The Shadow Isle

‘If it could fly here from Cymru, why couldn’t it move itself again? Maybe it didn’t like its first nest.’

Domnal shrugged. ‘Mayhap so,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t explain it any other way.’

‘No doubt. My thanks, Da,’ Dougie said. ‘I was just wondering.’

That’s who I saw, Dougie thought, Evandar! He was frightened enough by the magical gem to consider avoiding Haen Marn from that day on, but he knew that he never could. For one thing, there was Mic and the profitable trips down to Din Edin. And of course, for another, there was Berwynna.

That night, when the family lay asleep, Dougie still waked, thinking over the vision in the gem. His curiosity had been well and truly roused. Through the narrow slit of window he could see the moon, full and bright in a clear sky, its light a further temptation. He wondered, in fact, if somehow Evandar had meant him to look into the gem at the full moon. The wondering prodded him to action. Although he shared a bed with his two younger brothers, Dougie as the eldest had the privilege of the spot on the edge. He slid out of bed without waking them, put his plaid on over his nightshirt, then climbed quietly down the ladder of their loft.

The dogs, asleep at the kitchen hearth, roused enough to sniff the air and recognize him. With a wag of tails they settled themselves again and went back to sleep. Dougie crept through the dark kitchen, barked his shins on a bench, stopped himself from swearing, and very carefully unbarred the door. It creaked, but no one called out at the sound. He slipped out into the moonlit farmyard, then took his boots from the doorstep and put them on.

A shovel stood leaning against the hen house. Dougie fetched it, then strode over to the apple trees. In the shadows cast by their branches, he found it hard to see, but he dug as carefully as he could to avoid damaging the tree roots. He’d not gone more than a foot down when the shovel clanked on metal. Dougie laid it aside, then dropped to his knees and felt around with one hand in the damp chilly dirt. His fingers touched something cold, hard, and dirt-encrusted. By feeling around he found its edges, then dug with both hands. Finally he managed to pull free a casket, about three feet long and two wide.

Behind him lantern light bloomed. Dougie twisted around to see Domnal, dressed only in his long nightshirt, walking over, a candle lantern held high.

‘What damned stupid thing are you –’ Domnal said, then stopped, staring. ‘God’s wounds! What’s that?’

‘I don’t know, Da.’ Dougie scrambled up, carrying the casket. ‘I had a dream, you see, about Evandar. He was telling me to dig here between the trees. I tried to ignore it, but it kept gnawing at me, like.’

‘Oh.’ Domnal lowered the lantern. ‘Well, let’s take it into the barn. I don’t want to wake your mother.’

His father’s sudden meekness troubled Dougie’s heart. He’d just lied to his Da, he realized, but somehow he hadn’t wanted to tell him about Tirn’s strange gem on Haen Marn – he just hadn’t, though he couldn’t say why.

In the barn Domnal hung the lantern on a nail above a little bench. Dougie laid the casket on the bench, then found an old sack and used it to wipe away the dirt. Its long time buried in the wet earth had turned the casket so green and crusty that he couldn’t tell if it were silver or pot metal. When he tried lifting it, the lid came away in his hands. Domnal took it from him.

‘What’s inside?’ Domnal said. ‘It looks like old rags.’

‘So it does,’ Dougie said. ‘I wonder if there’s somewhat inside them?’

One at a time Dougie peeled away the swaddlings – wads of rotten cloth on the outside, then a layer of oiled cloth, then layers of stained but sound cloth, until finally he came to a sack of boiled leather. Inside lay something solid and flat. Another casket? But when he slid it out, he found a book, bound in white leather, stained here and there from its internment. A black dragon decorated the front cover.

Dougie was too disappointed to swear. ‘I was hoping for a bit of treasure, Da.’ He opened the book, but in the candlelight all he could see was page after page of writing.

