Читать книгу Dawnspell - Katharine Kerr - Страница 10

The year 833. Slwmar II, King in Dun Deverry, received a bad wound in battle. The second son of Glyn II, King in Cerrmor, died stillborn. We took these as bad omens. Only later would we realize that Bel in His Wisdom was preparing peace for His people …

The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn

The flies were the worst thing. It was bad enough to be dying, but to have the flies so thick was an unjust indignity. They clustered, buzzing, round the wound and tried to drink the blood. It hurt too much to try to brush them away. The wound was on his right side, just below the armpit, and deep. If someone could have stitched it for him, Maddyn supposed, he might have lived, but since he was all alone in the wild hills, he was going to die. He saw no reason to lie to himself about it: he was bleeding to death. He clutched the saddle-peak with his left hand and kept his right arm raised, because the wound blazed like fire if he let his arm touch it. The blood kept oozing through his shattered mail, and the big shiny blue-black flies kept coming. Every now and then, a fly bit his horse, which was too exhausted to do more than stamp in protest.

Maddyn was the last rider in his warband left alive. Since, when he died, the enemy victory would be complete, it seemed honourable to try to postpone their victory for a while; it seemed important then, as he rode slowly through the golden autumn haze, to cheat them of their victory for twenty minutes more. Ahead, about a mile away, was a lake, the surface rippled gold and shining in the sunset. Along the edge stood white birches, rippling in the rising wind. He wanted water. Next to the flies, being thirsty was the worst thing, his mouth so dry that he could barely breathe. His horse ambled steadily for the lake. It wouldn’t matter, his dying, if only he could drink first.

The lake was coming closer. He could see the rushes, dark strokes against bright water, and a white heron, standing one-legged at the edge. Then something went wrong with the sun. It wasn’t setting straight down, but swinging from side to side, like a lantern held in someone’s hand as they walked. The sky was dark as night, but the sun kept swinging back and forth, a lantern in the night, back and forth, wider swings now, up up high up all the way to noon above him and blazing. Then there was darkness, the smell of crushed grass, the flies buzzing and the thirst. Then only darkness.

A lantern was burning in the darkness. At first, Maddyn thought it was the sun, but this light was too small, too steady. An old man’s face leaned over him. He had a thick mane of white hair and cold blue eyes.

‘Ricyn.’ His voice was low but urgent. ‘Ricco, look at me.’

Although Maddyn had never heard that particular name before, he knew somehow that it was his, and he tried to answer to it. His lips were too dry to move. The old man held a golden cup of water to his lips and helped him drink. The water was sweet and cold. I won’t die thirsty after all, Maddyn thought. Then the darkness came again.

The next time that he woke, he realized that he wasn’t going to die. For a long time, he lay perfectly still and wondered at it: he wasn’t going to die. Slowly he looked around him, for the first time wondering where he was, and realized that he was lying naked between soft wool blankets on a pile of straw. Firelight danced over the walls of an enormous stone room. Although his wound still hurt, it was nicely bound with linen bandages. When he turned his head, he saw the old man sitting at a rough wooden table by the stone hearth and reading in a leatherbound book. The old man glanced up and smiled at him.

‘Thirsty, lad?’

‘I am, good sir.’

The old man dipped water from a wooden barrel into the golden cup, then knelt down and helped him drink.

‘My horse?’ Maddyn said.

‘He’s safe and at his hay.’ The old man laid a hand on Maddyn’s forehead. ‘Fever’s broken. Good.’

Maddyn just managed to smile before he fell asleep. This time, he dreamt of his last battle so vividly that it seemed he could smell the dust and the horse-sweat. His warband drew up on the crest of the hill, and there were Tieryn Devyr and his men waiting across the road – over a hundred to their thirty-seven, but they were going to make the hopeless downhill charge anyway. Maddyn knew it by the way Lord Brynoic laughed like a madman, lounging back in his saddle. There was naught they could do but die; they were trapped, and they had naught left to live for. Even though he felt like a fool for doing it, Maddyn started thinking about his mother. In his mind, he could see her clearly, standing in the doorway of their house and holding out her arms to him. Then the horn blew for the charge, and he could only think of riding. Down the hill, on and on, with Devyr’s men wheeling to face them – the clash came with a shriek from both sides. In his dream Maddyn relived every parry and cut, choked again on the rising dust and woke with a cry when the sword bit deep into his side.

‘Here, lad.’ The old man was right beside him. ‘All’s well now.’

‘Can I have some water?’

‘All you want.’

After Maddyn gulped down six cupsful, the old man brought him bread and milk in a wooden bowl. Since his hands were shaking too badly to hold a spoon, the old man fed him, too, a spoonful at a time. The best feast in the Gwerbret of Cantrae’s hall had never tasted as good as that meal did.

‘My thanks,’ Maddyn said. ‘Truly, I owe you the humblest thanks I can give for saving my life.’

‘Saving lives is somewhat of a habit of mine. I’m a herbman.’

‘And wasn’t that the luck of my life, then!’

‘Luck?’ The old fellow smiled in a sly sort of way. ‘Well, truly, it may have been, at that. My name is Nevyn, by the by, and that’s not a jest; it truly is my name. I’m somewhat of a hermit, and this is my home.’

‘My name is Maddyn, and I rode for Lord Brynoic. Here, do you realize that I’m an outlawed man? By every black-hearted demon in the hells, you should have let me bleed to death where I fell.’

‘Oh, I heard me of Brynoic’s exile, sure enough, but the pronouncements of tieryns and suchlike mean little to me. Cursed if I’ll let a man die, when I can save him, just because his lord overstepped himself at court.’

With a sigh, Maddyn turned his head away. Nearby was his shield, leaning against the wall, and a tidy stack of his other gear, including his small ballad-harp, wrapped safe in its leather sack. The sight of the fox device stamped on everything he owned made tears burn in Maddyn’s eyes. His whole warband, all his friends, men he’d ridden with for eight years now – all dead, because Lord Brynoic had coveted another man’s land and failed in his gamble to get it.

