Читать книгу The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr - Страница 9

Built as it was across seven hills, the city of Dun Deverry towered above the surrounding farmlands. Riding up from the south, Nevyn saw it from a long distance away as a cluster of grey and green shapes on the horizon. The road twisted, swinging at times a mile off the straight as it meandered around a lord’s dun or rambled along a stream till it finally reached a ford or bridge where a traveller could cross. As the road changed direction, the city seemed to dance on the horizon, now to the east, then to the west, showing him different views as he drew closer. A little while before sunset he finally rode up the last hill, and by then, the city loomed over him like a thunder cloud. The south gates had been repaired since the last time Nevyn had seen them, over a hundred years before, when they’d been only ragged heaps of stone and broken planks. Now they stood twelve feet high and over twenty broad, made of stout oak banded with iron. Each band sported an elaborate engraved design of interlaced wyverns, and on the portion of wall directly above the gates stood a wyvern rampant, carved in pale marble.

Since the stone wall holding them was a good fifteen feet thick, the gates opened into a sort of tunnel, which eventually led onto a cobbled square. Oak saplings, dusted green with their first leaves, stood round the edges. Out in the centre a good many townsfolk were standing around the stone pool of a fountain, gossiping no doubt, but none of them paid any attention to Nevyn, a shabby old herbman leading a laden pack mule and a scruffy riding horse, all three of them covered with dust from the road.

Nevyn, however, studied the townsfolk. As he followed the twisting street uphill past rows of prosperous-looking shops, he kept looking around him, appraising the faces of the people he passed. He’d come to Dun Deverry on two errands. For one, he was searching for a particular young woman who had been his apprentice many a long year before. Everywhere he’d been in the years since her death, he’d searched but never found her. He was hoping that since she’d died in Dun Deverry, she’d been reborn there. She would look very different, of course, but he knew that he’d recognize Lilli when he saw her again. The other errand was far more complicated. To accomplish it, he’d need the help of friends.

Olnadd, priest of Wmm, the god of scribes, lived in a shabby little house not far from the west gate. A brown wooden palisade enclosed the thatch-roofed house, a vegetable garden, and a pair of white geese. When Nevyn arrived at the gate, the geese stopped hunting snails to glare at him. He laid a hand on the latch. Hissing and honking, the pair rushed forward with a great flapping of white wings. His horse and pack mule both threw up their heads and began pulling on reins and halter-rope. As soon as Nevyn let go of the gate, the geese subsided.

‘Olnadd,’ Nevyn called out. ‘Olnadd! Anyone here?’

The front door opened, and the priest hurried out, a slender man with a slick, sparse cap of grey hair. In daily life Wmm’s priests dressed much as other Deverry men did, in plain wool brigga with a linen shirt belted over them. Olnadd’s shirt sported yokes embroidered with pelicans, the sacred bird of his god.

‘Whist, whist,’ he called out, ‘get back!’

The geese retreated, but not far.

‘My apologies,’ Olnadd said. ‘They’re better than watchdogs, truly.’

‘So I see. You don’t look surprised to see me, so I take it that my letter reached you.’

‘It did.’ Olnadd opened the gate and stepped out, shutting it quickly behind him. ‘Let’s take your horse and mule around to the mews. I’ve got a shed out there that will do for a stable.’

Once his animals were unloaded and at their hay, Nevyn followed Olnadd into the house. The priest’s wife, a tall, rangy woman who wore her grey hair in braids round her head, greeted him with a smile and ushered them both into her kitchen. They sat at the table near a sunny window. Affyna brought out a plate of cakes and cups of boiled milk sweetened with honey.

‘So, then.’ Olnadd helped himself to a raisin cake. ‘What brings you to us?’

‘A rather curious business,’ Nevyn said. ‘I want to see the king. I’ve made him a talisman, you see, a little gift for the blood royal.’

‘Little gift?’ Affyna said. ‘If you’ve made it, it must positively reek of dweomer. Well, I suppose reek isn’t quite the word I mean.’

‘It will do, truly.’ Nevyn grinned at her. ‘The question now is, how do I get an audience with our liege to give it to him?’

‘That will take a bit of doing,’ Olnadd said. ‘I don’t suppose we should pry, but I can’t say I’d mind having a look at the thing.’

‘I shouldn’t admit this, but I wouldn’t mind showing it off. It’s taken me a cursed lot of hard work.’ Nevyn reached into his shirt, pulled out the slender chain he wore around his neck, and unfastened a small leather pouch. He slid out its contents, wrapped in layers of silk.

‘Close those shutters, will you?’

Olnadd got up and did so. One ray of light came through the crack and fell across the table in a line of gold. Nevyn drew a circle deosil around the bundle with his hand, visualized four tiny pentagrams at its cardinal points, and cleared the space around the talisman of all influences – not that evil or impure forces would be lying about the priest’s breakfast table, but Nevyn didn’t care to have the stone pick up traces of local gossip. He unwrapped the five pieces of silk: the first, mottled with olive, citrine, russet and black; the second, purple; the third, Wmm’s own orange; the fourth an emerald green, and the last pale lavender.

In the centre of the silks lay an opal, as big as a walnut, but so perfectly round, so smoothly polished, that it seemed to breathe and glow with a life of its own. Affyna sighed sharply, and Olnadd muttered a few words of prayer under his breath.

‘It’s commemorated through Bran and the great Gwindyc, you see,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ve linked it up through the Kings of the Wildlands to the golden root of dominion. Not a word of this to anyone, mind.’

‘And is there anyone else in Dun Deverry who’d know what I was talking about if I told them?’

‘Not half likely, is it?’ Nevyn glanced at Affyna.

She smiled again. ‘Any woman who marries a priest learns to hold her tongue.’

One piece at a time, smoothing out wrinkles, Nevyn wrapped the opal back up in its silken shrouds. He returned it to the pouch, then wiped the dweomer circle away from the table. Olnadd got up and opened the shutters to let in the spring air.

‘And what kind of man is our king?’ Nevyn said. ‘I knew his grandfather, you see, but I haven’t been at court in a cursed long time.’

Olnadd considered, rubbing his chin.

‘Hard to say. Now, he used to be the wild sort, Casyl, when he was the Marked Prince, but wedding the sovereignty changes a man. He’s held the kingship only a year now, but he seems to be steadying down.’

‘Seems to be?’

‘Well, he’s a splendid warrior. Very useful just now.’ Olnadd considered again, picking up his cup and twisting it between his long fingers. ‘But the emotional sort. Given to quick judgments and – well – gestures. Things fit for bard songs, a lot of talk about honour – you know the sort.’

‘How easy is it for a subject to see his highness? I’ve brought a good bit of coin to bribe servants.’

‘You’ll need it, but I can smooth your way and save some of your silver. The scribes all come to the temple, of course, for worship. The head scribe’s an interesting sort. Truly, he should have come to us for the priesthood, but he has a taste for power. Coin will be out of place for our Petyc. We’ll go down to the bookseller’s and see what we can find.’

‘A bookseller? Ye gods, Dun Deverry’s turning into a grand city indeed.’

‘It is, at that. We might find a rare volume, even, but if not, there’ll be somewhat there that will make a decent gift. Then I’ll introduce you. Petyc will speak to the chamberlain if he likes you. A little gift might be in order for the chamberlain, but a few coins in a pouch should do. There’s naught subtle about him, truly.’

‘My thanks. I’d like to get this settled before King Casyl goes off to the summer’s fighting.’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt you can. The gossip tells me that he won’t ride north for another fortnight or so.’

‘Well and good, then. Ye gods! Another war in Cerrgonney!’

‘Now, now!’ Affyna paused for a sly smile. ‘The king never says war. It’s a rebellion, according to him.’

‘And when did the Boar clan swear fealty to the royal Wyvern?’ Nevyn said.

‘Oh, according to our present king’s father, it was round about 962 or so. Gwerbretion, he called their lords, and how could they be gwerbretion if they hadn’t sworn to him?’ Olnadd rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘We can’t doubt the king, can we now? He had it on the best authority – his own.’

They all shared a laugh but a grim one. In truth, Cerrgonney had been an independent kingdom for the past hundred and thirty-odd years, though kingdom was perhaps too grand a word for that rocky land filled with feuds, factions, and petty hatreds. The High King’s vassals, however, would support a war more readily if it were presented as putting down a rebellion rather than outright conquest.

‘And of course his scribes will write down what he tells them to,’ Affyna said, ‘and the royal bards sing the correct verses.’

‘Indeed,’ Nevyn said. ‘But ye gods, another war with the cursed Boars. I wonder if we’ll ever see the end of them?’

‘Now here!’ Olnadd gave him a grin. ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

‘I can’t, alas. The dweomer tells a man what he needs to know and little else.’

That night Nevyn retired early to the small spare guest chamber to work an elaborate piece of dweomer. As much as false omens and pretentious glamours annoyed him, he knew that he’d need them. He’d worked too hard on the opal talisman to have the king accept it lightly, and if he simply gained an audience and handed it over, the king most likely would underestimate its importance. Many years before, Nevyn had successfully used a certain kind of magical trick to shorten a rebellion against the current king’s grandfather. Quite possibly he could use it to benefit the grandson as well.

Nevyn lay down on the bed, slowed his breathing, and visualized the sigils that would lead him out to the etheric plane. In his mind he saw the blue light gather; then suddenly it flooded the room. The walls, dead things, turned black, while the air and its spirits pulsed around him with a sapphire glow. To travel on this plane he would need his body of light, but he had worked this dweomer so often that it came to him almost automatically. He’d created from the etheric substance a body, solid blue against the flux, shaped like a man wearing brigga and a shirt, though lacking detail, and joined to his solar plexus by a silver cord. Nevyn transferred his consciousness into it and looked down at his physical body, lying inert and apparently asleep on the bed below. He rose up higher, slipped out of the house, and hovered in the air. Above him the stars gleamed, great silver whorls and streaks against the night sky.

Down below, flickering in the silvery-blue etheric light, the houses and streets of Dun Deverry spread out, black and sullen with stone and tile. Here and there a garden or a tree gleamed with a reddish vegetable aura. Here and there as well the bright ovoid auras of human beings and animals hurried through the streets or disappeared behind dead wooden doors. Yet in an odd way the city itself did seem alive. Its history was so long and so troubled that images from the astral plane had spilled over, as it were, into the etheric, so that Nevyn could see superimposed pictures from all its times of violence and hope.

The tangle of images formed a dense flood, rising and swelling – the streets shrinking, changing place, broadening, disappearing altogether; houses rising, aging, and falling; fires raging through the streets; ghostly crowds of those who’d lived and suffered here rushing to and fro, then disappearing, leaving the desolation of the Time of Troubles, when a tiny village huddled inside shattered walls, only to swell again as the prosperity of peace returned. In the midst of the swirling flood of images, a few unchanging points stood out – the huge temple compound of Bel on one hill, the smaller temple of the Moon Goddess on another, each glowing under a silvery dweomer-shield created by the priests and priestesses. Yet always, under the mutating images, the city, the Holy City, shimmered with power, the soul of the kingdom simply because so many thousands of people believed it so.

In the centre of the city, in the heart of the glowing, surging magical web stood the king’s dun, a cluster of tall towers on the highest hill. With barely an effort Nevyn drifted towards it through the rippling etheric light. He had been born on that hill well over three hundred years ago. All the history that had taken place since his birth rose up in a second wave of images and lapped over the dun, then swirled back to allow his memories to flood over it in their place.

Once again Nevyn could see the brochs of his youth with their rough chambers and crude furnishings. In that torch-lit chamber of justice he’d infuriated his father and so set in motion the terrible mistake responsible for his unnaturally long life. With a flicker of light the image changed into the larger, more polished royal compound he’d visited as a simple herbman, then he watched the buildings crumble as rebellion and strife broke out among the great clans. In the civil wars he had installed a new king in a dun that was half in ruins from the long years of siege and betrayal.

Among the images of place he saw the empty simulacra of persons long dead, what ordinary folk call ghosts. He saw his father striding through the ruins, shouting soundless orders to vanished servants. His mother ran after, begging mercy for her unfortunate son. The Boars of Cantrae appeared, all swagger and rage. Prince Maryn and his tragic queen, Bellyra, walked through a translucent great hall. Branoic the silver dagger, Maddyn the bard, Councillor Oggyn – shadows of their forms rose up as if to greet him once again.

Among these images drifted one that Nevyn hadn’t expected to see: Lord Gerraent of the Falcon clan. The set of his broad shoulders, his easy warrior’s stance, the falcon-image embroidered on his shirt – the image was true in every detail, so much like Gerraent that Nevyn felt his old hatred for the man well up. He had been tangled with this soul’s wyrd for three hundred years, yet he would have assumed that any image seen here would have come from a much later incarnation, Owaen for instance, the captain of Prince Maryn’s personal guard. Another surprise: rather than dissolving into the general drift, this image lingered, pacing back and forth over a red glow like a carpet of fire. Finally Nevyn realized the truth, that he was seeing no mere memory-ghost, but the actual Gerraent, or rather, his soul reborn in a new body.

Nevyn dropped down through the blue light and hovered a few inches above the ground. This close he could see that the red glow emanated from a lawn, enclosed in the dead black of a stone wall. Off to one side a cluster of pulsing orange resolved itself into rose bushes, swelling with the astral tides of spring. Nevyn could see Gerraent – or whatever he was called in this life – in the midst of his aura, a typical young warrior, his sword at his side even in the midst of the king’s gardens, blond, tall, heavily muscled and every bit as arrogant as always. His aura was shot through with blind rage, a blood-coloured crackle of raw energy that Nevyn found sickening.

Nevyn’s sudden disgust seemed to touch Gerraent’s mind. He stopped his pacing and whirled around, his hand on his sword-hilt as he peered through the night. In puzzlement his aura shrank, then swirled around him. Nevyn marked him well so that he could recognize him again, then let his body of light drift upward. He was high above the ground when he saw another gold aura entering the garden, this one glowing softly around a female body. When Gerraent hurried forward to greet her, Nevyn lingered just long enough to confirm that she was no one bound to him by wyrd, then glided away.

Not far from the garden stood the heart of the king’s dun, four towers joined to a central fifth like the petals on a wild rose. In the bottom floor of the tallest tower, open windows glowed with torch light. Nevyn swung himself through one of them and found himself inside the great hall. The last time he’d seen this room it had been filled with shabby furniture, its walls hung with faded, torn tapestries, its huge hearths filthy with ash and refuse. Now the walls had been plastered and decorated with bright banners, one for each of the great clans, hanging between each pair of windows. The tables and chairs at the honour hearth shone with polish, and light winked on silver goblets. Over on the servants’ and riders’ side of the hall, the furniture was stained and old, but serviceable. Neatly braided rushes covered the entire huge floor.

Nevyn took himself over to the honour hearth, where noble lords sat drinking and a bard sang, his voice sounding oddly hollow and distorted to Nevyn’s etheric ears. Although no one sat at the king’s table, that is, the one closest to the fire, Nevyn saw a page leaving the hall with a flagon of mead on a silver tray. He followed the lad up the spiralling stone staircase, then along a familiar corridor to the king’s apartments.

Fine Bardek carpets covered the floor; elaborately carved furniture sat upon them. On a long, narrow table, candles flamed in banked silver candelabra, but they sent out as much etheric force as light, making it hard for Nevyn to see in the chamber. Looming out of the golden mist, a man with dark hair but green eyes stood by the empty hearth. His linen shirt, stiff with embroidery, displayed the red wyvern of the royal clan, and he wore brigga in the red, white, and gold royal plaid of Dun Deverry. The page set the flagon down on a little table, then bowed and walked backwards to the door. With one last bow he let himself out.

Nevyn remained, floating near the candles, and considered Casyl the Second, King of all Deverry and Eldidd. Casyl poured himself mead into a golden goblet, then sat down in a cushioned chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Finding the king alone was such a rare bit of luck that Nevyn decided to take it as a good omen. He moved closer still to the candles and began gathering both their etheric effluent and their smoke, winding it round his hands with a motion like that of a woman turning loose yarn into a proper skein. Although he couldn’t speak from the etheric, he could send thoughts to the king’s mind that to him would seem to be speech.

‘My liege,’ Nevyn thought to him. ‘A faithful servant stands ready to aid you.’

Casyl leapt to his feet so fast that he nearly spilled his mead. He set the goblet down on the tablet and began looking around him. With a wrench of will, Nevyn tossed his skein of smoke and effluent around the head of his body of light. Casyl yelped and stepped back. At that Nevyn knew he’d been successful – a ghost-like shape had come through to visible appearance.

‘Sometimes great gifts come from no one at all,’ Nevyn went on. ‘Remember this jest well in days to come.’

Casyl’s aura shrank so tight against him that it was barely more than a skin of light hanging around his body.

‘Your most honoured grandsire knew who no one was,’ Nevyn said. ‘The blood royal has its friends.’

