“Don’t stand there gaping, woman. If you’re coming to the shore with us, step lively.”
She sailed out the door, and with Dyfrig skipping at her side went through the outbuildings toward the flowery meadow, where honeybees and boreal warblers foraged, and a herd of goats and sheep with their young grazed the fresh grass. At the edge of the enchanted circle, Maudrayne told the boy to wait while she went to the holy hut nearby and looked inside.
The place was windowless, but light entered through a smokehole in the roof. Dobnelu lay unconscious on a rickety cot, her discarded magic drum beside her. She was a small person who could not have weighed seven stone, dressed for the ritual in a tattered blue-silk robe that had once been magnificent and costly. Her head had only a few wisps of white hair and the skin of her skull was so translucent that blood vessels seemed to cover it like a netted cap. Her eyes, large and black and smoldering with arcane energy when she was awake, were shuttered by crinkled lids. Her mouth hung slightly ajar, showing a few stumpy teeth. From time to time her lips moved soundlessly.
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/May,%20Julian%20-%20[Bor...0-%20Boreal%20Moon%202%20
-%20Ironcrown%20Moon.html (22 of 228)2-2-2007 18:46:18
May, Julian - Boreal Moon 2 - Ironcrown Moon
“Where do you journey?” Maudrayne whispered. “Whom do you talk to?” The former queen’s hand stole into the basket where the sharp kitchen knife lay and she fingered the long blade. It would be easy to take the sea-hag’s life while she was entranced and helpless. But would such a deed be justifiable, even to permit their escape? The old woman was terrible-tempered and imperious but without real malice. She had opened her home to three refugees at Ansel’s request (complaining loudly all the while), but had treated little Dyfrig with unfailing kindness, so that he came to love her and called her Eldmama Nelu. Maude and Rusgann she had used as domestic slaveys and farmhands, berating them mercilessly when they were clumsy or negligent. But she had never punished them with her magic.
I cannot kill the witch, Maudrayne realized. Nevertheless, I won’t rest until I find a way to get Page 22
away without doing her serious harm.
She left the hut and closed the door behind her. Rusgann was waiting with Dyfrig, carrying her own cup and an extra bottle of mead.
Maudrayne put the things into the basket, handed it to the maid, then led the way through the pasture to the steep path down the cliff.
==========
After the picnic breakfast was eaten, the three of them embarked on the promised treasure hunt along the narrow fjord beach. Good food and plenty of drink had cheered Rusgann so that she put her former misgivings aside. The bay waters sparkled under the bright sky.
Kittiwakes, fulmars, and other birds nesting on the rough rock walls and sea pinnacles made a raucous din. Green sedges, cliff ferns, and tufts of white starwort grew in sheltered high places, while some deeply shadowed stretches of shingle above the tide-line were still heaped with slow-melting slabs of ice driven ashore by the winter westerlies.
The tide was receding. They hiked along the emerging sands and slimy boulders below the fjord cliffs for hour after hour, finding all sorts of interesting things: colorful agate pebbles, net floats, shells, the skull of some small animal, and a freshly dead mirrorfish two ells long, from which the boy gleefully scraped a heap of huge, gleaming scales. There was even a chunk of white quartz with embedded metallic specks that might have been gold. Maudrayne carried all the treasures in the basket, along with the remains of the food.
Dyfrig raced ahead tirelessly, pursued by laughing Rusgann. After a while the two of them were lost to Maudrayne’s sight behind a jutting promontory at the end of the fjord beach.
She brooded as she hurried to catch up with them. Escape from Dobnelu’s steading was not going to be easy.
She sailed out the door, and with Dyfrig skipping at her side went through the outbuildings toward the flowery meadow, where honeybees and boreal warblers foraged, and a herd of goats and sheep with their young grazed the fresh grass. At the edge of the enchanted circle, Maudrayne told the boy to wait while she went to the holy hut nearby and looked inside.
The place was windowless, but light entered through a smokehole in the roof. Dobnelu lay unconscious on a rickety cot, her discarded magic drum beside her. She was a small person who could not have weighed seven stone, dressed for the ritual in a tattered blue-silk robe that had once been magnificent and costly. Her head had only a few wisps of white hair and the skin of her skull was so translucent that blood vessels seemed to cover it like a netted cap. Her eyes, large and black and smoldering with arcane energy when she was awake, were shuttered by crinkled lids. Her mouth hung slightly ajar, showing a few stumpy teeth. From time to time her lips moved soundlessly.
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/May,%20Julian%20-%20[Bor...0-%20Boreal%20Moon%202%20
-%20Ironcrown%20Moon.html (22 of 228)2-2-2007 18:46:18
May, Julian - Boreal Moon 2 - Ironcrown Moon
“Where do you journey?” Maudrayne whispered. “Whom do you talk to?” The former queen’s hand stole into the basket where the sharp kitchen knife lay and she fingered the long blade. It would be easy to take the sea-hag’s life while she was entranced and helpless. But would such a deed be justifiable, even to permit their escape? The old woman was terrible-tempered and imperious but without real malice. She had opened her home to three refugees at Ansel’s request (complaining loudly all the while), but had treated little Dyfrig with unfailing kindness, so that he came to love her and called her Eldmama Nelu. Maude and Rusgann she had used as domestic slaveys and farmhands, berating them mercilessly when they were clumsy or negligent. But she had never punished them with her magic.
I cannot kill the witch, Maudrayne realized. Nevertheless, I won’t rest until I find a way to get Page 22
away without doing her serious harm.
She left the hut and closed the door behind her. Rusgann was waiting with Dyfrig, carrying her own cup and an extra bottle of mead.
Maudrayne put the things into the basket, handed it to the maid, then led the way through the pasture to the steep path down the cliff.
==========
After the picnic breakfast was eaten, the three of them embarked on the promised treasure hunt along the narrow fjord beach. Good food and plenty of drink had cheered Rusgann so that she put her former misgivings aside. The bay waters sparkled under the bright sky.
Kittiwakes, fulmars, and other birds nesting on the rough rock walls and sea pinnacles made a raucous din. Green sedges, cliff ferns, and tufts of white starwort grew in sheltered high places, while some deeply shadowed stretches of shingle above the tide-line were still heaped with slow-melting slabs of ice driven ashore by the winter westerlies.
The tide was receding. They hiked along the emerging sands and slimy boulders below the fjord cliffs for hour after hour, finding all sorts of interesting things: colorful agate pebbles, net floats, shells, the skull of some small animal, and a freshly dead mirrorfish two ells long, from which the boy gleefully scraped a heap of huge, gleaming scales. There was even a chunk of white quartz with embedded metallic specks that might have been gold. Maudrayne carried all the treasures in the basket, along with the remains of the food.
Dyfrig raced ahead tirelessly, pursued by laughing Rusgann. After a while the two of them were lost to Maudrayne’s sight behind a jutting promontory at the end of the fjord beach.
She brooded as she hurried to catch up with them. Escape from Dobnelu’s steading was not going to be easy.
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