‘Did the tieryn bury our dead?’ he whispered.

‘He did. I found the battlefield some days after I brought you home. From the sight of the slaughter, I’m surprised that even one man escaped.’

‘I ran like a coward. I made the charge and got my wound. I knew I was dying, then, and I just wanted to die alone, somewhere quiet, like. Ah ye gods, I never dreamt that anyone would save me!’

‘No doubt it was your Wyrd to live.’

‘It was a harsh Wyrd, then. I’m still an outlawed man. I threw away the last bit of honour I had when I didn’t die with my lord and my band.’

Nevyn made a soothing remark, but Maddyn barely heard him. For all that his shame bit at him, deep in his heart he knew he was glad to be alive, and that very gladness was another shame.

It was two days before Maddyn could sit up, and then only by propping himself against the wall and fighting with his swimming head. As soon as he was a bit stronger, he began wondering about the strange room he was in. From the smell of damp in the air and the lack of windows, he seemed to be underground, but the fire in the enormous hearth drew cleanly. The room was the right size for that massive hearth, too, a full fifty feet across, and the ceiling was lost above him in shadows. All along the wall by his bed was a carved bas-relief, about ten feet above the floor, that must at one time have run around the entire room. Now the severely geometric pattern of triangles and circles broke off abruptly, as if it had been defaced. Finally, on the day when he was strong enough to feed himself for the first time, it occurred to him to ask Nevyn where they were.

‘Inside Brin Toraedic. The entire hill is riddled with chambers and tunnels.’

Maddyn almost dropped his spoon into his lap. Since Lord Brynoic’s dun was only about five miles away, he’d seen the hill many a time and heard all the tales about it, too; how it was haunted, plagued by demons and spirits, who sent blue lights dancing through the night and strange howls whistling through the day. It certainly looked peculiar enough to be haunted, rising straight out of an otherwise flat meadow, like some old giant long ago turned to stone and overgrown with grass.

‘Now, now.’ Nevyn gave him a grin. ‘I’m real flesh and blood, not a prince of demons or suchlike.’

Maddyn tried to return the smile and failed.

‘I like to be left alone, lad,’ Nevyn went on. ‘So, what better place could I find to live than a place where everyone else is afraid to go?’

‘Well, true enough, I suppose. But then there aren’t any spirits here after all?’

‘Oh, there’s lots, but they go their way and I go mine. Plenty of room for us all.’

When Maddyn realized that the old man was serious, his hands shook so hard that he had to lay down his bowl and spoon.

‘I couldn’t lie to you,’ Nevyn said in a perfectly mild tone of voice. ‘You’ll have to shelter with us this winter, because you won’t be fit to ride before the snows come, but these spirits are a harmless sort. All that talk about demons is simple exaggeration. The folk around here are starved for a bit of colour in their lives.’

‘Are they now? Uh, here, good sir, just how long have I been here, anyway?’

‘Oh, a fortnight. You lay in a fever for a wretchedly long time. The wound went septic. When I found you, there were flies all over it.’

Maddyn picked up his spoon and grimly went on eating. The sooner he got the strength to leave this spirit-plagued place, the better.

As the wound healed, Maddyn began getting out of bed for longer and longer periods. Although Nevyn had thrown away his blood-soaked clothes, Maddyn had a spare shirt in his saddlebags, and the old man found him a pair of brigga that fitted well enough. One of the first things he did was unwrap his ballad-harp and make sure that it was unharmed. With his right arm so weak, he couldn’t tune it, but he ran his fingers over the sour, lax strings to make sure they still sounded.

‘I’m surprised that Lord Brynoic would risk a bard in battle,’ Nevyn remarked.

‘I’m not much of a bard, truly, more a gerthddyn who can fight. I know a good many songs and suchlike, but I never studied the triads and the rest of the true bard lore.’

‘And why not?’

‘Well, my father was a rider in our lord’s warband. When he was killed, I was but thirteen, and Lord Brynoic offered me a place in the troop. I took it to avenge my father’s death, and then, well, there never was a chance to study after that, since I’d given my lord my pledge and all.’

‘And do you regret it?’

‘I’ve never let myself feel regret. Only grief lies that way, good sir.’

Once he was strong enough, Maddyn began exploring the old man’s strange home, a small complex of caves and tunnels. Besides the main living quarters, there was another stone room that the herbman had turned into a stable for his horse, Maddyn’s too, and a fine brown mule. The side of that room crumbled away, leading back to a natural cave, where a small spring welled up, then drained away down the side of the hill. Just outside the stable door was the gully that had given Brin Toraedic its name of ‘broken hill’, a long, straight cleft slicing across the summit. The first time he went outside, he found the air cold in spite of the bright sun, and the chill worked in his wound and tormented him. He hurried back inside and decided to take Nevyn’s word for it that winter was well on its way.

Since the herbman had plenty of coin as well as these elaborate living quarters, Maddyn began to wonder if he were an eccentric nobleman who’d simply fled from the civil wars raging across the kingdom. He was far too grateful to ask such an embarrassing question, but scattered across the kingdom were plenty of the noble-born who weaselled any way they could to get out of their obligations to the various gwerbrets claiming to be King of all Deverry. Nevyn had a markedly courtly way about him, gracious at times, brusque at others, as if he were used to being obeyed without question. What’s more, he could read and write, an accomplishment rare for the simple herbman he claimed to be. Maddyn began to find the old man fascinating.

Once every few days, Nevyn took his horse and mule and rode down to the nearby village, where he would buy fresh food and pack in a mule-load of winter supplies: hay and grain for the stock, or cheeses, sausage, dried fruit and suchlike for the pair of them. While he was gone, Maddyn would do some share of the work around the caves, then sleep off his exertion. On a grey morning with a sharp wind, Nevyn mentioned that he’d be gone longer than usual, because one of the village women needed his healing herbs. After the old man had left, Maddyn swept the stable refuse into the gully, then went back for a rest before he raked it out on to the hillside. He laid a bit more wood on the hearth, then sat down close by to drive the chill from his wound.

For the first time since the battle, he felt too strong to sleep, and his neglected harp called him reproachfully. When he took her out of her leather bag, the lax strings sighed at him. On a harp that size, there were only thirty-six strings, but in his weakened state, tuning her seemed to take him for ever. He struck out the main note from his steel tuning bar, then worked over the strings, adjusting the tiny ivory pegs while he sang out the intervals, until sweat ran down his face. This sign of weakness only drove him on until at last the harp was in reasonable tune, but he had to rest for a few minutes before he could play it. He ran a few trills, struck a few chords, and the music seemed to give him a small bit of his strength back as it echoed through the huge stone-walled room. The very size of the place added an eerie overtone to every note he played.

Suddenly, at his shoulder, he felt the White Lady, his agwen, she who came to every bard who had true song in him. As she gathered, he felt the familiar chill down his back, the stirring of hair at the nape of his neck. For all that he called himself a gerthddyn, her presence and the inspiration she gave him was the sign that the kingdom had lost a true bard when Maddyn had pledged for a rider. Although his voice was weak and stiff that morning, he sang for his agwen, a long ballad, bits of lyric, whatever came to his mind, and the music soothed his wound as well as a healing poultice.

All at once, he knew that he wasn’t alone. When he looked up, expecting to see Nevyn in the doorway, no one was indeed there. When he glanced around, he saw nothing but fire-thrown shadows. Yet every time he struck a chord, he felt an audience listening to him. The hair on the back of his neck pricked like a cat’s when he remembered Nevyn’s talk of spirits. You’re daft, he told himself sharply; there’s naught here. But he had performed too many times to believe himself. He knew the intangible difference between singing to empty air and playing to an attentive hall. When he sang two verses of a ballad, he felt them, whoever they were, leaning forward to catch every word. When he stopped and set the harp down, he sensed their disappointment.

‘Well, here, now. You can’t be such bad sorts, if you like a good song.’

He thought he heard someone giggle behind him, but when he turned, there was nothing there but the wall. He got up and walked slowly and cautiously around the room, looked into every corner and crack – and saw nothing. Just as he sat down again, someone else giggled – this time he heard it plainly – like a tiny child who’s just played a successful prank. Maddyn grabbed his harp only with the somewhat fuddled thought of keeping it safe, but when he felt his invisible audience crowd round him in anticipation, he was too much of a bard to turn down any listeners, even incorporeal ones. When he struck the strings, he was sure he heard them give a little sigh of pleasure. Just because it was the first thing that came to mind, he sang through the fifty chained stanzas that told of King Bran’s sea-voyage to Deverry, and of the magical mist that swept him and his fleet away at the end. By the time the enchanted ships were safe in the long-lost, mysterious harbour in the far north, Maddyn was exhausted.

‘My apologies, but I’ve got to stop now.’

A sigh sounded in regret. Someone touched his hair with a gentle stroke, like a pat on a dog; someone plucked at his sleeve with skinny-feeling fingers. The fire blazed up in the hearth; a draught of preternaturally cold air swirled around him. Maddyn shuddered and stood up, but little hands grabbed his brigga-leg. The harp-strings sounded in a random run down as someone tried them out. The very shadows came alive, eddying and swirling in every corner. Fingers were touching his face, stroking his arm, pinching his clothes, pulling his hair, while the harp-strings rang and strummed in an ugly belling.

‘Stop that, all of you!’ Nevyn yelled from the door. ‘That’s a wretched discourteous way to treat our guest!’

The little fingers disappeared. The fire fell low, as if in embarrassment. Maddyn felt like weeping in relief as the herbman strode in, carrying a pair of saddlebags.

‘Truly, it was a nasty way to behave,’ Nevyn went on, addressing the seemingly empty air. ‘If you do that again, then Maddyn won’t ever play his harp for you.’

The room went empty of presences. Nevyn tossed the saddlebags down on the table and gave Maddyn a grin. With shaking hands, Maddyn set his harp down and wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve.

‘I should have warned you about that. They love music. My apologies, lad.’

Maddyn tried to speak, failed, and sat down heavily on the bench. Behind him, a harp-string twanged. Nevyn scowled at the air beside it.

‘I said stop it!’

A little puff of wind swept away.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me a few questions, Maddyn lad?’

‘To tell you the truth, I’m afraid to.’

The old man laughed under his breath.

‘Well, I’ll answer anyway, questions or no. Those were what men call the Wildfolk. They’re like ill-trained children or puppies, all curiosity, no sense or manners. Unfortunately, they can hurt us mortal folk without even meaning to do so.’

‘I gathered that, sure enough.’ As he looked at his benefactor, Maddyn realized a truth he’d been avoiding for days now. ‘Sir, you must have dweomer.’

‘I do. How does that strike you?’

‘Like a blow. I never thought there was any such thing outside my own ballads and tales.’

‘Most men would consider me a bard’s fancy, truly, but my craft is real enough.’

Maddyn stared, wondering how Nevyn could look so cursed ordinary, until the old man turned away with a good-humoured laugh and began rummaging in his saddlebags.

‘I brought you a bit of roast meat for your supper, lad. You need it to make back the blood you lost, and the villager I visited had some to spare to pay for my herbs.’

‘My thanks. Uh, when do you think I’ll be well enough to ride out?’

‘Oho! The spirits have you on the run, do they?’

‘Well, not to be ungrateful or suchlike, good sir’ Maddyn felt himself blush ‘but I … uh … well …’

Nevyn laughed again.

‘No need to be ashamed, lad. Now as to the wound, it’ll be a good while yet before you’re fit. You rode right up to the gates of the Otherlands, and it always takes a man a long time to ride back again.’

From that day on, the Wildfolk grew bolder around Maddyn, the way that hounds will slink out from under the table when they realize that their master’s guest is fond of dogs. Every time Maddyn picked up his harp, he was aware of their presence – a liveliness in the room, a small scuffle of half-heard noise, a light touch on his arm or hair, a breath of wind as something flew by. Whenever they pinched or mobbed him, he would simply threaten to stop singing, a threat that always made them behave themselves. Once, when he was struggling to light a fire with damp tinder, he felt them gather beside him. As he struck a spark from his steel, the Wildfolk blew it into a proper flame. When he thanked them automatically, he realized that he was beginning to take spirits for granted. As for Nevyn himself, although Maddyn studied the old man for traces of strange powers and stranger lore, he never saw any, except, of course, that spirits obeyed him.

