The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [212]
“Why?” Dar continued. “Do you want to winter with us or in Mandra?”
Val was about to answer when she felt Dallandra’s mind tugging at hers. She muttered a quick excuse to the prince, then trotted off to seek a scrying focus. The sun was hanging low in the cloudless sky, but not far from camp a small stream ran over rocks. She concentrated on its swirling water and sent her mind out to Dallandra. The image built up fast of her fellow dweomermaster grinning in sheer delight.
“Where are you?” Val said.
“On the shore of the Lake of the Leaping Trout,” Dallandra said.
“What, by all the gods, are you doing there?”
“Studying the walls of Haen Marn, for one thing.”
All at once Valandario understood. “You’ve done it,” she said. “You’ve moved the island!”
“Well, not precisely. Branna did as much as I, and frankly, we were very very lucky. Either that, or we had help from the inner planes.”
“Did you hear knocks?”
“No, which is why I’m invoking sheer blind luck as an explanation. Although, you know, I think it simply may have been time for the island to come home.” Dallandra’s image, floating on the surface of the stream, frowned briefly in thought. “Branna’s been receiving omens and odd flashes of memory. I’ve come to believe that she was involved—deeply involved—with the creation of the island. If she’d been farther along in her training, working the dweomer might have been a good deal less harrowing, but neither of us died, so I suppose you can call us successful.”
“Yes, certainly I can! I’m overwhelmed, in fact. It’s utterly amazing, what you’ve done.”
“Amazing, perhaps. Exhausting, certainly. On the morrow, can you get the elder dragons to bring you and Grallezar here? I’m hoping that Arzosah hasn’t changed her wretched wyrmish mind about helping us unravel the dweomer.”
“They’re both off hunting at the moment, but I’m sure that Rori will talk sense into her if she has.”
When the two great wyrms returned to camp, each laden with a dead deer, they both proved willing to do what Dallandra had asked, though neither seemed joyful at the prospect. Arzosah kept her ears laid back and hissed even after she agreed.
“I do understand,” Val said to Arzosah, “how heavy your heart must be. I lost my mate many years ago now, and I miss him still.”
“My thanks,” Arzosah said. “Yours is the first sympathy I’ve gotten out of any of you wretched dweomer people. I’m glad to see that at least one of you understands my heartsickness.”
Both Valandario and the dragon turned their heads to look at Rori, who was assiduously studying the ground in front of him. When he stayed silent, Arzosah turned away with a snort and waddled off to return to her dinner. Valandario waited, but in a moment Rori did the same without another word.
That evening Valandario and Grallezar packed up what few things they’d need for the journey. Valandario emptied out a quiver of arrows and put the black crystal, wrapped in several layers of cloth, into it in their stead. She could sling the quiver across her chest, she decided, and keep the crystal right close to her during the journey.
While the prospect of flying troubled her not at all, Valandario did worry about leaving the alar with only Ebañy and Neb as dweomerworkers—Niffa had more than enough work to do among the townsfolk—and only the two youngest dragons for protection from the air as well. In the morning, however, Medea returned full of chatter about the astonishing island and its dweomers. Her presence reassured Valandario immensely, but she took Ebañy aside for a private talk.
“If you run into the slightest trouble,” she told him, “contact me immediately.”
“I shall, O Learned Lady of Little-Known Lore,” Salamander said. “But truly, after all these years of dweomerwork, I do think I’m capable of scrying for enemies.”
“Well, very true, and I don’t mean to be insulting. It’s just that—”
“I know.” Salamander grinned at her. “It’s just that in the past, I’ve been less than studious, indeed rather more flippant,