“Hanmara, Hanmara, ol duh um duh non ci ol zir doh no co. Ol pir tay day ol pir tay, Hanmara.”
Dallandra chanted these phrases over and over, with other words in between that Branna’s mind simply could not parse. A spirit voice, very high and clear, began to sing the words in descant harmony with Dallandra’s chant. After some little time, it faded away, and Dallandra fell silent as well.
Branna had no idea of how long they traveled. Trapped as she was by the astral forces of the illusory wall, she was forced to stand still, unable even to lean against the carvings to rest for fear of starting off some other dweomer process. The construct shook so hard at moments that she nearly fell. Her outstretched arms first pained her, then became numb. Her legs began to ache in their stead, and she felt shivering cold from the lavender mist that swirled around her.
At moments, the mist grew so thick that she could no longer see Dallandra. She became so terrified then that it took all her will to keep from screaming. Eventually the mist would thin. Once she could see Dallandra again, the fear would leave her.
After some long while, Branna became aware of noises, the muffled sounds of people calling out, the croak of a raven voice, the sounds of footsteps running back and forth, all of them coming from above her. She could guess that the other inhabitants of the manse had woken up and realized what was occurring around them. When she glanced out of the window, she saw that Medea, too, was awake. She’d sat up, and Avain huddled between the dragon’s front legs.
Bit by bit, the normal noises became louder. Branna could pick out individual voices, including Laz’s raven cackles. The lavender mist began to thin out. Sunlight streamed in through the window as suddenly as the lighting of a giant candle, when but a little while ago the night had wrapped everything in darkness. The mist vanished, one soft curl at time.
The wall became only a wall. Branna’s left hand rested on a carving of horses and her right, on a stylized carving of a tree. All of the spirit lights had gone out. She pulled her hands away fast, lest they sink in again, and rubbed them together to regain some feeling in her cold fingers. Her shoulders ached as if she’d been carrying a heavy load for miles.
“Branna!” Dallandra came hurrying toward her. “Are you unharmed?”
“I am,” Branna said. “Are you?”
“Just very tired. Here come the others.”
Enj came pounding down the stairway, followed by Berwynna and Mara, all of them talking at once. Behind them a white-faced Kov led a silent Angmar, who leaned heavily on his arm. Branna was relieved to see that the raven had stayed in his chamber; despite his broken leg, he could still fly, had he wanted to come down.
“What happened? Where are we?” Everyone began speaking at once and kept it up until Dallandra shouted at them to be quiet. They stood in a shocked semicircle around her and waited.
“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 struck Valandario as somehow momentous, as if they echoed down a long tunnel of years.
“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. A
lthough, 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, frivolous, and downright stupid.”
“Well and good, then. Self-knowledge is always the beginning of wisdom.”
Salamander opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. Valandario had the exquisite pleasure of seeing him speechless.
At some distance from the camp, Grallezar and Arzosah were waiting for her. As she walked out to join them, Valandario looked around her but saw no sign of Rori.
“He had one thing to do before we leave,” Arzosah said. “We’ve already explained everything to the girls, but he’s gone to speak with our son.”
After the hatchlings had eaten, Rori told Devar to follow him to the stream beyond the camp. As they took turns drinking, watching his young son stretch his wings to the sunlight wrung Rori’s heart. He would miss Devar more than he’d ever missed any of his human sons, more even than Cullyn Maelwaedd, his favorite out of the lot.
“I have some evil news to tell you,” Rori said.
Devar slewed around to face his father, his eyes wide with fear.
“I have to leave you,” Rori went on. “It aches my heart, lad, to tell you this, but now that the prince and his people are safe, I have to leave the clutch forever.”
“No!” Devar wailed out the word. “No, Da, don’t go!”
“I have to. I’m sorry. It’s my wyrd. What have I told you about wyrd?”
“That no dragon can turn his aside, but—”
“There’s no but or if or mayhap about this, lad. From now on, you’re going to be the male in this clutch. You’ll have to be brave, very brave in fact, but you won’t have to face it all alone. Soon your uncle will come to live in the tower below our lair, and he’ll teach you what you need to know.”
“I like Uncle Ebañy, but he’s not you.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but wyrd is wyrd, and it can’t be denied. Can you be brave?”
“I’ll try.” Devar hung his head. “I’ll try very hard.”
