Are you implying that my mothers a witch? Dougie rose from the bench and laid his free hand on his sword hilt.
What? Diarmuid nearly dropped his tankard. Naught of the sort, lad! Now, hold your water, like! All I meant was that shes the lordships daughter, and youre her son, and theres Berwynna, and uh well er He ran out of words and breath both.
Dougie put his half-full tankard down on the bench.
Ill just be getting on, Dougie said. You can finish that if youd like.
Dougie strode out of the yard and slammed the rickety gate behind him for good measure. Although he owned a horse, hed left him behind at the steading. Still glowering, he set out on foot for Haen Marn.
Dougie had good reason to be touchy on the subject of witchcraft. All his young life hed overheard rumours about his mother and father. In the impoverished loch country of northern Alban, the steading of Domnal Breich and his wife, Jehan, had flourished into a marvel. Every spring their milk cows gave birth to healthy calves, and their ewes had twins more often than not. In the summer their oats and barley stood high; their apple trees bowed under the weight of fruit. When Domnal went fishing hed bring home a full net every single time.
Some neighbours grumbled that Domnal must have made a pact with the Devil. As those things will, the grumbling had spread, but not as far as you might think, because Jehan was the local lords daughter. Lord Douglas, whose name Dougie bore, disliked nasty talk about his kin. No one cared to have their gossip silenced by a hangmans noose.
The gossip had transferred itself to the mysterious women on the island to the north of Lord Douglass lands. Lady Angmar everyone assumed she was of high birth because she had dwarves in her household and her twin daughters had spawned ten times the gossip that Domnal and Jehan ever had. Partisan though he was, Dougie could understand why the folk spoke of demons and witchery. The women and their island had turned up some seventeen winters ago, in the year before hed been born. The older people around remembered its location as a wide spot in a burn, not a loch at all, but when the island arrived, one winter night, it brought its own water with it.
Witchcraft a house, island, and loch appearing like that out of nowhere! All the way from Cymru they came in the blink of an eye, the old people said, and they must have come from Cymru, judging by the way they speak. Foreigners, thats what they are! What else could they be but witches, them and their flying house?
The loch that harboured the island lay in a dip of land too shallow to be called a valley, but the dark blue water must have run deep, because the same beasts that dwelled in Loch Ness lived beneath its choppy waves. The small island rose out of the water like the crest of a rocky hill. At its highest point stood a square-built tall tower, surrounded by apple trees. At its lowest point, a sandy cove, stood a wooden pier and a boathouse. In between the two stood the manse, such a solid structure that it was hard to imagine it taking to the air like an enchanted swan from some old tale.
Solid, and yet, and yet the buildings seemed to move around on the island, just now and then, when no one was looking. Whenever he visited, Dougie made sure to stand on the same spot to view it. Sometimes the manse appeared to be closer to the tower than on others, or the tower presented a corner rather than a flat side, or the entire island seemed a little nearer the shore or farther away. Hed once asked Lady Angmar about the shifting view. Shed scowled and told him hed been drinking too much dark ale. Hed never got up the courage to ask again.
At the edge of the loch a big granite boulder sat among tall grass. An iron loop protruded from its side, and from the loop dangled a silver horn on a silver chain. Oddly enough, neither silver piece ever tarnished, no matter how wet the weather. This clear evidence of witchcraft well, clear in the minds of the local folk had kept them from being stolen. Dougie picked up the horn and blew three long notes, then let it swing free again. While he waited, he took off his boots and hitched up his plaid, tucking the ends into his heavy belt.
Not long after he saw the longboat set out from the pier under oars. He heard the bronze gong clanging, just in case the beasts in the lake were on the prowl for a meal. Fortunately, the water near shore ran too shallow for the beasts. When the boat pulled up, with the oarsmen backing water to hold her steady, Dougie waded out and with the help of the boatmaster, Lon, hauled himself aboard.
And a good morrow to you, Dougie said.
Same to you. Lon knew only a few words of the Alban language. Take gong?
I will, and gladly. Dougie took the mallet from him.
While they rowed across, Dougie smacked the gong to keep it clanging and whistled for good measure. Once, when he looked over to the far side of the loch, he saw a tiny snake-like head on the end of a long neck lift itself out of the water, but at his shout the beast dived, disappearing without a ripple. As they approached the island, Berwynna walked out on the pier to meet the boat. His heart began pounding as loudly as the gong, or so it seemed to him.