With that Nevyn broke the vision. He allowed the candle smoke to disperse, scattered the effluent, and let his body of light drift towards the open window. The working had tired him badly. Casyl never moved, merely stared open-mouthed at the spot where Nevyn’s image had appeared.

Time to get back, Nevyn thought, and with that thought he felt something nearly as tangible as a pair of hands tugging at the silver cord. In a dizzying swirl of motion he swept back to Olnadd’s house, where his physical body lay, calling him back with a force his exhaustion couldn’t resist.

Yet, tired though he was, Nevyn lay awake for a while that night, thinking about Gerraent. If his old enemy were here, perhaps he would also find the woman who had shared their original tragedy, Brangwen of the Falcon, Gerraent’s sister and Nevyn’s betrothed, back in that far-distant time when he’d been a prince of the blood royal himself. He hoped and prayed to the Lords of Light that he would find her. If only he could make restitution to her for his fault, he would at last be allowed to die. If it’s meant to be, he told himself, I’ll see Gerraent again, and no doubt he’ll lead me to Brangwen – if she’s here.

Whether by chance or wyrd, Nevyn saw the reborn Gerraent early the next morning, when Nevyn and Olnadd went together to the dealer in books to buy Petyc’s bribe. As they were walking back to the priest’s house, they heard the clatter of hooves and the chime of silver bridle rings. Horsemen were trotting straight for them. All the nearby townsfolk ran for safety, darting into doorways or down alleys, plastering themselves against the walls of the houses. Silver horns blew; men shouted, ‘Make way in the king’s name! Make way!’ Nevyn and Olnadd found a safe spot in the mouth of an alley just as twenty-five riders on matched grey horses trotted past. At their head, unmistakably arrogant, rode Gerraent, his blond head tossed back, his blue eyes narrow and cold. Nevyn pointed him out to Olnadd.

‘Do you know who that captain is, by any chance?’

‘Only by name,’ Olnadd said. ‘He’s something of a hero, you see, but I truly don’t remember his tale. His name’s Lord Gwairyc, and he did somewhat or other in the war a few years ago that won him King Casyl’s favour. You’ll have to ask Petyc about it. I don’t keep up on the court gossip. I’ll send him a note asking him to join us tonight.’

Directly that evening, after dinner, Petyc arrived at Olnadd’s house. He may have been the head of the royal scriptorium, but his god held higher rank than his king, and as he remarked to Olnadd, he couldn’t refuse the summons.

‘Not that I mind answering it,’ Petyc said with a smile.

The scribe was a lean man, hollow-cheeked and balding, with deep-sunken dark eyes that flicked this way and that around the room, as if he were looking for hidden enemies. After they seated themselves at Olnadd’s table, the priest introduced Nevyn simply as a friend and scholar of strange lore. Petyc looked him over with a half-smile.

‘Nevyn?’ Petyc said. ‘It’s an odd name, Nevyn. You seem too corporeal to be no one at all, though that’s what the name might mean.’

‘It does mean no one, and it was a nasty jest of my father’s,’ Nevyn said. ‘No doubt you’ve never heard it before.’

‘Oddly enough, our liege the king was consulting with me about it this very morning.’

Nevyn smiled and waited.

‘Petyc keeps the royal archives, you see,’ Olnadd put in. ‘So many a strange question comes his way.’

‘No doubt,’ Nevyn said. ‘And did our liege find the answer to his question?’

‘He found an answer of sorts.’ Petyc paused, quirking an eyebrow, then continued. ‘But whether the answer applies to you, good sir, I couldn’t say. It seems that in the reign of our liege’s grandsire, King Aeryc, there was talk of a mysterious secret order of priests – or somewhat of that sort – who all bore the name Nevyn. A certain Nevyn paid King Aeryc a great service in the matter of the Eldidd rebellion.’

‘Ah,’ Nevyn said. ‘An interesting tale.’

Olnadd suppressed a smile and studied the ceiling. Petyc considered them both, as nervous but as eager as a stray cat who approaches a bowl of scraps laid out by a farmer’s wife.

‘May I ask you somewhat?’ Petyc had gathered his courage. ‘If I pry, then tell me, but do those old tales of other men named Nevyn have somewhat to do with you?’

‘They do. What made you guess, besides the name, of course?’

‘The name, mostly. Some of the records discuss a clan – I suppose you’d call it a clan – of sorcerers, always headed by a man called no one. I take it you’re sworn to aid the king?’

‘Him, too, but we do our best to offer our aid to anyone who needs it, whether prince or bondman.’

Petyc considered this in some surprise.

‘Matters of history have always interested me.’ Nevyn decided to change the subject. ‘It’s a great honour to meet the keeper of the King’s archives. Olnadd tells me you understand their importance, unlike so many scribes.’

With this sort of opening, the conversation could turn to the safe and pleasant matters of scholarship. As Petyc talked about his chronicles, his intelligence became obvious. He carefully selected what to record with a clear view of what granted an event importance.

‘Some of the ancient annals we have would no doubt amuse you,’ Petyc said. ‘They record with great solemnity every two-headed calf and dragon-shaped cloud seen in the kingdom, but omit to tell us anything about the king’s councils.’

‘You seem quite interested in ancient times.’

‘I am, truly.’ Petyc nodded in Olnadd’s direction. ‘His holiness here was the first to show me how fascinating the past can be. I was just a lad, then, sent to him once I’d been taken on by the dun. He taught me that there was more to books than the shaping of their letters.’

‘You were a quick pupil, one of the best I ever had.’ Olnadd glanced at Nevyn. ‘Petyc has an interesting library, some twenty volumes in his own personal collection.’

‘That’s an amazing number, truly.’ Nevyn took the hint and the opening. ‘I have a volume with me, actually, that might interest you, Petyc.’

Nevyn brought out the bribe, a copy, some eighty years old, of the anonymous saga of Rwsyn of Eldidd, a king who’d ruled in the fifth century. When Petyc exclaimed over it, Nevyn could easily press it upon him as a gift without the word ‘bribe’ ever coming near the surface of conversation. With the saga duly accepted, Nevyn mentioned that he’d always wanted to see King Casyl from some better vantage than as a bystander to a formal procession.

‘That could be arranged,’ Petyc said. ‘I’d be most honoured, anyway, if you’d visit my humble quarters and look over some of the other books we’ve been discussing.’

‘And I should be most honoured to see them. May I visit you sometime soon?’

‘Come tomorrow afternoon, by all means. I’ll speak to the chamberlain about your audience with our king, but I fear that the chamberlain will tell you that he’s much too distracted these days. The Cerrgonney war, you know. I mean, rebellion.’

‘Oh no doubt. But perhaps I can impress the chamberlain with my sincerity.’

On the morrow, wearing a clean shirt for the occasion, Nevyn presented himself at the massive iron-bound gates of the dun. When he announced his business, the guards looked him over suspiciously, but they allowed him into the ward while they sent a servant off to fetch the scribe. Petyc appeared promptly, then escorted him inside the rearmost tower of the conjoined brochs. As they were walking down a corridor, a pair of the king’s riders came swaggering along, shoving them out of the way and walking on fast. Petyc made a sour face at their broad backs.

‘That reminds me,’ Nevyn said. ‘Do you know anything about one of the King’s captains, a man named Gwairyc?’

‘I do. Now, I’ve only met him most briefly and formally, but his liege requested I enter a tale about Gwairyc into the annals for 980. It marked an event important in itself, but as well our liege meant it as a mark of honour to the captain. To give the man his due, it was splendidly brave. I suppose.’

‘An event of warfare, then?’

‘Just that.’ Petyc paused by a big wooden door. ‘Come in, and I’ll show you the very annal itself.’

Petyc led Nevyn into a long low-ceilinged room, well-lit by a rank of windows. Four long wooden writing tables stood by the windows, and at the nearest, a pair of young scribes were making copies of a royal decree. Petyc spoke to each of them, checked their work, then led Nevyn into a smaller chamber, lined with wooden shelves, where leather-bound codices exhaled a faint smell of dust and old parchment. Most of the volumes seemed to be household accounts and bound correspondence, but Nevyn was gratified to see a fairly new copy of Queen Bellyra’s history of Dun Cerrmor.

‘A most interesting compendium, isn’t it?’ Petyc nodded in its direction. ‘She also left part of a manuscript about Dun Deverry itself.’

‘Ah, it’s survived, then.’

‘It has. The original’s down in Wmmglaedd, but we have copies here. Let me get you the annals we were speaking of.’

Petyc squatted down in order to ferret about on a low shelf. Eventually he brought out a splendidly bound book, its wooden cover engraved with interlace and painted in red and gold. He thumbed through it and found the passage at the end.

‘You will forgive my humble style, of course.’

‘Oh, but the lettering’s splendid. The proportions are most just and fluid.’

Petyc allowed himself a small smile. Nevyn read over the passage while Petyc watched amazed, simply because Nevyn was one of the few men in the kingdom who could read silently rather than aloud.

‘The most sorrowful death of Prince Cwnol was nearly deflected,’ the passage ran. ‘But his wyrd came upon him, and no man could turn it aside, not even Gwairyc, son of Glaswyn. When the foul traitors closed around the prince on the field, Gwairyc thrust himself forward and fought like a god, not a man, attempting to save his prince. He slew four men and carried the prince alive back in his arms, but alas, the wounds were too deep to bind. In honour of his bravery, Prince Casyl counted him as a friend from that day on and commends his memory to all who might read this book.’

‘Nicely phrased.’ Nevyn closed the book and handed it back. ‘Did he truly slay four men by himself?’

‘So Casyl told me at the time – Prince Casyl, as he was. His father was still alive then, of course. I’ve never seen a battle, myself.’

‘You may count yourself quite lucky. Is Gwairyc still in Casyl’s favour now that Casyl’s king?’

‘He is.’ Petyc looked briefly sour. ‘He’s one of the many younger sons of the Rams of Hendyr – do you know them? A fine old clan, truly, but perhaps a bit too prolific for their own good. Gwairyc got himself into the king’s warband because of his skill with a sword, and now that he has his chance at royal favour, he sticks closer to the king than wet linen.’

Nevyn was about to ask more when the chamberlain came bustling in. A stout man with flabby hands and neatly trimmed grey hair and beard, Gathry made Petyc’s earlier prediction come true.

‘Alas, good Nevyn,’ he said, ‘the king is much distracted these days. The Cerrgonney wars and all.’

Petyc thoughtfully turned his back so that Nevyn could slip Gathry a velvet pouch of coins. The councillor patted his shirt briefly, and the pouch disappeared.

‘But you know,’ Gathry continued, ‘I do believe that our liege might have a few free moments this very afternoon. Allow me to go inquire.’

The chamberlain bustled out again, only to return remarkably fast with the news that indeed, the king had a few moments to give one of his subjects. Nevyn followed Gathry up a long staircase and through a door into the central tower, where they went down a half-flight of steps to a pair of carved double doors. Gathry threw them open with a flourish and bowed his way inside. Nevyn recognized the half-round chamber; it had been the women’s hall when Maryn was king.

All of Bellyra’s cushioned chairs and silver oddments had long since been replaced. On the stone walls hung tapestries of hunting scenes and hunting weapons – boar spears, bows and quivers of arrows, a maul for cracking the skulls of wounded game – displayed on iron hooks. The furnishings consisted of one long rectangular table and a scatter of benches. A pair of much-faded banners appliqued with red wyverns hung on the flat wooden wall, and in front of them in a half-round carved chair sat the king.

Thanks to the royal line’s dubious inbreeding, Casyl looked much like Aeryc: the same squarish face, the same wide green eyes and tight-lipped smile, but his shock of hair was a dark brown, not blond like his grandfather’s. His long, nervous fingers played with a jewelled dagger. When Gathry started to kneel, the king pointed the dagger at him.

‘Leave us. Come in, my lord Nevyn.’

Bowing, Gathry hurried out backwards and carefully shut the doors behind him. When the king nodded at a nearby bench, Nevyn sat.

‘Very well, ‘ Casyl said. ‘This is one of the few places in the dun where we won’t be overheard. I trust you’ll forgive the lack of ceremony.’

‘Ceremony means little to a man like me, your highness.’

‘So I thought.’ Casyl ran his thumb along the dagger’s hilt. ‘My scribes tell me many an interesting thing about men named Nevyn. Are they true?’

‘Do you doubt it after seeing me in the candle-flames?’

Casyl’s hand tightened so hard on the dagger hilt that his knuckles went white. Nevyn said nothing. In a moment, the king glanced at his belt, took his time sheathing the dagger, then finally looked up.

‘King Aeryc was a very long-lived man,’ Casyl said. ‘I had the privilege denied to most men of knowing my grandfather. He made a point of telling me when I was a little lad never mock the dweomer.’

‘Aeryc was wise. My master in magic told me much about him.’

‘I’m honoured that you’d seek me out. But tell me, does this mean some great trouble coming to me and mine?’

Nevyn almost laughed. He’d forgotten that most men saw the dweomer only in terms of dark and portentous warnings of doom.

‘Not in the least, my liege. I’ve only come to give you a gift, one that I hope will prevent such troubles.’

At that, Casyl smiled, but his eyes stayed wary.

‘I’ve brought you a gem, a dweomer-stone,’ Nevyn went on. ‘And I’ll beg you to guard it as the greatest treasure you have and to pass it on to your son when the time comes. Will you promise me that, my liege, as one man to another?’

‘Gladly. Here, I never dreamt there truly was such a thing as magical jewels.’

‘They’re quite rare, your highness, as well you can imagine.’

Nevyn brought out the pouch and unwrapped the opal, laying it onto the long table. Before he could offer to bring it to the king, Casyl got up and strode over for a look. When he saw the perfect opal gleaming among its silks, he gasped aloud. He reached out his hand, then stopped.

‘May I touch it?’

‘By all means, your highness. If it pleases you, do look into it. I’d be most interested in what you might see there.’

Gingerly, as if he were approaching a wounded wild animal, the king picked up the gift, silks and all, and cradled it in the palm of one broad hand. The opal glowed with flame-coloured veins set against its misty white depths. While the king gazed into it, Nevyn silently called upon the Kings of the Elements, who ruled the spirits attached to the talisman. He directed their minds to the king and announced that he and his heirs were the rightful owners of the stone. Casyl felt their presence. Nevyn could see it by the way he shuddered, turning uneasily as if he felt a draught of cold air.

‘By the gods,’ Casyl whispered. ‘Never have I seen a gem like this one.’

‘Well, your highness, I’d wager high that you’ll never see its like again, so treasure it well. May I ask what you see within it?’

‘A golden sun. By the hells, am I going daft?’

‘You’re not. You’ve merely proved yourself a true king, if you can see that inner sun.’

Casyl looked up, his lips half-parted in awe. In truth, any person of good will who looked into it would see the same sun, but Nevyn knew from long experience that flattery and fine words worked more wonders than dweomer when it came to influencing royalty.

‘You may use this stone as a test of honour,’ Nevyn went on. ‘If ever you gaze upon it, and the sun has set, some evil will have beset your heart. Undo the evil you have done, and the sun will rise again.’

‘A mighty gift indeed! May I never betray it!’

‘So I would hope, but truly, it’s the men who might come after you that trouble my heart. Everyone knows that you’re the soul of honour.’

‘You flatter me, but you have my thanks. I hope that I remain worthy of this marvellous gift.’

‘You’re most welcome, your highness, but remember that it’s just a gem, though a mighty one, and I’m just a man, though a highly skilled one. Now listen well! This is the Great Stone of the West. Remember that name, but tell it to no one but your legitimate sons. Show the stone to no one but them. Tell the eldest that no one must see it but his heirs, and so on down the long river of Time. Guard this stone like the mighty treasure it is, but if harm ever comes to it, I or my successor will appear to rescue it. When it comes time for me to appoint a successor, he too will be another Nevyn, as my master was before me.’

‘Well and good, then,’ Casyl looked into the stone again and smiled. ‘It’s passing strange. Just looking at this gem, just holding it – I’ve never felt like this before. It brings peace, but a peace that’s alive, not like dropping off to sleep or suchlike.’ Casyl laid a fingertip gently on the stone. ‘Is there anything I should do to tend it?’

‘There’s not, but the keeping of it secret and the honouring of it.’

‘A marvel indeed. Here, why would you give me such a thing?’

‘Because you’re the king, and the king is the shield of his people. Through you I can help bring them safety.’

Casyl nodded, turning solemn, staring into the opal’s depths for many a long moment. Finally he looked up. ‘Come now, good Nevyn. Surely you’ll let me give you a good price for this stone.’

‘I won’t, your highness. The dweomer asks no price for its aid to good men. It’s a gift to you and the kingdom.’

