The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [216]
First, Dalla tried looking at one of the pages through the crystal with no particular result. When she set it down on the page, nothing changed. She tried placing it upon the front cover, the back cover, on each page, in different areas of each page—still nothing. Finally, she picked the crystal up, holding it without thinking close to her face.
“You wretched book!” she snapped. “Will you unlock, or shall I burn you?”
The book shimmered like the reflection of a book upon water. Dallandra nearly dropped the crystal in surprise as the illusion disintegrated. The front cover vanished first, then the back. The pages began to peel away, one at a time, and fade into air. In a startling gleam of silver light the last page but one followed the others into nothingness. A single piece of parchment, slightly singed around the edges, lay on the bench.
“Ye gods!” Branna whispered.
“He always did like to make a gaudy display,” Dallandra said. “Evandar, I mean, when he worked dweomer, no matter how much dweomer force he wasted doing it.”
Valandario quirked an eyebrow in her direction.
“Let’s see what this thing says.” Dallandra handed the crystal back to Val. “I know what you’re thinking, and no doubt you’re right. Does it matter? He’s gone now.”
“That’s very true,” Val said. “I shan’t mention it again.”
When Dalla picked up the parchment, she was relieved to see that the writing had turned into simple Elvish. As she read, she translated the words into Deverrian for the sake of Branna and Grallezar.
“If the man’s shadow survives, then he will survive,” it began. “If his shadow has died, then he will die unless he remain a beast.
Fear not the dark of the moon but its full. Unweaving the dweomer is much like unpicking a length of cloth. Unraveling the threads is a simple task, but without a spindle upon which to wind them, they tangle and are lost. If you lack a spindle, then he will be lost. If the threads fall into water, they will drain the man’s life. If they fall upon the ground, they will strangle the one who attempts the unweaving. If they come loose and waft through the air, they will destroy the spindle.”
Dallandra looked up to find her listeners nodding in understanding.
“Well and good, then,” Dalla said in Deverrian. “At last! Somewhat that’s perfectly clear.”
“True spoken,” Val said. “But you do realize, don’t you, that he just copied that out of the Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll?”
“Now, now,” Grallezar broke in before Dallandra could make an angry reply. “He did copy a bit here, a bit there, but he did put together a new sense out of the bits. And here, did he not point to the source with the picture upon the cover of the book?”
“Of course!” Dallandra said. “That’s why it’s the opposite of the picture on Laz’s copy of the Scroll.”
“That’s very true,” Val said. “I wonder if he saw Laz’s book somewhere, but it doesn’t matter anymore. We have the information we need.”
Branna looked so stricken that Dallandra could practically hear her thinking, “We do?” Grallezar gave her apprentice an indulgent smile.
“I shall tell you the answers to these riddles before the night does fall,” Grallezar said. “But for now, I think me that Dalla’s part of this work lies with Avain. Think you her mother will agree to what we have in mind?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to go ask Wynni first.”
“What about Avain?” Val said. “We should be asking her.”
Dallandra laughed, one startled bark. “True spoken! But I think me Arzosah can convince her.” She swung her leg free of the bench and stood up. “Val, if you’d call Arzosah over? I’ll just be talking with Wynni in the kitchen.”
Although she never would have claimed that she understood the dweomer in Evandar’s book, Branna did have some vague idea about the meaning of its instructions. She merely had no idea of how the elder dweomermasters were going to carry them out. One thing had come clear to her, however, the reason that Laz would remain in raven form for the rest of his life. His “shadow,” his human etheric double, had indeed died. Trying to unwind the raven form would kill him.