‘I wasn’t,’ Domnal said. ‘When Evandar’s involved, you never know what you’ll get, but you can wager it’ll be a strange thing.’ He took the empty casket and held it up to the light, twisting it this way and that as if he were looking for a maker’s mark. ‘It’s too filthy to see anything.’ He set the book down on the bench. ‘Put that book back in, lad, and we’ll hide it under some straw for the morrow.’

‘Well and good, then. Do you think this belongs to Haen Marn?’

‘I do. The night he saved me, Evandar told me that he needed a messenger, and it was going to be my son, when I had one. I’m supposing he meant someone to bring them this.’

‘And why couldn’t he have taken it over himself?’

‘Witches can’t travel across water, nor the Folk of the Seelie Host, either, or so I’ve always heard.’

‘So he needed a man to do his ferrying for him. I suppose that makes sense of a sort.’

‘Naught about Haen Marn makes sense.’ Domnal smiled with a bare twitch of his mouth. ‘I think me it might be dangerous to forget that.’

Dougie went back to bed. He woke just before sunrise, got up and dressed for the second time, then went out to the barn in the cold grey light to feed the cows. His brother Ian arrived soon after with his milking stool and pails. Dougie fed the horses, turned them out into pasture, then returned to the house to talk with Jehan. He found her in the kitchen, kneading a massive lump of bread dough.

Over the years she’d borne eight children and done plenty of farm work as well. She was stout and her hands were a mass of callouses, but despite the grey in her red hair and the lines around her green eyes, Dougie could see how beautiful she must have been when his father had won her.

‘I was thinking of going back out to Haen Marn today, Dougie said. ‘Will you be needing me for aught?’

‘Not truly,’ Jehan said. ‘But you know, it’s time you married your Berwynna and brought her home.’

‘I’d like naught better, Mother. Berwynna says she wants to marry me as well. It’s Lady Angmar who’s dead-set against it. She doesn’t want Berwynna to ever leave the island, not for a single day. She keeps saying it’s too dangerous.’

‘It is the local folk she fears? Once you two were married by Father Colm in the chapel, then all this stupid talk about witches would stop.’

‘It’s not that. She won’t explain why.’

‘You’re sure she has a real reason, then?’ Jehan frowned at him. ‘Or does she look upon us with scorn?’

Dougie shrugged to show that he didn’t know. He was suddenly afraid, wondering if his Wynni was a witch, after all. His father had told him that witches couldn’t cross water, hadn’t he? Jehan paused to push a stray lock of grey hair back behind her ear with her little finger.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Dougie said. ‘This very day, I’ll ask Lady Angmar about claiming my Berwynna. If she says me nay again, I’ll keep after her and see if I can find out if she truly doesn’t want the lass to leave the island or if she thinks I’m not worthy or suchlike.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Jehan looked up from the kneading. ‘You might as well know the truth.’

Before he left, Dougie put a clean shirt on under his plaid, then fetched the mysterious book from the barn. Since he was going to Haen Marn anyway, he figured, he might as well run Evandar’s errand for him.

Towards noon Lon brought a bucket of fish into the kitchen hut behind the manse. Berwynna put on her oldest tunic, wrapped a fragment of stained, fraying plaid around her for a skirt, and set to work cleaning the catch. Marnmara’s six cats rubbed round her ankles and whined. The orange brindle leapt up onto the workbench with its usual dirty paws. When she yelled and swatted, it jumped down again. Berwynna chopped off the fish heads and tails with efficient strokes of her long knife, then tossed them down at varying distances to give every cat a chance at this bounty. She gutted the fish, then threw the innards to the mewling horde as well.

Feeding the island took hard work. Despite the presence of so many large beasts in its water, the loch supplied netsful of fish all year long. Berwynna suspected that some sort of dweomer made the loch unusually productive, but neither her mother nor her sister would confirm her suspicion nor deny it, either. Man and dwarf, however, do not live by fish alone, as old Otho was fond of saying. The local villagers and farmers paid for Marnmara’s healing services with produce and what little grain they could spare. Mic’s coin bought beef, oats, and barley from the farmers on the richer lands to the south. Occasionally the boatmen managed to kill a deer. As well as medicinal herbs, Marnmara raised vegetables in her garden, and apple trees grew around Avain’s tower.

