending him away because you did ask her to,” Mara said. “Not just because of what Avain did tell you.”
“Well, now, she does deserve a bit of merriment. She does work so hard for all of us. I think me you understand not just how much we do depend upon her labors.”
Mara wrinkled her nose at her mother, who ignored the sneer.
“My poor Wynni!” Angmar went on. “It does ache her heart, shut up here like she be.”
“Why not let her marry, then, and go live among the pigs and dogs on the mainland?” Mara said. “Since she does seem to like them so much.”
Angmar swung her head around and glared. Mara started to speak, but Angmar got in before her, letting fly with a stream of Dwarvish. Although Laz couldn’t understand a word, he could hear anger easily enough. Mara, in turn, snarled out a few sullen words, also in Dwarvish, which only made Angmar angrier. With a muttered excuse that neither woman bothered to acknowledge, Laz got up and slunk away.
He made his way through the apple trees to the lakeshore. Out behind the manse, he’d found a tiny beach that had become his favorite spot on the island. A willow tree, pruned into a canopy, overhung a stone bench. When he sat down, he could watch the water through the slender branches, just budding with green. Across the rippled lake rose the dark, stone-streaked hills of Alban—whatever or wherever that name might have meant.
Over the past few weeks, as his hands had continued to heal, and his strength continued to build, Laz had attempted simple dweomer workings, only to fail at all of them. All around the island rose a water veil of etheric force that made scrying beyond it impossible. He’d expected that. Another difference in the feel of the etheric, however, troubled him far more.
Back home in the Northlands, he’d sensed the etheric plane as a constant presence, hovering close to the physical, or perhaps even merging into the physical in some unclear way. He’d always been able to exploit