The Shadow Isle. Katharine Kerr

with it, imagining the details of wing and head, until it seemed to live apart from his working as it stood on the windowsill. With a snap of will, he transferred his consciousness over to it. There he had an unexpected struggle, but at last it seemed that he looked out from the bird’s eyes at his body, slumped as if asleep on the floor.

      Now came the hardest step, drawing the physical substance of his body into this new form. Once the process had come easily to him. That night he tried three times and failed at every attempt. No matter how hard he concentrated, how carefully he recited the working, his stubborn lump of flesh stayed where it was, and the raven remained an image, a body of light, only. His mind kept slipping back, as well. At one moment he would be looking out of the raven’s eyes; at the next, he’d be seeing the strip of wall in front of his body. Finally he realized that his body was panting for breath and dripping with sweat. He withdrew the raven image from the windowsill, banished it with the proper seal, and sat up, turning to lean against the wall while he let his breathing slow to normal.

      ‘Squittering shits!’ he said in the Gel da’Thae tongue. They were the only words that seemed appropriate.

      Once he felt steady again, he got up and struggled back into his clothes. Why oh why didn’t I listen to Sisi? The question was going to torment him for the rest of his life.

      Moving as quietly as he could, he went downstairs and out to the cooler air of the apple grove. White blossoms hung thick on the branches like trapped moonlight. That morning the trees had barely begun to bud. He stared at the blossoms while his heart pounded in terror.

      ‘How long did I sleep?’ he whispered.

      ‘Naught but a few hours,’ Marnmara said from behind him. ‘Time on Haen Marn runs at its own pace.’

      Laz spun around to find her holding up a pierced-tin lantern. He could see her smiling in its dappled light.

      ‘You’ve not been here long, Tirn,’ Marnmara continued. ‘The island still has tricks to show you.’

      ‘So it seems. No wonder my hands are healing so quickly.’

      ‘That may be so, indeed.’

      ‘May I ask you a question? Where are we? How does this island move itself?’

      ‘As to the first, we be in a land called Alban. As to the second, I know not, nor do I know which is its true dwelling place. If we could return to the land that you and my mam call home, then mayhap I would know. My own dweomer should kindle then, like a flame shielded from the wind.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It be weak, here.’

      ‘What makes you think I have dweomer?’

      ‘Oh come now!’ She laughed aloud. ‘Did you not send the dragon book to my chamber just now?’

      ‘I – uh –’ Laz felt his face burn with a blush that, he hoped, the darkness would cover. Had the spirits taken his words as a command? Or had he merely hurt their tender feelings? Spirits could be extremely touchy. He had no idea which it was, although he wasn’t about to admit his ignorance. ‘So, the spell worked, did it?’

      ‘It did. The book did appear on white wings and settle onto a coffer in my chamber. So I did put it safely away inside.’

      ‘I thought it would be best if you kept it with you.’

      ‘Well and good, then.’ She hesitated briefly. ‘Oft have you told me you wished to make some repayment for my healing.’

      ‘I do, truly, if there’s aught of mine that you’d want.’

      ‘You know dweomer, don’t you? Teach me some.’

      ‘I could do that, certainly. But you must have knowledge of your own.’

      Marnmara shook her head. ‘I have bits and shreds of such knowledge only. It comes to me in dreams or now and again in memory. I do feel – nay, I do know in my heart – that if I did know the first steps of the dweomer way, then I might walk far. But I know them not.’

      ‘Well and good, then. I can certainly teach you those.’

      In the lantern light her smile turned soft, flickering, it seemed, like the candle flame itself. Although he’d always thought of her as beautiful, that night the thought carried a sexual interest that had escaped him when he’d been weak and in constant pain. He realized that he had started emitting the betraying scent of his interest, too, but he could take comfort in knowing that she’d not understand it, if indeed she could smell it at all.

      Perhaps the look in his eyes had told her enough.

      ‘Tirn,’ she said, ‘there’s somewhat you need to know about me. I wear this body the way you wear a shirt. Don’t be taken in by it.’

      She patted him on the shoulder with the same affection with which she’d pat one of her cats, then walked away, disappearing into the manse.

       And what by the gods does she mean by that?

      As he followed her inside, Laz felt both sad and profoundly weary in a way he’d never experienced before. At last he identified the sensation. He wanted to go home.

PART I

       The Westlands Spring, 1160

      Some say that the ancient mages of the Seven Cities, those long dead fortresses of beauty and magic, left a record of their secret work not in words or images but in stones and earth. Yet I for one call such a foolish tale, because I see not how it may be possible, no, not in the least.

       The Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll