The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [128]
“Splendid! I’m looking forward to getting home. A nice cozy winter, that’s what I’m longing for.”
“And so am I.”
With a yawn she snuggled closer to him. She seemed to have no idea that he was considering returning to human form. Sooner or later, he would have to tell her, if indeed he did decide to spend the winter as a man on Haen Marn instead of inside a fire mountain as a dragon. For the moment, however, he could put the decision out of his mind.
Or at least, he could try to do so. In the morning, when he was about to leave on another scouting expedition, Dallandra confronted him.
“I”ve been wondering,” she said. “If you’ve made up your mind yet.”
“Do you mean about the transformation?” Rori said.
“What else would I mean?”
“True enough. I’ve not decided yet, frankly. My mind keeps going this way and that.”
“Well, it’s time you steadied it.”
He considered just taking wing and flying away, but a voice in his mind whispered, “Coward!”
“With the dragon book still lost,” Rori said, “I assumed that the matter couldn’t be settled.”
“It may not be lost for long. Laz Moj has gone after it, and no matter what you think of him, he does have dweomer.”
“Does that mean he might find the book? Huh, I wouldn’t think he could, the wretched bit of scum.”
“Rori, he’s trying to make amends in this life. It’s a struggle for him, but he truly wants to set his feet on the right road.”
“Well, then, more honor to him. I suppose.”
“But Laz’s wyrd isn’t the issue.” Dallandra put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Do you want to remain a dragon or not? I need an answer, Rori.”
He raised himself up on his forelegs, but Dallandra held her ground. When he snarled at her, she merely rolled her eyes in disgust.
“There’s a thing I don’t understand,” he said in a decent tone of voice. “Why do I have to answer before Laz has found the cursed book?”
“Because your reluctance may well be what’s keeping the thing hidden. I’m beginning to think that Evandar linked it to you, somehow or other. That may be why he put it originally on Haen Marn, because he knew you’d connected yourself to the island through Angmar.”
Rori lay down again and considered the grass directly in front of him.
“I know you’ve heard about currents in the astral,” Dallandra went on. “Some waft a thing to its true owner, like the silver dagger that caused you so many years of pain. Others push a thing farther away. This book is not a real object, not as we know ‘real’ on the physical plane. It’s drifting on the astral at the moment, waiting for you to make up your mind. It needs an answer, Rori, and by the Black Sun herself, so do I.”
With a long rumbling sigh he looked up to face her again.
“So you do,” he said, “so you do. Ye gods, I don’t know my own heart these days, and that’s the honest truth. I don’t know what I want. I love the freedom of the air, I’m fond of Arzosah, but there’s Angmar.”
“Indeed. Perhaps you’d best go see her, and listen to what your heart tells you there at Haen Marn.”
Every muscle in his body went tense against his will. He felt himself crouch for the leap into the wind that would free him from her questions. His wings trembled, longing to spread. He fought them quiet, but his tail lashed of its own accord.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “I’ll think on it.”
“Please do. Sooner or later you’ve got to decide.”
Dallandra turned on her heel and stalked back to camp. Rori waited until she’d gone a safe distance away, then unfurled his wings and flew, heading north for another look at the Horsekin fortress.
When, on the morrow, his wings brought him gliding over the long mound, he roared with laughter at what he saw. For a long while he circled on the air currents to savor the sight. The entire top of the mound had collapsed inward like a rotted melon, revealing