I’m gone?’
‘That, too. Mostly I wish I could go with you. I want to see Din Edin, and I don’t care how bad it smells.’
‘A journey like ours is no place for a lass.’
‘If you say that again, I’ll kick you. You sound like Mam.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but –’
‘Oh don’t let’s 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, she’d 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 he’s 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. Berwynna’s 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 weren’t 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 Marn’s great hall tended to breed fancies. The dark oak panels lining the walls were as heavily decorated as the Holy Book in Lord Douglas’s 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 sister’s belief that the decorations had some sort of meaning, just as if they’d been a book indeed. Since Dougie couldn’t read a word in any language, it was all a great mystery to him.
‘Think she’ll ever puzzle it out?’ Dougie said to Berwynna.
‘She tells me she’s very close. Tirn’s been a great help to her. He knows what some of the sigils are.’
‘Sigils?’
‘It means marks like those little ones.’ Berwynna shrugged. ‘That’s all I know.’
‘The townsfolk are saying that Tirn’s a demon.’
‘Are you surprised? They think we’re all witches and demons, don’t they?’
‘Well, true enough, the ingrates! And after all the healing your sister’s done for them, too!’
Tirn came in not long after. Like Dougie himself, he was an unusually tall man, and no doubt he’d 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 Marnmara’s 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 Dougie’s 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 she’d said, then smiled and nodded.
‘Mam’s asking him if Marnmara can take another look at this gem he brought with him,’ Berwynna told Dougie. ‘Uncle Mic says it’s a bit of cut firestone. I’ve 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 Tirn’s 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.
‘I’ve not seen anything like that before, either.’ Dougie shook his head in bafflement. ‘It looks like glass, though.’
‘It’s got no bubbles in it,’ Berwynna said. ‘So Uncle Mic said it can’t be glass. It comes from fire mountains, whatever they are.’
‘Well, he’s the one who’d know.’ Dougie turned to Angmar. ‘Could I have a look at that, my lady? I’m curious, is all.’
‘I don’t 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.
‘Don’t look into it too closely,’ she said. ‘It’s a rather odd thing. You don’t 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. There’s naught to this, he thought, and looked directly down into the black depths through the squared-off tip. He heard Marnmara’s 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 Dougie’s 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 hound’s 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