‘Then you shall have a gift in return.’ Casyl grinned, abruptly boyish. ‘Anything in my kingdom you desire is yours. Well, except my wife.’ He laughed aloud. ‘I’ve never had such a splendid gem before! Name what you desire, good Nevyn – I truly mean it, anything at all.’

Olnadd’s right, Nevyn thought. The king does like the grand gesture.

‘Fine horses, other jewels, gold, land,’ Casyl went on. ‘Have you ever desired a vast demesne? Here, the tieryn of Buccbrael has just died, and he has no heir but a daughter. Shall I apportion his lands and the lass to you?’

‘Your highness, I honour your generosity, but my craft leaves me no time for ruling lands and marrying young wives.

I want nothing at all. Your gratitude is the greatest reward an old man’s heart could have.’

‘Oh, but there must be somewhat. Here, it would be dishonourable of me to let you go away empty-handed. How can I be dishonourable to the man who’s given me the very jewel of honour’s soul?’

Nevyn was about to make another self-deprecating reply when he felt a cold touch of dweomer-warning down his back. He knew in the strange wordless way of the dweomer that there was something he was supposed to have from Casyl.

‘Your highness, I’m most touched and overwhelmed. May I think about this for a bit? A king’s boon is too rare and splendid to be spent upon a whim.’

‘True spoken. Think on this boon carefully, and –’ Casyl paused, thinking. ‘In three days, when the sun’s marking out the same hour, I shall receive you in the great hall. Come to me then.’

‘My humble thanks.’ Nevyn bowed to him. ‘Done, then.’

‘Splendid! Now, let’s go down to the great hall. Let me give you a goblet of mead to accompany my thanks.’

‘My thanks, your highness, but I’d prefer dark ale.’

Before they left the private chamber, Nevyn taught Casyl how to wrap up the opal in its silks. Even though he’d bound the stone over to the king, he preserved one link back to himself, so that he could tell if the stone should somehow be endangered. He had no desire to see all his hard work wasted.

The king personally escorted Nevyn to the great hall and sat him down at the honour table. A young page brought the ale, but Casyl himself filled Nevyn’s tankard. As he sipped the good strong brew, Nevyn was aware that every single man and most of the women in the hall had stopped whatever they were doing to stare at him, this shabby old man that the king treated like a long-lost grandfather. When the time came for him to leave, Nevyn could feel their gazes following him the entire way out of the hall. Walking outside into the cool of late afternoon made him feel as if he were tossing aside a burden, the weight of so much envy.

A company of the king’s horsemen came trotting through the gates. Nevyn stepped back out of the way as the men dismounted and grooms rushed forward to take the horses. Most of the riders were laughing, shouting jests back and forth and talking about ale and their dinner, but Lord Gwairyc stood alone and watched them with a small contemptuous smile. Or was it truly contempt? More of a shield, that smile, against the contempt of other men. Before Gwairyc could notice him, Nevyn went on his way, but at the dun gates he stopped to speak with the two guards, who bowed to him. Apparently the news of his sudden high standing had spread fast.

‘Tell me somewhat,’ Nevyn said. ‘Lord Gwairyc, there, who just rode in. Do you know him?’

‘Well, my lord,’ one guard said, ‘Everyone knows of him. He wouldn’t have much to do with the likes of us.’

‘They say he’s splendid on the field,’ the other guard put in. ‘He’s got no more fear in him than a ravening wolf. And you’d best not cross him, either, my lord. Touchy, he is, and I swear he’d kill a man for one wrong word.’

‘Ah, I see. Does he have any close friends?’

‘The king honours him, my lord.’ The first guard thought for a long moment. ‘I can’t think of anyone else.’

In gathering twilight Nevyn walked back to Olnadd’s house. Around him, merchants and craftsmen were hurrying home to their dinner. In open windows lanterns glowed, and the smell of cooking drifted in the warm evening air. A group of little children were laughing and tossing a leather ball back and forth while they waited for their mother to call them in for dinner. Nevyn suddenly felt that he understood Gwairyc, cut off like him from normal life and easy companionship. Once he finished his work in the city, he might never see Olnadd again, since he went where the dweomer led him, not where he wished to. Gwairyc would dine in an honoured place in the great hall and sleep in a crowded barracks, but that little smile – Gwairyc was lonely, Nevyn realized. A younger son, a man with an empty rank and no prospects, he’d found the only way to gain a position and honour, by endlessly risking his life until the day he died young in his king’s service. Of the two of us, he’s got the harsher wyrd, Nevyn thought, no matter how weary I grow.

This idea brought with it the first real pang of sympathy for Gerraent that Nevyn had ever felt. The sympathy seemed to grow of its own accord. At dinner, as he told Olnadd and Affyna about his day, an idea came to him, so strange that at first he refused to consider it. Affyna unwittingly gave it to him when he told them about the king’s offer of a boon.

‘I can’t accept some expensive gift, of course,’ Nevyn said. ‘I see what you mean about the grand gesture, Olnadd. Turning him down would be like snubbing a child who offers you his favourite toy, some grubby wooden horse or suchlike. You don’t want it, but how can you say him nay?’

‘But here, Nevyn,’ Affyna broke in. ‘If you took a gift that would help someone else, I’m sure it would be honourable enough.’

‘Now that’s true spoken. There’s plenty of poor folk in the kingdom who can use the king’s gold.’

Nevyn considered the boon in this new light. Somewhat I could sell, and then give the proceeds to the poor, he thought, or maybe another jewel to make a second talisman. He was going to miss having regular work to give meaning to his long days.

‘Oh, I meant to ask you,’ Affyna said. ‘Did you find out about that captain who interested you?’

‘Gwairyc? I did. Petyc knew his tale.’

‘Oddly enough, I met him once. I have a friend, Ylaenna, who has the prettiest daughter. Oh, she’s a beauty, that lass! Well, somehow or other, she met this Gwairyc, and he was sniffing around her good and proper until Ylaenna’s husband put a stop to it.’

‘I take it Gwairyc has little honour around lasses.’

‘Well, now.’ Affyna considered for a moment. ‘No doubt he doesn’t, but you know, I thought there was more to the lad than anyone would allow.’

‘You have the best heart in the world,’ Olnadd said, grinning. ‘I swear, you’d find something good to say about a murderer or suchlike.’

‘Oh come now, the lad’s not that bad!’ Affyna said. ‘But I suppose you’re right enough. It’s a short life that the royal horsemen lead, but there’s a good heart in Lord Gwairyc, if only someone could bring it out in him.’

‘I doubt me if it was his heart that Ylaenna was worrying about,’ Olnadd muttered.

‘Oh!’ Affyna made a mock-slap in his direction. ‘There’s no need to be coarse!’

Her opinion of the captain brought Nevyn first a feeling, then a thought, that he did his best to argue out of existence. Why should he do one cursed thing for Gerraent? Why should he put himself out a jot for that arrogant soul? Because he’s another human being, Nevyn reminded himself, one of the race you’ve sworn to serve. Late that night, as he was meditating in his chamber, his mind continually brought up the memory image of Gwairyc’s lonely little smile. Perhaps Affyna was right, and a good man lay under that surface, if someone could find and release him.

Nevyn groaned aloud. Transmuting Gerraent’s soul promised to be a much harder job than his fifty years of work enchanting the opal. He did have one perfectly legitimate reason to let Gwairyc be. Lilli, his apprentice, would take all his time once he found her. Surely she’s been reborn by now! Nevyn thought with some irritation. He had several days to see if indeed, she was alive somewhere in or near Dun Deverry. If not, then he could worry about Lord Gwairyc.

Over the next two days, he wandered the city in search of her. He even made a point of meeting the reputedly lovely daughter of Affyna’s friend, just on the off-chance that she might be Lilli reborn, but though she was undoubtedly beautiful, she was not his former apprentice. At night he both meditated upon Lilli and her harsh wyrd and actively hunted for traces of her soul upon the astral plane. He found nothing.

On the third day, when he was to return to the king to claim his boon, Nevyn woke to a realization. His old chains of wyrd, the tragedies over many lives that bound him to Gerraent and those other souls who had participated in his original fault – they would always take precedence in his life. Lilli had great talent for the dweomer, and most likely she would catch the attention of some other dweomermaster. If not, then he would find her when it was his wyrd to find her, and not a moment before.

Late in the warm and muggy day, Nevyn puffed back up the hill to the royal dun. The guards ushered him in with bows, and a page came running to greet him.

‘His highness told us to look for you, my lord,’ the page said. ‘He’s in council at the moment, but he begs that you’ll not be offended, and that you’ll wait for him in the great hall.’

‘I shall be honoured,’ Nevyn said. ‘Lead on.’

As they walked together across the ward, Nevyn noticed that Lord Gwairyc’s contingent of horsemen had just ridden in. The men were dispersing while the grooms were leading their mounts away. Near the broch Lord Gwairyc was standing and speaking with another nobleman. As they passed him, Gwairyc glanced Nevyn’s way. For a moment, their eyes met, only briefly, but what Nevyn saw there shocked him: no recognition, no hostility, nothing, really, but a cold indifference. Always before, Gerraent reborn had recognized him, as an enemy perhaps, but still, he had recognized him.

The page, Nevyn noticed, seemed terrified of the captain. In a moment he saw why. The groom leading Gwairyc’s dappled grey gelding had one hand on the horse’s bridle; with the other he held and idly swung the reins like a whip. Just as they were passing Gwairyc, the groom swung them too vigorously and clipped the startled horse across the nose. Gwairyc took two long strides, grabbed the groom by the shoulder, and hit him across the face so hard that the fellow yelped and staggered back.

‘I’ll take him in myself,’ Gwairyc snarled. ‘He’s twice as valuable as you are, and don’t you ever forget it.’

The groom pressed one hand over his bleeding nose and ran off, stumbling a little, without looking back. The page who’d been attending to Nevyn caught the old man’s sleeve.

‘Let’s go inside, my lord,’ he whispered.

‘By all means,’ Nevyn said. ‘We don’t need ill-temper coming our way.’

They hurried into the great hall, a cool refuge from the heat of the day as well as from Lord Gwairyc. Riders and servants were gathering at their hearth, while across the hall a few courtiers had already come in to sit together and gossip. At the table of honour Lord Gathry was waiting. He personally pulled out Nevyn’s chair for him, then sat down beside him.

‘Here, page,’ Gathry said. ‘Run and fetch mead and goblets. No doubt our guest is thirsty.’

The boy nodded and trotted off.

‘My thanks,’ Nevyn said, ‘Tell me somewhat, good sir. Do you know Lord Gwairyc?’

‘As much as any man can know him, I suppose. He’s part of the royal household now.’ Gathry paused for a twist of his lips. ‘There’s some talk that our liege will make him an equerry.’

‘Indeed? This idea seems to displease you.’

‘Oh, not at all, of course. If our liege chooses to do so, of course I have no objection.’ Gathry glanced around, turning to look behind him as if he expected Gwairyc to crawl out of a crack between the stones in the wall. ‘A good man, truly. Most devoted to our liege.’

‘Ah, I see. May I ask you just how devoted?’

For a moment, Gathry looked puzzled by the question; then he considered.

‘Now, truly, there are some at court who don’t care for Gwairyc and talk against him, but I must give the man his due, my lord. I think he’d walk into a fire if our liege asked him. The lords who grumble against him feel shamed. Their own allegiance runs a bit thinner than that, if you take my meaning.’

‘Oh, indeed I do, and my thanks.’

Nevyn turned in his chair and looked back at the doors. Gwairyc was standing alone, his arms crossed tight over his chest, his face utterly stripped of all feeling. No one spoke to him when he walked in and took his place at the head of one of the riders’ tables. A handful of men at a time, the king’s riders clattered in, laughing among themselves. Nevyn watched, and while he saw many men nod to Gwairyc or even bow to him, no one seemed to say a friendly word, nor did Gwairyc ever say one in return. Nevyn began to think of him as a soul standing on the edge of some abyss, just as when a man, all unmindful, strolls along the sea-cliffs to take a bit of air at night and cannot see the dirt crumbling just a few inches from his foot. A man so cut off from his fellows risked falling into evil ways, maybe not in this life, with his devotion to the king to guide him, but in his next the cliff edge might give way beneath him and let him fall into the darkness that recognizes nothing but its own wants and whims.

I truly can’t get out of this, Nevyn thought. He always was an irritating little bastard, so I don’t know why I’m even surprised that he’d be a nuisance now.

The sunlight streaming in through the windows had turned gold with the sunset by the time that the king’s private door opened. There was a blare of silver horns, two pages marched through, and everyone in the hall rose and knelt as Casyl came striding in with a pair of black-robed councillors. Casyl smiled and raised a hand in greeting to his court, then strode over to the honour table and took his place at the head. In a clatter of chairs and benches the assembled company sat down again, yet no one spoke more than a few whispers. Nevyn realized that almost every person in the great hall had turned to stare at him, that mysterious shabby old man, back again.

‘Greetings, my lord,’ Casyl said to Nevyn. ‘And have you come to tell me what you desire for your boon?’

‘I have, my liege.’

‘Splendid!’ Casyl rubbed his hands together like a merchant who’s just made a good sale. ‘The gift you gave me grows the more wondrous the more I study it. Speak. Tell me your wish, and if it’s in my power to bestow, then you shall have it.’

‘Your highness, my thanks.’ Nevyn paused for effect. ‘I want Lord Gwairyc to be my servant for seven years and a day, to serve me as faithfully and scrupulously as he would serve you.’

The men at the honour table gasped aloud; those at the nearest ones leaned forward, all of them desperate to know and unable to ask what had been said. Casyl frankly stared, eyes narrowed in confusion, as if he thought Nevyn were jesting.

Nevyn smiled briefly. ‘Do you think that Lord Gwairyc will comply with your wishes in this matter, my liege?’

‘No doubt. But with all the splendid things I can offer you, why do you want him?’

Nevyn leaned close to whisper.

‘For reasons of the dweomer’s and my own. I don’t care to reveal them, my liege. I swear it will be to your friend’s benefit and ultimately to yours.’

‘Done, then. Page, run and fetch me Lord Gwairyc.’

It took the page some while to thread his way through the crowded hall. He reached Gwairyc, said a few words, then stood back and allowed the lord to make his way back across alone. By the time he did, the human patience of the courtiers had been stretched beyond breaking. First the king’s servitors began to whisper about Nevyn’s strange request. The knowledge spread with the servants who’d been pouring mead and laying out baskets of bread. Once the warbands heard it, muffled oaths and loud talk overwhelmed the polite whispers. Gwairyc was forced to make his way to the king’s side through a clamour, all centred on what lay ahead of him. Silently Nevyn cursed himself – he should have requested the boon privately, but it was too late now.

Gwairyc knelt before the king, who turned in his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘My Lord Gwairyc,’ Casyl said, ‘once you swore to serve me and follow me to the death if need be. Is that vow still true?’

‘More true than ever, your highness.’ Gwairyc’s voice was soft and dark. ‘Do you doubt me?’

‘Never for a moment. You must have heard what’s transpired.’

‘I did. I just didn’t believe it.’

‘Alas, it’s true.’ Casyl waved in Nevyn’s general direction. ‘I promised Lord Nevyn any boon he desires. He’s asked me for you, to be his servant for seven years and a day, and to serve him the way you’d serve me.’

Gwairyc swung his head around like a striking snake and stared at Nevyn for a long poisonous moment before returning his gaze to the king. ‘Your highness,’ he whispered. ‘You’d send me away?’

‘Not willingly, but how can I go back on my promise? What kind of man would I be, to promise a boon and then haggle like some merchant? Here, my friend, I’ll miss you.’

Gwairyc slumped and stared at the floor. ‘Well, my liege,’ Gwairyc said at last. ‘A vow’s a vow, and whatever Lord Nevyn says, I’ll do it as willingly as I can.’

‘Well and good, then. And when the seven years and a day are over, I beg you to return to me.’

‘I will, my liege.’ Gwairyc’s voice came close to breaking. ‘I swear it.’

Casyl glanced at Nevyn to give him permission to speak.

‘My thanks, your highness,’ Nevyn said. ‘Now, my lord, I’m staying at the temple of Wmm in the city. Tomorrow at dawn, come to me there. Bring a horse and gear for a long journey.’

‘I will, my lord.’ Gwairyc hesitated, looking up at him with stunned eyes. ‘May I ask how I am to serve you?’

‘You may, but not here,’ Nevyn said. ‘On the morrow I’ll tell you more. I’m a herbman, though, and we’ll be travelling the roads all summer.’

The eavesdroppers snickered. Gwairyc’s face became a mask of shrouded feeling. Everyone else in the hall began to whisper among themselves, a vast susurrus of ‘what did the old man say?’ When the king threw up his hand, silence came promptly.

‘Gwarro, my friend,’ the king said. ‘Serve this man as you would serve me. That’s all I’d ask of you.’

‘Then that’s what I’ll do, your highness.’ Gwairyc rose and bowed to him. ‘If you’ll give me leave to go?’