Maddyn also spent a lot of time thinking over his future. Since he was a member of an outlawed warband, he would hang if Tieryn Devyr ever got his hands on him. His one chance of an honourable life was slim indeed. If he rode down to Cantrae without the tieryn catching him, and then threw himself upon the gwerbret’s mercy, he might be pardoned simply because he was something of a bard and thus under special protection in the laws. Unfortunately, the pardon was unlikely, because it would depend on his liege’s whim, and Gwerbret Tibryn of the Boar was a harsh man. His clan, the Boars of the North, was related to the southern Boars of Muir, who had wheedled the gwerbretrhyn out of the King in Dun Deverry some fifty years before. Between them, the conjoint Boar clans ruled a vast stretch of the northern kingdom and were said to be the real power behind a puppet king in the Holy City. It was unlikely that Tibryn would bother to show mercy to a half-trained bard when that mercy would make one of his loyal tieryns grumble. Maddyn decided that since he and the spirits had worked out their accommodation, he would leave the gwerbret’s mercy alone and stay in Brin Toraedic until spring.

The next time that Nevyn rode to the village, Maddyn decided to ride a-ways with him to exercise both himself and his horse. The day was clear and cold, with the smell of snow in the air and a rimy frost lying on the brown stubbled fields. When he realized that it was nearly Samaen, Maddyn was shocked at the swift flowing of time outside the hill, which seemed to have a different flow of its own. Finally they came to the village, a handful of round, thatched houses scattered among white birches along the banks of a stream.

‘I’d best wait for you by the road,’ Maddyn said. ‘One of the tieryn’s men might ride into the village for some reason.’

‘I don’t want you sitting out in this cold. I’ll take you over to a farm near here. These people are friends of mine, and they’ll shelter you without awkward questions.’

They followed a lane across brown pastureland until they came to the farmstead, a scatter of round buildings inside a circular, packed-earth wall. At the back of the big house was a cow-barn, storage sheds, and a pen for grey and white goats. In the muddy yard, chickens pecked round the front door of the house. Shooing the hens away, a stout man with greying hair came out to greet them.

‘Morrow, my lord. What can I do for you this morning?’

‘Oh, just keep a friend of mine warm, good Bannyc. He’s been very ill, as I’m sure his white face is telling you, and he needs to rest while I’m in the village.’

‘We can spare him room at the hearth. Ye gods, lad, you’re pale as the hoar frost, truly.’

Bannyc ushered Maddyn into the wedge-shaped main room, which served as kitchen and hall both. In front of a big hearth, where logs blazed in a most welcome way, stood two tables and three high-backed benches, a prosperous amount of furniture for those parts. Clean straw covered the floor, and the walls were freshly whitewashed. From the ceiling hung strings of onions and garlic, nets of drying turnips and apples, and a couple of enormous hams. On the hearthstone a young woman was sitting cross-legged and mending a pair of brigga.

‘Who’s this, Da?’ she said.

‘A friend of Nevyn’s.’

Hastily she scrambled up and dropped Maddyn a curtsey. She was very pretty, with raven-black hair and dark, calm eyes. Maddyn bowed to her in return.

‘You’ll forgive me for imposing on you,’ Maddyn said. ‘I haven’t been well, and I need a bit of a rest.’

‘Any friend of Nevyn’s is always welcome here,’ she said. ‘Sit down, and I’ll get you some ale.’

Maddyn took off his cloak, then sat down on the hearthstone as close to the fire as he could get without singeing his shirt. Announcing that he had to get back to the cows, Bannyc strolled outside. The woman handed Maddyn a tankard of dark ale, then sat down near him and picked up her mending again.

‘My thanks.’ Maddyn saluted her with the ale. ‘My name’s Maddyn of … uh, well, just Maddyn will do.’

‘Mine’s Belyan. Have you known Nevyn long?’

‘Oh, not truly.’

Belyan gave him an oddly awestruck smile and began sewing. Maddyn sipped his ale and watched her slender fingers work deftly on the rough wool of a pair of brigga, Bannyc’s, by the large size of them. He was surprised at how good it felt to be sitting warm and alive in the presence of a pretty woman. Every now and then, Belyan hesitantly looked his way, as if she were trying to think of something to say.

‘Well, my lord,’ she said at last. ‘Will you be staying long with our Nevyn?’

‘I don’t truly know, but here, what makes you call me lord? I’m as common-born as you are.’

‘Well – but a friend of Nevyn’s.’

At that Maddyn realized that she knew perfectly well that the old man was dweomer.

‘Now here, what do you think I am?’ Maddyn had the uneasy feeling that it was very dangerous to pretend to dweomer you didn’t have. ‘I’m only a rider without a warband. Nevyn was good enough to save my life when he found me wounded, that’s all. But here, don’t tell anyone about me, will you? I’m an outlawed man.’

‘I’ll forget your name the minute you ride on.’

‘My humble thanks, and my apologies. I don’t even deserve to be drinking your ale.’

‘Oh hold your tongue! What do I care about these rotten wars?’

When he looked at her, he found her angry, her mouth set hard in a bitter twist.

‘I don’t care the fart of a two-copper piglet,’ she went on. ‘All it’s ever brought to me and mine is trouble. They take our horses and raise our taxes and ride through our grain, and all in the name of glory and the one true King, or so they call him, when everyone with wits in his head knows there’s two kings now, and why should I care, truly, as long as they don’t both come here a-bothering us. If you’re one man who won’t die in this war, then I say good for you.’

‘Ye gods. Well, truly, I never thought of it that way before.’

‘No doubt, since you were a rider once.’

‘Here, I’m not exactly a deserter or suchlike.’