‘Wynni!’ Marnmara stood in the door of the kitchen hut. ‘Dougie’s just come across to the pier.’

‘Oh ye gods!’ Berwynna said. ‘Here I stink of fish.’

‘That won’t bother him. He’s besotted.’

Still, Berwynna scrubbed her hands with a scrap of soap and rinsed them in a bucket of well water. She wanted to change her filthy old clothes, but as she was hurrying towards the manse, she saw Dougie, just coming up the path, his tousled red hair gleaming in the sun. Under one arm he carried a bulky packet, wrapped in cloth.

‘There you are!’ Dougie said, smiling. ‘Ah, you look beautiful today, lass!’

‘My thanks!’ He is besotted, Berwynna thought. Thank God! ‘It gladdens my heart to see you, too.’

‘Good. I’m hoping to have a bit of a talk with you and your mother.’ He paused for a grin. ‘About us.’

Berwynna’s heart leapt and pounded. ‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know what there is to talk about.’

He merely grinned and reached out to catch her hand.

They found Angmar in the great hall, where she was sitting at a window with mending spread out on the low table in front of her. Dougie laid his parcel on the table, then bowed to her.

‘What’s all this?’ Angmar raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Usually you just sit yourself down without so much as a by-your-leave.’

‘Uh, my apologies, my lady.’ Dougie’s face turned a faint pink. ‘I’ve brought you a very strange gift, and I was hoping that we, I mean Wynni and I and you, could have a bit of a chat.’

‘If you’re going to ask me if you may marry her, save your breath. I’ll not agree.’

Dougie winced.

‘I don’t want her living off the island,’ Angmar continued.

‘Truly?’ Dougie said. ‘Or is that me and my kin aren’t grand enough for you?’

‘What? Naught of the sort! Dougie, I know not how or why, but in my soul I do know that me and mine will cause you grief one day. I’d beg you to put my daughter out of your heart.’

‘Mam!’ Berwynna could stay silent no longer. ‘But I love him. I want to marry Dougie.’

He turned her way and grinned. When Berwynna held out her hand, he clasped it and drew her close.

‘Wynni, heard you not one word of what I said?’ Angmar flopped her mending onto the table and scowled at both of them. ‘Avain did see much grief –’

‘What she sees in the water isn’t always true,’ Berwynna said. ‘Sometimes it’s wrong, or else it comes true in some odd way that’s more of a jest than anything. Well, doesn’t it?’

‘True enough.’ Angmar paused for a long sigh. ‘But –’

‘Besides,’ Berwynna hurried on before her mother could finish, ‘if you won’t let me leave the island, why can’t Dougie come live here?’

‘And what would your family say to that, then?’ Angmar glanced at Dougie. ‘With you the eldest son and all?’

‘They’d take a bit of persuading,’ Dougie said. ‘But I’d keep at it and wear them down in the end.’

‘Still, most like it be too dangerous. The isle be a jealous place, and I doubt me if you belong to it the way we do.’

Berwynna felt tears gathering just behind her eyes. She gave her mother the most piteous look she could manage and willed the tears to run. Her mother sighed with a shake of her head.

‘Wynni, Wynni! You children don’t understand, and there’s no way I can make you understand, truly.’ Angmar hesitated for a long moment. ‘But whist, whist, child, don’t weep so! Here, let me discuss this with Marnmara. But I’d not hope too much, either of you.’

She picked up the mending again and frowned at it with such concentration that Berwynna knew they’d been dismissed. She snuffled back her tears and wiped her eyes on her sleeve while Dougie patted her shoulder to comfort her. Hand in hand they went outside and sat down together on a wooden bench under an apple tree. Above them the white flowers were just peeking from their pale green buds.

‘Well now,’ Dougie said at last. ‘So much for the grand speech I’d stored up in my mind. I never got a chance to speak any of it.’

