The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [56]
When the boat arrived, Lon greeted him with a bare wave of one hand. Dark pouches under his eyes and a bleary smile marked him as exhausted.
“Up all night, were you?” Dougie said.
Lon merely nodded and handed him the mallet for the gong. Dougie hit it as hard and as fast as he could. He’d never seen so many beasts in the lake; the water roiled and splashed as they rose to the surface, swung their heads this way and that, then dove again to disappear. Somewhat’s frightened them, Dougie thought. They’re acting like netted fish.
Berwynna was pacing back and forth at the end of the wooden pier. She looked pale, and her uncombed hair fell untidily around her shoulders. When he caught her hand and kissed it, she smiled, but her eyes showed traces of weeping.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Something peculiar’s happening. ”
“That storm was peculiar enough for me!”
“Beyond that. I can feel some baleful thing in the air. It’s all around us.”
“Oh, is it now?” Dougie glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing but the lake. “Did you know that someone’s stolen the silver horn?”
“I didn’t.” Her eyes grew wide. “Come up to the manse. We’d best tell Mam that.”
Angmar met them at the door of the manse and raised a gentle hand to keep them from entering. “Keep your voices down,” she said. “Marnmara’s studying the patterns on the walls and can’t be disturbed.”
Dougie glanced through the open door of the manse. At the far wall Marnmara was standing with Tirn, both of them facing the wall and waving their hands as they pointed to this mark or that. On a table behind them, Evandar’s book lay open.
“Dougie,” Angmar continued, “you’d best leave us straightaway. I’ll tell the boatmen.”
“What?” Berwynna clutched his arm with both hands. “Mam, why?”
Angmar gave her daughter a black look. “There’s no time to argue,” she said, “if Dougie wants to see his mother and clan ever again. The boat—”
“Wait,” Dougie broke in. “I shan’t stay if you’d rather not have me here, but let me tell you one quick thing. Your silver horn’s been stolen. It’s not chained to the rock anymore.”
Angmar muttered something in a language he didn’t understand. “Then it’s too late,” she said at last. “My heart aches for you, Dougie, truly it does.”
“Mam!” Berwynna snapped. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re going home,” Angmar said, “and Dougie’s going with us, whether he wants to go or not.”
The light around them suddenly dimmed. Dougie shook his arm free of Berwynna’s grasp and spun around to look at the lake. The sunny spring day had vanished. Like a silver bowl, fog arched over loch and island both, a strange swirling fog, touched with pale purples and blues. He saw the boatmen hauling the dragon boat up onto the shore and heard them yelling back and forth in near panic.
“I should go help them,” Dougie said.
“It’s too dangerous,” Angmar said. “You don’t truly belong to the island, and it can’t protect you. Let’s go to Avain’s tower. We’ll be safer there.”
The square stone tower rose gray and menacing over the apple trees. Angmar hurried them inside to an oddly cold room, empty except for the rickety wooden stairs. Marnmara’s cats, their ears laid back, their tails bushed, bounded up ahead of them.
Avain met them at the landing by her little chamber. She was abnormally tall, perhaps an inch taller than Dougie, and pudgy, with a big puffy face and a round head crowned with a tangled mass of blonde hair. She kept rising up on her toes and then falling back on her heels while she grinned and clapped her hands. She was repeating a single word over and over, not that Dougie understood it, “Lin, lin, lin.”
“What may that mean?” Dougie asked Berwynna.
“Home, home, home,” Berwynna said, then began to tremble.
Angmar ushered them into the chamber, where a wooden table stood by the single window. They sat down in the straw on the floor. With a cautious glance at Angmar, Dougie put his arm around Berwynna’s shoulders and drew her close,