She merely shrugged and went back to her sewing. Maddyn wondered why a woman of her age, twenty-two or so, was living in her father’s house. Had she lost a betrothed in the wars? The question was answered for him in a moment when two small lads, about six and four, came running into the room and calling her Mam. They were fighting over a copper they’d found in the road and came to her to settle it. Belyan gave them each a kiss and told them they’d have to give the copper to their gran, then sent them back outside.

‘So you’re married, are you?’ Maddyn said.

‘I was once. Their father drowned in the river two winters ago. He was setting a fish-trap, but the ice turned out to be too thin.’

‘That aches my heart, truly. So you came back to your father?’

‘I did. Da needed a woman around the house, and he’s good to my lads. That’s what matters to me.’

‘Then it gladdens my heart to hear that you’re happy.’

‘Happy?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Oh, I don’t think much of things like happiness, just as long as the lads are well.’

Maddyn could feel her loneliness, lying just under her faint, mocking smile. His body began to wonder about her, a flicker of sexual warmth, another sign that life was coming back to him. She looked at him steadily, her dark eyes patient, self-contained, almost unreadable.

‘And what will you do now?’ she said. ‘Ride on before the snows come?’

‘Nevyn doesn’t think I’ll be fit by then, but sooner or later I have to go. It’ll mean my life if I stay. They hang outlawed men.’

‘So they do.’

Belyan considered him for a moment more, then got up briskly, as if she’d come to some decision, and strode out of the room through a blanket-hung door in one of the wickerwork walls. He was just finishing his tankard when she returned, carrying a shirt, which she tossed into his lap when she sat back down.

‘That was my husband’s,’ she said. ‘It’s too small for Da, and it’ll rot before the lads grow to fit it. Take it. You need a shirt that doesn’t have foxes embroidered all over it.’

‘Ye gods! I forgot about that. No wonder you thought I was a deserter, then. Well, my humble thanks.’

He smoothed it out, studying with admiration the sleeves, stiff with finely embroidered interlacing and spirals, and at the yokes, floral bands. It had probably been her husband’s wedding shirt because it was unlikely that her man had owned two pieces of such fancy clothing, but still, it was a good bit safer for him to wear than one with his dead lord’s blazon. He took off his old shirt and gave it to her.

‘Do you want this for the cloth? You can mend the lads’ tunics out of it.’

‘So I can. My thanks.’

She was looking at the scar along his side, a thick clot of tissue in his armpit, a thinner gash along his ribs. Hurriedly he pulled the new shirt over his head and smoothed it down.

‘It fits well enough. You’re generous to a dishonoured man.’

‘Better than letting it rot. I put a lot of fancy work into that.’

‘Do you miss your man still?’

‘At times.’ She paused, considering for a few moments. ‘I do, at that. He was a good man. He didn’t beat me, and we always had enough to eat. When he had the leisure, he’d whittle little horses and wagons for the lads, and he made sure I had a new dress every spring.’

It came to that for her, he realized, not the glories of love and the tempests of passion that the bard songs celebrated for noble audiences. He’d met plenty of women like Belyan, farm women, all of them, whose real life ran apart from their men in a self-contained earthiness of work and children. Since their work counted as much as their men’s towards feeding and sheltering themselves and their kin, it gave them a secure place of their own, unlike the wives of the noble lords, who existed at their husbands’ whims. Yet Belyan was lonely; at times she missed her man. Maddyn was aware of his body, and the wondering was growing stronger. When she smiled at him, he smiled in return.

The door banged open and, shouting and laughing, the two lads ushered in Nevyn. Although he joked easily with the boys, the old man turned grim when he reached Maddyn.

‘You were right to stay out here, lad. I like that new shirt you’re wearing.’

Belyan automatically began rolling up the old one, hiding the fox-blazoned yokes inside the roll.

‘Tieryn Devyr is up at Brynoic’s dun,’ Nevyn went on. ‘He’s going to assign the lands to his son, Romyl, and give the lad part of his warband to hold them. That means men who know you will be riding the roads around here. I think we’ll just go home the back way.’

For several days after, Maddyn debated the risk of riding on his own, then finally went down to see Belyan by a roundabout way. When he led the horse into the farmstead, it seemed deserted. The wooden wagon was gone, and not even a dog ran out to bark at him. As he stood there, puzzling, Belyan came walking out of the barn with a wooden bucket in one hand. Maddyn liked her firm but supple stride.

‘Da’s taken the lads down to market,’ she said. ‘We had extra cheeses to sell.’

‘Will they be gone long?’

‘Till sunset, most like. I was hoping you’d ride our way today.’

Maddyn took his horse to the barn and tied him up in a stall next to one of the cows, where he’d be out of the wind and, more importantly, out of sight of the road. When he went into the house, he found Belyan putting more wood in the hearth. She wiped her hands on her skirts, then glanced at him with a small, secretive smile.

‘It’s cold in my bedchamber, Maddo. Come sit down by the fire.’

They sat down together in the soft clean straw by the hearth. When he touched her hair with a shy stroke, she laid impatient hands on his shoulders. When he kissed her, she slipped her hands behind his neck and pulled him down to her as smoothly as if she were gathering in a sheaf of wheat.

The winter was slow in coming that year. There was one flurry of snow, then only the cold under a clear sky, day after day of aching frost and wind. Although the pale sun managed to melt the first snowfall, rime lay cold and glittering on the brown fields and in the ditches along the roads. Maddyn spent the days out of sight in Brin Toraedic, because Lord Romyl’s men were often out prowling, riding back and forth to the village to exercise their horses and to get themselves out of the dun. Maddyn would sleep late, then practise his harp by the hour with the Wildfolk for an audience. Sometimes Nevyn would sit and listen, or even make a judicious comment about his singing or the song itself, but the old man spent much of his day deep within the broken hill. Maddyn never had the nerve to ask him what he did there.