‘It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Mam’s got one of her ideas, and my dear sisters are dead-set against us, too, from what she said.’

‘I don’t understand. What did she mean about Avain seeing things?’

‘Oh, she sees visions in a bowl of water.’ Berwynna looked down, saw a pebble on the path, and kicked it viciously away. ‘Since she’s a mooncalf, Mam and Marnmara say that the angels or the saints are sending her messages that way. I don’t understand, and I don’t agree, but you heard Mam.’

‘I did, and a nasty thing it was to hear. I’m willing to risk a fair lot of grief for you, but I don’t want you sharing it.’

‘Bless you! But I’m willing to run the risk, too.’

Dougie threw his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed her. She laughed in sheer pleasure and took another kiss, but just as he reached for a third, she heard a warning snarl of a cough behind her. Dougie let her go. Berwynna turned on the bench and saw old Lonna, arms akimbo, glaring at her. Dougie rose and bowed to the elderly dwarf.

‘I’ll just be leaving, then,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Fare thee well, my lady.’

‘I’ll walk with you to the landing.’ She spoke to Lonna in Dwarvish. ‘Could you tell the boatmen to make ready?’

Lonna made a sound that might have been yes, then turned and stomped off towards the manse.

‘Ye gods!’ Dougie lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I’m beginning to understand why you want to get out of this place, truly.’

‘Well, I don’t want to leave it forever. I just want to see more of the world than Haen Marn.’ Berwynna paused, glancing around her. ‘There’s not much of it, is there? Just one small island, and every now and then I get to go over to the mainland with Marnmara when she gathers wild herbs or if someone’s ill in the village. Once we got to go to your grandfather’s dun, too, when the groom’s wife was so ill. That’s all I’ve ever seen, and all I’ve ever known, and oh Dougie, I’m sick to my heart of it!’

‘I can understand that.’ Dougie patted her hand, then raised it to his lips and kissed it, fish stains and all. ‘Let me think about this, lass. Mayhap I can come up with some scheme to get us married.’

Berwynna walked him down to the jetty and saw him off. For a brief while she lingered on the pier and considered the boathouse, a roof and walls with lake water for a floor. A narrow walkway ran along one side to give the boatmen access to the ladder that led up to the loft where they slept. Besides the magnificent dragon boat, the island owned two coracles, a large one for the fishing, and a small craft that Marnmara and Berwynna used for their rare trips to the mainland. These hung out of the water from pegs on the boathouse walls.

The question, Berwynna decided, was whether she could creep into the boathouse at night, get the coracle down, and lower it into the water without making a splash or other noise that would wake the boatmen. Not likely, she thought. If only she could, she could row across and meet Dougie, and perhaps Father Colm would marry them before her family caught her. Even less likely, since he thinks I’m a witch. She picked up a stone and hurled it into the water as hard as she could, then turned on her heel and stalked back to the manse.

In the great hall the others had gathered around Marnmara, who had come over to Angmar’s table to look at Dougie’s gift. Angmar sat to her right, the mending unnoticed in her lap, while Tirn stood just behind Marnmara and peered over her shoulder. When no Mainlanders were around, the island folk talked in one of the two languages that Angmar called ‘our home tongues.’ Since Tirn knew no Dwarvish, they spoke the mountain dialect of Deverrian whenever he joined them. In fact, he seemed to know it oddly well, better than any of the rest of them. Berwynna sat down on a bench opposite her mother just as Marnmara opened the sack and slid out its contents: a book, bound in white leather, with a black leather piece in the shape of a dragon upon the cover.

Tirn gasped, tried to choke back the noise, then coughed. Marnmara twisted around to look up at him.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I thought it was a book I used to own. That one had a black cover with a white dragon upon it.’

‘Indeed?’ Marnmara said. ‘What sort of book might it be? A grammarie?’

‘What’s that?’ Tirn looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never heard that word before.’

‘A book of spells.’ Marnmara was trying to suppress a grin.

‘Ah.’ Tirn hesitated, caught, then shrugged. ‘Well, it was that, truly.’

