The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [136]
“I do wonder, then,” Grallezar said, “if the secrets of the isle be graved on those walls for all to see but few to read.”
Dallandra looked at Branna and raised a questioning eyebrow. Branna shuddered, suddenly cold in the warm and stuffy tent. She had, she realized, just felt an omen-touch. “I think that’s true,” she said. “If I read the omen a-right.”
“An omen, eh? So!” Grallezar clapped her hands together. “I think me you be linked to this isle more deeply than we did think before.”
“Indeed,” Dallandra said. “When the time’s right, you and I will go there and see if we can read the walls—well, of course, if your master allows.”
“Huh! Kind of you to ask.” But Grallezar was smiling. “I think me it would be an acceptable thing if my apprentice did get a glimpse of grand secrets. Truly, then she might even devote herself to her beginner’s studies with a bit more zeal.”
Branna felt her cheeks burn with a blush. The two older women laughed, just gently, as if they, too, were remembering how it felt to be young.
That evening, when they were discussing their day’s work, Branna told Neb about the carved walls of Haen Marn.
“I wonder what those other sigils are,” she finished up. “The ones Laz couldn’t recognize.”
“I wonder, too,” Neb said. “The healer who lived in Trev Hael used some odd-looking symbols for various minerals, like brimstone and quicksilver. She wrote them on labels and suchlike. She told me once that they were ancient, maybe Rhwmani or even Greggyn.”
“Do you think they might have been Elvish?”
“It could well be. I’ll write them out and ask Dalla in the morning.”
By a golden dweomer light, Neb found a scrap of pabrus and mixed up some ink. Branna watched as he drew the symbols. At first they looked like meaningless squiggles and naught more, but once he’d finished a row of them, she noticed that they were all composed of some dozen marks arranged in different orders.
“That one with the crescent over a straight line,” Branna said to Neb, “is that quicksilver?”
“It is.” He looked up in surprise. “What made you say that?”
“I don’t know. But the one with the crescent under the line, is that the metal silver?”
“Right again! Dead silver, I suppose you could call it, so the crescent above the line might be the mark of some lively thing, like quicksilver.”
For hours they pored over the symbols, trying to discern which mark denoted which property. In the morning, when they took their discoveries to Dallandra, she told them that the symbols indeed belonged to an ancient Elvish way of describing various natural substances.
“What I wonder about,” Dallandra said, “is how your herbwoman in Trev Hael learned them.”
“She told me they’d been handed down to her from her master in the craft,” Neb said. “That’s all I know.”
“In a way it doesn’t matter. This is a very valuable thing you two have done, breaking these symbols down into their marks. Neb, please write the meanings up on fresh pabrus. This lore is too valuable to lose.”
“Do you think it will help when we get to Haen Marn?” Branna said.
“I do. I’ve been thinking about those unknown sigils on the walls. If they’re composed of some of these marks, deciphering them’s going to be much much easier.”
“A question,” Neb put in, “how are you going to get everyone to Haen Marn when the time comes? I’m assuming you’ll want the other masters to help you.”
“You’re quite right about that, but I don’t know how we’ll get there.” Dallandra smiled, a trifle ruefully. “Dragonback, if naught else. I’m sure Rori would carry us there—well, assuming he’s made up his mind about the transformation, but Arzosah is another matter entirely.”
When Rori left Haen Marn, he flew a wide loop north, searching for the wagon train of migrating Horsekin. He suspected their goal to be the fortress Dwrgi dweomer had destroyed,