One afternoon when Nevyn was gone, Maddyn remembered a song about Dilly Blind, the trickiest Wildfolk of them all. Since it was a children’s song, he hadn’t heard it in years, but he ran through it several times and made up fresh verses when he couldn’t remember the old. The Wildfolk clustered close and listened, enraptured. When he finally finished it, for the briefest of moments he thought he saw – or perhaps did indeed see – little faces, little eyes, peering up at him. Then, suddenly, they were gone. When Nevyn returned later, Maddyn mentioned his vision – if such it was – to the old man, who looked honestly startled.

‘If you do start seeing them, lad, for the sake of every god, don’t go telling people about it. You’ll be mocked within a bare thread of your life.’

‘Oh, I know that, sure enough. I’m just puzzled. I never had so much as a touch of the second sight before.’

‘Truly? That’s odd, because bards so often do have the sight. But anyway, lad, you’re doubtless picking it up just from being here with us. Suppose you laid your sword down close to the fire in the hearth. In time, the blade would grow hot, even though it wasn’t in the fire itself. Being in a centre of dweomer power can do that to a man with a sensitive mind.’

With a little shudder Maddyn looked around the towering stone chamber. A centre of power? he thought; truly, you can feel it sometimes.

‘Well,’ Maddyn said at last. ‘It was a strange chance that brought me here.’

‘Perhaps. But naught happens to a dweomerman by chance, especially not in these cursed and troubled times.’

‘I take it the wars ache your heart.’

‘Of course they do, dolt! If you had any sense, they’d ache yours too.’

‘Well, good sir, I’ve never known anything but war. Sometimes I wonder if the days of the old kingdom are like the tales in some of my songs – splendid to hear, but never true.’

‘Oh, they were real enough. There was a time when a man could ride the roads in peace, and the farmers gather in their crops in safety, and a man have a son and feel sure that he’d live to see the lad live to be grown and married. Good days, they were, and I pray constantly that they’ll come again.’

Maddyn felt a sudden longing to know that kind of life. Before, he’d wanted battle glory and honour, taken it for granted that there would always be wars to provide them, but all at once he wondered if glory were the great prize he’d always believed it to be. Later, when he went out to walk on the top of the hill, he found that the snow had been falling all morning. For miles around, the world was soft and white under a pearly grey sky, the trees etched against the horizon, the distant village snug under a breath of smoke from its chimneys. He’d seen views like it a hundred times and thought nothing of them, but now it was beautiful, so beautiful that he wondered if he’d ever really looked at anything before he’d ridden up to the gates of the Otherlands.

At night, whenever the weather allowed, Maddyn rode down to see Belyan. At first he was afraid that Bannyc would resent this outlaw who’d ridden in and taken his daughter, but the old man regarded him with a certain pleasant indifference. Her sons were a different matter. The younger one found him a nuisance, and the elder frankly hated him. Maddyn took to arriving late at the farm, when he could be sure they were asleep, because Belyan made it clear that the lads came first in her heart – fair enough, he thought, since they both knew he’d be riding on in the spring. Yet, whenever he held her in his arms, the spring seemed very far away.

Once the snows came in force, it was hard to ride down to her bed as often as Maddyn wanted. One night, after a frustrating week of being snowbound in the hill, he left early and pushed his horse hard through the heavy drifts. He stabled his horse, then climbed in through Belyan’s chamber window, pushing the oiled hides aside and cursing while she laughed at him. Although she had a freestanding clay stove in the chamber, it was still bitter cold. He threw off his cloak, pulled off his boots, then got into bed before undressing the rest of the way.

‘Your chamber’s as cold as the blasted roads!’

‘Then come over to my side of the bed. It’s nice and warm.’

When he took her in his arms, she turned to him greedily with a simple, direct passion that still took him by surprise. She didn’t know how to be coy and flirtatious like the other women he’d had. When would she have had the time to learn, he wondered, and it didn’t bother him one whit. Later, as he lay drowsing between sleep and waking, he found himself considering staying in the spring. Bannyc would be glad to have an extra man to help work the farm; Bell would be glad to have him in her bed every night; the lads could gradually be won over. While Maddyn didn’t love her, he liked her, and it would do well enough all round. Yet he didn’t dare stay. For the first time, he saw clearly that he was indeed running for his life. Any lord in Cantrae who recognized him would turn him over to Devyr for hanging. He was going to have to ride west, ride fast and far enough to find a lord who’d never heard of him or Lord Brynoic and one who was desperate enough for men to take him on with no questions asked. Most likely, he’d end up riding for one of the enemy sides in the long wars, a Cerrmor ally or an Eldidd lord. He kissed Belyan awake and made love to her again, simply to drown his thoughts of the future ahead of him.

That night the snow was so bad that Maddyn risked staying the night. It was pleasant, sleeping with his arms around Bell, so pleasant that he was tempted to risk doing it often, but when he came out of her chamber in the morning, he found some of Bannyc’s neighbours there, eating bread and drinking ale while they chatted by the hearth. Although they were pleasant to him, Maddyn had the grim experience of finding himself the undoubted focus of four pairs of eyes and – no doubt – a good bit of future gossip. If any of that gossip reached the wrong ears, he would be in danger. After that, he rode only at night and left her house well before dawn.

Yet for all his precautions, the night came when Maddyn ran across some of Romyl’s men. Just at midnight, he was picking his way across the fields on his way back to Brin Toraedic. A cold wind drove torn and scudding clouds across the sky, alternately covering and sailing free of a full moon. He could see the hill close by, a jagged blackness rising out of the meadow and looming against the sky, when he heard the jingle of bridles carrying in the clear night air. Horses snorted; hoofbeats were trotting fast down the road. Nearby was a leafless copse, an imperfect shelter, but the best Maddyn could find. As he guided his horse into the trees, the branches dropped snow, scattering it over his hood and cloak. Maddyn sat as still as he could and waited. He refused to make an obvious dash for the hill. If he were going to be caught, he didn’t want Nevyn hanged with him.