Marnmara allowed the grin to blossom. She opened the book randomly, then frowned at the page before her.

‘Be somewhat wrong?’ Angmar said.

‘I did hope I could read this,’ Marnmara said, ‘but I’ve not seen these letters ever before.’ She turned round again and looked Tirn full in the face. ‘Except right there, tattooed on your skin. What language be they?’

‘That of the Seelie Host,’ Tirn said.

Berwynna made the sign of the Holy Rood.

‘Truly?’ Angmar quirked one eyebrow. ‘Now, I myself have seen such letters before, and they were made by someone as much flesh and blood as you are.’

Tirn face’s turned scarlet between his tattoos and scars.

‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘You must know about the Ancients, then. Some call them the Westfolk, others the Ancients. Do they dwell in this country, too?’

‘I know not,’ Angmar said, ‘but they do dwell in my homeland. Indeed, the father of my daughters did have Westfolk blood in his veins.’ She leaned back to study his face. ‘I think me that you come from the place the Deverry folk call Annwn, not from Alban, no, nor Cymru nor Lloegr, either.’

‘You’ve caught me out, my lady.’ Tirn smiled and ducked his head in apology. ‘I didn’t want to say anything at first because I thought you’d never believe me. I didn’t realize that you too hale from Deverry.’

‘I come not from Deverry proper, but from the north of it, in the country known as Dwarveholt. Now, can you read that book?’

‘Alas, I cannot in any true sense. I can read well enough in three languages, but that of the Ancients isn’t one of them.’ Tirn raised his bandaged hand and pointed at the tattoo on his left cheek. ‘These marks? Among my kin they’re thought to bring good luck or the favour of the gods. They’re very old, and their meaning’s been long forgotten.’

Angmar continued studying his face, while Marnmara paged through the book, frowning at a bit of writing here and there and shaking her head over the lot.

‘What I can do,’ Tirn went on, ‘is sound out the letters, though I don’t know what many words mean. Well, truly, they’re not letters in the way that the holy book of this country is writ in letters. Each one stands for a full sound, what mayhap would take two or three letters in some other tongue.’

Everyone stared, puzzled, but Marnmara, who laid a finger on one mark. ‘This one?’ she said.

‘La,’ Tirn said, ‘and the next is sounded drah.’

‘Be you a scholar, then, Tirn?’ Berwynna said. ‘Father Colm does warn against the studying of books, saying it leads to sorcery.’

‘Does he?’ Tirn grinned at her. ‘He may be right, then, for the first time in his fat life.’

Berwynna began to laugh, then stifled the sound when Angmar glared at her. Tirn shifted his weight from foot to foot, then walked round to sit down on the same bench as Berwynna. She moved over to give him plenty of room. Angmar gave both of them a sour look.

‘Is somewhat wrong, my lady?’ Tirn said to Angmar.

‘There be Horsekin blood in your veins, bain’t?’ Angmar said.

Tirn blushed again, then nodded.

‘Mam, Mam!’ Marnmara looked up from the book with a sigh. ‘Matters it to you, with all of us so far from home?’

‘Not truly,’ Angmar said. ‘I find truth sweeter than lies, is all.’

‘It is, and I owe you an apology,’ Tirn said, ‘but I feared you’d have me killed or suchlike if you knew about the Horsekin.’

‘If you realized not that we be from Annwn like you,’ Angmar said with some asperity, ‘why did you think we might know about the Horsekin?’

Tirn blushed again, then spoke hurriedly. ‘I’m an outlaw among them, you see, and I’ll swear to the truth of that. They’d kill me if they ever got hold of me.’

‘Now, that I do believe,’ Angmar said, ‘because of the fear in your voice.’

Her mother and old Lonna had told Berwynna tales of the Horsekin, vicious killers who worshipped an evil demon named Alshandra. Now here was one of them, sitting next to her, a very ordinary man by the look of him, and badly injured to boot.

‘Do you believe in Alshandra, then?’ Berwynna said to him.

