The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [59]
“Well, now we have.” Enj glanced around. “I take it our other sister’s up in the manse?”
“She is, and Mara’s her name.” Angmar slipped her arm through his and gave him a significant look. “Marnmara, that be.”
The Lady of the Isle reborn, then! Enj wondered exactly how to greet a grandmother who was now your younger sister, then decided that questions of courtesy didn’t truly matter on a day as happy as this one. Arm in arm, they walked up to the manse with Berwynna trailing after.
In the great hall the others waited for them—Mic, old Otho, Lonna, a lass so like Berwynna that Enj knew she must be his other sister, and two young men, red-haired Dougie, enormously tall, and tattooed Tirn with his scarred and malformed hands. As the introductions went round, Lonna and Mic both wept.
“Ye gods!” Otho snarled. “There’s no need for everyone to carry on so! For all we know this wretched island’s got some evil plan in mind.”
“Ah, Otho!” Enj said. “I take it your sunny mood means you’re glad to be home.”
Otho, a frail whitebeard now, shook a feeble fist in his direction, then suddenly smiled. Lonna wiped her eyes on the hem of her apron, and Berwynna took her handkerchief out of her kirtle.
“Here, Uncle Mic,” she said.
Mic snuffled, smiled at her, and wiped his eyes vigorously.
“Dougie, well met to you, too,” Enj said.
Dougie gave him a blank look, then shrugged, holding up empty palms.
“He’s deaf?” Enj murmured to Berwynna.
“No!” She laughed at him. “He doesn’t speak Dwarvish, and he doesn’t know much Deverrian, either, that’s all. I’ll translate for him.”
“Tirn does speak Deverrian, though,” Marnmara said, “and Dougie had best learn more of it, so I say we all use it this day.”
“I agree, but first,” Enj spoke in Dwarvish, “since the outlanders can’t understand us, what’s all this about ‘uncle’ Mic?”
“He’s Mother’s half brother,” Berwynna said. “Didn’t you know?”
Enj turned to Mic in some exasperation.
“I didn’t want to tell you when I was here before,” Mic said, “because Rhodry Maelwaedd was with us at the time, and it was none of his affair—”
“Hah!” Otho broke in. “I should think not, him a cursed elf and all!”
Everyone laughed, perhaps at the predictability of the insult, perhaps in general good feeling. At length everyone sat down at the long head table, and Lonna and Berwynna bustled off to bring tankards and flagons of ale. Enj sat at Angmar’s right hand, and Marnmara took the seat to her left. The others sat randomly toward the far end, though Enj noticed Dougie keeping the seat next to him clear. While Berwynna poured ale for the men, Enj leaned close to his mother.
“I see the twins favor Rhodry Maelwaedd mightily,” Enj said, too softly for the lasses to hear, “but they look too young to be his children.”
“What? Of course they be his!” Angmar spoke normally. “How long think you that we’ve been gone in Alban?”
“More than forty years, Mam, getting on to fifty, truly.”
“Ye gods!” Mic put in. “To us it seemed a bare seventeen years.”
Enj shook his head to show his bafflement. He shouldn’t be surprised by anything that happened on or to Haen Marn, he supposed.
“Time be like water,” Marnmara leaned forward into the conversation. “Rivers flow at many different speeds.”
This pronouncement struck Enj as more a riddle than an explanation. He had a long swallow of ale to help clear his mind. Haen Marn’s good dark brew, and the sight of the great hall around him—he’d worry about the Rivers of Time some other day, he decided, and enjoy this one.
“It’s been so long here, then,” Angmar said suddenly. “Ai! I doubt me if my Rhodry still walks the earth.”
“Um, well.” Enj hesitated, then decided that blurting the news out would be best. “He does, Mam, but not as you remember him. He ran afoul of great dweomer, and it turned him into a dragon.”
Angmar stared, her mouth half-open. Berwynna translated for Dougie, who made a strange gesture with one hand, describing what appeared to be a cross in midair in front of him. Marnmara, however,