A slender lass, she stood barely up to his chest. She wore her glossy raven-dark hair clasped back. Her cornflower-blue eyes dominated her delicate face. To set off her colouring she wore a finely woven plaid in a blue and grey tartan cloth that Mic the Dwarf had brought home from Din Edin, earned by his trade in gems and jewellery. When she saw Dougie she smiled and hurried forward to help him onto the pier.
Id hoped to see you today, Berwynna said.
Well, I truly came to see you, Dougie said, but I told my mother that I need to see your Mic. I was wondering if hell be travelling south soon.
He will. Berwynnas smile disappeared. I hate when you go a trading with Uncle Mic.
Hes got to have some kind of guard on the road. Dougie grinned at her. Do you miss me when Im gone?
That, too. Mostly I wish I could go with you. I want to see Din Edin, and I dont care how bad it smells.
A journey like ours is no place for a lass.
If you say that again, Ill kick you. You sound like Mam.
Well, Im sorry, but
Oh dont lets talk about it!
Berwynna turned on her heel and strode down the pier to the island, leaving Dougie to hurry after, babbling apologies. By the time they reached the door of the manse, shed forgiven him. Hand in hand they walked into the great hall of Haen Marn.
On either side of the big square room stood stone hearths, one of them cold on this warm spring day. At the other an ancient maidservant stirred a big iron kettle over a slow fire. The smell and steam of a cauldron of porridge spread through the hall. The boatmen came trooping in and sat down at one of the plank tables scattered here and there on the floor. At the head table sat Angmar, her greying pale hair swept back and covered by the black headscarf of a widow. When Dougie and Berwynna joined her, she greeted them with a pleasant smile.
Come to talk to Mic, Dougie? Angmar spoke the Alban tongue not well but clearly.
I have, my lady, Dougie said. Will he be needing my sword soon?
Most likely. You can ask him after hes joining us.
One of the boatmen brought Dougie a tankard of ale, which he took with thanks. He had a long sip and looked around the great hall. In one corner a staircase led to the upper floors. In the opposite corner old Otho, a white-haired, stoop-shouldered and generally frail dwarf, sat on his cushioned chair, glaring from under white bushy brows at nothing in particular. Berwynnas sister, Marnmara, stood near the old man while she studied the wall behind him.
The two young woman had been born in the same hour, and they shared the same colouring. Marnmara however was even smaller than her sister, a mere wisp of a woman, or so Dougie thought of her. At times he could have sworn that she floated above the floor by an inch or two, as if she werent really in the room at all but a reflection, perhaps, in some invisible mirror. At others she walked upon the ground like any lass, and he would chide himself for indulging in daft fancies about her.
Haen Marns great hall tended to breed fancies. The dark oak panels lining the walls were as heavily decorated as the Holy Book in Lord Douglass chapel. Great swags of carved interlacements, all tangled with animals, flowers, and vines, swooped down from each corner and almost touched the floor before sweeping up again. In among them were little designs that might have been letters or simply odd little fragments of some broken pattern. Berwynna had told him of her sisters belief that the decorations had some sort of meaning, just as if theyd been a book indeed. Since Dougie couldnt read a word in any language, it was all a great mystery to him.
Think shell ever puzzle it out? Dougie said to Berwynna.
She tells me shes very close. Tirns been a great help to her. He knows what some of the sigils are.
Sigils?
It means marks like those little ones. Berwynna shrugged. Thats all I know.
The townsfolk are saying that Tirns a demon.
Are you surprised? They think were all witches and demons, dont they?
Well, true enough, the ingrates! And after all the healing your sisters done for them, too!
Tirn came in not long after. Like Dougie himself, he was an unusually tall man, and no doubt hed once been a strong one, too, judging from his broad shoulders and long, heavily muscled arms, but at the moment he was still recovering from whatever accident had burned him so badly. He walked slowly, a little stooped, and held his damaged hands away from his body. Thin cloth, smelling heavily of Marnmaras herbal medicaments, wrapped his hands and arms up to the elbows. Peeling-pink scars cut into the tattoos on his narrow face and marbled his short brown hair. He nodded Dougies way with a weary smile, then sat down across from him at the table.