Casyl nodded his agreement. The great hall sat stunned as Gwairyc turned and strode out. No one spoke, no one followed him, but here and there, Nevyn noticed, at other tables, courtiers smiled as slyly as if they’d just seen an enemy slain.

Nevyn took leave of the king as soon as he could. He walked back to Olnadd’s along streets that lay in shadow from the setting sun, even though the sky above still shone blue. Well, Lilli, Nevyn thought, someday mayhap we’ll meet again, but it won’t be this summer.

‘Gwarro, it’s just too awful,’ Sagraeffa said. ‘I’ve been weeping for hours.’

Around her swollen eyes ran little streaks of Bardekian kohl, witnesses to the truth of her tears. She’d taken off her headscarf as well and dishevelled her hair, which hung like thick dark ropes around her full face. ‘I just hate this,’ she went on. ‘You can’t go!’ ‘I don’t have any choice, do I? By the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell, do you think this gladdens my heart?’

Sagraeffa snivelled and twisted her handkerchief tightly between pale fingers. Lady Sagraeffa, wife to Lord Obyn of the White Wolf, was a lovely woman, with raven-dark Eldidd hair and cornflower-blue eyes to match. For months, Gwairyc had been stalking her, flattering her, courting her, and now, just when he had a chance at the prize, disaster had ended his hunt. He felt like strangling her for putting him off for all these months. As if she read his temper, she shrank back into the corner of the window-seat.

‘I shall miss you so,’ she said. ‘Don’t you even know where that awful old man is going?’

‘I don’t. The hells, for all I care.’

Sagraeffa gave a small delicate sob and twisted the handkerchief tighter. With a muttered oath, Gwairyc got up and began pacing around the chamber, which was stuffed with cushioned furniture and little knick-knacks. He picked up a silver basket of glass flowers from Bardek and considered heaving it into the gilded mirror above the hearth.

‘Gwarro, what are you doing?’ Sagraeffa snuffled. ‘Come sit down. We don’t have very long, and I want one of your kisses.’

Gwairyc paced back, but he stood over her rather than sitting down. She leaned against red velvet cushions and smiled wistfully at him.

‘How long will your cursed husband be gone?’

‘How should I know?’ Sagraeffa pouched her full lips into a moue. ‘He’s so tedious when he gets to talking with Lord Banryc.’

‘Good.’

When Gwairyc sat down next to her, she smiled, offering him her hand, then pulling it back again. She wanted some more fine words, he supposed, all that courtly drivel that she ate up, like a chicken pecking seed as he trailed it out in front of her.

‘My heart aches at leaving you, my love,’ Gwairyc said. ‘It’s the worst thing of all.’

Sagraeffa smiled, moving a little closer and letting him catch her hand.

‘Ah by the hells, how can the gods be so cruel?’ Gwairyc went on. ‘They show me the love of my life, then tear me away from her.’

‘Well, they’ve done the same to me. That beastly old man! Oh, Gwarro, it’s going to be all tedious again without you.’

Gwairyc pulled her close and kissed her. With a sigh, she slipped her arms around his neck and let him take a few more kisses, but when he laid his hand on her breast, she giggled, pulling away and glancing at the door. Admittedly, her stupid husband could come in at any minute, but Obyn was a man who liked his habits, and one of those habits was having three games of carnoic with Lord Banryc every other night. He estimated that they were just finishing the first one.

‘Now come along, my love. It’s our last night together. Are you going to be as cruel as the gods and send me away without even a splendid memory of your love?’

Sagraeffa caught her lower lip under her front teeth and stared up at him, honestly frightened. All at once, Gwairyc realized that she’d never had any intention of sleeping with him.

‘Obyn might come back.’ Her voice shook.

‘So what? I’ve already been banished, haven’t I? And do you think that dry stick of a husband of yours has the strength to beat you? I’ll wager he doesn’t. He won’t be back anyway.’

‘But I –’

Gwairyc caught her face in both hands and kissed her hard. When she squirmed away, he caught her by the shoulders and kissed her again. For a moment she struggled with him, then went satisfyingly limp in his arms.

‘You told me you loved me. Do you or not?’

Sagraeffa looked up at him with tear-filled eyes, a pleasant sign of weakness. This time, he kissed her gently, letting his mouth linger on hers. She laid a trembling hand on his arm and caressed him. He knew cursed well that she wanted it as badly as he did. He decided that this time, she wasn’t going to put him off.

‘Tomorrow I’ll be gone. Who knows if we’ll ever see each other again? Please, my love? My heart aches with wanting you so badly. There’s never been another woman who could make me feel this way.’

This brought a wary smile to her slightly swollen lips. Gwairyc had one brief thought for her husband – what if he did leave early? Then he kissed her again, kept kissing her until she gave in and let him caress her.

‘Let me take you to your bedchamber.’

Sagraeffa went stiff in his arms and turned her head away.

‘Oh by the hells!’ Gwairyc snapped. ‘We’re running out of time!’

‘Don’t be so beastly, Gwarro! You’re just not as nice tonight as you usually are.’

‘Ah, curse it! What do you expect? I’ve been flayed alive, and I’m supposed to mince around?’

‘Well, you don’t need to be mean to me.’

Gwairyc felt his temper snap like a rope pulled too tight. He grabbed her, kissed her, and threw her down on the window-seat, falling half on top of her to kiss her again. She screamed, but only feebly, a little yelp carefully calculated to stay in the chamber. This time, when she surrendered to his caresses, he gave her no chance to change her mind. He picked her up, slid off the window-seat and laid her down again right on the floor.

When they were finished, Sagraeffa lay still on the carpet for a long time and stared at him. Her face was flushed, and when he caressed her, he could feel her nipples, as hard as Bardek almonds. Gwairyc gave her one last kiss, then got up, pulling up his brigga and lacing them.

‘You’re such a brute,’ she whispered.

‘Oh am I now? Those noises you made – it didn’t sound to me like you were screaming for help.’

Gasping in rage, Sagraeffa sat up, pulling down her dress and glaring at him. Gwairyc picked up his sword belt from the floor and began buckling it on.

‘And I suppose you’re just going to leave me now,’ she said.

‘You’re the one who was worrying about your blasted husband. I don’t want to leave. I’d rather spend all night in your bed.’ He gave her a grin. ‘Admit it – you’d like to have me there.’

Sagraeffa got up, then stood glaring at him while she tried to smooth down her skirts with nervous fingers. He liked seeing her this way – dishevelled, flustered, utterly weak before his superior strength. He took her by the shoulders and gave her a kiss, which she took meekly, leaning against him.

‘Oh ye gods, what if I have a baby? Obyn will know it isn’t his.’

‘Indeed? Then maybe you’d best do something to stiffen his, um, resolve.’

With a snarl, Sagraeffa pulled away and slapped him across the face. Her soft hand barely stung on his cheek.

‘Get out of here! I hate you!’

Gwairyc dodged another slap, made her a hasty bow, and ran for the door. As he let himself out, he heard her weeping. With a shrug, he slammed the door and hurried down the corridor. He had no more time to waste on her. The worst part of this last night lay ahead of him: going back to the barracks to face his men.

The king’s riders were housed in five separate barracks. Each warband had its own standard and blazon in addition to the royal wyvern. Gwairyc’s band, the Falcons, were housed in barracks closest to the broch complex. As he hurried across the dark ward, Gwairyc was brooding about the other four troops. During the winters, when they lacked real enemies, all five of them were bitter rivals. No doubt the Falcons were in for a lot of jests about the wyrd that had fallen on their captain. When he reached the door, he paused, summoning courage. Then he flung open the door and strode in, bracing himself for jeers.

Instead, the men merely looked at him, glancing his way, then turning silently back to dice games or polishing gear as he walked the long way down the row of bunks to his own small chamber at the far end of the barracks. He slipped in, barred the door behind him, then let out his breath in a long sigh of relief.

The room sweltered from a fire his page had lit in the small hearth. Gwairyc lit a pair of candles from the coals, set them on the mantel, then spread and smashed the fire to dead ash. For a long time he leaned against the wall and watched the candle flames dance.

‘Ah ye gods! How can you do this to me?’

The gods didn’t deign to answer. With a sigh, Gwairyc unbuckled his sword belt and laid it down carefully on the bed. He had better pack up his gear, he decided, what there was of it, enough clothes and the like to fit into two pair of saddlebags and little more. At a timid knock on his door, he opened it to find a small group of his riders clustered behind red-haired Rhwn, who generally acted as his second-in-command. Rhwn was holding out a big silver pitcher and a clay cup.

‘My lord?’ Rhwn said. ‘Me and the lads bribed a kitchen lass and got you some mead. Figured you’d need it.’

‘My thanks.’ Gwairyc steadied his voice by force of will, then took the mead. ‘Do you hold this to my shame?’

‘How can we? I tell you, my lord, me and the lads are as vexed as the Lord of Hell with boils on his cock! It’s not going to be the same, riding behind some other captain.’

The men behind him all nodded their agreement.

‘Well, my thanks,’ Gwairyc said again. ‘I never knew I had such a blasted strange wyrd in store for me.’

‘No man knows his wyrd,’ Rhwn said with a shrug. ‘Here, my lord, who is that old man? He can’t truly be some old daft herbman. The King himself called him a lord.’

‘Then he’s a daft old lord who turned herbman, maybe. Ah horseshit, I’m going to find out, aren’t I?’

Rhwn nodded with a long sad sigh, then herded the other men away to leave Gwairyc his privacy. Gwairyc barred the door again and returned to stuffing his material wealth into his saddlebags. By the time he’d done, he’d drunk half the mead. He finished off the rest of the pitcher fast, drinking it down like physick, then passed out fully dressed on his bunk.

Waking brought torment, a headache like a sword cut, a stomach that roiled like a winter sea. Rolling up his blankets gave him a foretaste of the seven hells. Gwairyc had a brief thought of suicide, decided it would be acknowledging defeat in a battle not yet begun, and grimly got his gear together instead of slitting his own throat. Just as dawn was brightening the sky, he led his grey gelding, a personal gift from the king, out of the dun gates. When he mounted, the effort made the buildings around him sway and wobble. He let the horse pick a slow way out into the city streets.

Only a few townsfolk were out this early: a housewife sweeping off her steps, a servant emptying a chamber-pot into the gutter. Gwairyc found the temple of Wmm by luck as much as memory. He dismounted, wondering where exactly Nevyn might be. When he touched the locked gate, the geese charged, hissing and flapping.

‘If you didn’t belong to a priest,’ Gwairyc said, ‘I’d wring your ugly white necks.’

He led his horse around to the mews he’d noticed behind the priest’s house. Sure enough, Nevyn was just tying a saddled riding horse to a hitching rail.

‘Ah, there you are,’ the old man said. ‘I’m still loading the mule.’

The gate was just broad enough to let Gwairyc’s horse follow him into a small dusty yard behind what seemed to be a stable. Nevyn was standing beside a pair of large canvas packs, while his mule stood head-down and sulky nearby. Gwairyc made an uneasy bow to his new master. Nevyn was a tall man, slender and remarkably strong-looking with a vigour that belied his untidy shock of white hair and his wrinkled face, dotted with the brown spots of advanced old age. He was dressed in a pair of dirty, much-mended brown brigga and an old shirt without any blazon on the yokes. A tattered brown cloak hung over the horse’s saddle.

‘Well, here I am,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Do you want me to load that mule for you?’

‘In a bit. You look ill. What did you do, drink yourself blind last night?’

‘Just that.’

‘I thought you might, so I saved out a few herbs for you. Here, sit down. I’ll just fetch a bit of hot water from Affyna’s kitchen.’

Gwairyc sat down on the ground. His head was aching so badly that it was hard to think, but he wondered if he hated the old man. It seemed that he should hate someone for this indignity. What by every god did this daft old bastard want with him, anyway? Nevyn came back with a clay cup and handed it to him. A drift of sweet-smelling steam came up from a murky greenish liquid.

‘Drink all of it, lad,’ Nevyn said. ‘You’ll feel better in a bit.’

Gwairyc managed to choke the sweet stuff down. For a moment, he felt sicker than before, but remarkably quickly, his headache began to ease and his stomach to settle down.

‘Ye gods!’ He handed the cup back to Nevyn. ‘You could make a fortune with this brew.’

‘Indeed? Well, I’ve never wanted a fortune. It’s a pity you had to drink yourself sick.’

‘Can you blame me?’

Nevyn caught his gaze and looked at him, merely looked, but all at once Gwairyc turned cold. He felt that the old man was looking through his soul, seeing old secrets, old faults, old crimes that he couldn’t even remember committing.

‘Listen, lad.’ Nevyn’s voice stayed free of any feeling. ‘What I’m doing with you is for your benefit. I know you won’t believe me at first. Hate me if it makes you feel better. Just do as I say, and remember that I’m doing this for your benefit.’

The gaze from ice-blue eyes bored holes through his very soul.

‘I will,’ Gwairyc said, ‘but it’s for the king’s sake, not yours.’

‘Not your own?’

Gwairyc tried to answer, found no words, then handed back the empty cup, the only gesture he could think to make.

‘Well, that was unfair of me.’ Nevyn turned away and released him. ‘Just remember what I told you. Now. I’ve bought you a new shirt and a cloak. Pack those fine ones away. You might be doing this for the king’s sake, but you won’t wear his blazon again for a good long while.’

The shirt turned out to be plain rough linen, and the cloak the coarse brown of farmers’ clothing. Once Gwairyc had changed, he loaded the mule while Nevyn went inside to say farewell to the priest of the temple. By the time they left the mews, the townsfolk had started their day, bustling along the streets or standing gossiping in front of one house or another. When Gwairyc started to mount up, Nevyn caught his arm.

‘We’re walking to the gates. Too crowded to ride.’

‘The common folk can just get out of our way.’

‘Common folk? Those are proud words from a herbman’s servant.’

Gwairyc had to bite his lip to keep from swearing at him.

Once they were clear of the city walls, they mounted and, with Gwairyc leading the mule, took the west-running road. Nevyn set a slow pace, letting his horse amble along in the hot summer morning. On either side of the road, the rich green fields of Casyl’s personal demesne rolled off to the horizon. Gwairyc felt sick to his heart: soon the army would ride north without him. All the bitter splendour of battle – his one real love, his whole life – had been stolen from him by an old herbman’s whim. He began to have thoughts of murdering Nevyn and leaving his body somewhere beside the road. But what then? he told himself, You could never go back to court. For the sake of the king he worshipped, he was going to have to play this bitter game out to the end.

Gwairyc urged his horse up beside Nevyn’s. ‘May I ask where we’re going?’

‘West. I never have any particular place in mind when I travel. There are sick folk all over the kingdom.’

‘I suppose there must be, truly.’

‘But we’ll spend part of the summer in the old forest. It still covers plenty of ground once you get off to the west.’

‘The forest, my lord?’

‘Just that. I have wild herbs to gather, you see.’

Gwairyc couldn’t stop himself from groaning aloud. Off in the forest, all alone with this cursed old man, not even a pretty wench to use for a bit of comfort!

‘What are you doing?’ Nevyn said. ‘Cursing the very day you were born.’

‘Somewhat like that.’

Nevyn laughed and said nothing more.

That first day they headed south, skirting Loc Gwerconydd, then turned west. Gwairyc soon learned that travelling with Nevyn meant meandering from village to village at a comfortable walking pace for the horses. In each village the inhabitants clustered round to buy Nevyn’s herbs and ask his advice on their various aches and pains. Much of the time Gwairyc himself had little to do but tend the horses and the mule. He began to wonder if he’d die of boredom before his seven years were up. As they usually did when he was bored, his thoughts turned to women.

Most of the village lasses struck him as dirty and bedraggled, but one evening a finer prize came to the bait of Nevyn’s herbs. She was young but full into womanhood, with high breasts set off by a tight kirtle, and she wore her long chestnut hair pulled back from her heart-shaped face. Unlike those of the usual village lasses, her face and her hands looked well-washed. While Nevyn dispensed advice and sold herbs, she lingered at the edge of the crowd. Gwairyc caught her eye and smiled at her. He was hoping for a smile in return or at least a blush, but she looked straight past him.

Maybe she’s near-sighted, he thought. When her turn came to consult the herbman, Gwairyc stood right behind him and smiled again. Again, he might as well have been made of glass for all the response he got. After she bought her herbs, he took a step in her direction, but she held her head high and walked off fast.

‘Well, well,’ Nevyn said. ‘I take it she wasn’t interested.’

‘I should have known you’d notice. She wasn’t, at that.’

‘You’re just a herbman now, lad. The lasses won’t be fawning on you like they did with one of the king’s own captains.’

Gwairyc opened his mouth to say something foul, then shut it again rather than give the old man the satisfaction of having riled him. Nevyn laughed anyway and turned away to begin packing up the unsold herbs.