Trotting in tight formation, six riders came down the road. When they were directly abreast of the copse, they paused and wheeled their horses into a ring to argue about which direction to take at the crossroads ahead. Maddyn could clearly hear that they were more than a bit drunk. In an almost tangible swirl of concern and bewilderment, the Wildfolk clustered around him to listen as the argument in the road went on and on. Then Maddyn’s horse stamped, shivering uncontrollably in the cold with a jingle of tack. One of the riders turned in the saddle and saw him. Maddyn urged his horse slowly forward; he would rather surrender, he realized, than put Nevyn, and possibly Belyan, at risk.

‘Danger,’ he whispered to the Wildfolk. ‘Tell Nevyn.’

He felt some of them rush away, but the others crowded round, a trembling of small lives like gusts of warmer air.

‘You!’ the rider called. ‘Come forward!’

With a sinking heart, Maddyn recognized Selyn, one of Devyr’s men who knew him well. With Selyn at their head, the riders trotted over, spreading out in a semicircle to surround and trap him. Since it was a hopeless situation, Maddyn rode out to meet them. In the moonlight, he could just see an expression of exaggerated surprise on Selyn’s face.

‘Maddyn! Oh by the gods!’ His voice was a frightened hiss. ‘It’s long past Samaen.’

One of the others yelped sharply, like a kicked hound. The group pulled their horses to an abrupt halt, just as Maddyn felt the Wildfolk rushing about him in panic, lifting and trembling the edges of his cloak and hood.

‘Now, here, Maddo lad, don’t harm us. I used to be a friend of yours. It was only my lord’s orders that ever made us lift a sword against you. May peace be yours in the Otherlands.’

As Selyn began edging his nervous horse backwards, the truth hit Maddyn: Selyn, who thought he was dead with all the rest of Brynoic’s warband, could only assume that he was seeing Maddyn’s spirit. The thought made him laugh aloud. It was the perfect thing to do; the entire squad began edging their horses backwards, but they never took their terrified eyes off Maddyn’s face. Such profound attention was more than any bard could resist. Maddyn tossed his head back and howled, a long eerie note, sending his trained voice as far and high as he could. A rider shrieked, and the sound broke the squad.

‘Spirits!’ Selyn screamed. ‘Save yourselves.’

With a giggle of pure, delighted malice, the Wildfolk threw themselves forward among the horses. In the moonlight Maddyn could see them: a thickening in the air like frost crystals, little faces, little hands, fingers that began pinching every horse and rider they could reach. The horses kicked and plunged; the riders yelled, slapping at their mounts with their reins as they desperately tried to turn them. When Maddyn howled a second time, the horses lurched sideways and charged for the road at a gallop with their riders clinging to their necks. Maddyn sat in his saddle and sobbed with laughter until the Wildfolk returned. In a companionable crowd, he rode back to the hill, whose legend had just grown a good bit larger. As he led his horse into the stable, Nevyn came running to meet him.

‘What’s all this about danger?’

‘All over now, good sir, but it’s a pretty tale. I think I’ll make a song about it.’

First, though, he simply told the tale to Nevyn over a tankard of mulled ale, and the old man laughed his dry chuckle that always sounded rusty from long disuse.

‘The battlefield where your warband fell is only about five miles from here, certainly close enough for a haunt. One thing, though, if they ride back in the morning, they’ll see the hoofprints of your horse.’ Nevyn looked at a spot close to his right knee. ‘Do us a favour, will you? Take some of the lads and go out to the field. Do you remember the tracks Maddyn’s horse made? You do? Splendid! Sweep those away like a good lad, but leave all the other tracks where they are. We’ll have a good jest on those nasty men.’

Maddyn could feel that the crowd was gone, except for a tiny blue sprite. All at once, he saw her clearly, perched on his knee and sucking her finger while she stared up at him with alarmingly vacant green eyes. When she smiled, she revealed a mouth full of needle-sharp, bright blue teeth.

‘Oho!’ Nevyn said. ‘You see her, don’t you?’

‘I do, at that. Will I go on seeing the Wildfolk after I leave here?’

‘I’d imagine so, but I don’t truly know. I haven’t come across a puzzle like you before, lad.’

Maddyn had the ungrateful thought that if he were a puzzle, then Nevyn was the greatest riddle in the world.

The next afternoon, Nevyn rode down to the village to hear the gossip and brought back the tale of Maddyn’s meeting with the squad in its new and doubtless permanent form. Lord Romyl’s men had foolishly ridden by Brin Toraedic in moonlight, when every lackwit knows you should avoid the hill like poison during the full moon. There, sure enough, they’d seen the ghosts of Lord Brynoic’s entire warband, charging across the meadow just as they had during the last battle. Yet in the morning, when the riders went back to look, they found the hoofprints of only their own horses.

‘“And what did they think they’d find?” the tavernman says to me,’ Nevyn said with a dry laugh. ‘Everyone knows that spirits don’t leave tracks.’

‘So they did come back, did they? I’m cursed glad you thought of that.’

‘Oh, it’s one thing to be spirit-plagued by moonlight, quite another to think things over in the cold light of dawn. But they found naught for all their looking, and now none of Lord Romyl’s men will ride near the hill, even in daylight.’

‘Isn’t that a handy thing?’

‘It is, but ye gods, you warriors are a superstitious lot!’

‘Oh, are we now?’ Maddyn had to laugh at the old man’s indignation. ‘You show me a world full of spirits, send those spirits out to run me an errand, and then have the gall to call me superstitious!’

Nevyn laughed for a good long time over that.

‘You’re right, and I apologize, Maddyn my lad, but surely you can’t deny that your average swordsman believes that the strangest things will bring him luck, either good or ill.’

‘True, but you just can’t know what it’s like to ride in a war. Every time you saddle up, you know blasted well that maybe you’ll never ride back. Who knows what makes one man fall and another live in battle? Once I saw a man who was a splendid fighter – oh, he swung a sword like a god, not a man – and he rode into this particular scrap with all the numbers on his side, and you know what happened? His cinch broke, dumped him into the mob, and he was kicked to death. And then you see utter idiots, with no more swordcraft than a farmer’s lad, ride straight for the enemy and come out without a scratch. So after a while, you start believing in luck and omens and anything else you can cursed well turn up, just to ease the pain of not knowing when you’ll die.’

