The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [209]
They had spent the morning studying a particular section of the carvings on the east wall. In the center of an oval, delineated by an arrangement of small sigils of Aethyr, stood a depiction of a tree, half of which had stylized leaves on its branches but the other half, stylized flames. Across the room behind them, on the west wall, stood another, similar design but with its oval defined by repeated sigils of Air. The trees had to refer to the tree that stood by the gate between the worlds, Dallandra realized, but the realization had not gotten her much farther.
“So far,” Dallandra said, “we’ve got four places on the walls that seem to refer to traveling, the patches of sigils of Aethyr and Air that Laz pointed out to me, and then these two trees. And then—” She paused to walk along the wall until she reached another set of symbols that at first glance looked like a design element and naught more. “And then there’s these. They’re the key to the egregore, I’d wager. Mara mentioned how the healing lore began to come into her mind the night after she’d been studying this bit of the wall.”
“If you say so.” Branna frowned at the designs. “Oh, wait, I think I do see. Birds plucking things from a garden? Is that it?”
“In a very stylized way. Now, over here—”
Laughing, calling out to one another, the inhabitants of Haen Marn came trooping in, Berwynna arm in arm with her mother, and behind them Mara, Avain, and Enj, with Mic and Kov bringing up the rear. From the east door Lonna hurried in and Lon after her to greet Berwynna. Even Medea joined in by the simple expedient of sticking her green-and-gold head through the window closest to the long table. So much for study and meditation, Dallandra decided.
“We’d best pick this up again later,” Dallandra told Branna.
“True spoken,” Branna said. “Though I can’t say I begrudge them their joy.”
Yet at dinner that night, in the midst of laughter and the noisy telling of tales, Dallandra found herself glancing over at the huge swags of carving that swooped across the walls of the great hall. Somewhere among them lay the secrets she needed.
In the middle of the night, Branna woke from a dream too strange and unfocused to be one of her true dreams, yet she felt that she’d been given a kernel of important lore. She got up and made a small dweomer light, shielding it with her body to keep from waking Dallandra, only to realize that the master had already gotten up and gone before her. Branna allowed the light to swell, then dressed and went downstairs. Dallandra was standing in the great hall beside the door in the west wall.
“Did I wake you?” Dalla said. “My apologies, if so.”
“You didn’t,” Branna said. “I had a dream. I was looking at a part of the wall and a voice said, this bit was made to be yours. Or something like that. You know how dreams are with words. So I woke and felt I had to come look for the piece that’s mine before the memory faded.”
“Very good! Which bit is it?”
“The pair of Aethyr sigils in the midst of some animals that might be horses. It’s on the east wall by the other door.”
“Very good! I’ve been looking at this pair of Air sigils here. Look, they’re surrounded by what look like ships. It must have somewhat to do with motion and travel.” Dallandra touched one of the ships with her forefinger. “I have the feeling that maybe this piece is mine, somehow, now that you mention it.”
Branna ran across the room to the back door. When she tossed her dweomer light on to the wall, she saw the sigils and the animals, clearly horses now that she was awake.
“Here they are!” she called out to Dalla.
“Good!” Dalla called back. “I see the two groups are on an east-west axis, and both of them are near the burning trees.”
“So they are!”
Branna reached out and ran her fingertips along the sigils, then glanced back just in time to see Dallandra laying a casual hand on the sigils by the other door. The entire manse lurched and trembled. Branna yelped and nearly fell, but her hand seemed to have become stuck