The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [134]
“Envoy Kov,” she said, “you’re welcome to stay here rather than fly off with the dragon. He tells me that he needs must take urgent news back to the prince of the Westfolk, and he doubts that you want to go to their camp.”
“I don’t, truly, but I’d not intrude—”
“It would be no intrusion. A man from Lin Serr’s always welcome on the isle. Enj is off hunting on the shore, but he should return in a day or two, so you’d not lack for company.”
“Then my thanks, my lady.” Kov bowed to her. “I’ll stay gladly.”
Angmar turned back to the boat and called up the news to Lon. He smiled then began to strike the gong hard in a regular rhythm. The sound rippled across the lake. On the farther shore, the silver wyrm stood and seemed to bow. As Kov watched, Rori took flight. His wing beats drummed as Lon let the gong quiver into silence. The sound faded as he turned in a graceful arc and flew off to the west. Angmar watched him go in utter silence. At last, when not even Kov’s dwarven eyes could find the silver point in the sky, she sighed, but only once.
“I’d best go tend Avain in her tower,” Angmar said. “Mara, if you’ll tend to our guest?”
“I will, Mam,” Mara said. “Lonna’s already fed him.”
“Good, good.” At that, Angmar smiled, though briefly. “I’ll fetch Avain her dinner.”
Kov bowed again, and she walked off, heading inside the manse. He turned to Mara. “Your servant’s right. I must stink of wyrm.”
“Well, that most certainly is true!” Mara smiled wryly. “You may heat yourself a bath at our fire. We have only the one servant—Lonna, that is—and she really can’t haul water anymore.”
“I can bathe in the lake. I can swim, you see.”
“Truly?” She looked at him as if he were a great marvel. “Well, around the back of the manse there’s a little bench that marks a shallow cove. You can bathe safely there. The beasts don’t come right up to the shore.”
“My thanks, I’ll do that. But when I’m done, I’ll heat myself some water to shave, if you have a razor here I could borrow?”
“I do, one that my father left behind, all those years ago.”
Besides the razor, Mara found him a clean shirt that had once belonged to Otho. Bathed, with his neck shaved and his beard neatly trimmed, in general, respectable again, Kov joined Mara at the table in the great hall.
“You cut a much better figure now,” she pronounced.
“My thanks,” Kov said. “A lovely woman like you deserves no less and a great deal more.”
Smiling, she reached out with one hand, as if she were about to take his, then hurriedly drew it back with a blush. All of Kov’s weariness vanished at the gesture. There’s hope, he thought. Oh, by Gonn himself, maybe I can gain her favor! He felt like bursting into song.
“I’m somehow sure that Haen Marn has somewhat to do with this,” Branna said. “In my meditations, I keep seeing a golden bird, a piece of jewelry, I mean, not a live bird. It’s flat with outstretched wings, a brooch, I think it is.”
“And this does make you think of Haen Marn?” Grallezar said.
“It does, but I can’t understand why.”
Grallezar considered, sucking a thoughtful fang. They were sitting in the dweomermaster’s tent, early on a wet afternoon, with the rain drumming on the leather roof above them. Now and then a drop made its way through the smoke hole in the roof and splashed on the cooking stones set on the floor.
“I feel like there’s knowledge trying to reach me,” Branna said, “a flood of it, like the rain outside, but all I get is the occasional drop or trickle.”
“Meditating does seem that way often. Your dreams—see you the golden bird in them?”
“Only once. In the dream I knelt by a stream and dropped the bird into it. In the Dawntime, my people gave gifts to the gods by putting things in streams and rivers. That’s what