Angmar asked him a question in the language that the locals took for Cymraeg, and Tirn answered her in the same. Berwynna leaned forward and joined the conversation. Here and there Dougie could pick out a word or phrase Berwynna had been teaching him a bit of her native tongue but they spoke too quickly for him to follow. Tirn considered whatever it was shed said, then smiled and nodded.
Mams asking him if Marnmara can take another look at this gem he brought with him, Berwynna told Dougie. Uncle Mic says its a bit of cut firestone. Ive not seen anything like it before.
Angmar got up and went round to where Tirn sat. With his burnt hands still so bad, he could touch nothing. She pulled a leather pouch on a chain free of Tirns shirt. From the pouch she took out a black glassy gem, shaped into a pyramid about six inches tall. The tip had been lopped off at an angle.
Ive not seen anything like that before, either. Dougie shook his head in bafflement. It looks like glass, though.
Its got no bubbles in it, Berwynna said. So Uncle Mic said it cant be glass. It comes from fire mountains, whatever they are.
Well, hes the one whod know. Dougie turned to Angmar. Could I have a look at that, my lady? Im curious, is all.
I dont see why not, Angmar said.
When Angmar set the pyramid down in front of him, Dougie picked it up and examined it, turning it around in his fingers. Tirn made a comment, which Angmar translated.
Dont look into it too closely, she said. Its a rather odd thing. You dont want to stare at it for too long.
Dougie glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and saw the ordinary daylight in the great hall shining through black crystal. Theres naught to this, he thought, and looked directly down into the black depths through the squared-off tip. He heard Marnmaras voice, coming nearer, sounding annoyed at something. He wanted to look up and ask her what the matter was, but the stone had trapped his gaze. He simply could not look away. Inside the black glow something appeared, something moved a man, a strange slender man with pale skin, hair of an impossibly bright yellow, eyes of paint-pot blue, and lips as red as cherries.
The fellow was standing in the kitchen garden of Dougies family steading. He seemed to be staring right at Dougie, then turned and walked through the rows of cabbages till he reached the pair of apple trees by the stone wall, but the trees, Dougie realized, were young, barely strong enough to bear a couple of branches of fruit. The strange fellow stopped and pointed with his right hand at the ground between them. Over and over he gestured at the ground, then began to make a digging motion, using both hands like a hounds front paws.
Dougie! Marnmara shouted his name. She grabbed his shoulder with one hand and shook him.
The spell broke. He looked up, dazed, unsure of exactly where he might be for a few beats of a heart. Marnmara turned to her mother and Tirn, set her hands on her hips, and began to lecture them in their own tongue. Tirn spoke a few feeble sounding words, then merely listened, staring at the table. Angmar, however, argued right back, waving a maternal finger in her daughters face. When Dougie put the pyramid onto the table, Marnmara stopped arguing long enough to snatch up the gem.
What did you see in it, Dougie? Marnmara said.
A strange-looking fellow standing between two apple trees. You might have warned me that the thing could work tricks like that.
I didnt know it could. Marnmara smiled briefly, then spoke to Tirn in their language. He looked utterly surprised and spoke a few words in reply. He says he told you not to look into it.
Thats true enough, Dougie said. My apologies.
Dougie decided that he didnt like the way everyone was staring at him. He stood up and held out his hand to Berwynna.
Ill be needing to go home soon.
Together they walked down to the pier. Although hed never seen the boatmen leave the great hall, there they were, manning the oars, ready to take him back across. Dougie shook his head hard. He felt drunk, but hed only had half a tankard of Diarmuds watered ale, and then another half of Angmars decent brew hardly any drink at all.
Are you well? Berwynna said. Youve gone pale.
I saw the strangest damned thing in that stone of Tirns. It was like a dream, some fellow pointing to the ground over and over. He seemed to think it was important, that bit of earth.
Do you think it was a spirit? Berwynna turned thoughtful. They say that spirits know where treasures are buried.
Well, so they do in old wives tales and suchlike. I wouldnt set your heart on me finding a bucketful of gold.
She laughed, then raised herself up on tip-toe and kissed him farewell.
The kiss kept Dougie warm during his long walk home, but the memory of his peculiar experience kept the kiss company. After hed brooded on what hed seen for a mile or two, the look of the fellow in the vision jogged his memory. He knew something about that fellow, he realized, but hed forgotten the details.