Some ten mornings after, they stopped at a farm. Behind an earthen wall stood a round, thatched house, a tumbledown barn, a pig sty, and a chicken house. The pigs lay in stinking mud, but the chickens were out scratching and squawking in the dirt yard. When Nevyn shoved open the gate, a pair of scruffy black dogs rushed out of the barn, but they barked and wagged in friendly greeting. Right behind them came a stout woman in a torn brown dress. A leather thong tied back her greasy black hair. Her thick fingers and her hands were as calloused and scarred as a blacksmith’s. When she opened her mouth to talk, Gwairyc saw that she was missing half her teeth.

‘Oh Nevyn, Nevyn,’ she stammered out. ‘Oh ye gods, this is an answer to my prayers, I swear it!’

‘Here, Ligga, what’s so wrong?’

‘Our lad’s sick, cursed sick. I’ve been praying and praying to the Goddess to help us.’

‘Well, maybe She made me decide to stop by. Gwarro, unload the mule’s packs. Take those horses to the barn.’

Gwairyc tied the horses up in the stinking cow-barn, then carried the canvas packs inside the house. He found himself in a big half-round room, set off from the rest of the house by a filthy wickerwork partition. Under a smoke hole lay a pair of blackened hearthstones where a low fire burned. A little girl, wearing a clean if stained brown dress, was standing by the hearth and stirring soup in an iron kettle perched over the fire on an iron tripod. She gave Gwairyc a terrified glance and pointed at the far side of the room.

Gwairyc shoved aside the much-mended grey blanket that served as a door and carried in the packs. He found Nevyn and Ligga standing by a big square bed. A little boy lay on coarse dirty blankets. Snot and tears mingled on his fever-red face. Gwairyc could smell him and Ligga both, a reek of sweat, dirt from the animals, and in the boy’s case, excrement.

Nevyn gestured at Gwairyc to put the packs down, then sat on the edge of the bed next to the lad, who promptly turned his head away.

‘Come along, Anno. It’s old Nevyn. I want to make you feel better.’

Anno shook his head in a stubborn no.

‘Your mouth hurts, Mam says. Let me have a look.’

Anno whimpered and flopped over to bury his face in the blankets.

‘Anno, listen,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’m going to look at your mouth whether you want me to or not. You’re very sick, lad. You don’t even know what you’re doing, do you? Come along – you know I won’t hurt you if I can help it.’

When the lad began to sob, Nevyn caught him and pulled him into his lap. After a brief struggle, Nevyn took the lad’s jaws the way you’d take a horse’s and pried them open. Anno moaned and pissed all over himself and the old man. Nevyn barely seemed to notice.

‘Thank the gods, it’s just a bad tooth. I was afraid you had the clotted fever in your throat, lad, but it’s just this nasty tooth. You’ll be all better once we have it out.’

‘Don’t!’ Anno screamed. ‘Mam!’

‘You’ve got to!’ Ligga said. ‘You listen to your elders! Forgive us, Nevyn, I –’

‘Hush, hush! It’s not his fault. The gum’s gone so pussy that he’s fevered and half out of his mind. The tooth’s loose, anyway, so it won’t be a hard thing to do. Then we’ll work on the fever. All of his humours are out of balance, you see, with a superfluity of the hot and moist.’

This sonorous explanation seemed to comfort Ligga, even though Gwairyc doubted if she knew what it meant. When Nevyn started to let Anno go, the lad tried to slither off the bed. Nevyn caught him and hauled him back.

‘Gwarro, come sit down. Take him and hold him still while I get the things I need.’

Choking on revulsion, Gwairyc took the skinny little lad in his arms. He sat down on the edge of the bed and wondered if it had bugs. Anno squirmed, tried to bite his wrist, then began to cry. The urine and the pus both reeked. I promised the king, Gwairyc reminded himself. I swore a vow to the king — he made himself repeat the thought over and over. It seemed to take Nevyn forever to get out a pair of forceps, a bottle of spicy-scented oil, and some scraps of cloth. For the operation itself, Gwairyc pressed the lad’s shoulders down on the bed; he was forced to watch while Nevyn deftly pulled a broken stump of tooth from his jaw. An ooze of green pus came with it.

‘You see the green material, oh apprentice of mine?’ Nevyn said. ‘It’s the perturbed hot humour combined with an excess of the moist. Teeth are of course ruled by the cold earth humour in crystalline form, and their natural enemy is the moist.’

Gwairyc tried to speak, but he could only swallow – hard, and several times.

‘You look pale, lad,’ Nevyn said to Gwairyc.

Gwairyc bit his lip and looked away. In the doorway, Ligga was quietly sobbing to herself. She must love the stinking little brat, he thought. Well, cows watch over their calves, too.

‘We’ll stay here tonight, Ligga,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ll tend that fever with herbs.’

‘My thanks.’ She pulled up the hem of her skirt and blew her nose on the frayed and stained brown cloth. ‘Ah ye gods, my thanks.’

Gwairyc silently cursed him. He’d been hoping they’d get free of the farm straightaway and camp somewhere clean.

After several doses of herbs, Nevyn finally got Anno to fall asleep. The old man changed into a fresh pair of brigga, handed the soaked ones to Gwairyc, and told him wash them out.

‘And you’d best do yours while you’re at it,’ Nevyn said. ‘You’ve got a spare pair, haven’t you?’

‘I have.’

‘There’s a stream out back,’ Ligga said. ‘Here, I’ll get you some soap.’

A scrap of soap in one hand, the dirty clothes in the other, Gwairyc strode out of the house into the relatively clean air of the farmyard. Ligga followed him out and pointed. ‘Go straight out the back gate. You’ll see my pounding rocks on the stream bank.’

‘Pounding rocks?’

‘Now, here, haven’t you washed clothes before?’ She gave him her half-toothless grin. ‘Get them wet first. You work the soap in good, then put them on the flat rock and beat the soiled bits with the round rock.’

Cursing under his breath, Gwairyc took the brigga down to a tiny streamlet, meandering through wild grass. He found the rocks, knelt down, and tried to follow her instructions. His rage built and flamed until he could barely see what he was doing. How could he be here, him, the hero of the Cerrgonney wars, washing some farm-brat’s piss out of a pair of old brigga? He considered waiting till dark and running away, but a bitter truth stopped him. If he broke his vow, he’d have nowhere to go, unless of course he wanted to sink to the level of a silver dagger. Even being a herbman’s servant would be better than that.

All at once, he realized that he was weeping, a final blow of shame. He threw the wet brigga onto the grass and sobbed aloud until he heard footsteps rustling through the grass. He wiped his face on his sleeve and looked up to see Nevyn, standing there with his hands on his hips.

‘Oh here, lad. This is a good bit harder on you than I thought it’d be.’

The old man’s sympathy delivered the worst cut of all. Gwairyc wanted to kill him. I’m doing this for the king, he reminded himself. With a sigh, Nevyn sat down next to him in the grass.

‘The lad’s going to live. Do you care one jot?’

‘I don’t. Ye gods, how can you do things like this? With your skill, you could be the king’s own physician or suchlike.’

‘There’s many a man who wants to physic the king. How many want to help folk like these?’

‘Well, and why should they? This lot is hardly better than bondfolk.’

‘I treat bondfolk who need me, too.’

Gwairyc stared at him. Daft and twice daft!

‘I’ll admit to being surprised when you looked so ill,’ Nevyn continued. ‘After all, you’ve ridden to many a battle. You must have seen the dead and dying, the wounds and suchlike.’

‘I don’t understand it, either. You’re right enough about the things I’ve seen.’ Gwairyc thought for a moment. ‘But you expect that, in a battle. You’re used to it. And you don’t let yourself dwell on it, like. This –’ He paused and suddenly saw the answer. ‘In battle, you’re fighting for your clan or your king. So much hangs on the outcome of a war. So all the death and the cuts and suchlike – they’re in a good cause, like. They matter.’

‘And this lad doesn’t matter?’

‘Why would he? Folk like these – one dies, there’s always more. They breed like rabbits.’

Nevyn cocked his head to one side and considered him for a long moment. Although the old man’s face displayed no particular feeling, Gwairyc began to wonder if he’d somehow shamed himself.

‘Well, um, mayhap, they’re more like horses.’ Gwairyc tried again. ‘You appreciate a good one, but if you lose him, you can get another.’

Nevyn blinked a few times, quickly.

‘It’s shameful!’ Gwairyc burst out. ‘I’m noble-born, but now I might as well be a farrier or a stablehand.’

‘Ah. Treating the sick is shameful.’

‘Well, not for you.’

‘But for you it is.’

‘Of course. You’re not a noble-born man.’

‘You’re quite sure of that?’

Gwairyc suddenly remembered the king, pouring the old man ale with his own hands. In a kind of panic he tried to speak but found he could only stammer.

‘It appears you see the flaw in your argument.’ Nevyn smiled in a twisted sort of way, then stood up. ‘You might think about all this a bit. Now, wring the water out of those brigga. Then spread them out flat on the grass to dry. I’m going back to the house.’

Once the brigga were drying, Gwairyc returned to the cow-barn. He unsaddled the pair of riding horses and unloaded the mule. He found a reasonably clean spot in a corner to pile up the gear, then looked over the various stalls. He had no idea if these folk brought the cows in at night or left them out. A skinny youngish man with a weather-beaten face and cropped brown hair, slick with grease, came into the barn.

‘Be you Nevyn’s apprentice? I’m Myrn. Ligga’s man.’

‘I’m Gwairyc.’

Myrn nodded in what might have been a greeting. ‘I’ll put them horses up for you. My thanks for saving my lad.’

‘That was Nevyn’s work, not mine, truly.’

Myrn nodded again and took a pitch-fork from the floor. Gwairyc hurried out and left the horses to him.

On the morrow, Anno seemed to be recovering, but Nevyn left various packets of herbs for his care just in case. When Ligga tried to offer him her few saved coppers as payment, Nevyn refused. That gesture Gwairyc could understand. Taking coins from folk like these would be as ignoble as stealing a hunting dog’s food.

They left the farm and took up their slow road west again. Mile after mile, village after village, farm after farm – Nevyn seemed to know every commoner in the kingdom, and all of them were, in Gwairyc’s opinion, filthy. Gwairyc saw more injuries and illnesses than he’d ever known existed, with disgusting symptoms all: cuts gone septic, clustered boils, fevers, vomiting, loose bowels, swellings, foul dark urine, and dropsies, to say naught of the ever-present diseased teeth. He tried at first to shut the symptoms out of his mind, but the sights and smells haunted him. At times he dreamt about them. It’s the shame of the thing, he told himself. Why else would they sicken me so much?

Yet one afternoon, as they rode down a lane between two fields pale green with sprouting wheat, he remembered the first battle he’d ever seen, or rather, its aftermath, the dead men, the dying horses. Once the battle-rage had worn off, he’d felt a stomach-churning disgust far stronger than any of Nevyn’s patients aroused in him. He’d been not much more than a lad, then, and he would rather have died than let any of the men around him see his feelings. And in time, he’d learned how to armour his soul. I’ll grow used to this, too, he told himself. After all, I’ve got no choice.

Late one hot afternoon, when rain clouds were boiling up from the south, they came to a sprawling village on the banks of a broad but shallow stream. The place was too small to offer an inn, but the tavernman, who knew Nevyn well, let them shelter in his hayloft. After Gwairyc stabled the horses and mule, Nevyn bought them each a tankard of ale. They sat outside the tavern on a little bench across from a market square, empty except for a couple of brown dogs, lying near the public well. In the stiff wind the poplars growing all round the town shivered and bowed.

‘We’re in for a storm, all right,’ Nevyn pronounced.

‘I’d say so, my lord. I hope to the gods that the stable roof doesn’t leak.’

Nevyn nodded his agreement and had a sip of his ale. With the clatter of hooves and the jingle of polished tack, a squad of five horsemen came trotting down the village street and up to the inn. As they dismounted, Gwairyc saw the swords at their sides and the blazon of a red hawk on their shirts.

‘Must be the riders of our local lord,’ Gwairyc said.

‘Just so. I don’t remember his name.’

The lads tied their horses up at the side of the tavern, then came strolling around to the door. Gwairyc envied them. Once he’d been free to enjoy a tankard in the company of men who understood him, men who were true companions and fellow-warriors. One of the riders paused, looking Nevyn over.

‘Good morrow, sir. You look new to our village.’

‘Just passing through. I’m a herbman, you see.’

The rider nodded pleasantly and went inside with his fellows. In a bit, Nevyn finished his ale and handed the tankard to Gwairyc.

‘Take this back in. One’s enough for me, but buy yourself another if you’d like, lad.’

‘My thanks. I will.’

Gwairyc took the copper for the ale from Nevyn and carried the tankards back to the tavernman. While the tavernman was dipping him a second tankard from the barrel, Gwairyc realized that the Red Hawk riders were looking him over. As Gwairyc started back outside with his full tankard, a beefy blond fellow got up and blocked his way.

‘What are you doing with a sword, lad?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Gwairyc said.

‘You’re naught but the servant for that moth-eaten old herbman. You’ve got no right to carry a man’s weapon.’

Gwairyc threw the tankard of ale full into his face. With a howl of rage, the fellow staggered back and swatted at the ale running and foaming down his chest. Shouting, the other lads jumped up, hands going to their hilts. Gwairyc drew and dropped into a fighting stance. He could ask for naught better than a chance to kill someone and wash away his shame with blood.

‘What’s all this?’ Nevyn yelled. ‘Stop it!’

No one paid him the least attention. The nearest two riders drew, dropping into their stance, and edged cautiously for Gwairyc. Gwairyc waited, judging distance. All at once a crash and crackle like thunder boomed around him. Blue fire leapt up, surrounding his enemies in one enormous flame, blinding him as well as them. He heard the lads yelling and cursing as another fire came with the thunder close behind.

‘Get out!’ Nevyn’s voice said calmly. ‘All of you – out now!’

Still half-blind, Gwairyc staggered back, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear his sight. He could just barely see the Red Hawk riders, equally blind, stumbling as fast as they could, shoving each other to be the first out the door. In the corner the tavernman was laughing in long peals while he hugged his own middle. Nevyn strolled over to Gwairyc and pulled the sword from his limp hand.

‘Did you do that?’ Gwairyc heard his voice squeaking like a lad’s.

‘And who else would it have been?’ the tavernman broke in. ‘Ye gods, Nevyn, you’re a marvel, you are – and at your age, too.’

‘Oh, the old horse can take a jump or two yet,’ Nevyn said, grinning. ‘Now listen, Gwarro. I won’t have you killing anyone. Do you understand me?’

‘I think I finally do understand you, my lord. You’re dweomer.’

‘Just that. What did you think I did to earn the king’s favour? Lance his boils?’

Shaking too hard to speak, Gwairyc leaned back against the tavernroom wall. Nevyn looked at the sword.

‘You won’t be carrying this from now on. Take off that sword belt, lad, and hand it over. I’m not giving it back to you until I see fit.’

For a moment Gwairyc’s rage flared up like dweomer-fire. Taking his sword away was the worst dishonour in the world. Nevyn’s cold blue gaze caught and pinned him to the wall. Slowly, silently cursing himself for doing it, Gwairyc unbuckled his belt and handed it to the old man, then turned and ran outside rather than watch another man sheath his blade. He threw himself down on the bench and watched the clouds darkening the sky while he trembled so hard he could no longer tell if the cause were rage or terror.

The rain clouds had turned as dark as cinders when Nevyn came out to join him. He stood, his hands on his hips, in front of the bench and look Gwairyc over. ‘Well?’ Nevyn said.

‘Well what?’

‘What have you made of all that?’

‘The blue fire and the like? I’ve not made anything out of it, except you called it down from wherever it came from. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Most likely. Do you remember what I told you that very first day at the temple of Wmm? There was a thing I told you to remember.’

Gwairyc thought for a long moment. ‘You told me you were doing this to benefit the king.’

‘I didn’t.’ Nevyn suddenly grinned. ‘I told you I was doing it to benefit you.’

‘Ye gods! That ran right out of my mind.’

‘I thought it might have.’

‘But how by all the ice in all the hells – I mean, benefit me how?’

‘Only you can know that.’

‘What? I –’

‘If I explained, you’d only miss it.’

Gwairyc thought up a nasty reply, but the memory of the blue fire leaping through the tavern stopped him from voicing it.

‘I’m not talking in riddles to tease you,’ Nevyn continued. ‘Some things truly can’t be made clear.’

‘Well, since it’s dweomer, I’d be a fool to argue.’

Gwairyc had the rare pleasure of seeing Nevyn taken utterly aback.

‘Come to think of it,’ the old man said at last, ‘I would have thought you’d be alarmed at the very idea of dweomer, but you’re not.’

