The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [211]
“Haen Marn moved,” Dallandra said calmly. “As to where, I don’t know yet. I suggest we go outside and look.”
Dallandra let the others go outside ahead of her. She was dreading the news that the inadvertent dweomer she and Branna had stumbled upon had sent them all back to the mysterious land of Alban, though she could take comfort in knowing that she had an idea of how to get them back again if so. When she went out, she saw the others hurrying to the pier that jutted out into Haen Marn’s lake, which offered an unobstructed view of the surrounding landscape.
As Dallandra walked toward the water, Branna fell in beside her. Together, they studied the view. The island still sat in a lake, but one easily three times the size of its original location. Dallandra could see across the water to a grove of pine trees, planted in straight rows like a garden. Along the shore stood little wooden structures and stone firepits.
Branna began to laugh.
“What?” Dallandra said.
Branna merely shook her head. Apparently, she couldn’t stop laughing. She raised her arms, leaped into the air, and jigged a few dance steps, laughing all the while. Dallandra grabbed her right arm in both hands but stopped short of shaking her.
“What is it?” Dalla snapped. “Is somewhat wrong?”
“I know where we are.” Branna got her voice under control at last. “Trout! I know now, why the trout. We’ve done it, we’ve done it! We’ve brought the island home.”
Branna pulled her arm free of Dallandra’s grasp and dropped to her knees. She covered her face with both hands and wept. Dallandra stood close and patted her shoulder to comfort her but said nothing. It was far too soon to ask Branna why she wept, or how she could know such things, not that it mattered, in a way, because Branna was incontrovertibly right about one thing. They were gaz ing upon the elven death ground by the lake that Deverry men term the Cint Peddroloc, but the Westfolk call the Lake of the Leaping Trout.
Dallandra glanced up and saw, high in the eastern sky, the pale sliver of the last of the old moon. Another night, and the moon would disappear into her dark.
Branna had stopped weeping. She pulled a handful of grass and blew her nose, then got up, wiping her face on her sleeve.
“My apologies.” Branna’s voice sounded thick with recent tears, but she was smiling. “I just had the strangest feeling, that at last I’d paid back some sort of debt.”
The icy cold of recognition ran down Dallandra’s spine. “Then most likely you have, and you should discuss that with Grallezar when she gets here. At the moment, we need to go explain things to the others.”
The day after Dallandra and Branna had left them, the royal alar and the Cerr Cawnen folk had met up at last. Under Prince Dar’s leadership, they continued their slow march eastward toward the Melyn River Valley. Every morning Valandario scried the surrounding terrain for Horsekin raiders. Once she did see a small squad, but they were heading north. At odd moments during the day, she followed them in vision until they disappeared into the broken tablelands.
“It looks to me,” she told Dar that evening, “like they were cut off from some larger body, and they’re desperate to get back to safety.”
“Good,” Dar said. “We’ve got no time to worry about them now. Do you think this good weather will hold?”
“Yes, for a few more days at least. Which reminds me. Where is the alar going to winter this year?”
“Down on the coast as usual. I’ve been consulting with Chief Speaker Jahdo. The townsfolk are going to need the rest of the year to mark out their farmland, plant their grain, build shelters and the like. They won’t have the leisure to worry about us and our bargain till the spring. The same holds for Gerran. He’ll get his dun once our people have gotten themselves settled and reasonably secure. They’ll need to take care of themselves before they can take Gerran’s money for building it. If there’s nothing to eat, the coin won’t do them one cursed bit of good.”
Our people. Dar’s choice of words