The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [63]
“Did my sister ever come back inside?” she said.
“She didn’t,” Dougie dropped his voice to a whisper. “Tirn came creeping back in not long after you left, and he looked like a whipped hound.” He let his voice return to normal. “It wouldn’t hurt your sister to give you some help with all that kitchen work.”
“I’ve often had the same thought, strangely enough.”
“Well, here, when it’s time to serve, let me help. I don’t need to sit here like a lump on a log, and me not understanding a word of what your brother’s saying anyway.”
“That would gladden my heart, and while we work, I can teach you a bit more about the language we speak.”
“I’d best learn it.” Dougie gave her a grin. “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life.”
Berwynna smiled in return, but her mother’s words hung over them like a sword. What if he did come to grief, now that they’d come into this strange country her mother called home? All through that evening, during her work in the kitchen and the feast that followed, she did her best to forget that question. Yet she was always aware of him, first helping her in the kitchen, then sitting close at dinner.
“Your mother’s talking up a storm with your brother,” Dougie said, then slipped one arm around her waist.
With his free hand he fed her tidbits from their trencher as if she’d been his wife, and when she took a choice bit of meat from his fingers, she would smile and at times, when her mother looked the other way, lick them. His smiles grew ever softer, ever warmer. Berwynna began to feel a languid sort of warmth herself, as if she’d downed a double tankard of the strongest ale ever brewed.
At the meal’s end Enj announced that Berwynna had done enough hard work for the day. “You’ve shamed us all, Dougie,” he said. “Come now, Mic, you and I can clean up the mess.”
“I do love having a brother!” Berwynna called out. “My thanks!”
When the men began to clear the table, Angmar bade everyone a good night and went upstairs to bed. Berwynna and Dougie made a grateful escape to the cool night air outside. As soon as they were well away from the great hall, Dougie caught her by the shoulders and kissed her, a long lingering kiss.
“Let’s find somewhere to sit down,” she said. “You’ll break your back, bending over like this.”
“Ever the practical lass!” he said with a soft laugh. “Splendid idea!”
“I’ve got an even better one.” Berwynna looked up at the manse and pointed to a window, glowing with candlelight. “That’s Mam’s chamber window.”
As they watched, the light went out.
“She’ll be asleep soon.” Berwynna dropped her voice to a whisper. “If we’re careful and quiet, we could go up the back stairs and go to your chamber.”
“I like that one even better.” He paused to take another kiss. “Quiet, it is!”
Laz woke in the middle of the night from dreams of sorcery so vivid that he wept, thinking of how much he’d lost. He sat up and wiped his moist eyes on the edge of his blanket. Dweomer lay thick all around him on the island, but he himself could do nothing—or so he thought, wrapped in self-pity. Yet something about the dream nagged at him, a brief image of a book, open to a page of Gel da’Thae script, his book, left behind with Sidro here in this familiar world. Perhaps his power lay waiting for him, too, now that he’d returned to his proper place.
You could at least try, he told himself, not the raven, perhaps, something simpler, a divination, mayhap. He got up, pawed through his heap of clothing with his mangled hands, and found the black crystal. In the darkness of his chamber, he could see nothing in the gem or elsewhere, for that matter. Without thinking he summoned the Wildfolk of Aethyr. Although snapping his fingers lay beyond him, he clapped his hands together. A silvery