‘I’m one of the Rams of Hendyr, aren’t I? Most lords mock the dweomer. Can’t be true, they say. But not us, and we won’t let anyone of our rank or below mock it in our presence. It’s one of the things that makes us Rams. That’s what my father and my grandfather tell all of us.’

‘Indeed?’ Nevyn considered this for a moment. ‘May I ask why?’

‘Of course, you being what you are. It’s because of Lady Lillorigga of the Ram. One of our ancestors, she was, back in the Time of Troubles.’

‘I’ve heard her name, truly.’ Once again Nevyn looked startled, and Gwairyc began to enjoy the effect he was having. ‘Go on, lad, if you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all. She was a sorceress, and the bards have passed down the tale. She made a prediction of some sort, I think it was.’ Gwairyc paused, frowning over details – he’d not heard the story for a good many years now. ‘They’d been loyal to the cursed Boars, but thanks to her, The Ram recognized the true king in the nick of time and went over to his side. It’s all a bit muddled in the tales, my lord, when it comes to exactly how she did it, but she did, and that’s been good enough for us.’

‘As well it should be. And now we’d best get inside, because it’s starting to rain.’

By the morrow the weather had cleared, and they took up their slow travelling west again. At intervals Gwairyc would think about Nevyn’s words. Try though he did, the only benefit he could see was that he wouldn’t die in this summer’s fighting, which was a coward’s benefit and beneath contempt.

On the longest day of the year they reached Matrynwn, a proper town near the headwaters of the Vicaver. From the dusty village square they could see mountains, rising squat and rocky off to the west.

‘They mark the Eldidd border,’ Nevyn told him.

‘Good,’ Gwairyc said. ‘That relieves my heart.’

‘Of what?’

‘The fear of meeting some lord I know. I’ve never been this far west in my life.’

‘Ah, I see. Well, we could easily travel on to Eldidd.’ Nevyn paused, thinking. ‘I’ve got friends off to the west.’

‘What about the herbs you were looking for? In old forest, I think you said.’

‘I did say just that, and truly, old forest’s easy to find in western Eldidd. Done, then! Let’s ask around about the road ahead of us.’

Matrynwn turned out to be the last town on the only road that would lead them through the mountains. Thanks to its position it sported several proper inns, each with fenced pastures for the horses and mules of the caravans that came through. After a little asking around, Nevyn found an inn that was sheltering a caravan heading west. Its master, a Cerrmor man named Wffyn, considered himself lucky that a herbman wanted to join them. He was a burly fellow, with a sandy beard streaked with grey and a scatter of grey hairs on his mostly bald head. Judging by the heavy muscles of his long arms, though, he could still wield a quarterstaff if he had to. And sometimes, or so he told them, you had to.

‘You never know who’s lurking about the mountains, but you’ll be safe, riding with us,’ Wffyn said. ‘I’ve got ten men who can fight as well as tend the mules. By all means, good sir, you and your apprentice will be most welcome.’

Wffyn had an apprentice of his own, of sorts – very much of sorts, Gwairyc decided. Tirro was a skinny lad, probably no more than fifteen summers old, with the bright blue eyes and high cheekbones of a Cerrmor man, though red pimples dotted those cheekbones and clustered around his mouth. His hair – actually, he seemed to have none, because he wore on his head a little linen cap, all stained with some sort of grease – but his eyebrows were blond, as you’d expect of someone from the south. When Gwairyc first met him, Tirro refused to look him in the eye. Every now and then, while their two masters discussed the trip ahead, Tirro would stick a skinny finger under the cap and scratch viciously, to the point where he eventually made himself bleed.

‘Ye gods,’ Nevyn said. ‘What’s vexing you so badly, lad?’

‘Ah, well, uh.’ Tirro kept his gaze on the floor.

‘Ringworm,’ Wffyn broke in, ‘and come along, lad, you’re not supposed to scratch it. Get some more salve if you need it.’

‘I will, master.’ Tirro stood up. ‘My apologies.’ He turned and ran out of the tavern room.

‘What kind of salve is it?’ Nevyn said.

‘I don’t truly know. The apothecary in Cerrmor made it up for him. Ceruse, he called it, in emollients.’

‘Ah,’ Nevyn said. ‘Ceruse is the calx of lead, that is, whitened lead.’

‘Lead? Now that I know.’ Wffyn nodded sagely. ‘It does seem to be working, when I can get him to stop scratching.’

‘Good. Is he bloodkin of yours?’

‘He’s not, and I thank the gods for that. An unfortunate sort of lad, Tirro. I’m taking him along as a favour to his father, naught more.’

‘I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘Giving him a taste of the merchant life?’

Wffyn started to speak, paused, had a sip of ale, frowned into his tankard, started once more to speak, then sighed. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘I didn’t mean to go telling tales, but truly, I wouldn’t mind a little help with keeping an eye on the lad. He had to leave Cerrmor, you see, and sudden like.’

‘Stealing?’ Nevyn said.

‘Worse.’ Wffyn hesitated briefly. ‘He’s somewhat of a loricart, if you take my meaning.’

‘I don’t,’ Nevyn said. ‘Cerrmor cant-words are beyond me.’

‘Well, now, I’ve heard this sort of man called hedge creepers in other parts of the kingdom, or lobcocks.’

‘I’ve heard those, too.’ Gwairyc cleared his throat and spat into the straw on the floor. ‘He means men who fancy little children.’

‘That,’ Nevyn said slowly, ‘is truly disgusting.’

‘It is all of that,’ Wffyn said. ‘There was a lass name of Mella, a pretty little thing but not more than six summers old, and Tirro got a fair bit too friendly with her, if you take my meaning. Her father and her uncles were going to beat the cursed wretched young cub to a bloody pulp, but fortunately they saw reason when I said I’d take him away on caravan.’

‘I gather there was no doubt that the lad was guilty.’

‘None. On top of everything else, he gave the poor child his ringworm.’

Nevyn made a profoundly sour face. ‘But you’ll take him with you?’

‘Well, now, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help him, but I owed his da a fair bit of money, if you take my meaning.’

‘I see. So he’s erased the debt now?’ Nevyn said.

‘He has,’ Wffyn glanced at Gwairyc. ‘But if you see Tirro hanging around some little lass during our travels, tell me, will you? I can’t be everywhere at once.’

‘Gladly,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Have no fear of that.’

Wffyn raised his tankard in salute and smiled his thanks.

‘What’s going to happen when you get back to Cerrmor?’ Nevyn asked.

‘Tirro will be shipping out for Bardek,’ Wffyn said. ‘His father has a friend with a ship, you see, but he’d left harbour before this thing happened – the ship’s captain I mean, not the father. He’ll come back late in the summer and then make the last run over to winter in Bardek. Tirro will be going with him, and good riddance.’

‘I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘Exactly where is the ship going, do you know?’

‘Myleton.’

Nevyn nodded, as if merely acknowledging the information, but by then Gwairyc knew him well enough to see that something had troubled him. Later, when they were alone, he asked the old man about it.

‘Bardek is a very strange place,’ Nevyn said. ‘There are men there who share Tirro’s particular vice, and some of them are rich and even powerful. They pursue their prey in the shadows, because most Bardekians are decent folk, but at the same time, in the larger towns, there are brothels where they can satisfy their wretched cravings in safety.’

‘That’s loathsome!’

‘Indeed. So I was wondering if I could send a message to some friends of mine there, to suggest they tell the archons to keep an eye on this unfortunate cub. Alas, they live on Orystinna, nowhere near Myleton.’

‘A pity. This Orys-whatzit – it’s another island?’

‘It is. Most likely Tirro will alert the archons to his presence on his own, by doing some wretched thing too openly. He strikes me as more than a little dim-witted. I wish I could prevent it, but alas, like our good merchant, I can’t be everywhere at once.’

‘Indeed.’ Gwairyc shook his head in disgust. ‘Ye gods, if the lad was as hard up as all that, he could have gone after a sheep. It would have been cleaner.’

‘True spoken.’ Nevyn managed a twisted smile at the jest.

Gwairyc realized that for this moment at least he and his master, as he always thought of Nevyn, had found a common bond of sorts in their disgust. It would be a good time to bring up a matter very much on his mind.

‘There was somewhat else I wanted to ask you,’ Gwairyc said. ‘About these bandits, my lord. I can’t defend the caravan with my bare hands.’

‘Ah. You want your sword back, do you?’ Nevyn considered, but only briefly. ‘Very well. I’ll give it to you. Just don’t go drawing it on anyone but the bandits.’

‘I won’t, I swear it.’

The return of his sword raised Gwairyc’s spirits more than anything else could have, except perhaps the chance to kill a bandit or two with it. Unfortunately to his way of thinking, though not to anyone else’s, the ride through the mountains proved hot, tedious, and uneventful – except for a strange accident.

It happened on the steepest part of the road up to the main pass. In the sticky summer heat the caravan made slow progress that day and camped early when they found a reasonably flat area off to one side of the dusty trail. Lined with some sort of shrubby tree that Gwairyc couldn’t put a name to, a muddy rivulet ran nearby, flowing out of the forest cover and heading downhill. The hot day had exhausted everyone. The stock had to be tended and fed, exhaustion or no, but no one spoke more than they absolutely had to. With his share of the work done, one of the muleteers pulled off his boots, rolled up his trousers, and trotted off to soak his aching feet downstream from their drinking water. Gwairyc had just turned Nevyn’s mule into the general herd when he heard the man scream. Without thinking he drew his sword and ran just as a second agonized shriek rang out to guide him.

In the spotty shade the muleteer was lying sprawled with one leg held high in the air. It was such an odd posture that it took Gwairyc a moment to notice the blood sheeting down the muleteer’s leg. The fellow had stepped into a wire snare and tripped it. Now the thin wire was biting ever deeper into his unprotected ankle as he flailed his arms and screamed.

‘Hold still!’ Gwairyc put all his noble-born authority into his voice. ‘You’ll be hurt worse if you don’t.’

The fellow looked his way, sobbed once, and fainted. Gwairyc trotted over and considered the wire. He had no desire to blunt his blade by trying to cut it. His inspection showed that the thin strand forming the noose had been knotted repeatedly over a much thicker wire, reinforced with rope, that formed the long portion of the snare and anchored the whole contraption to a nearby sapling. By then another muleteer and Wffyn himself had come at the run. With a cascade of foul oaths the muleteer set to work untwisting the strands whilst the merchant supported the injured man’s leg.

‘I’ve never seen such a cursed strong snare,’ Wffyn remarked. ‘What was the hunter after, I wonder? A bear?’

‘That thing would never take a bear’s weight,’ Gwairyc said. ‘A deer? Not likely, either.’

‘Huh.’ Wffyn’s face was beginning to turn pale. He looked away from the muleteer’s blood-soaked leg. ‘Makes you wonder if that trap was set to catch a man. Guarding somewhat, like, close by here.’

‘It might be.’ Gwairyc sheathed his sword. ‘I’ll get Nevyn. Our friend here should thank the gods that the old man’s nearby.’

Indeed, whether it was the gods or luck, the fellow would have lost his foot and perhaps his life as well if it weren’t for Nevyn. Still, the process of getting the embedded wire out of the wound and the whole mess washed clean and stitched up was painful enough to watch, much less experience. The poor fellow would keep coming round only to faint again the moment Nevyn touched the leg. Gwairyc busied himself with heating water in an iron pot for steeping herbs while the rest of the caravan stayed strictly elsewhere. Only Tirro stuck close to them.

‘I could help,’ Tirro said. ‘I can look for firewood if you need to brew herbs.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Go to it, but be cursed careful where you put your feet.’

‘I will, sir.’

With a little bow of his head Tirro hurried off into the underbrush. In but a little space of time he came back with a good supply of dead branches. By then Nevyn had begun to stitch the wound. Tirro glanced at the muleteer’s leg and went decidedly pale.

‘Just feed some wood into the fire,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Don’t look.’

‘I won’t, sir.’ Tirro hunkered down by the fire.

The pot of water hung from a tripod. Tirro concentrated on breaking up branches and feeding bits into the fire underneath. He was doing well until the muleteer came round from a faint and began moaning. Tirro straightened up and looked at the leg just as Nevyn started pouring warm herb water over the wound, releasing a flood of clots and bits of skin. At that the lad turned dead-white and rushed away to vomit among the bushes.

By then Gwairyc could see even worse sights without feeling sick. Instead he merely felt shamed, as if he’d sunk even lower in the world by simply knowing enough herbcraft to act like the apprentice he nominally was. Still, once the muleteer was lying on a pad of blankets with his ankle wrapped in clean bandages, and his pain eased with one of Nevyn’s herbal mixtures, Gwairyc had to admit a certain admiration for the old man’s skill. When they were sitting by their own fire and eating a delayed dinner, Gwairyc told him so.

‘I wish we had chirurgeons like you with the army,’ Gwairyc said. ‘There must be naught that you can’t cure.’

‘My thanks, but I only wish that were true, lad. There’s many a foul illness that baffles my herbs, wasting diseases of the lungs, strange fevers from Bardek, and the like.’

‘I see. I’ve never been down on the southern coast, but I’ve heard about those fevers. Doesn’t make me want to go there.’

‘Well, even in Bardek the fevers are not what you’d call common.’ Nevyn paused, glancing away in thought. ‘Strange ills can strike a man down anywhere. In fact, my master in herbcraft told me once about a very strange disease that someone contracted not far from Dun Deverry. The patient – one of the king’s own riders – had been wounded in a fight against bandits. They’d finally cornered the bandits in an apple orchard, of all places, one where the trees had gone untended for years, and –’

‘Wait a moment,’ Gwairyc interrupted. ‘There haven’t been any bandits near Dun Deverry for a cursed long time.’

‘True spoken. This incident happened when my master’s master was young, or so he said.’ Nevyn paused to count something out on his fingers. ‘It must have happened not long after the Civil Wars, now that you mention it.’

‘Ah, now that makes more sense.’

‘Anyway, this fellow was a fine swordsman, but he and the warband had never had to dismount and fight among trees before.’

‘That’s doubtless why the bandits made a stand there.’

‘Doubtless, but would you let me finish?’

‘Apologies, my lord. Go on.’

‘So he was too used to trusting his skill. He was an arrogant lad, all in all, but he had reason to be, I suppose. He rushed in and got himself severely wounded. Well, my master’s master managed to stop the bleeding, and the fellow was a strong man, so he assumed that the captain – he was the captain of the king’s personal guard, you see –’

‘Silver daggers, weren’t they?’

‘That’s right. You’ve heard about them, then?’

‘Many a time.’

‘Well and good. That’ll shorten the tale. So just when this captain should have been starting to recover, a truly strange thing happened to his wound. It turned foul and corrupted, but in a way the chirurgeons had never seen before. The flesh turned black at the edges of the wound, like a bit of parchment held too close to a candle. The blackness spread, and the stench was truly horrible. Had he been wounded on an arm or leg, they could have amputated and saved him, but it lay on his thigh too close to the body for any such thing. It must have been a sickening thing, to see the corruption spreading through the captain’s body with naught anyone could do to stop it. Finally he died, so mayhap the blackness reached the heart. My master didn’t know nor did his master. The rest of the silver daggers called it evil sorcery, and for all I know, they were right.’

Gwairyc shuddered. The tale affected him far more deeply than it should have. He’d seen many a man die in battle and others die from wounds afterwards, but none like this, from some black rot that crept along, conquering new territory on a man’s body. It seemed to him that he could almost smell it, just from hearing the description, a rank acid smell like rotting meat. Well, it was rotting meat – the thought nearly made him gag.

‘Are you all right, lad?’ Nevyn was studying his face.

‘I am, my lord. My apologies. It just touched my heart somehow, hearing about Owaen dying like that. Or – wait – was that his name?’

‘Owaen? It was indeed, and oddly enough, his device was a falcon, just like yours.’

‘That’s a horrible wyrd for a man to have!’ Gwairyc paused for a cold shudder. ‘And here he was, the survivor of all those battles and years of war.’

‘He’d survived many, indeed. You must have heard about him in a bard song or the like.’

‘I must have, truly. I –’ Gwairyc realized that he could call up no memory of having heard so much as the name. ‘Well, I don’t remember him turning up in the bard songs, but he must have. How else would I know his name?’

‘Indeed.’ Nevyn smiled, just briefly. ‘How else, truly?’

Yet for the rest of the evening, Gwairyc felt troubled, wondering how he knew so much about this Owaen. He was sure, for instance, that the Silver Daggers’ captain had originally been an Eldidd man. That fact suddenly rose in his mind along with the sound of a voice lisping at the beginning of words like gwerbret. Werrbret, they would say in Eldidd. He knew it, and yet there was no way he could have known it. Finally he managed to put the matter out of his mind, but that night he had a confused dream, flashing by in fragments, about fighting with a red wyvern on his shield.

In the morning light Gwairyc, Tirro, and a couple of the muleteers searched the area around the snare. They found only a single trace of the man or men who might have set it. Tirro suddenly stooped and reached into a pile of dead leaves to pull out some small shiny thing.