‘I don’t,’ Tirn said, ‘and that’s why I’m an outlaw.’

‘I see.’ Angmar rose and began to collect the mending in a basket. ‘Well and good, then.’

Berwynna followed her mother out of the great hall and up the stairs to Angmar’s room. She’d been planning on badgering Angmar about Dougie, but her mother’s mood had turned so grim that she thought better of the plan. Alone, they spoke in Dwarvish.

‘Mama, do you trust Tirn?’ Berwynna asked instead.

‘I don’t,’ Angmar said. ‘There’s somewhat more than a bit shifty about him beyond his Horsekin blood. I do believe him about being an outlaw, mind. I wonder, in fact, if his own kind gave him those burns and scars, a-torturing him somehow.’

‘Ych!’

‘Truly, they’re a cruel lot, the Horsekin. But be that as it may, Tirn knows lore that Marnmara needs if she’s to get us home again.’

‘Will we ever really go home,’ Berwynna said, ‘wherever that is?’

‘I have my hopes. It may not mean much to you, but I long to see your father again.’

‘Well, of course. I wish I knew him, too. My father. It has such a distant ring to it, doesn’t it? Even though you’ve told me about him, it’s not the same as knowing him.’

‘It’s not.’ Angmar allowed herself a long sigh. ‘I’ve tried to think of myself as a widow and stop longing for him, but deep in my heart I’m sure he’s still alive back home, if we could only get there. And I miss my homeland, too, the Dwarveholt.’

‘Mam, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to slight what you treasure, but the land means naught to me. This is the only home I’ve ever had.’

‘I do understand that. But I have hopes that someday you’ll have better and find a better man, too.’

This last was too much to bear. ‘Please, please, tell me why I mayn’t marry Dougie?’ Berwynna said. ‘I love him ever so much.’

‘I know, but ye gods, it would ache my heart to go home but leave you here with your Dougie. You’re young, child. There will be other men –’

‘I don’t want any of them.’

‘Dougie’s the only handsome lad you’ve ever known.’ Angmar managed a smile. ‘First love is the love that stings, or so they always say. But answer me this. Suppose you did marry your lad and go to live with him, and then we all disappeared without you. How would that feel?’

Berwynna felt the blood drain from her face. The thought of losing her family –

‘I see it doesn’t sit well with you,’ Angmar said. ‘Well, it could happen, were you to go live on Alban land. Haen Marn goes where it wills when it wills, and it doesn’t bother with giving fair warning.’

‘Then how come you let Marnmara go over to the mainland to heal the folk and suchlike?’

‘Because the island’s not going to go anywhere without her. That I know as surely as I know my own name.’

Berwynna bit back the bitter words that threatened to break free of her mouth. It’s always Mara, isn’t it? she thought. She’s the important one, never me.

Laz had told the truth when he’d told Angmar that he couldn’t read the Westfolk language. He regretted it bitterly, too, thanks to that book of spells. So much dweomer so near – but the book might as well lie on a table in Deverry for all the good it would do him. Wildfolk hunkered down on the table around the book, slender green gnomes, each with a cap made of rose petals. Now and then one of them would stretch out a timid finger and touch the edges of the page. When Marnmara threatened to swat them, they disappeared. For some while Laz watched Marnmara turn pages, her stare as fierce as a warrior’s, as if she could force the meaning from the alien letters by sheer will. ‘Not one word can I read,’ she announced. ‘And the whole thing be writ in the same markings.’

‘So it looked to me,’ Laz said, ‘and it aches my heart, I tell you.’

‘No doubt. Here.’ She pushed the heavy book across the table towards him. ‘Mayhap if you sound out more of the marks, you might find a word or two you know. I do hope that somehow this book holds the dweomer to take us all home again, though I do have this strange feeling in my heart that it be naught of the sort.’

‘Let me take a look, then.’

