The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [202]
His first thought, in fact, was that he slept and dreamt, but Kov had seen the quivering silver shape as well.
“What in the name of Gonn’s hammer is that?” Kov said.
“I’m not sure,” Laz said, “but I’d get down from that rickety ladder if I were you. Something’s made a gate from somewhere, and I’ve got no idea what’s going to come out of it.”
Kov swore aloud and climbed down. Laz set the basket of apples on the ground and watched as the shape began to drift toward them. A bare foot across at first, as it traveled it grew until it was some six feet high and four across. Its color turned from solid silver to a strange bluish-green, spitting and snapping with silver sparks. It stopped some three feet from the two men and hovered briefly, then split open like a pair of double doors.
Dallandra and Branna stepped out of it, both of them laden with packs like peddlers. Dalla turned and snapped her fingers. The lozenge disappeared.
“Good morrow,” she said. “We’ve come to take a look at the island.”
Kov started to speak, rolled his eyes, and sat down suddenly upon the ground.
“Put your head between your knees,” Dallandra said. “And my apologies for startling you.” She knelt beside Kov, whose face had gone white. “Breathe deeply.”
Branna shrugged off her pack, laid it down, then turned to look at Laz. Although he’d seen her from a distance during his time near the Westfolk camp, he’d never been close enough to speak with her. She stared at him with a gaze that seemed to be looking through his eyes and plunging into his mind and memory as if she would pierce his very soul. For a brief moment he saw a lass with dark hair and a twisted harelip; then the image dissolved back into Branna’s face and a scorn that sliced into his pride.
She turned her back on him and walked over to help Kov stand. “He’ll be all right in a bit,” Dallandra said cheerfully. “We’d best go introduce ourselves to Angmar, and I’ve got somewhat to give her as well.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kov said. “I think I need a sip or two of ale.”
Dallandra smiled at Laz as if she expected him to accompany them, but he let them all troop up to the manse without him. He walked along the lakeshore to the little bench under the willow tree and sat down with a sigh. Out on the lake the wind rippled the water, and the sunlight glinted upon it like gold coins, but all he could see was the memory-image of Branna’s face, ice-cold with scorn.
She had looked at him like that once before, but when? Not in the Westfolk camp, certainly. He had not a trace of a memory of knowing her when he’d lived as Lord Tren. That life before—suddenly he saw in vision the different face, the dark-haired lass with a harelip, sneering at him, then laughing with a sound as raucous as the cry of a raven while he wept. Others stood around and stared at him, all men, these shadowy figures of memory.
Loddlaen. The name rose up and attached itself to one of the men. A friend who’d turned on him, a friend upon whom he’d revenged himself once he’d gathered the power to break Loddlaen’s will. The power came from—
“No.” Laz began to tremble. “No, no, I couldn’t have done that.” But he had done it, whatever it was. His memory balked like a terrified horse and refused to go any further.
Laz sat and watched the sun on the water for hours, that afternoon, until at last Mara came looking for him to tell him that the evening meal was on the table.
“I’ll eat in the kitchen, my thanks,” Laz said.
“What?” She laughed at him. “Why?”
He could never tell her. “Oh, well,” he said. “I thought mayhap you had too many guests already.”
“Be not so foolish! There always be room for my teacher at table.”
Yet Laz made sure to take the place at the foot of the table, because Branna was sitting at Angmar’s right hand up near the head, just across from Dallandra at Angmar’s left. Enj and Kov sat next on either side, a welcome barrier between him and the women. Yet now and then throughout the meal, he noticed