‘It’s a coin,’ he announced. ‘A Bardek coin.’

‘A what?’ Gwairyc held out one hand. ‘How can you be sure?’

‘It’s just like the ones my da’s friends bring home from Myleton.’ Tirro gave it to him. ‘They call it a sesturce.’

The coin proved to be barely big enough to cover one of Gwairyc’s fingernails, but its green tarnish showed that it contained at least some silver. Gwairyc could just make out a few foreign-looking letters. When they brought it to Nevyn, the old man rubbed it clean on his sleeve.

‘It’s from Bardek, sure enough,’ Nevyn said. ‘Do you see the device upon it? A man’s head in profile. It must one of their archons, as they call their leaders, but I’ve not the slightest idea which one.’ He handed the coin back to Tirro. ‘You’ve got sharp eyes, lad.’

‘I’m sorry about yesterday, sir, really I am.’ Tirro stared at the ground. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

This outburst seemed to make Nevyn as puzzled as Gwairyc felt. He considered the lad for a moment with his head cocked to one side.

‘Um, what?’ Nevyn said finally.

‘The way I looked after you told me not to. Isn’t that what you just meant by mentioning my sharp eyes?’

‘Naught of the sort! I was complimenting you, as a matter of fact.’

Tirro blushed scarlet, started to speak, then merely bolted, running back towards the camp before either Gwairyc or Nevyn could say a word.

‘What by all the ice in all the hells was that about?’ Gwairyc said.

‘I don’t know,’ Nevyn said, ‘but I’d guess that his father was given to making cruel remarks, and frequently to boot.’

‘Oh.’ Gwairyc shrugged the problem away. ‘Anyway, that coin is the only thing we found, other than trees and a cursed lot of rocks. The banks of the stream are low and damp, but the only tracks we saw were made by deer and then some sort of small creature, a badger, most likely.’

‘How very odd,’ Nevyn said. ‘The snare had to be fairly new, because it hadn’t rusted. Well, we can’t stay here to keep hunting. Wffyn and his men are ready to move out, and we’d best join them.’

‘Well and good, then. What about the injured fellow?’

‘They shifted the load of one of the mules to the other packs and tied him to the saddle instead. This way, if he faints, he won’t fall. He’ll have to stay behind, though, once we get to a town.’

It took the caravan most of a day to travel down from the mountains. Towards sunset it reached a prosperous-looking farm, where Wffyn stopped to barter with the farmwife for peaches and cabbages to freshen up the communal meals. After the haggling, the merchant described the accident his muleteer had suffered.

‘Do you know who might have set that snare?’ Wffyn said. ‘It was a cursed dangerous thing to do.’

The farmer and his wife exchanged a glance, but their eyes showed no feeling at all.

‘I don’t,’ the man said at last. ‘You’re right enough. It’s too close to the road for someone to be setting snares.’

‘Let me get you a sack for them cabbages.’ Without looking at any of the men, the wife turned away and hurried into the farmhouse. Wffyn raised one eyebrow but said nothing.

Once they were back on the road, Wffyn manoeuvred his horse to ride next to Gwairyc and Nevyn.

‘What did you think about those people?’ the merchant said. ‘It looked to me like they knew plenty about that snare.’

‘To me, too,’ Nevyn said. ‘I wonder what they’re after, up in the wild hills.’

At the next village, when Wffyn told his story in the local tavern, the men there responded with honest bewilderment. After some discussion, however, the local miller remembered that you could find small grey hogs up in the hills.

‘Pigs, they get loose now and then,’ the miller said. ‘Go wild, they do, breed amongst themselves. There’s a right proper herd of swine by now, I’d wager. Our local werrbret hunts them now and again, but he don’t claim them or nothing, so the pork’s free for the taking.’

Werrbret. Gwairyc was so startled by the man’s accent that he nearly gasped aloud. He covered the sound with a quick cough. ‘Hogs, eh?’ Wffyn turned to Nevyn and lowered his voice. ‘That farmer and his wife – why would they act so strange, like, if they were just hunting wild pig?’

‘Indeed. I wonder – I’ve heard rumours about slavers landing their boats in the wild places along the coast. No doubt there are ways of finding out where, if you have somewhat to sell.’

‘Gods!’ Wffyn spat on the straw-covered floor. ‘You could well be right, good sir.’

‘I’d rather be wrong, truly. Come to think of it, why would they risk maiming the merchandise? That snare was a dangerous thing.’

‘Well, if someone were wearing boots and hadn’t rolled up his brigga, either, it wouldn’t bite very deep.’

‘True spoken.’ Nevyn frowned down at his tankard. ‘Even a good thick wrap of rags would protect the leg to some degree. On the way home, tell your men to keep their boots on.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll need to tell them.’

Nevyn agreed with a smile, then turned to Gwairyc. ‘You look like somewhat’s troubling you, lad. Is it about these slavers?’

‘What? It’s not. I was just wondering why the Eldidd folk speak a fair bit different than we do, with their werrbret and all, and then the way they roll their R’s around.’

‘I’m surprised you’d notice such a thing.’

Gwairyc shrugged in feigned indifference. Someone must have told me about it, he decided. He refused to believe anything else, despite a voice from deep in his mind that persisted in whispering: you remember.

Tirro’s scalp was beginning to sprout a blond fuzz, marred by a few small circles of ringworm. Nevyn had him sit on a bale of goods in the strong morning sun and turn his head this way and that just to make sure that the spots were on the verge of disappearing. As he worked, he was also inspecting Tirro for something entirely different. He’d begun to suspect that he’d known this unfortunate little scoundrel before, during one of Tirro’s earlier lives, someone with a nature equally flawed. He would have to find some excuse for staring into Tirro’s eyes before he could be certain. At the moment Wffyn stood nearby and watched the inspection.

‘Very good,’ Nevyn announced. ‘You can burn that ghastly linen cap, lad, but keep putting salve on those spots.’

‘I will, sir,’ Tirro said. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘One more thing.’ Nevyn pounced on the white lie that suddenly occurred to him. ‘I don’t like the appearance of your left eye. Getting a trace of this particular salve in your eye can be a very bad thing. Here, tip your head up and look me right in the face.’

Tirro caught his breath with a small gulp of fear.

‘Go on,’ Wffyn snapped. ‘Do what the herbman wants.’

Tirro gulped again and caught his shaking hands between his knees. So! Nevyn thought. He’s got some reason to fear me, has he? Tirro raised his head, glanced at Nevyn, and immediately looked down again.

‘Come along, Tirro,’ Nevyn said. ‘I won’t bite.’

Once again the boy raised his head. This time he did manage to look at Nevyn for a few beats of a heart – enough. Brour! Nevyn thought. That slimy little renegade! Aloud, he said, ‘Ah, splendid! The eye looks fine. I thought I saw a swelling, but it must just have been some trick of the light. You can go now.’

Tirro jumped up and ran, heading for the herd of mules. Nevyn watched as he disappeared among them.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you.’ Wffyn stepped forward. ‘Will you be travelling on with us a-ways? A man as good with his herbs as you are, Nevyn, is welcome everywhere.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’m thinking of going all the way west to Aberwyn or thereabouts.’

‘We’ll certainly be going that far and beyond, since we’re going to trade with the Westfolk.’

‘True spoken. Where are you planning on crossing the Delonderiel?’

‘A good distance north of Aberwyn, actually, just north of the Pyrdon border. Now, some will tell you that’s the long way round, but I’ve found better horses up in the Peddroloc region than I have at the southern trading grounds nearer to Aberwyn. Is that too far out of your way?’

‘It may be. We’ll stay with you till you reach the Gwynaver, though. We can always turn south from there.’

Not long after, however, an old friend gave Nevyn a reason to travel the entire way with Wffyn. Some hundreds of years before, Nevyn had taken on a young apprentice in the dweomer, Aderyn by name, who had gone to live among the Westfolk. Over the years, Nevyn had kept in touch with his former apprentice, now a master in his own right. At night when both of them were near a fire, they could reach each other’s minds through the flames.

Since he needed only a few hours of sleep a night, Nevyn generally was the last person awake when the caravan camped. That particular evening he was sitting up by the dying fire, tending the glowing coals and watching the salamanders leaping and playing among the last of the flames, when he felt someone tugging at his mind. The contact strengthened so readily that he knew it had to be Aderyn, and sure enough, his ex-apprentice’s image built up as if his face floated on fire.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Nevyn thought to him.

‘And the same to you. In fact, I’m hoping to see a fair bit more of you.’ Aderyn’s image smiled at him. ‘I was wondering if you were planning on riding our way this summer.’

‘Not planning on visiting you, precisely, but I’m in Eldidd at the moment. There’s no reason I couldn’t ride a little further.’

‘Excellent! One of my former students has joined my alar – Valandario her name is. Have you met her?’

‘Not that I remember,’ Nevyn said. ‘Which means naught, of course. I may well have.’

‘She’d heard about your work with the Great Stone of the West, and so she –’

‘Wait a moment. How did she hear about it? It’s not precisely a secret, but I don’t want a lot of talk, either. Did you tell her?’

‘You know, I don’t think I did.’ Aderyn’s image frowned in thought. ‘I don’t know where she did learn of it.’

‘Ask her if you get a chance, will you?’

‘I will. Val’s always had a special affinity for gems. Now just recently, at the summer festival, I happened to meet her. She wanted to know if she could ask your advice about a particular gem.’

‘Can she speak through the fire? I’ll be glad to talk with her. I learned a fair bit about gem dweomer in Bardek.’

‘She can certainly try.’ Aderyn sounded and looked more than a little doubtful. ‘It’s not one of her stronger gifts, though she’s learning. But we wondered if you might actually come out here, or if we could meet you perhaps in Eldidd. She thinks you’ll need to see this stone for yourself.’

‘Well and good, then. I’m travelling with a merchant who’s bound for your trading grounds. I’ll continue on with him.’

‘Splendid! I’m truly glad to hear it, and I’m sure Valandario will be, too. Come to think of it, maybe you can also help me with a little problem I’ve run into.’

‘I’ll most assuredly try. How’s Loddlaen these days?’

‘Doing well.’ Aderyn’s image turned expressionless, but since they’d joined minds through the fire, Nevyn could feel his anger. ‘I don’t know why you’d assume –’

‘My apologies, my apologies. What’s the real trouble, then?’

‘Oh, well, mostly, my grand scheme’s not going as well as it should.’

For a moment Nevyn quite simply couldn’t remember what Aderyn’s grand scheme was. Aderyn felt the lapse and smiled.

‘My compilation of dweomerlore,’ Aderyn said, ‘trying to piece together the ancient elven dweomer by filling the gaps with our own lore.’

Nevyn’s memory creaked into life at last. ‘Of course, the dweomer system the Westfolk lost when the cities were destroyed. We’ve talked about it many a time. Ye gods! I cannot tell you how aggravating it is, not being able to remember things the way I used to. Next I’ll be forgetting my own name.’

‘Well, you have a great deal more to remember than most men. Three hundred years’ worth, isn’t it now?’

‘Somewhat like that. Your own memories stretch a fair way back.’

‘Ah, but life out here is simple. You’ve always managed to complicate matters for yourself.’

‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. But about that problem –’

‘I’ve gathered together every shred I can, but there are large stretches of territory still missing from my mental map, as it were.’

‘I like that figure of speech.’

‘My thanks.’

‘Do you have any idea of what was in that missing province?’

‘Some important thing at the very centre.’ Aderyn’s mind radiated frustration. ‘I do know that the masters of the seven cities studied dweomer for very different reasons from ours. Their ultimate goal wasn’t to help their folk, though they did that, too, but to – well, to do somewhat that I can’t fathom, some grand result.’

‘No clues at all?’

‘Only an unusually elaborate schema of Names and Calls. When I first came to the Westlands, there were still a few dweomerworkers alive who had studied with a teacher who’d been taught in the lost cities. Unfortunately, that teacher was young by elven standards, and only a journeyman. The masters among the dweomerfolk stayed to fight till the end.’

‘And so the lore was lost with them?’

‘Just that. But one thing that did survive was a list of names of certain areas of the Inner Lands. These names, or so I was told, were all that survived of a twice-secret lore. Apparently you had to prove yourself worthy before you were allowed to study it.’

‘Secrecy has a bitter price in evil times.’

‘Just so. But I’m looking forward to telling you what little I’ve gathered, once we can talk face to face.’

‘I’m looking forward to it, too. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’

‘We?’

‘I’ve acquired a rather odd apprentice. I’ll tell you more once you’ve met him.’

The Westfolk lands lay a good month’s journey away, out beyond the western border of the kingdom. Wffyn the merchant’s ultimate goal was to trade iron goods for Westfolk horses, but rather than pack the heavy metalwork all the way from Cerrmor, he’d brought Bardek spices and fine silks to trade for it in Eldidd. As they made their slow way north from market square to market square, Nevyn had ample time to sell his herbs and other medicinals as well as collect more in the meadows and along the roads.

Nevyn also made a point of treating Gwairyc as the apprentice he supposedly was. He taught him herblore, trained him in the drying of herbs, and used him as an assistant when he performed the few simple chirurgeries he knew how to do. When it came to procedures, Nevyn found that having a large, strong assistant was very useful indeed, since the various anodynes available in those days lacked the power to render the sufferer unconscious. Over the years Nevyn had learned how to dodge the sudden fists or teeth of a patient driven mad enough by pain to attack the man trying to help him. Gwairyc, however, could hold them down and occasionally administer an anaesthetic of desperation by clipping the patient hard on the jaw. That part of the work he seemed to enjoy.

When they worked together in less trying situations, Nevyn studied the apprentice as much as the patient. Once, over three hundred years before, Nevyn had been a prince of the royal house, as arrogant as Gwairyc – if not more so, he reminded himself. Yet studying herbcraft with his teacher in the dweomer had opened his eyes and his heart. Once he’d seen how the ordinary people of the kingdom lived, and in particular the bondfolk who were at that time little better than slaves, he’d wanted nothing more than to end every moment of suffering that he could. He’d been hoping that this similar exposure to the ills and suffering of the common folk would open Gwairyc’s heart as well, but he saw on his apprentice’s face only the flickers of disgust and annoyance that would, occasionally, break through a mask of utter indifference. You weren’t a warrior, he told himself. You never had to temper your soul like iron.

Only once did Gwairyc take any interest in a patient. In a village called Bruddlyn, they met the local lord, a certain Corbyn, who brought them to his dun to treat his small son, also named Corbyn, for spotted fever. Fortunately, the boy’s mother had kept him in a dimly lit room, away from the sunlight that might have blinded him. Nevyn brewed one type of herbwater to lower the fever and a second as a soak for compresses to ease his itching skin.

‘Our lordship didn’t have much coin,’ Nevyn told Gwairyc afterwards, ‘but he did give us a silver cup that belonged to his own father. It has the name ‘corbyn’ inscribed on the bottom, but still, we should be able to sell it somewhere, for the silver if naught else.’

‘I take it the lad’s going to recover,’ Gwairyc said.

‘He is.’

‘Good.’ Gwairyc smiled in sincere pleasure at the news. ‘He’s the only son of that clan, the only one yet, anyway, and I’m glad they won’t lose their heir. But here, do these lords always name their first-born Corbyn?’

‘So it seems. Why?’

‘There’s somewhat odd about Eldidd, foreign-like.’ Gwairyc frowned at nothing in particular. ‘And that’s another thing that I just can’t …’ He let his voice trail away.

Nevyn waited for him to go on, but in a moment Gwairyc merely said that he’d saddle the horses and walked away.

Eldidd may be strange, Nevyn thought, but I begin to think Gwarro matches it! And what am I going to do with the lad, then? His first course of treatment for the illness in Gwairyc’s soul was failing, and badly. With a sinking feeling around his heart, he realized that he didn’t have a second.

It wasn’t until they’d almost reached their destination that Nevyn saw Gwairyc respond to the sufferings of a common-born soul, and even then, the circumstances were decidedly unusual. He received his first omen of that future event, and a hint of just how complex the days ahead might be, when he contacted Aderyn again.

‘Here’s a question for you,’ Nevyn said. ‘How will I be able to find you once we get to the grasslands? The trading grounds are quite large, as I remember them anyway.’

‘They stretch a good hundred miles, yes, north to south.’ Floating over the campfire, Aderyn’s image smiled at him. ‘I’ve arranged an escort for you and your merchant.’

‘Splendid! Where do I find this escort?’

‘In Drwloc. The fellow’s a bard, Devaberiel by name, and he’s going there to fetch a little son of his.’

‘What’s an elven woman doing living in Pyrdon?’

