The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [53]
In the event, finding the jeweler turned out to be easier than either Dallandra or Valandario anticipated. The route that the royal alar was taking to Cengarn ran west of Pyrdon and led eventually to the trading ground by the Lake of the Leaping Trout. By the time that the alar reached it, a number of Deverry merchants had arrived for the spring horse fairs. A good number of alarli had joined them. This time when Valandario asked around, she found a Westfolk jeweler, a slight man with the longest, most delicate fingers she’d ever seen, and emerald-green eyes that gleamed like gems themselves.
He sighed over the beauty of the pieces, then laid them on a cloth and began to fit them together, a few at a time, his fingers moving like spiders over the silver, until he could tell her that they would form a complete horn except for the mouthpiece, irrevocably broken and deformed.
“I’m not one of the Mountain Folk,” he said. “I couldn’t have done work like this, but I can repair it. I’ll make a new mouthpiece, too, so it’ll sound some notes again. Now, I can’t guarantee that they’ll be the original notes, of course.”
Val’s heart sank. “Of course,” she said, and she managed a smile. “How much will you want for that?”
“Nothing but the Wise One’s good wishes.”
“Those you’ll have, certainly, and my thanks.”
As she walked back to her own tent, Val was cursing her ill luck. She should have realized that the sound of the horn might be different once mended. Would it still summon Haen Marn? She could only hope. Perhaps the summoning dweomer lay elsewhere in the horn, she reminded herself. It would be part of her working to find out.
When the jeweler returned the repaired horn, she decided that she’d best pay him something, no matter how he protested. Dweomer workings always require a price. She preferred it to be a gemstone, not some subtle personal sacrifice that would only appear when she least expected it. She reached into her bag of divination gems and pulled out one randomly—a chunk of lapis lazuli that made his eyes grow wide and greedy.
“My thanks.” She dropped the chunk into his outstretched palm. “You’ve done a splendid job.”
“My thanks to you, Wise One! This stone will make a splendid brooch to tempt a merchant with.”
As the alar made its slow way north, Valandario kept the horn with her at all times. While she was riding, she hung it from a chain around her neck and tucked it inside her tunic. At night it slept on a pillow next to hers. She began to see it in her dreams, and finally it was a dream that gave her the secret of its healing. She saw a dwarven woman holding the horn in her arms and singing a lullaby while she rocked it like a baby.
“Of course!” Val woke suddenly and found herself sitting up in the dawn gloom inside her tent. “It’s born of Earth, so I’ll ask the Lords of Earth.”
That evening, when the alar was making its night camp, Valandario found Dallandra outside her folded tent, waiting for the alar to put it together. Dalla sat slumped on a high pile of cushions, her knees spread, her hands dangling between them.
“You look pale,” Val said. “You need to eat and rest.”
“Rest, certainly,” Dalla said. “I’m not so sure about eating. Did you want to ask me something?”
“I was going to ask you to be the sentinel for a working, but not after seeing you!”
“I’d better not, no. How about Grallezar?”
“Excellent idea!”
Grallezar was not only willing to come along and stand guard, she brought her apprentice with her so that Branna might see a ritual of evocation. The women walked about a mile away into the grassland. In the red-gold light of sunset they found a reasonably flat area where the new grass grew short and even.
As she had before, Valandario cleared her place of working, drew and consecrated a circle, and invoked the light. This time, however, she laid the newly restored silver horn down in the circle’s center, then drew a pentagram around it. Once the star burned with blue astral fire, she called upon the Lords of Earth.
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