The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [52]
“That’s not what killed Evandar, exactly,” Dallandra said. “For one thing, he wasn’t truly alive.”
It was Cal’s turn for the astounded stare. “Are you telling me,” he said, “that you ran off with a dead—”
“I’m telling you naught of the sort. He was a spirit, not a ghost.” She could tell that one of their pointless arguments was beginning to build and decided to end it early. “Cal, I’ve got to sit down. I’m so exhausted these days because of the baby.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He became instantly contrite. “Here, let me pull back the tent flap for you.”
He followed her inside and helped her settle herself on their blankets, then knelt beside her on the floor cloth. “I don’t care if Evandar was a spirit or a slab of dead mutton,” he said, “I don’t want you risking your life with some dangerous dweomer working. ”
Dallandra sighed and tried again. “I never want you to ride to battle, either,” she said. “Does that stop you?”
“Well, no.” He glanced away. “We’ve had this argument before, haven’t we?”
“Too many times.”
“All right, I’ll hold my tongue now.” He rose, then stood smiling down at her. “You rest. We can argue after the baby’s born.”
A pair of boots lay on the floor cloth close at hand. Dallandra was tempted to pick one up and throw it at him as he walked away, but she decided that the effort wouldn’t be worth the effect.
Valandario was surprised to find how easy it was for her to weep for Javanateriel despite the passage of so many years. She remembered how she’d wept the night of his murder, then realized that after the day of his cremation she’d kept her grief locked inside herself—and her self locked inside the grief. Flooded by old mourning, the remnants of the broken horn washed clean. She wiped her tears away from her face and the pieces of the silver horn and realized that she felt as if she could float away, released from the weight of dead sorrow.
When she inspected the gleaming silver, she saw that the horn had been shaped from thin sheets of beaten metal. The original craftsman had decorated the pieces with delicate lines of engraved knotwork, then soldered them together, finally adding a lipped mouthpiece. The passing of Haen Marn from the world had smashed the horn to pieces, then squashed the pieces together. Now that she’d freed and cleaned them, she needed to get them back together before she could restore any kind of enchantment.
Valandario went from tent to tent of the royal alar to ask about jewelers. Everyone knew someone—someone in Aberwyn, someone riding with another alar, someone who had died a few years back, someone who had a cousin who did silver work, and so on.
“You’d think that there’d be a few craftsmen riding with the prince,” Valandario said to Dallandra.
“So you would,” Dalla said. “Unfortunately, there’s not.”
“Though you know, since Haen Marn seems to be linked to the Mountain Folk, perhaps we should try to find a dwarven smith to repair the horn.”
“Out here? Where? On the other hand, I just thought of something. Dwarven merchants do come to Cengarn. They might bring a jeweler with them or know of one they trust.”
“Very well, I suppose I can wait till we reach it.”
“You look disappointed, Val.”
“Oddly enough, I am, but I think that’s the horn’s own feelings affecting me. It wants to be healed. That’s the only explanation I can come up with. The horn wants to be healed as soon as possible.”
Dallandra considered this remark while Valandario waited. They were sitting in Dallandra’s tent, or at least, Val was sitting, decorously cross-legged on a leather cushion. Dallandra half-sat, half-sprawled across a pile of them. Now and then she laid her hands on her swollen stomach as if patting the child within.
“Well,” Dalla said at last, “if we only knew what part of the inner planes Haen Marn really belongs to, we could perhaps fix it by dweomer.”
“If,” Val said. “We don’t, however. Not even the spirit of the evocation knew it.”
“That, alas, is true. I’ll try to