‘She’s not elven, though I suspect there’s elven blood in her clan – somewhere. She looks human, and her kin certainly act that way.’ Aderyn’s image scowled into the flames. ‘Her brother’s done naught but berate her since the day she had to tie her kirtle high. A bastard in his clan! Oh, the shame of it! To hear him rant, you’d think he was the high king himself.’

‘I see. The child’s better off with his father’s people, then. We’re not far from Pyrdon. How soon will this bard get there?’

‘Around the next full moon. We – my alar, that is – are on our way to the border now.’

‘Good. Well, my thanks. This will make things a fair bit easier. Huh, I’ve not seen Dun Drw since King Maryn was young.’

‘The place must hold plenty of memories for you.’

‘Doesn’t everywhere?’

‘True enough.’ Aderyn’s image turned solemn. ‘But oddly enough, Drwloc holds some memories for me as well, bitter ones. I think I told you about this – the young lad who died of consumption because of that poor twisted spirit-woman. Meddry, his name was. I feel responsible for his death. I should never have left his side for a moment.’

‘Well, don’t be too harsh on yourself. I – wait. Ye gods! Meddry died only a few years ago, didn’t he?’

‘He did.’ Aderyn paused, thinking. ‘Maybe ten, maybe less. Time truly loses its meaning out here on the grass, and so I don’t remember precisely when.’

‘That’s good enough. It makes me wonder who else might be living in Drwloc or roundabout.’ Nevyn paused for a morose sigh. ‘And here I am, bringing Gerraent with me.’

A few more days of travelling brought them to the gwerbret’s own town, Drwloc, a much grander affair than Lord Corbyn’s village. The town sported a proper stone wall, sheltering nearly two hundred round houses arranged around a big market square. Among them Wffyn found a good-sized inn, which sat beside a stretch of grass pasture and near the local smithy as well.

‘Excellent!’ the merchant said. ‘We’ll be able to get our stock reshod before we start for the trading grounds.’

A crowd of villagers gathered round to watch the caravan tether out its stock on the pasture. The muleteers would camp there with the horses and mules, just in case Drwloc included a horsethief among its denizens. Nevyn and Wffyn, however, rented themselves a chamber, little more than a loft, above the tavern room.

‘Well, this is quite the day!’ the innkeep’s wife announced. ‘Here’s a caravan come through, and we’re having a market fair as well.’

‘That’s a bit of luck for me, too,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ll just go down to the market, I think, and let everyone know that there’s a herbman in town.’

‘I’ll do my trading later with that blacksmith,’ Wffyn said. ‘You go on, and I’ll keep an eye, like, on things here.’

Nevyn opened his mule packs, filled a sack with bundles of various remedies for common ills, then handed it to Gwairyc to carry. They followed the curving street to the open square in the centre of town and the market, which turned out to be a straggling line of farmers, selling fresh produce, eggs, and chickens out of the backs of wagons. Here and there a peddlar spread out his wares on a blanket: pottery, soap, embroidery threads, all manner of small portables brought up from the more prosperous coast. The villagers stood around gossiping or strolled along, looking at the various offerings, or hunkered down to bargain when they saw something they liked.

‘We’d best buy some more food for the last bit of our journey,’ Nevyn said. ‘Usually there’s someone selling cheeses at these village markets.’

As they made their way through the confusion, they came upon a young woman, walking some paces in front of them. She was so short and thin that at first he thought her a young lass. She carried a child in her arms. Her dark hair, however, was combed straight back into a clasp at her neck in the style of an unmarried woman. While her overdress of undyed linen looked clean and well made, there was nothing fancy about it. She wore another strip of plain linen around her waist as a kirtle. A nursemaid, Nevyn thought. The child in her arms twisted around to rest his chin on her shoulder and look back.

‘Ye gods!’ Nevyn said. ‘There’s a beautiful little lad!’

Perhaps two years old, the boy had enormous grey eyes and hair as pale as winter sunlight on snow – Westfolk blood in his veins, Nevyn decided. When he realized that Nevyn was looking at him, the boy smiled so cheerfully that Nevyn had to smile in return. The boy giggled and said something in his nursemaid’s ear. She stopped and turned round.

She would have been a pretty lass, if it weren’t for the witchmark that split her mouth. During his long years as a physician, Nevyn had seen plenty of harelips and cleft palates – normal disfigurements, he was tempted to call them at that moment, because this unusual blemish sat well off-centre. Although it revealed the pink upper gum, a couple of stained teeth, and a twist of dark pink scar, it looked more like a healed wound than a harelip, so puzzling a feature that it took Nevyn a moment to notice her eyes, deep-set and cornflower blue. He caught his breath. He recognized her: his Brangwen reborn again.

She set the boy down, then caught his hand to keep him close. For a moment she studied Nevyn as intently as if she saw a puzzle in his eyes. He could guess that she recognized him without knowing how or why she did. Maybe, at last, he would be able to bring her to her true wyrd, the dweomer, and free himself of the rash vow he’d sworn so many hundreds of years earlier.

‘Good morrow, good sir.’ She spoke with a pronounced lisp, a moist thickening of many consonants. ‘I see you’re new to our town.’

‘We are,’ Nevyn said. ‘My name’s Nevyn, I’m a herbman, and this is my apprentice, Gwairyc. Forgive me for seeming to follow you. Your young lad there caught my attention.’

‘Oh, no harm done. My name is Morwen.’ When she smiled, the scar tissue curled her lip into an animal snarl that matched the lack of good humour in her eyes. ‘A herbman’s always a welcome thing. He’s not my lad, though, but my sister’s.’

‘Well, your sister’s a lucky lass, then.’

Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked sharply away.

‘My apologies!’ Nevyn said. ‘What did I –’

‘Forgive me, good sir. My sister doesn’t think she’s lucky in the least. She’ll be sending our Evan away soon to his father’s people.’

‘And you’ve been his nursemaid?’

Morwen nodded. Evan leaned against her skirts and stared at Gwairyc, who’d been listening to all this with a sullen kind of patience. Nevyn suddenly realized just who this child had to be.

‘The lad’s father?’ Nevyn said. ‘Is his name Devaberiel, and he’s a bard of the Westfolk?’

‘He is. Fancy you knowing that!’

‘Well, actually, I rode here to meet up with him. He’s a friend of a friend of mine. We were going to ride west together.’

‘I see.’ The tears were back in her voice. ‘That means he’ll be here soon, doesn’t it? Dev, I mean.’

‘Well, it does, truly.’

The silence hung between them, awkward and painful. Evan picked up her mood and whimpered, holding out his arms. When she picked him up, he buried his head in her shoulder.

‘Morri,’ he said. ‘My love you.’

‘I love you too.’ She nearly wept, then forced out her twisted smile. ‘Well, we’d best be getting home. Your Da should be riding in ever so soon, and your Mam will want to know that.’

With the child clutched tight in her arms, Morwen hurried off, head held high.

‘That’s a pity,’ Gwairyc said.

‘It is, truly,’ Nevyn said. ‘Poor lass! The child’s probably the light of her life.’

‘That too, I suppose. I meant the witchmark.’

Nevyn didn’t bother to answer. His mind was racing with plans, to return to Drwloc as soon as possible and win Morwen’s confidence. The dweomer will provide plenty of light for her life, he thought, if I can only make her see it. As Morwen passed by, some of the market people turned away. Others frankly stared. She ignored them all, doubtless from long practice, but a gaggle of boys, farm lads judging by their much-mended clothes and dirty faces, proved harder to ignore. The four of them followed her, taunting and laughing.

‘Here, ratface!’ one yelled out. ‘Witch lass! Too proud for a word with us, are you?’

When she walked a little faster, they ran after and surrounded her. The two largest lads planted themselves firmly in her path.

‘That’s enough!’ Gwairyc muttered.

Before Nevyn could say a word, Gwairyc took off running straight for the lads. He grabbed one from behind by the shirt, swung him round, and punched him so hard that blood poured from the lad’s nose. With a yelp the lad sank to the ground. One of the others broke and ran at that, but two remained game – at least until Gwairyc hit one back-handed and split his lip. With a shriek the coward fell to his knees. Gwairyc had saved the largest lad for last. Him he grabbed by the shirt and punched him in the stomach. The lad sank to the ground and vomited cheap ale all down his front. By the time Nevyn trotted up, the fight, such as it was, had finished.

‘All right, you dogs!’ Gwairyc snarled. ‘Now you’re a fair bit uglier than this poor lass is. Get out of my sight!’

The two who could still walk grabbed the vomit-covered lad by the arms and hauled him up and away. Their more cowardly but wiser friend was hovering nearby. With his help they broke into a shambling trot and disappeared in the crowd. It had all happened so fast that little Evan seemed barely troubled. He did pop his thumb in his mouth, then twisted in his nursemaid’s arms to watch her assailants run away. Morwen herself was staring wide-eyed at Gwairyc.

‘My thanks,’ Morwen said in her thick, moist voice. ‘But you needn’t have troubled yourself. I’m used to this sort of thing.’

‘Mayhap so,’ Gwairyc said. ‘But it griped my soul, somehow, seeing you mocked.’

‘You’re the first man I’ve ever met who felt that way.’ Morwen seemed less pleased than thoughtful. ‘I do appreciate it, good sir. Don’t think that it didn’t gladden my heart to see them bleed.’

Gwairyc laughed, briefly. After a nod in Nevyn’s direction, Morwen turned and walked off, carrying Evan. This time, no one bothered her.

‘Very good,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’m glad to see you have a bit of pity for someone beneath you in rank.’

Gwairyc shrugged, then began examining his bruised knuckles. Nevyn merely waited. At last Gwairyc looked up and spoke. ‘I’m not sure I’d call it pity,’ he said. ‘Everyone says that a harelip means a person’s been cursed by the gods.’

‘Everyone?’ Nevyn raised an eyebrow. ‘And cursed in the womb, before the poor baby even sees the light of the sun?’

‘It happens in the womb?’

‘It does.’

‘Well, then, that’s a bit different, isn’t it?’ Gwairyc turned to look off in the direction that Morwen had taken. ‘Seeing her mobbed like that, it just somehow griped my soul.’

‘Unfair odds, if naught else.’

‘That’s it, truly.’ Gwairyc turned to him and smiled. ‘That’s what touched my heart, then, the unfair odds.’

Nevyn was profoundly disappointed. He’d hoped that Gwairyc was feeling some compassion at last.

That evening, after a long afternoon selling herbs and sundries, Nevyn learned a great deal more about Morwen and Evan from the innkeep’s wife. After a dinner of boiled beef and bread, Wffyn went off to bed. As mere apprentices, Tirro and Gwairyc would sleep on the straw-strewn floor. They spread their blankets out in the curve of the wall at a good distance from one another, then lay down and were soon snoring. The innwife dipped Nevyn a tankard of dark ale, then took a cupful for herself and sat down opposite him at table. She was a thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, skinny woman, wearing a greasy pair of green dresses. A little woad-blue scarf, stained with sweat, bunched around her wattled neck.

‘Well, since you asked about Morwen’s sister, good sir,’ she began, ‘it was ever so great a scandal, but they always say that great beauty is better than a dowry any day, and they’re right enough when it comes to Varynna – that’s Morwen’s sister, Varynna. As beautiful as the moon in the summer sky, or so the lads all call her. Well!’ She paused for a sip of ale, then dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘And that Westfolk man of hers could see it as easy as anyone. So there she is, big with child, and her not married, so oh, she’s had her comeuppance, all right!’

‘Comeuppance for what?’ Nevyn said.

‘The airs she gave herself, good sir, ever so high and mighty she was until her belly started to swell. Now, there are some as say that Varynna was but following in her mother’s footsteps, like, because Varynna doesn’t look much like her sister and brother, if you take my meaning.’ She paused for a wink. ‘And that name! Not a usual sort of name, is it?’

‘It’s not, truly.’ Nevyn managed a polite smile.

‘A bit of the Westfolk, eh? So, anyway, Varynna did nurse the little lad, but for everything else, she handed him over to her sister, and I doubt if she’s touched the lad since he was weaned. Goes to show how wretched a mother she is, giving her lad to a witch lass to raise!’

‘Now here, Morwen seems to be taking good care of the lad.’

‘Oh, I suppose she’s fond of him. She’ll never have a child of her own.’ She paused for a ladylike sneer at the very thought. ‘Well, as to Varynna, her brother was ever so angry, having a bastard in the family, but he could do naught about it thanks to the will.’

‘Hold a moment. What will?’

‘Tsk, you’re so easy to talk to, I keep forgetting you’re not from around here, good herbman. Their father’s will. You see, he died of a fever, so he knew he was going, like. So he called in the priest of Bel and a few other men of good standing to hear his will. The farm went to the brother but only on the condition that he provided for his mother and the two sisters.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘So brother Dwal was stuck, like, with the three of them. The mother died not long after her husband, though. She’d not been quite right since Morwen was born.’ She tapped her forehead and winked. ‘It was the shame of it, I suppose.’

‘Now here, why blame her?’

‘It must have been her doing, producing a deformed get like that. No doubt she stepped over a crack or killed a hare or suchlike when she was carrying the child. That’s the way these things always happen.’

‘Not truly. It’s much more likely to be the effect of malefic lunar influences on the four humours, you see, early in the pregnancy. The moist humour is particularly susceptible.’

‘It is? Well, fancy that!’ She looked utterly unconvinced. ‘But, truly, we were speaking of our haughty little Varynna. So anyway, this spring all the old gossips had a fair bit more to wag their tongues about. A merchant and his son came in, all the way from Abernaudd, they were, and come to look for Westfolk horses. And the son was fair taken with Varynna, turned quite daft he was. But the father, well now, he had more of a head on his shoulders, and he wasn’t too pleased to find that his son’s new ladylove had a bastard. Back and forth they went about it, yelling and pounding on the table right here in my inn, and finally the old man relented. As long as the bastard never darkens my door, says he, you can marry her and take her away.’

‘Ah, I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘And now Evan’s father is coming to collect the little lad.’

‘Just that.’ The innkeep’s wife finished her cup of ale in one long swallow. ‘And Dwal’s fair pleased to be rid of both of them, I tell you. He’s planning on finding a wife himself now.’

‘Poor little Morri! Losing the lad seems to be aching her heart, and badly.’

‘I suppose it is.’ She shrugged the issue away. ‘Her nose-in-the-air sister wants the child far away from her, as far as he can get, and truly, the Westfolk live on the edge of nowhere, and so that’s that.’

Late that evening, after the innwife had gone to bed, Nevyn stayed by the glowing coals of the dying fire and considered Morwen’s strange situation. The unusual harelip was a clear example of repercussion, as the dweomerfolk call it, where some mark or wound from a particularly violent death carries over to the victim’s next life. The victim’s flood of ancient emotion marks the budding etheric double of the child in the womb, which in turn influences the physical body. Yet since such repercussions rarely last more than a single lifetime, Morwen’s scarred lip indicated that this incarnation was her first since Branoic’s horrible death all those years past.

And she’s so scrawny, Nevyn thought. No doubt she’d had a difficult time eating as a baby and a small child. Most children with harelips did. Once she’d grown older, most likely her kinsfolk had begrudged her food. Nevyn realized that he wouldn’t need some complicated scheme to take Morwen away from her family. Most likely her brother would be glad to see her go if Nevyn could convince her to leave.

On the morrow Nevyn left his stock of medicinals in Wffyn’s care and went with Gwairyc to Morwen’s brother’s farm, which lay not far beyond the town wall. It was a prosperous-looking place, three round houses joined together in a cluster, all of them white-washed and roofed in new thatch. They sat on a square of green grass, protected by an earthen wall from the cows and horses grazing in a large pasture out back. Beyond the pasture lay wheat fields.

By the front door Morwen was sitting on a little bench in the sun while she watched Evan playing with a leather ball. When Nevyn hailed her, she got up and walked over to the gate. Two big black and tan hounds accompanied her, tails wagging.

‘Good morrow, good sirs,’ she said in her moist lisp. ‘What brings you to me?’

‘I was wondering if you’d seen any sign of Devaberiel yet,’ Nevyn said. ‘He might arrive today, you see.’

‘I’ve not.’ She looked away, fighting tears for a long few moments. ‘Ah well,’ she said at last, ‘I’d invite you in to wait, but my brother takes it ill when I have guests. He’s always afraid I might offer them a bit of his ale or bread.’

‘Ye gods,’ Gwairyc said. ‘From the look of your farm there’s no call for him to be so miserly.’

‘There’s not, and he’s not, except when it comes to me.’

‘I see.’ Nevyn had long since got out of the habit of making small talk, but now he badly wanted to linger. ‘Do you have many guests?’

‘Me?’ Morwen paused for a short bark of a laugh. ‘Hardly, good sir.’

‘What? No friends or suchlike?’

‘There was only one lass in our entire village who ever dared befriend a maimed creature like me, and she –’ Morwen paused for a quick intake of breath that might have been a sigh or a choked back sob. ‘She died but two years ago. Lanmara, her name was.’