‘I can see that, truly.’

Nevyn’s good humour was gone; he looked saddened to tears as he thought things over. Seeing him that way made Maddyn melancholy himself, and thoughtful.

‘I suppose that’s what makes us all long for dweomer leaders,’ Maddyn went on slowly. ‘You can have the best battle plan in the world, but once the javelins are thrown and the swordplay starts, ah by the hells, not even the gods could think clearly. So call it superstition all you want, but you want a leader who’s got a touch of the dweomer about him, someone who can see more than you can, and who’s got the right luck.’

‘If being lucky and clear-sighted made a man dweomer, lad, then the world would be full of men like me.’

‘Well, that’s not quite what I meant, good sir. A dweomer leader would be different, somehow. Doubtless none exist, but we all want to believe it. You’d love to ride for a man like that, you tell yourself, someone the gods favour, someone you can believe in. Even if you died for him, it’d be worth it.’

Nevyn gave him such a sharp look that Maddyn hesitated, but the old man gestured for him to go on. ‘This is incredibly interesting.’

‘Then my thanks, truly. Now, Slwmar of Dun Deverry’s a great and generous man, but he’s not a dweomer leader. I always had trouble believing he was the true King, frankly, even though I always pledged him that way because my lord did. He used to walk among us men every now and again, talking to us and calling us by name, and it was splendid of him, but he was just an ordinary sort of lord, not a true king.’

‘Indeed! And what should the true King look like, then?’

‘Well, there should be somewhat of the dweomer about him. You should just be able to tell he’s the true King. I mean, he doesn’t have to be as tall as one of the gods, or as handsome, either, but you could look at him and know in your very soul that he was meant to rule. He’d have splendid good luck, and the gods would send omens of the things he was going to do. By the hells, I’d follow a man like that to the death, and most of the kingdom would, too, I’ll wager.’

With a wild, half-mad grin, Nevyn got up and began pacing furiously back and forth in front of the hearth.

‘Have I said somewhat stupid?’ Maddyn said.

‘What? You’ve just said the best thing I’ve heard in many a long year, actually. Lad, you can’t know how glad I am that I dragged you back from the gates of the Otherlands. My thanks for making me see what’s been under my nose all along. I’ll tell you one great fault of the dweomer. You get so used to using it and looking in strange places for stranger lore that you forget to use the wits the gods gave you in the first place!’

Utterly confused, Maddyn could only stare at him as he cackled and paced back and forth like a madman. Finally Maddyn went to bed, but when he woke restlessly in the middle of the night, he saw Nevyn standing by the hearth and smiling into the fire.

Over the next couple of snowbound weeks, Nevyn spent much time brooding over the idea that Maddyn had so inadvertently handed him, a splendid repayment for his healing. Although complex in its details, the plan was peculiarly simple at its core and thus possible. At the moment, things looked as if the wars might rage until the end of time, ravaging the kingdom until there wasn’t a man left fit to fight. After so many years of civil war, after so many leaders slain and buried, so many loyal followers wiped out, it seemed to men’s minds that each of the claimants had as good a right as the next one to the throne. When it came to figuring bloodlines and genealogies, even the priests had a hard time telling who was most fit to be King of all Deverry. The lords, therefore, pledged to the man who seemed to offer an immediate advantage, and their sons changed the alliance if the advantage changed.

But what if a man appeared who impressed his followers as the true King, a dweomer leader, as Maddyn said, whom half the kingdom would follow to the throne or the grave? Then at last, after one final gruesome bloodbath, the kingdom would come to peace. Dweomer leader, is it? Nevyn would think; give me a decent man, and I’ll make him look dweomer soon enough. It would be easy – disgustingly easy as he thought about it – to surround a good-looking man with glamour, to manipulate the omens around him, to pull a few cheap tricks just like the one that the Wildfolk had pulled on Selyn and his friends. They would have the troops on their knees and their lords along with them, all cheering the one true King. He realized, too, in those nights of brooding, that he shouldn’t have been surprised that Maddyn would bring him the idea. In his last life, as young Ricyn down in Cerrmor, he’d been the captain of a warband pledged to just such a dweomer leader, Gweniver of the Wolf, whose madness and undoubted piety to the Dark Goddess had combined to blaze her round with false glamour like a fire.

Thinking about her and her grim fate made Nevyn wary. Did he have the right to subject another man to the forces that had torn her fragile mind apart? He would have to be very careful, to wait and scheme until he found a candidate strong enough for the burden. He wondered, too, if he would even be allowed to use dweomer for such a purpose. He spent long hours in meditation, stripped his soul bare and begged for aid from the Lords of Light. In time, his answer grew slowly in his mind: the kingdom needs peace above all else, and if something goes wrong, then you will be the sacrifice. That he could accept, thinking of himself as the servant of, and the sacrifice for, the King he would create.

The permission given, it was time to plan. While Maddyn was away at Belyan’s, or sleeping his boredom away, Nevyn would talk through the fire to the other dweomerfolk of the kingdom, particularly Aderyn in the west and a woman who bore the honorary name of Rommerdda in the north. Everyone was so weary of war that they were eager to throw their dice on Nevyn’s long gamble.

‘But we can’t do this alone,’ Rommerdda remarked one night. ‘We’ll have to win over the priests. Can we?’

‘I intend to start turning the earth for this particular garden in the spring. At the same time, we can start scouting around for the proper prince.’

Her face dancing in the firelight, Rommerdda looked sceptical. She wore her long white hair in two braids like a lass of the Dawntime, and her face was even more wrinkled than his, so old, so exhausted that Nevyn knew she would never see the end of this work they were planning. Of all the dweomerfolk in the kingdom, only he and Aderyn had unnaturally long lives, each for their separate reasons. There would, however, soon be another Rommerdda to take up the task in hand.

And it was going to be a hard one: find the right man, then lay the proper omens for his coming with the aid of the priests. Once the kingdom lived for the day when the true King appeared, then Nevyn could orchestrate his moves. As he brooded over the details, Nevyn began to long for spring. The sooner he got started, the better.