“That’s all you or anyone can do. You’re growing daily, and soon you’ll be able to protect your sisters while your mother’s off somewhere, rather than them protecting you.”
Devar nodded, looked away, and spoke in a choked wet voice. “Can’t you even come back to visit?”
“No. I’m sorry. If I could I would, but I won’t be able to. Here’s the worst news of all. I probably won’t live very long, not as dragons measure our lives, a few years perhaps.”
“You’re ill?”
“Very ill.” It wasn’t precisely a lie, Rori decided, and might make the parting a little easier for Devar. “You know the dragonish way. When our time comes, we go off alone to await our end.”
“I do know that.” His voice began to tremble. “I don’t want you to die.”
“No one wants to die, but when their time comes, what can they do against it?”
“Naught.” Devar sounded one small step away from weeping. “I know that, too.”
“Still, one day we may well meet again. I’ll be in a different body then, a human one. I’ll hope and pray that we do meet. But while you’ll recognize me, I’ll not be able to recognize you, not at first, anyway. Don’t feel slighted. It’s merely the way things are. Do you understand? If I have a new body, I’ll not be able to recognize you.”
“I’ll remember.” Devar looked up, and his eyes, that strangely elven mix of dragon and human, glistened with tears. “If I tell you, will you remember?”
“I don’t know. You may have to be patient and explain things.”
“Da, I wish you didn’t have to die.”
“But I do. Your mother will explain more when you’re older. Now, I need you to be brave, but your sisters need you even more. You need to be strong for their sake.”
“I will, then.” His young clear voice strengthened. “I promise.”
Rori knew that if he stayed a moment longer, he would weep and shame them both. He turned and walked a safe distance away, then leaped, wings beating hard, and soared the brief distance to the gathering place in the grass where the others waited for him. Once Grallezar and Valandario had secured themselves, Val on Rori, and Grallezar on Arzosah, the two wyrms took flight, wheeled once over the sprawling camp, and headed south and east for the Lake of the Leaping Trout.
“Mara?” Dallandra said.“ I need to speak with you.”
Mara, who’d been studying one of the egregore keys on the north wall, turned to her with a smile and curtsied.
“I’m wondering if you want the island to stay here or return to where it was, eventually, I mean,” Dallandra continued. “There are certainly more people living here on the Deverry border than live up north of Lin Serr.”
“That be very true,” Mara said. “I did spend some time in thought over that myself. The Mountain Folk be hardy, and their women do possess much healing lore of their own. Mama does remember not one soul from Lin Serr ever coming to the island for help, and she did live here for seventy-some years before the taking of us all to Alban.”
“That says to me that the island
should stay here, then, if you agree.”
“I do, indeed.”
“Splendid! How does Laz fare this morning?”
“As well as can be expected.” Mara frowned, biting her lower lip in thought. “I do wish he would allow you to see him, but he be still so heartsick and so—well—humiliated. He does curse himself for a fool and croak on and on about a woman. Her name be Sidro, but I do understand few of his words. I think me he does then speak in the language of his childhood.”
“Most likely he does. Perhaps when his leg stops paining him so much, he’ll grow calmer, and then we can talk with him.”
“I shall hope so with all my heart.”
“Now, I’ve got some good news to give you. Your father is on his way here. He and your stepmother should arrive soon, in fact. He can’t fly through the vortex to reach the island, so you and your mother will need to go over by boat to greet him.”
Mara smiled, and at that moment she looked more like a child filled with joy by the prospect of some splendid gift than the accomplished healer she was. “Let me be off to tell Mam,” she said. “We must make ourselves and the manse ready.”
The sun stood just past zenith when the two dragons settled upon the farther shore. The dragon boat immediately set out from the island with Mara and Angmar, who’d been waiting on the pier. Berwynna stayed behind and joined Dallandra and Branna in the great hall.
“I did have Da to myself for some weeks,” Wynni told them. “It be Mara’s turn to greet our father.”
“That’s generous of you,” Dallandra said. “Wynni, have you thought at all about the rest of your life?”
“I have, and I think me I may marry Mirryn of the Red Wolf.”
“He’d be a splendid choice,” Branna put in. “He’s my cousin, and I know him fairly well, you see. He’ll make a better lord than many another man I’ve known.”
“Well and good, then, if ever my heart heals from the losing of my Dougie.” Berwynna got up from her place at table. “Wish you some ale or suchlike? I could fetch it.”