The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [201]
Mirryn’s smiled disappeared. “Ah, well,” he said. “I can understand that.”
“But if my stepsister be willing to be so kind,” Berwynna continued, “mayhap she’ll come to the island to fetch me here again in the spring.”
“Of course I will,” Medea said.
“Then I’ll look forward to the spring doubly this winter.” Mirryn made as much of a bow as he could without swinging the lantern so hard that the candle went out. “My thanks to you, fair ladies both.”
“Most welcome, I’m sure,” Medea said. “Wynni, Dallandra asked me to tell you that Laz Moj has returned to the island with the missing book.”
Berwynna let out a whoop of pure joy that made Mirryn jump back a step. She laughed as she apologized to him.
“You ken not how that news gladdens my heart,” Berwynna said to Mirryn. “I’ll be telling you the tale should you wish.” She turned to Medea again. “Will Dalla be going to the isle to fetch it?”
“She will, and knowing her, I wager she’ll get there before we do.”
Laz had taken to doing what kitchen work he could with his maimed hands. He’d worked out a way to hold a broom reasonably well, and every morning he swept out the kitchen hut while Lonna went outside to toss scraps to the island’s cats. Since the Gel da’Thae relied on ferrets to control the rodents who inevitably attack stored food, Laz had never seen house cats before coming to Haen Marn. In fact, he’d assumed that they were some species of Wildfolk until he’d seen Lonna and Mara feeding and stroking them.
After she tended the cats, Lonna would come back into the kitchen, look at the swept floor, and grunt a brief thanks. The moment was Laz’s chance to fish for information.
“Lonna,” he said that morning, “I heard the name Lin Rej once. Was it a dwarven stronghold?”
“It was,” Lonna said. “And a grand one, or so I heard as a child. It stretched for miles and miles underground, but there were gardens, too, up above. That’s how your folk got in, through the garden stairways, when they were a-burning it and slaughtering my folk.”
“My apologies! I—”
“You weren’t there.” Lonna fixed him with a gaze as sharp as a knifepoint. “My thanks for the sweeping.”
Laz bowed to her for want of anything to say and left the kitchen hut. He found himself wondering if he had been “there,” one of the Horsekin who’d destroyed the dwarven city. If so, it had happened too many lives ago for him to worry about, he decided, especially since he had a more recent set of transgressions to brood over.
Every afternoon Laz spent several hours teaching Mara dweomerlore. The need to organize the material efficiently showed him that his own training had a good many gaps, things that Hazdrubal had never told or shown him. The Bardekian, of course, had expected to be paid for his lore. Most likely he’d held things back in order to get a better price for them later, not that he’d lived to see that “later.” More and more, Laz was coming to agree with Faharn, that Hazdrubal was—not a sham, certainly—but suspect.
Had Hazdrubal studied the legendary dark dweomer? Something had made him flee his home in the islands. Now and then, Hazdrubal had made sharp comments about meddling government officials or cowardly masters of magic who refused to see and take the strange powers available to those who dared to use them. While Faharn had bristled at such talk, Laz had found it oddly familiar, even though he couldn’t place where he’d first heard it.
That life before Lord Tren, he would think, the one that Dalla and Ebañy never talked about. What did I do then? What was I? As the drowsy summer days rolled by on Haen Marn, Laz began to feel that he knew the answers to those questions. His mind merely recoiled every time he tried to voice them.
Yet, in the event, it was neither Ebañy nor Dallandra who forced him to the answer. One hot afternoon, Laz stood under an apple tree, holding out the basket while Kov, up on a ladder, picked the ripest fruits and tossed them down. Flies buzzed, birds sang, a breeze from the lake stirred the