The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [57]
Avain hummed a strange tuneless music under her breath as she sat down at her table and reached for a silver basin. A dribble of water slopped over its edge as she pulled it close. She stared into it for a long time, by Dougie’s reckoning, and during that entire long time, nothing seemed to happen, nothing moved, except for the mist outside the window.
Carved deep into Haen Marn’s wall, the sigils of the Kings of Aethyr glowed pale lavender. Nearby a peculiar set of marks that Laz had never seen before glimmered turquoise, though flecked with an unpleasant red orange.
“If I only knew what these sigils be—” Mara pointed to the flecked glow.
“It doesn’t matter,” Laz said. “There’s truly naught that we can do, one way or the other. The island will go where it wills to go, and what we want or think is worth the fart of a two-copper pig, no more.”
Still, she went on studying the symbols carved into the wall, her eyes narrow as if she could force meaning out of them. In his chair by the window old Otho turned toward her with a scowl.
“We’re probably all dead already,” he announced. “I can’t see one cursed thing out this blasted window but an ugly fog. Hah! It’s probably the fog of the Otherlands. I only ever wanted to die in Lin Serr, you know, but I’m not in the least surprised that I won’t get to. Whole cursed life’s been like that. Bound to have a bad end.”
“Otho,” Laz said wearily, “we’re not dead. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s not the Otherlands.”
“Indeed?” Otho glared at him from under fierce eyebrows. “What makes you so sure we’re going anywhere, eh?”
“The way I came here. I know what it feels like to travel between worlds.” Laz felt a line of cold sweat run down his back. I may hate it, he thought, but I’ll never forget it.
Otho snorted in loud contempt. Mara laughed aloud, the high-pitched giggle of a terrified girl.
“Come sit down,” Laz said to her. “There’s naught else you can do but wait.”
She hesitated, then followed him to the long table. They sat down on one of the benches, but, Laz noticed, they made sure that their backs were to the window. Otho leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared out at nothing. Are we traveling on one of the Rivers of Time? Laz wondered, or are we going through a place where there’s no time at all? A second trickle of fear-sweat joined the first. He leaned back against the table edge, stretched his legs out in front of him, and did his best to appear at ease for Mara’s sake.
Although he acted confident around others, much of the time Enj felt like a fool in his belief that some day Haen Marn would return. The entire dwarven community of Lin Serr kept telling him that he was a fool or perhaps even daft. Maybe they’re all right, he would think, maybe I’m eating empty hope for a cold dinner. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from hoping, couldn’t keep himself away from the place where once the lake and its island had lain. Only one thing remained to mark its former location. On a particular riverbank—no one had ever named it, since only a handful of people knew it existed—stood a boulder of gray granite, roughly half-a-sphere and about four feet at its highest point. Just below that point was a red stain that looked like blood from a distance. Up close, however, it revealed itself to be the much-rusted remains of an iron ring bolted into the rock.
A good many times in the past forty years Enj had returned to that boulder, camped for a few days, and then moved on, heart-struck with disappointment. For this visit, however, he had Rori’s news to give him fresh hope. On a fine spring day he hiked up through the budding trees and pale grass along the bank of the river, full and chattering with runoff from the mountain snows. As he came clear of the forest, he saw the boulder in its usual spot, but near the point something winked and gleamed in the bright sun. It shone like silver. He