Using his wrists rather than his damaged hands, Laz managed to turn the book right side up in front of him. Marnmara moved to sit next to him and turn the pages when he asked. As he sounded out letters from the syllabary, he did come across words he knew, most of them useless, such as ‘next’, ‘then’, ‘and’, ‘is’ and the like. Still, Marnmara watched him so admiringly that he kept going.

‘Turn all the way back to the first page,’ Laz said finally. ‘If you’d be so kind.’

Marnmara did as he asked.

On the top of that first page a line of symbols, larger than the rest, had been carefully painted in red. Laz sounded them out several times. Thanks to the Westfolk custom of putting dots between words to set them apart, he managed to form them up into something he could guess at.

‘Now this first word,’ he said, ‘is a verb of some kind. That is, it’s the name of an act, a thing you do. I can tell by this sound at the beginning. It stands for “keh” and that means an action follows.’

A wide-eyed Mara nodded, taking it all in.

‘And this sound at the end,’ he continued, ‘means “how” or “why” one does this action. Alas! I don’t know what the action is. However, I’m fairly sure this next word means “a dragon”, because that name sounds much the same in several tongues, drahkanonen among the Westfolk, draeg in Deverrian, and drakonis among the Bardekians.’

‘You most certainly be a scholar, Tirn. Here, I think me you should study this book for all of us. Maybe more will come to you if you do contemplate it.’

‘Mayhap. We can hope.’

‘I –’ Mara paused, then turned around. ‘Be it that you wish somewhat, Wynni?’

Berwynna stood in the doorway, where, Laz realized, she’d been listening for some while, not that he saw anything wrong with her doing so. Marnmara, however, rose, shutting the book with a puff of dust.

‘Come take this upstairs to Tirn’s chamber,’ Marnmara said. ‘He can carry it not himself.’

‘You might say please, truly, once in a while.’ Berwynna walked over to the table.

‘Oh don’t be tedious!’ Mara shoved the book at her. ‘Here!’

With a scowl Berwynna took the book, so heavy that she clasped it to her chest with both arms, and trotted over to the stairs. She hesitated, glancing back, at the foot of them as if she might speak further, then shrugged and went on up.

‘Little sneak!’ Mara said. ‘She always be listening and prowling around. Now. We’d best work on your hands before dinner. Rest here a moment. I be going to fetch the medicaments.’

Laz suppressed a sigh. He needed more than a moment to brace himself for what lay ahead. Before Marnmara went upstairs, she spoke briefly to Lonna, the aged maidservant, who merely nodded for answer. Lonna went to the hearth, poured water from a big clay jar into an iron pot, then set the pot in the coals to heat. By the time Marnmara returned, carrying a small cloth sack, the water was steaming. Lonna set it on the table in front of Laz, then stomped off, muttering to herself. Marnmara took a handful of herbs out of the sack and dropped them into the water.

‘Let that cool for a moment,’ she said.

‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘May I ask you somewhat?’

‘You may, though I might not answer.’

‘Fair enough. Where did you learn so much about healing?’

‘I don’t know.’ She paused for a smile at his surprise. ‘When I were but a child, Old Lonna did tell me of a few simples. She did know how to bind a small wound and such crude lore, too. But then, once I did grow into a woman, I did have a dream.’ She hesitated, considering him. ‘Here, Tirn, since you be a scholar, tell me what you do think of this. In the dream I did find a door dug into the dirt of Haen Marn, out among the apple trees, that were. I did open the door and go down the stairs within. At the bottom was another door. I did open that. Herbs came pouring out, a great flood of dried herbs. I did scream, thinking they would smother me, but I woke to find the blanket over my face.’ She laughed with a toss of her head. ‘But here be the strange thing. From that day on, I did know herblore.’

‘I’d say you remembered it. The door led to your memory of such things.’

‘From a life lived before, mean you? It could well be. I remember naught of this, but my mother does assure me that once before I was the lady of this isle. Avain did recognize me, Mam tells me, on the very day I was born.’ She looked at him with her head cocked a little to one side, and her eyes wide, as if she were expecting him to challenge or dismiss her tale.