The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage

The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage Katharine Kerr Book nine of the celebrated Deverry series, an epic fantasy rooted in Celtic mythology that intricately interweaves human and elven history over several hundred years.A new chapter of the history of the kingdom of Deverry – an ideal starting point for newcomers to Katharine Kerr’s gorgeous epic, and a satisfying continuation of the saga for those readers who have followed the series through its previous incarnations.In Cengarn, Rhodry of the silver daggers – half-elven, half-human – is beset by strange dreams. A dark-haired enchantress, the Raven Woman, is haunting his sleep, and he can find no release, even in the arms of Dallandra, his lover. Little does he know that his feud with the Raven Woman goes back over three hundred years, to a time when the very throne of Deverry stood under threat of civil war. KATHARINE KERR THE RED WYVERN Book One of The Dragon Mage COPYRIGHT (#) Voyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in Great Britain by Voyager 1997 Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1997 Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780006478607 Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007378319 Version: 2014-08-15 MAP (#) DEDICATION (#) For Jo Clayton AUTHOR’S NOTE (#) I must apologize to the faithful readers of this on-going project who have had to wait so long for the volume now in hand. I have been much distracted of late by legal matters, in particular the suits and counter-suits concerning a certain Elvish scholar of Elvish and his libellous attacks upon me. When Gwerbert Aberwyn ruled in our favour in Malover, my publishers and I hoped that the matter had ended at last, but alas, our opponent saw fit to appeal to the High King himself. After an ennervating journey by coach and barge on the part of myself and a representative of my publisher, we settled into a suite at a public guesthouse in Dun Deverry and filed our counter-suit. While we waited for our proceedings to be summoned, I once again applied myself to the craft for which I am better suited than legal wrangling, that of writing novels. Some months later, we are still waiting. Let us hope that the High King’s courts take up and dispose of this matter soon. CONTENTS Cover (#u08a2df2b-1FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474) Title Page (#u08a2df2b-2FFF-11e9-9e03-0cc47a520474) Copyright (#) Map (#) Dedication (#) Author’s Note (#) Prologue: Winter, in a Far Distant Land (#) Part One: The North Country (#) Part Two: Deverry, 849 (#) Part III: The North Country (#) Epilogue: Spring, in a Far Distant Land (#) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) Appendices (#) Glossary (#) About the Author (#) Other Books By (#) About the Publisher (#) PROLOGUE (#) Winter, in a Far Distant Land (#) Some say that all the worlds of the many-splendoured universe lie nested one within the other like the layers of an onion. I say to you that they lie all braided and wound round and that no man nor woman either can map all the roads of their twisting. The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid Domnall Breich knew the hills around Loch Ness well enough to know himself lost. The hunting accident that had killed his horse and separated him from his companions had happened some two miles straight south, or at least, in that direction and at that distance as closely as he could reckon. By now he should have reached the frozen dirt road that led back to the village and safely. He stopped, peering through the rising mists at the snow-streaked valley, stippled here and there with pines. The gathering dark of the winter’s shortest day shrouded Ben Bulben, the one landmark that might guide him through the mists. When he glanced at the sky, he realized that it was going to snow. ‘Mother Mary, forgive my sins. Tonight I’ll be seeing your son in his glory.’ They always said that freezing was as pleasant a death as any, more like falling asleep to wake to fire and sleet and then the candlelight that would guide you to the gates of Heaven or Hell. Domnall felt no fear, only surprise, that a man like him would die not in battle or bloodfeud but in the snow, lost like a lame sheep, but then the priests always said a man could never tell the end God had in store for him. Ahead against the grey of clouds, the western sky gleamed dull red at the horizon. When he faced the glow and looked round, he saw off to his right, at the edge of his vision, a tall tree. He turned and sighted upon it. His last hope lay in keeping a straight course toward the north, the general direction of the loch, which ran southwest to northeast. If he reached the edge of that dark gash in the land, he could follow it and head for Old Malcolm’s steading, which he just might, if Jesu favoured him, live to reach. Worth a try, and if he were doomed, he might as well die on his feet. He wrapped his plaid tight around him, pulled his cloak closed around it, and walked north. The first thing he noticed about the tree was that it grew straight and remarkably tall. As the sunset faded into darkness, he noticed the second thing, that it was burning. Here was a bit of luck! If he could nourish a fire against the snow, it would keep him through the night. As he drew close, he noticed the third thing, that although half of the tree blazed with fire, the other half grew green with new leaf. For a moment he could neither speak nor breathe while all the blood in his veins seemed to freeze like water spilled into snow. Was he already dead then? ‘Jesu and the saints preserve,’ he whispered. ‘May God guide my soul.’ ‘It’s a waste of your breath to call upon the man from Galilee,’ the voice said. ‘He doesn’t do us any favours, and so we do none for him.’ Domnall spun around to find a young man standing nearby. In the light of the blazing tree he could see that the fellow was blond and pale, with lips as red as sour cherries and eyes the colour of the sea in summer. He’d wrapped himself in a huge cloak of solid blue wool with a hood. ‘And are you one of the Seelie Host, then?’ Domnall said. ‘The men of your country would call me so. There’s a great grammarie been woven at this spot, and it’s not one of my doing, which vexes me. What are you doing here?’ ‘I got lost. I wish you no harm, nor would I rob you and yours.’ ‘Well-spoken, and for that you may live. Which you won’t do if you stay out in this weather much longer. I need a messenger for a plan I’m weaving, and it’s a long one with many strands. Tell me, do you want to live, or do you want to die in the snow?’ ‘To live, of course, if God be willing.’ ‘Splendid! Then tell me your name and the one thing you wish most in all the world.’ Domnall considered. The Seelie Host were a tricky bunch, and some priests said them no better than devils. Certainly you were never supposed to tell them your name. Something touched his face, something cold and wet. In the light from the blazing tree he could see snow falling in a scatter of first flakes. ‘My name is Domnall Breich. I most desire an honourable death in battle, serving my liege lord.’ The spirit rolled his eyes. ‘Oh come now, surely you can think of a better boon than that! Something that would please you and bring you joy.’ ‘Well, then, I love with all my heart the Lady Jehan, but I’m far beneath her notice.’ ‘That’s a better wishing.’ The fellow smiled in a lazy sort of way. ‘Very well, Domnall Breich. You shall have the Lady Jehan for your own true wife. In return, I ask only this, that you tell no one of what you see here tonight except for your son, when he’s reached thirteen winters of age.’ The fellow suddenly frowned and drew his hands out from the folds of his cloak. For a moment he made a show of counting on his fingers. ‘Well, thirteen will do. Numbers and time mean naught to the likes of me. Whenever you think him grown to a man, anyway, tell him what you will see here tonight, but tell no one else.’ ‘Good sir, I can promise you that with all my heart. No one but his own son would believe a man who told of things like this.’ ‘Done, then!’ The fellow raised his hands and clapped them three times together. ‘Turn your back on the tree, Domnall Breich, and tell me what you see.’ Domnall turned and peered through the thin fall of snow. Not far away stood a tangle of ordinary trees, dark against the greater dark of night, and beyond them a stretch of water, wrinkled and forbidding in the gleam of magical fire. ‘The shore of the loch. Has it been here all this while, and I never saw it?’ ‘It hasn’t. It’s the shore of a loch, sure enough, but’s not the one you were hoping to find. Do you see the rocks piled up, and one bigger than all the rest?’ ‘I do.’ ‘On top of the largest rock you’ll find chained a silver horn. Take it and blow, and you’ll have shelter against the night.’ ‘My thanks. And since I can’t ask God to bless you, I’ll wish you luck instead.’ ‘My thanks to you, then. Oh, wait. Face me again.’ When he did so, the fellow reached out a ringed hand and laid one finger on Domnall’s lips. ‘Till sunset tomorrow you’ll speak and be understood and hear and understand among the folk of the isle, but after that, their way of speaking will mean naught to you. Now you’d best hurry. The snow’s coming down.’ The fellow disappeared as suddenly as a blown candle flame. With a brief prayer to all the saints at once, Domnall hurried over to the edge of the loch – not Ness, sure enough, but a narrow finger of water that came right up to his feet rather than lying below at the foot of a steep climb down. By the light of the magical tree he found the scatter of boulders. The silver horn lay waiting, chained with silver as well. When he picked it up and blew, the sound seemed very small and thin to bring safety through the rising storm, but after a few minutes he heard someone shouting. ‘Hola, hola! Where are you?’ ‘Here on the shore!’ Domnall called back. ‘Follow the light of the fire.’ Out of the tendrilled snow shone a bobbing gleam, which proved to be a lantern held aloft in someone’s hand. The magical fire behind cast just enough light for Domnall to see a long narrow boat, with its wooden prow carved like the head of a dragon, coming toward him. One man held the lantern while six others rowed, chanting to keep time. As the boat drew near, the oars swung up and began backing water, holding her steady as her side hove to. ‘It’s a cold night to ask you to wade out to us,’ the lantern bearer called, ‘but we’re afraid to run her ashore with the rocks and all in the dark.’ ‘Better I freeze seeking safety than freeze standing here like a dolt. I’m on my way.’ He hitched his plaid up around his waist and bundled the cloak around it, then stepped into the lake. The cold water stole his breath and drove claws into his legs, but it stood shallow enough for him to reach the dragon boat, where hands of flesh and blood reached down to pull him aboard. ‘Swing around, lads! Let’s get him to a fireside.’ Shivering and huddling in the dry part of his plaid, Domnall crouched in the stern of the boat as they headed out from shore. In the yellow pool of lantern light he could see the man who held it, a fellow on the short side but stocky. He wore a hooded cloak, pinned with a silver brooch in the shape of a dragon. In the uncertain light Domnall could just make out his lined face and grizzled beard. ‘Where are we going, if I may ask?’ Domnall said. ‘The isle of Haen Marn.’ ‘Ah.’ Domnall had never heard of the place in his life, and he’d spent all twenty years of it in this corner of Alban. ‘My thanks.’ No one spoke to him again until they reached the dark island, looming suddenly out of falling snow, a muffled but precipitous shape against the night. A wooden jetty appeared as well, snow-shrouded in the lantern light, and with a chant and yell from the oarsmen, the boat turned to. One man rose, grabbed a hawser, and tossed it over one of the bollards on the jetty to pull them in. With some help Domnall managed to scramble out, but his feet and legs had gone numb and clumsy. The man with the lantern hurried him along a gravelled path and up a slope, where he could see a broad, squarish manse. Around the cracks of door and shutter gleamed firelight. ‘We’ll get you warm soon enough,’ the lantern-bearer said, then banged upon the door. ‘Open up! We’ve got a guest, and all by Evandar’s doing.’ ‘Evandar? Is that the man of the Seelie Host? You know him?’ ‘Better than I wish to, I’ll tell you, far far better than that. Now come in, lad, and let’s get you warm.’ The door was creaking open to flood them with firelight and the smell of resinous smoke. They brushed past the servant woman who’d opened it and hurried into a great hall where fires crackled in two hearths of slabbed stone, one on either side of the square room. The walls were made of massive oak planks, scrubbed down and polished smooth, then carved in one vast pattern of engraved lines rubbed with red earth. Looping vines, spirals, animals, interlace – they all tangled together in great swags across each wall, then swooped up at each corner to the rafters before plunging down again in a riot of carving … Domnall followed his rescuers across the carpet of braided straw to the hearth at the far side. At a scatter of tables sat a scatter of men, all short and bearded, and in a carved chair right up near the fire a lady, wearing a pair of drab loose dresses and heavy with child. Like the men around her, she was not very tall, more like the grain-fed Sassenach far to the south in stature, and since her pale hair hung in a single braid, Sassenach is what he assumed her to be. Domnall knelt at her feet. ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘My thanks and my blessing to you, for the saving of my life.’ ‘My men saved you, not me,’ she said in a low, musical voice. ‘But you’re welcome in my hall.’ She glanced round. ‘Otho! Fetch him a tankard and some bread, will you?’ ‘As my lady Angmar commands.’ One of the men, a bare four feet tall, and white of hair and beard, rose from a table. ‘Sit in the straw by the hearth, lad, and spread that bit of cloth you’re draped in out to dry.’ They had to be Sassenach, all of them, because they wore trousers and heavy shirts instead of proper plaids and tunics, but he wasn’t about to hold their birth against them after the way they’d rescued him. Since the hearth was a good ten feet long, Domnall could move a decorous distance away from the lady to sit near a brace of black and tan hounds. He unwound his plaid, stretched it out on the straw to dry, and sat in his tunic by the fire to struggle with the wet bindings of his boots. By the time he had them off, Otho had returned with the promised tankard and a basket of bread. ‘A thousand thanks,’ Domnall said. ‘So, this is Haen Marn, is it? I’ve never seen your isle before.’ ‘Hah!’ Otho snorted profoundly. ‘And I wish I never had either.’ ‘Uncle!’ A young man sprang up from his seat at a table. ‘Hold your tongue!’ ‘Shan’t! I rue the day that ever we travelled to this cursed place. I just get myself home and what happens? Hah! Wretched dweomer and –’ ‘Uncle!’ The young man hurried over. ‘Hush!’ ‘You hold your tongue, young Mic, and show some respect for your elders.’ The two glared at each other, hands set on hips. During all of this Lady Angmar never moved or spoke, merely stared into the fire. Behind her, shoved against the wall, stood another carved chair, fit for a lord but empty. Domnall wondered if she’d been widowed; it seemed a good guess if a sad one. ‘Well, now,’ Domnall said. ‘Do you all hail from the southern lands?’ ‘Who knows?’ Otho snapped. ‘It could have been any wretched direction at all!’ ‘You’ll forgive my uncle, good sir,’ Mic said. ‘He’s getting old and a bit daft.’ He grabbed Otho’s arm. ‘Come and sit down.’ Muttering under his breath, Otho allowed himself to be dragged away. Domnall had the uneasy feeling that the old man wasn’t daft in the least but speaking of grammarie. Yet his mind refused to take that idea in. He found it easier to believe in a lady sent away by her brothers after a husband’s death, or perhaps even a lady in political exile, allowed to take a small retinue away with her. The Sassenach chiefs were always fighting among themselves, and he’d heard that their women could do what they wished with their bride-price if their husbands died. The welcome fire, the warm straw, the steamy reek of his drying cloak and plaid, the taste of ale and bread – it all seemed too solid, too normal to allow the presence of magic. As he found himself yawning, he wondered if he’d merely imagined the man named Evandar and the blazing tree. They might merely have been the mad visions of a man come near death by cold. At length Lady Angmar turned and considered him with eyes so sad they were painful to look upon. ‘I can have the servants give you a chamber,’ she said, ‘or would you prefer to sleep here by the banked fire?’ ‘The fireside will do me well, my lady, and I’d not cause you any more trouble.’ Her mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile. ‘There’s been trouble enough, truly,’ she said, then returned to watching the fire. Angmar never spoke again. At length she rose and with her elderly maidservant left the hall. Young Mic brought Domnall a blanket; Otho banked up the fire; they took the lantern and left him with the dogs to curl up and sleep. When he woke cold grey light edged the shutters. Otho was just letting the whining dogs out at the door. Stretching and yawning, Domnall sat up as the old man came stumping over, poker and tongs in hand, to mend up the fire. ‘I’ll get out of your way, good sir,’ Domnall said. ‘You’re a well-spoken lad.’ ‘It becomes a Christian man to watch his speaking.’ Otho glanced puzzled at him. ‘A what kind of man?’ he said. ‘A Christian man, one of Lord Jesu’s followers.’ ‘Ah. Is this Yaysoo the overlord in these parts?’ ‘Er, well, you could say that.’ Otho hunkered down and began lifting the chunks of sod away from the coals. Domnall pulled on his boots, bound them tightly, then stood up to wrap and arrange his plaid. ‘The Lady Angmar? Has she lost her husband then?’ ‘Lost him good and proper,’ Otho said. ‘No one knows where he may be or if he lives or lies dead, and here she is, heavy with his child.’ ‘That’s a terrible sad thing.’ ‘It is, truly. If she knew he was dead, she could mourn him and get on with life, but as it is …’ ‘The poor lady, indeed.’ ‘It’s just like him, though, to do something so thoughtless. An inconvenient man, he was, all the way round. Ah, but who knows why women choose the men they do? She’s still wrapped in sorrow over her Rhodry Maelwaedd, no matter what we may say.’ That was doubly odd. What was a Sassenach woman doing married to some lord from Cymru? Or could this be the reason for her exile? Otho glared at the coals, then blew a bit of life into one of them and threw on a handful of tinder. ‘Do you have a home near here, lad?’ ‘I do. I serve Lord Douglas and live in his hall.’ ‘Then let me give you some advice. Get out of here while you can and head home, or you may never see it again. The snow’s stopped falling, and the boatmen will row you across.’ ‘I’ll need to give the lady my thanks first.’ ‘She’ll not come down till well past mid-day. Her grief rules her. Get out while you can, while the sunlight lasts, and that won’t be long, this time of year. I warn you.’ The old man glared up at him, his face red and sweaty as the fire leapt back to life. ‘Haen Marn travels where it wills, and faster than spit freezes on a day like this.’ Grammarie. His memories of the night before, of Evandar and the burning tree, came back like a slap in the face. Domnall grabbed his cloak from the straw. ‘Then I’ll be off. Good day to you, Otho.’ The old man snorted and turned back to his work. Outside Domnall found a day ice cold but clear, with the watery sun just rising – he’d slept late. At the door he paused, looking around him in the crisp day. Wind whined around walls and soughed in trees. He walked a few paces down the path, then turned back for a proper look at the place. In the sun the island seemed much larger than he’d thought the night past. The manse itself stood long and low, with behind it a rise of leafless trees, pale grey and shivering, and behind them a tall, squarish tower, perched on top of a little hill. He shaded his eyes and studied the tower for a moment; it sported three windows, one above the other, and a peaked roof covered in grey slates. In the middle window someone was standing and looking down. From his distance he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman, but he suddenly knew that he was being watched, studied as intensely as he’d been studying the tower. There was no malice in the gaze, merely a shocking closeness, as if that person in the window had dropped down to stand in front of him. With a shudder he turned away. He could feel the gaze follow him until he started walking toward the lake. When he risked a quick glance back he found the tower window empty. At the end of the gravelled path he saw the jetty and the dragon boat, riding high in the water. No one seemed to be about, but by the time he reached the jetty, the head boatman and his oarsmen came strolling down the shore to join him. Otho must have sent a servant down to rouse them, Domnall supposed. ‘Ready to go back, lad?’ the boatman said. ‘I am, though I wish I’d had a chance to pay my thanks to Lady Angmar.’ ‘Ah, she won’t be down for a good while yet.’ The boatman shook his head. ‘It’s a sad thing.’ They all boarded, and when the oarsmen settled at their thwarts, Domnall sat in the stern, out of their way. Here in daylight he noticed a bronze gong, hanging in a wooden frame. The boatman saw him looking at it. ‘That’s for the beasts in the lake,’ he announced. ‘In this cold weather they sink to the bottom and sleep, or some such thing. Like bears do, you know, in caves. In the summer, they’re a fair nuisance, but luckily they hate noise, and banging that gong keeps them off.’ ‘Beasts?’ Domnall said. ‘In the lake, truly. Huge they are, with long thin necks and mouths full of teeth. They can capsize a boat like this as easy as I can squash a bedbug.’ All the oarsmen nodded in solemn agreement. ‘Ah,’ Domnall said. ‘This lake must feed into Ness, then. That gives me hope.’ ‘Here! You know of the beasts?’ ‘Well, of one. It lives in our lake, though you don’t see it often.’ All the oarsmen glanced back and forth, nodding again, but in satisfaction this time. ‘I think me,’ their leader said, ‘that our island may have returned home. Interesting, eh, lads?’ The crew nodded but never spoke. The boatswain raised his hand and called out. When he shouted ‘three’, they all fell to their oars. Since sunlight brought safety, the oarsmen could pull the boat close enough in to the narrow strip of sandy beach for Domnall to leap ashore. Still, as a precaution he took off his boots. Better to land barefooted in damp sand and snow than try to walk in wet boots. He made it ashore safely, called out his final thanks with a wave as the boat shoved off, then sat on one of the boulders to put his boots back on. With quick hard strokes the dragon boat fled back across the water, so dark under a winter sky it looked black, toward the rise of the isle. As the sun touched the loch, mist steamed on the surface. All at once Haen Marn seemed very hard to see. Grammarie! It can be naught else, he told himself. The tall tree that had blazed with fire the night before had disappeared, but then, he’d expected no less. Ahead lay trouble enough without worrying about magic. He’d had a safe night instead of a cold death, but he still needed to reach home if he were to live through another one. The sun would stay up only a few hours at best, and if the clouds and snow returned, the light would fade even faster. When he thought over his yesterday’s misadventure, he could only assume that he hadn’t gone far enough north before turning to search for the road. In the fresh fall of snow the countryside stretched around him like a place in a dream, featureless and forbidding. He commended his soul to the saints and headed out in the direction he hoped would lead him eventually to the road – if he could see it when he found it. Yet in the event Lord Douglas himself, riding at the head of his men, found him and well before sunset. Domnall was just climbing a low rise when he heard the sound of horses and horns, blaring from the other side. He whooped, he yelled, he screamed out his lord’s name, and sure enough, in a flurry of answering calls they crested the rise and pulled up, waiting for him to flounder through the snow and reach them. ‘My lord!’ Domnall called out. ‘Never have I been so glad to see a man as you!’ With a toss of his head Lord Douglas laughed. A rider led forward a fresh horse and threw Domnall the reins. Calling out his thanks, Domnall mounted, then made a half-bow to his lord from the saddle. As the warband started off down the road, Douglas motioned him up to ride beside him. ‘How did you live through the night?’ Lord Douglas said. To lie to his lord galled him, but breaking a sworn promise would have galled more. ‘I hardly know. I prayed to every saint I could think of, and I found a hut of sorts. It stank of shepherd and sheep dung, but it was so small that I stayed warm. Well, warm enough.’ ‘Good. We give the saints and their priests enough in tithes. I’m glad to see they keep their side of the bargain.’ ‘My thanks for riding out after me, my lord. I thought you’d have given me up for dead.’ ‘I did, but you’re one of my men, and damned if I’d leave you out here without so much as a hunt.’ Douglas paused, considering something with an odd look on his face. ‘Besides, Jehan would have sent me to Hell herself if I hadn’t ridden out. You should have heard her, weeping and cursing and carrying on.’ ‘Your daughter, my lord?’ Domnall felt himself blushing and stammering. ‘But I never would have thought – I mean, uh er, my lord, I –’ ‘Hold your tongue, Domnall Breich. Her mother’s a strong-minded woman, and so is she, and I’ve spent all I’ve a mind to on her sister’s dowry. There’s not much left for hers, but you’d not be asking for much, would you?’ ‘My lord, if she would have me, I’d ask for naught but her and count myself the richest man alive.’ ‘Good. Then if you can provide for her, you can have her. What about that, eh?’ ‘My father promised me a steading if I were to marry. It’s not a great lord’s lands, but we’ll make do.’ ‘And I can spare you some milk cows and suchlike.’ Lord Douglas considering, frowning. ‘How long have the pair of you been hiding this secret?’ ‘My lord, I swear to you that I never knew she favoured me. I held her too far above me.’ ‘I believe you. She told me that she never knew she loved you until she thought you dead. It was my grief that made me see, she said.’ Remembering Evandar, Domnall found himself speechless. Had Jehan loved him at all until the night just past? But who was he to question this splendid miracle, this gift beyond hoping for? ‘Then, my lord,’ Domnall said, ‘I’ll count the night I just spent the luckiest of my life, for all that I thought I was a doomed man.’ When they rode back to the castle, the Lady Jehan stood waiting for them on the steps of the keep. As soon as Domnall dismounted, she rushed to him and flung herself into his arms. He held her tight, laid his face against her auburn hair, and thought himself the happiest man in God’s world. Yet even in his joy he remembered the lady of Haen Marn, mourning her lost lord. That night he went into the chapel and prayed for her, that someday Lord Jesu might let her see her Rhodry Maelwaedd again. PART ONE (#) The North Country (#) Autumn 1116 Ah, the beginnings of things! In another place have I discoursed upon the complexities that weave the origin of any event, whether great or small. Ponder this well, for if a magician would set a great ritual in motion, then he must guard every word he says and weigh each move he might make, down to the smallest gesture of one hand, for at the births of things their outcomes lie in danger, just as in its cradle an infant lies helpless and vulnerable to the malice of the world. The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll Loathing. Dallandra could put no other name to her feeling. Wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, she was standing on top of the wall that circled Gwerbret Cadmar’s dun. Below and around her the town of Cengarn spread out over three hills, bound them with curving streets, choked them with round stone houses, roofed in filthy black thatch. Behind most of the houses stood pens for cows and chickens and of course, dung heaps. Out on the muddy streets she could pick out movement – townsfolk hurrying about their business or perhaps a pack of half-starved dogs. Here and there stood trees, dark and leafless under the grey sky. The view behind her looked no better. Massive stone towers, joined together, formed the dark and brooding broch complex in the centre of the dun. The muddy ward of the enormous fort swarmed with dirty servants and warriors, cursing as they led their horses through a clutter of pigsties and sheep pens. A blacksmith was hammering at his forge; pages sang off-key or chivvied the serving wenches, who swore right back at them. In the crisp autumn air the stink rose high – human waste, animal waste, smoke, spoiled food – overpowering the pomander of Bardek cloves she held to her nose. You should be used to it by now, she told herself. She knew that she never would get used to it, no matter how long she lived among human beings. ‘Dalla!’ A man’s voice hailed her from below. ‘Care for a bit of company?’ Without waiting for her answer Rhodry Maelwaedd, who preferred to be known only as Rhodry from Aberwyn, began climbing the wooden ladder that led up the catwalk. A tall man, but oddly slender from shoulder to hip, he was handsome in his way with his dark blue eyes and ready smile. Despite the touches of silver in his raven-black hair and his weather-beaten skin, he looked young and moved fast and smoothly, too, like a young man. She knew, however, that he’d been born well over eighty winters ago. Although he shared her elven blood – his mother had been human, his father one of the Westfolk like Dallandra – he seemed to have distinctly human opinions about some things. He leaned on the parapet and grinned down at Cengarn. ‘A fine sight, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Maybe to you. I hate being shut up like this.’ ‘Well, no doubt. But I mean, it’s a fine thing to see the town standing and not some smoking heap of ruins.’ ‘Ah, now there I have to agree with you.’ But a few months before, Cengarn had stood in danger of being reduced to rubble, besieged as it was by a marauding army. Now the only threats hanging over the town were those faced by every city in Deverry each winter – disease, cold, and starvation. Dalla leaned on the parapet next to him, then stepped back. He smelled as bad as the rest of them. ‘What’s wrong?’ Rhodry said. ‘That stone is cold. Damp, too.’ ‘True enough.’ But he stayed where he was. ‘We should have snow soon.’ She nodded agreement and glanced at the lowering sky. A nice thick white blanket of snow – it would hide the dirt, she hoped, and freeze the offal and excrement hard enough to kill the stink. ‘There’s somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve been having some cursed strange dreams. Do you think they might mean dweomer at work?’ ‘I’ve no idea. Tell me about them.’ ‘Well, it’s the Raven Woman, you see. She comes to me in my dreams and taunts me.’ ‘That is serious. Here, let’s go somewhere warm, where we can sit and talk.’ They climbed down the ladder and picked their way across the mucky ward. As they passed, the various servants and riders out and about fell silent, turned to stare, and even, every now and then, crossed their fingers in the sign of warding against witchcraft. Dallandra ducked into a side door of the broch and out of sight of the crowded ward. ‘Safe,’ she whispered. ‘What?’ Rhodry said. ‘Do you feel danger coming our way?’ ‘My apologies. It’s the way everyone looks at me. I’m not used to being hated and feared.’ ‘Oh well, now, they don’t do that.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Why would they?’ ‘All the dweomer they’ve seen lately. Etheric battles, shapechangers, the way Alshandra would appear in the sky like a goddess – too many strange things, too many things they never should have seen. The Guardians live by their own laws, not those of the dweomer.’ Rhodry considered. ‘True enough,’ he said at last. ‘We’ve all seen more than we can explain away.’ Her chamber lay at the very top of a side tower; her door shared a landing with heaps of bundled arrows and piles of stones, ammunition stored against another siege like the one so recently lifted. The chamber itself was a slice of the round floor plan set off from the storage area by wickerwork partitions. Straw covered the plank floor, and wooden shutters hung closed over the single window. Rhodry perched on the wide windowsill and let her have the only chair. Before she sat down she heaped chunks and sticks of charcoal into a brass brazier, then snapped her fingers to summon the Wildfolk of Fire. When the charcoal glowed, she held her hands over the warmth. ‘Aren’t you cold there in the draughts?’ Dallandra said. ‘Not so I notice.’ She was always amazed at how little cold and other discomforts, even pain itself, bothered him; his dangerous life had turned his entire body into a weapon, hard as forged steel. Matters of magic, however, lay beyond his strength. ‘These cursed dreams!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’m half-afraid to sleep at night. You wouldn’t have a talisman, would you, to drive them away?’ ‘Nothing so simple. Tell me about them.’ ‘I’ve been thinking a good bit about them. They have a sameness to them. I’ll be walking somewhere I know well, this dun, say, or the town, or even Aberwyn. And all of a sudden, the air around me will turn thick, like, and a bluish colour, like looking into deep water, and there the bitch will be, stark naked and taunting me. She keeps saying she’ll have my head on a pike one fine day and other little pleasantries.’ Dallandra swore at hearing her worst fear confirmed. ‘You think it’s dweomer, don’t you?’ He was grinning his twisted smile. ‘I do. Whatever you do, don’t go chasing after her. She’s trying to draw your soul out of your body, you see.’ ‘And what then?’ ‘I don’t know. If she were a master of the dark dweomer, she’d be able to kill you, but she’s nothing of the sort. A poor little beginner, more like, who knows a few tricks and naught more.’ ‘A few tricks? Ye gods! She can turn herself into a blasted bird and fly, she can visit men in their dreams, and you call that tricks?’ ‘I do, because I’ve seen just enough of her to know that she doesn’t understand how she does it. Her power is all Alshandra’s doing, or it was. Now it’s Evandar’s wretched brother who’s causing all the trouble.’ Rhodry laughed, a high-pitched chortle that made her wince. ‘Tricks,’ he said again. ‘Well, if that’s all they are, you wouldn’t happen to have a few you could teach me, would you?’ ‘I don’t, but I’ve got a few of my own. I’ll scribe wards around you every night before you go to sleep.’ ‘Not so easy with me sleeping out in the barracks.’ ‘What? Is that where the chamberlain’s put you? After all you did this summer in the gwerbret’s service?’ ‘A silver dagger’s welcome is a short one and his honour shorter still.’ ‘That’s ridiculous! I’ll speak with the chamberlain for you.’ Dallandra hesitated, glancing around. ‘Here, if you don’t mind a bit of gossip, there’s room enough in this chamber for both of us.’ ‘And why would a silver dagger mind gossip?’ His smile had changed to something open and soft. ‘It’s your woman’s honour that’s at stake. But if there’s no one up here to know –’ ‘No one wants to live next to a sorcerer. Which has its uses. No one’s going to argue with me either, come to think of it. Why don’t you just fetch your gear and suchlike?’ ‘I’ll find young Jahdo and have him do it. He’s been earning his keep as my page.’ ‘It’s good of you to take the lad on like that.’ ‘Someone had to.’ Rhodry stood up with a shrug. ‘He’s no trouble. I’m teaching him to read.’ ‘I keep forgetting you know how.’ ‘It comes as a surprise to most people, truly. But Jill made him a promise before she was killed, that she’d teach him, and so, well, I’ve taken on that promise with her other one, that she’d get him home again in the spring.’ Later that afternoon, with the chamberlain spoken to and Jahdo found, Rhodry’s gear got moved into a chamber next to Dallandra’s own. With the job done, Jahdo himself, a skinny dark-haired lad, brought Dallandra a message. ‘My lady, the Princess Carra did ask me to come fetch you, if it be that you can come.’ ‘Is somewhat wrong?’ ‘It be the child, my lady, little Elessi.’ ‘Oh ye gods! Is she ill?’ ‘I know not. The princess, though, she be sore troubled.’ Dallandra found Carra – Princess Carramaena of the Westlands, to give her proper title – in the women’s hall, where she was sitting close to the hearth with her baby in her arms. Out in the centre of the half-round room, Lady Ocradda, the gwerbret’s wife and the mistress of Dun Cengarn, sat with her serving women around a wooden frame and stitched on a vast embroidery in the elven style, all looping vines and flowers. The women glanced at Dallandra, then devoted themselves to their work as assiduously as if they feared the evil eye. Carra, however, greeted her with a smile. She was a pretty lass, with blonde hair and big blue eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face, and young; seventeen winters as close as she could remember. ‘Dalla, I’m so glad you’ve come, but truly, the trouble seems to be past, now.’ ‘Indeed?’ Dallandra found a small stool and sat upon it near the fire. ‘Suppose you tell me about it anyway.’ ‘Well, it’s the wraps. She hates to be wrapped, and it’s so draughty and chill now, but she screams and fights and flings her hands around when I try to wrap her in a blanket. She won’t have the swaddling bands at all, of course.’ At the mention of swaddling, Lady Ocradda looked up and shot a sour glance at the princess’s back. The women of the dun had lost that battle early in the baby’s life. At the moment Elessario was lying cradled in a blanket in Carra’s arms and sound asleep, wearing naught but her nappies and a little shirt made of old linen, soft and frayed. ‘Most babies like to be warm,’ Dallandra said. ‘By the fire like this she’s fine. But when I put her down in my bed, it’s so cold without the wraps, but she screams if I put them round her.’ ‘It’s odd of her, truly, but no doubt she’ll get used to them in time.’ ‘I hope so.’ Carra looked at her daughter with some doubt. ‘She’s awfully strong-willed, and here she was born just a month ago. You know, it seems so odd, remembering when she was born. It seems like she’s been here forever.’ ‘You seem much happier for it.’ Carra laughed and looked up, grinning. ‘I am, truly. You know, it was the strangest thing, and I feel like such an utter dolt now, but all the time I was carrying her, I was sure I was going to die in childbed. When I look back, ye gods, I was such a simpering dolt, always weeping, always sick, always carrying on over this and that.’ ‘Well, my dear child,’ Ocradda joined in. ‘Being heavy with child takes some women that way. No need to berate yourself.’ ‘But it was all because I was so afraid,’ Carra said with a shake of her head. ‘That’s what I realized, just the other day. I was just as sure as sure that I was going to die, and it coloured everything. I’d wake up in the morning and look at the sunlight, and I’d wonder how many more days I’d live to see.’ ‘No doubt you were frightened as a child,’ Ocradda said. ‘Too many old women and midwives tell horrible tales about childbirth where young girls can hear them. I’ve known many a lass to be scared out of her wits.’ ‘I suppose so.’ Carra considered for a moment. ‘But it was absolutely awful, feeling that way.’ ‘No doubt,’ Dallandra said. ‘And I’m glad it’s past.’ Carra shuddered, then began to tell her, in great detail, how much Elessi was nursing. Although she listened, Dallandra was thinking more about Carra’s fear. Had she died in childbed to end her last life, perhaps? Such a thing might well carry over as an irrational fear – not, of course, that Carra’s fear lacked basis. Human women did die in childbirth often enough. A reincarnating soul carried very little from life to life, but terror, like obsessive love, had a way of being remembered. As, of course, did a talent for the dweomer – she found herself wondering about the Raven Woman. It was possible that this mysterious shapechanger was remembering, dimly and imperfectly, magical training from her last life. Later that night Dallandra learned more about her enemy. She was getting ready for bed when she heard a tap at her chamber door. Before she could call out a query, Evandar walked in, or more precisely, he walked through the shut and barred door and oozed into the room like a ghost. Dallandra yelped. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do things like that!’ she snapped. ‘You give me such a turn!’ ‘My apologies, my love. I did knock. I’m trying to learn the customs of this country.’ He took her into his arms and kissed her. His skin, the touch of his lips and hands, felt oddly cool and smooth, as if he were made of silk rather than flesh. ‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,’ Dallandra said. ‘I wish you could stay a while.’ ‘The dun’s too full of iron, weapons and nails both, or I’d spend the night with you. When all this trouble is done, my love, we’ll go back to my country, you and I.’ He paused to kiss her. ‘And we’ll share our love again.’ ‘That will be splendid.’ With a sigh she let go of him. ‘From now on, can’t we meet in the Gatelands? I’d rather spare you pain if I could.’ ‘My thanks, and the meadows of sleep will do us well enough for ordinary news. But something a bit more urgent brings me here tonight.’ He paused for effect. ‘I’ve tracked down the Raven Woman. She’s sheltering in Cerr Cawnen.’ ‘Cerr Cawnen? Jahdo’s city?’ ‘The very one. I found her when I was hunting my brother.’ ‘Shaetano?’ ‘The very one, and still working mischief. He’s escaped me, but I think I know who let him out of the prison I made for him.’ ‘The Raven Woman.’ Dallandra heard her own voice sag in sudden weariness. ‘And once again, the very one, my love. Her name, by the by, is Raena. I did find that titbit for you. Now, you told me that you think her little skilled in dweomer, and I agree. Her magic’s like one of those rain spouts that men make to carry water, and she’s naught but the barrel underneath.’ ‘And Shaetano’s willing to be the downpour, is he?’ ‘Just that. No doubt he’s flattered to be worshipped as if he were one of the gods. He’ll lend her power to make mischief, anyway, mischief being his own true calling. So I thought I’d tell you where I was bound. After all, you have good reason to hate him yourself.’ ‘Hate him? I don’t, truly.’ ‘What? Why not? After the way he treated you – stealing you away, binding you, holding you up to mockery in that wretched wooden cage – how you can not hate him?’ He asked in all seriousness, and she considered with the seriousness that he deserved in his answer. ‘Well, he frightens me, and when I think of the things he did, I’m angry still, but it’s not the same as hate. Does he truly understand the evil he works, and why it’s an evil thing?’ ‘I’ve no idea, and I care even less. He’s crossed me and injured you, and that’s enough for me.’ ‘And so you’ll be hunting him? If you can find him and stop him, then Raena’s dweomer should dry up and quickly, too.’ ‘Good. Let us hope. I’ll find him, sooner or later, never you fear, but I do have a few other errands to run as well.’ Evandar turned away and smiled, an oddly sly quirk of his mouth. ‘I have a scheme afoot, you see.’ ‘Oh ye gods, what now? Evandar, you know I love you, but those schemes of yours! They always get out of hand, they always hurt people, and I wish –’ ‘Hush!’ He held up one hand flat for silence. ‘I’ve been thinking. Have I not learned from you, my love, about thinking and the passing of Time? Well, when Time passes, and my people are born into the world of flesh and death, just as our Elessi’s been born, won’t they need a place to go?’ ‘A what?’ ‘A place of their own, and I shall say no more about it.’ He turned back and grinned. ‘It’s a surprise and a riddle, and here’s a clue: when the moon rises again you’ll see.’ Dallandra hesitated on the edge of snarling at him. Once he defined something as a riddle, he would never tell the answer, no matter how much she prodded or swore or wheedled. ‘Oh very well,’ she said with a sigh. ‘And how soon will this moon of yours rise?’ ‘I have no idea. I’ve been weaving this scheme for a long time, truly, ever since I asked the man named Maddyn for his rose ring – hundreds of your years ago now, isn’t it?’ ‘It is. Wait – that’s the ring Rhodry used to have, the one with the dragon’s name graved on it.’ ‘It is, but I’ll speak no more about it now.’ Evandar paused for a lazy grin; he knew full well how his riddles irritated her. ‘But to the matter at hand, my love, Shaetano’s clever, so that will take this strange thing, Time, as well. He’ll hide from me, but sooner or later, he’ll have to appear to his worshipper over in Cerr Cawnen. When he does, I’ll be close by.’ All at once he tossed his head in a spasm of pain. ‘Iron! Wretched demon-spawn metal!’ Evandar took one step toward the window and disappeared. She saw nothing, not a fading or a trembling of him – one moment he was there; the next he was not. Dallandra shuddered once, but only once. She’d got used to him and his ways, over the years they’d been lovers, hundreds of years, in fact, as men reckon time. The tiny room smelled of ancient smoke and recent dust. The fetid air hung cold and close around the two people standing, bundled in cloaks, with their backs to the wide crack between stones that served as its door. ‘It be best not to light a candle or suchlike in here,’ Verrarc whispered. ‘Not enough air.’ ‘There’s no need on us for one,’ Raena said. ‘Watch, my love. See what I did learn, this past year or two.’ He could hear her draw a deep breath; then she began to chant the same few words – he thought they might be Gel da ’Thae – over and over again. Up at the corner of the webby ceiling a silver light gleamed, then spread and brightened. Spiders dashed from her dweomer. ‘Ye gods,’ Verrarc whispered. ‘Gods, indeed, my love. This be a gift from the gods I do serve, the true gods.’ Raena turned, glancing around the room. ‘What place be this? It must be old, truly old.’ ‘No one knows. When I was a boy, I did find all the secret places of Citadel. Some few I asked the elders about, but most, like this one, I did keep for my own.’ She nodded, looking round her. Near the ceiling and all round the room ran a line of triangles and circles, crudely carved into the stone. Verrarc had never seen it so clearly; when he had hidden in this half-buried chamber as a child, the only light had been a dim glow from the entrance. ‘I feel despair here,’ Raena spoke abruptly. ‘And old fear.’ ‘Do you? We’d best be about our business. I don’t want anyone wondering where we might be and come looking for us. What was this thing you were going to show me? Or is it the light?’ ‘Not just the light. Here.’ When she knelt on the dirty floor, he joined her. She flung both hands into the air and began a chant of different words, vibrated from deep in her throat and spat out like a challenge. In answer the silver light shrank and collected itself into a glowing sphere, about the size of an armload of hay, that hung above and before them. When Raena tossed her head, the hood of her cloak fell back. Her eyes were shut, sweat oozed down her face, and her long black hair seemed to gleam and flutter in the unnatural light. Verrarc felt himself turn cold as the sphere of light began to stretch itself in to a long cylinder. Within the silvery pillar something – no, someone – was forming. At first it seemed only a trick of the light, a shape like a drift of smoke caught in a sunbeam, but gradually it solidified and turned mostly human. When the figure stepped free of the silver pillar, Verrarc could see that there was more than a touch of the fox about him. Red fur tufted his ears and ran in a brushy roach from his low forehead back over his skull and down his neck. Under their red-tufted brows, his eyes gleamed black and bright. Each of his fingers ended in a sharp black claw. ‘I am the Lord of Havoc, ruler of the powers of strife and tumult.’ His voice boomed and echoed so loudly that Verrarc feared someone in the town above would be hearing him. ‘Why have you summoned me, O my priestess?’ ‘To beg my lord’s favour,’ Raena whispered. ‘I have brought another who would worship thee.’ ‘Then you have summoned well, little one. I shall –’ All at once Lord Havoc hesitated, staring at something behind his two worshippers. When Verrarc twisted around to look, he saw nothing, but Havoc yelped. He flung himself backward into the pillar and disappeared, leaving behind him the stink of fox. The light that formed the pillar began to break up. Although Raena chanted to drive it back, the light stubbornly spread out and clung to the walls, as faded and torn as an old curtain. With a gasp for breath she fell silent. ‘Rae, forgive me,’ Verrarc said. ‘But a doubt lies upon me that he be any sort of god at all. A fox spirit, more like, such as do live in the woods.’ ‘Animal spirits are weak little things!’ She turned on him with a snarl. ‘How could he nourish my dweomer if he were some woodland imp? I tell you, I’ve seen him do great things, Verro, truly great, and he does shower favour upon me.’ Verrarc got up, dusting off the heavy cloth wrappings round his legs. ‘You saw the light, didn’t you?’ Raena snapped. ‘I did.’ He straightened up, then gave her his hand and helped her clamber to her feet. ‘Here! You do be as pale as he was!’ She very nearly collapsed into his arms. He struggled with the folds of his cloak and hers, finally got a supporting arm around her, and helped her stand. All around them the silver light was fading. ‘It be needful to get you back to the house,’ Verrarc said. He squeezed out of the room first to the dark tunnel beyond, then helped her through. The tunnel twisted and wound, the air grew fresher and colder, and about thirty feet along they came to its entrance, an opening in a stone wall. Beyond they could see snow and tumbled blocks of stone overgrown with leafless shrubs. Verrarc helped her climb out, then scrabbled after to the wan light of a dying day. They were standing on the peak of Citadel, the sharp hill island that rose in the centre of Loc Vaed and the town of Cerr Cawnen. Between the trees that grew among and around the ruins of the old building, brought down in an earthquake centuries ago, Verrarc could see down the steep slope of the island, where public buildings and the houses of the few wealthy families clung to the rocks and the twisting streets. The blue-green lake itself, fed by volcanic springs, lay misted with steam in the icy air. Beyond, at the lake’s edge, the town proper sprawled in the shallows – houses and shops built on pilings and crannogs in a welter of roofs and little boats. Beyond them, marking out the boundary of Cerr Cawnen, stood a circle of stone walls, built around timber supports to make them sway, not shatter, in the earth tremors that struck the town now and again. They were looking roughly west, and the lazy sun was sinking into a haze of brilliant gold. Thanks to Loc Vaed’s heat, Cerr Cawnen itself lay free of snow, but beyond the town the first fall of the season turned pink and gold in answer to the setting sun. Here and there in the distance stood a copse, dark against the snow, or a farmer’s hut, barely visible in the drifts, with a feather of smoke rising from its chimney. ‘It do be lovely up here, the long view,’ Verrarc said. ‘Someday soon, my love, I’ll be showing you a view so long that all this,’ Raena paused to wave a contemptuous hand ‘will look like a dungheap.’ ‘Oh, will you now?’ ‘I will. The things that I have seen, my love, did stagger my mind and my heart, just from the seeing of them. The world be a grand place, when you get yourself beyond the Rhiddaer.’ ‘No doubt.’ Verrarc hesitated. ‘And just where have you been learning all these secrets?’ ‘You’ll know in good time.’ She shivered and drew the cloak more tightly about her. ‘It be needful for me to consult with Lord Havoc, to see what I may be telling you.’ He looked at her sharply. Her mouth was set in a stubborn twist. ‘Let’s get back to the house,’ he said. ‘I want to see you warm, and I’ve got a few matters to attend to before the settling of the night.’ Dera had a rheum in her chest. Huddled in her cloak, she sat close to the hearth fire and sipped a mug of herb brew. ‘Gwira left me a packet of botanicals,’ Niffa said. ‘I can make more.’ Her mother merely nodded. She was a small woman, short and thin, and now she looked as frail as a child, hunched over her mug. Her once-blonde hair hung mostly grey around her lined face. ‘You be vexing yourself about our Jahdo, Mam. I can see it by the way you look at the fire.’ Dera nodded again. Niffa knelt down beside her and laid a hand on her arm. ‘I do know it in my heart that he’ll be coming home to us safe, Mam. Truly I do. I did see it, nay, I have seen it many a time in my true dreaming.’ ‘Hush. You mayn’t speak about those things so plain, like.’ ‘There’s naught here but us two.’ ‘Still, it frightens me. And what would our townsfolk do, if they began thinking you could dream true and see deaths, too, in their faces?’ ‘Well, true-spoken. I’ll hold my tongue.’ Dera sighed, then coughed so hard she spasmed. Niffa grabbed a handful of straw from the floor and held it up for her mother to spit into, then tossed the wad into the fire. ‘My thanks,’ Dera whispered. ‘And will I be here when our Jahdo comes home?’ It took Niffa a moment to understand what her mother was asking. ‘You will. I did see that as well, you laughing with us all.’ ‘Good. I – here, what be making that noise?’ From outside the two women heard shouting, swearing, and a peculiar sort of hollow bumping sound. Niffa got up and hurried to the door, opened it to a blast of cold air and peered out the crack. She could just see up the narrow steep alley that led from their door to the public street on the slope above. Panting and puffing, two men were struggling to get a four-foot-high barrel of ale down the rocky track without it escaping to crush the fellow at the bottom. The one at the top she recognized as Councilman Verrarc’s servant, Harl. ‘What are you doing?’ she called out. ‘Bringing you a gift,’ Harl panted. ‘From my master. For your wedding.’ ‘Less talk!’ the other man snapped. ‘Don’t let it get away from you!’ With a grunt Harl steadied his grip on the barrel. Once they had it level with the entrance, getting the barrel over the doorstep and inside required a last round of curses and a lot of banging, but finally it stood on the straw-strewn floor. Harl and his helper – Niffa recognized him as one of the blacksmith’s sons now that he was visible – wiped their sweaty faces on the sleeves of their baggy winter shirts, then stood panting for a moment. ‘Ye gods,’ Harl said. ‘The stink of ferrets in this place be like to knock a man flat!’ The blacksmith’s lad nodded his agreement. Dera wrapped the cloak tightly around her and walked over to survey the gift, almost as tall as she. ‘It be a kind thing for the councilman to remember us,’ Dera said. ‘And so generously!’ ‘It be the best ale, too,’ Harl said. ‘My master was particular about that, he was, the best dark ale. He did send it this early so it could settle. He said to tell you to leave it be till the wedding day itself.’ ‘We will, then.’ Dera shot Niffa a glance. ‘And there be a need on you to go thank him.’ Niffa and her family, the town ratters, lived with their ferrets in two big rooms attached to the public granary, lodgings provided them in return for keeping the rats down. The big square building stood low on the Citadel hill, while Councilman Verrarc’s fine house stood high, just below the mysterious ruins at the island’s crest. To get there Niffa panted up the steep alley to the broader, cobbled path above, then followed it as it spiralled up the hill, past the white-washed fronts of family compounds and the occasional stone bench, provided for the weary. She dodged between the militia’s armoury and a huge boulder to come out on the next street up. Here and there, twisted little pine trees grew in patches of earth or shoved their way to the sunlight from between rocks. In the high white wall Councilman Verrarc’s outer gate stood open. Niffa walked into a square court, paved with flat reddish stones, where huge pottery tubs stood clumped together to catch rainwater. A pair of big black hounds, lying in a patch of sun, lifted their heads, sniffed at her, then thumped lazy tails. The house itself stood beyond them, a low white structure roofed in thatch. The front door sported a big brass ring. Niffa banged it on the wood, then waited, shifting from foot to foot, until it opened a bare crack. She could just see Magpie, a girl of about her own age, staring back out. Magpie had a pudgy round face, dark eyes, and a thin mouth that always hung a little open. ‘Let me in, Maggi,’ Niffa said. ‘There’s a need on me to see the councilman.’ Maggi considered, tilting her head a little. ‘Come on now, you’d had the knowing of me since we were children! Do let me in, and then fetch the councilman.’ When Magpie’s eyes narrowed, Niffa realized she’d made a mistake by linking two different tasks together. It would take the poor girl a while to sort that out, she supposed. Fortunately, a voice sounded from inside the house, and old Korla, a bent and withered woman who shuffled along in big sheepskin shoes, took over the door from her grand-daughter. ‘Ah,’ Korla said to Niffa. ‘So, you’ve come about that ale?’ ‘I have. I do wish to thank your master properly for so fine a gift.’ Giggling to herself, Magpie ran off. Korla led Niffa into the councilman’s hall, a square room with a low beamed ceiling and a floor covered with braided rushes. Below each shuttered window stood a carved chest; in the middle of the room, a table with benches; at the massive hearth, two carved wooden chairs with cushioned seats, and against the wall, three other chairs – a fortune of furniture for a Cerr Cawnen house. Here and there on mantel and table some small silver oddment caught the firelight and glittered. Sitting in one of the chairs, her feet up on a footstool, was Raena, dressed in fine blue cloth and with her hair bound up like a great lady. She acknowledged the servant with a small nod but said nothing to either her or Niffa. ‘I’ll be fetching the master,’ Korla said and shuffled through a side door. Niffa walked close to the fire and held out her hands to the warmth. She could feel the older woman studying her, but when she looked up and arranged a smile, Raena looked away with a sneer. Perhaps she felt her shamed position – Niffa tried to think kindly about her. After all, Raena had been cast off by her husband for being unfaithful to him with Verrarc. She must have known that every woman in town gossiped about her. On the hearth a log within the fire slipped, flashing with sparks and a long leap of flame. In the suddenly brighter light Niffa could see Raena’s face clearly: pale, beaded with sweat, and under her eyes lay dark circles as livid as bruises. ‘Be you well?’ Niffa said. ‘Should I be calling your maid to you?’ ‘My thanks but no. Tired, I be, not ill.’ Her words slipped out one a time. ‘Very well, then, but I –’ Niffa stopped in mid-sentence, caught by the way Raena was looking at her. The older woman’s dark eyes glittered in the firelight, but her stare was cold, thorough, searching over Niffa as if she were hunting lice upon her cloak. All at once Niffa felt like screaming at her, like slapping her as well and yelling that she should take her filthy self out of Cerr Cawnen forever. She turned and hid her face in the shadows thrown by the fire, but she fancied that she could feel Raena’s cold stare prying at her back. ‘Well, a good day to you, Niffa!’ Verrarc strode in through the side door. He was tall, the councilman, blond and good-looking by most people’s standards, but his blue eyes peered with a winter’s cold, and to Niffa his smiles looked as painted as a wooden doll’s. ‘I trust your mam be well?’ he went on. ‘She does have a rheum, Councillor, though she fares better today than last. I did come in her place to thank you for that splendid gift.’ Briefly his smile turned warm. ‘Most welcome you are to it, and your kin as well. Now, if your mother should need of somewhat, whether medicaments or food, please do ask me for it. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.’ He did, too – Niffa could tell even as she wondered why his very generosity irked her so. She managed a few more polite exchanges, then curtsied and made her glad escape. As she picked her way down the icy steps that led to the granary and home, she was wondering why she hated Raena so much, and on sight, too. She’d never actually met the woman before that day. Unless she was very badly wrong, Raena hated her as well. But little could either of them know that their hatred went back hundreds of years to another life, when both of their souls had been closely linked indeed, as mother and daughter in a life so far removed from what they shared at the moment that it would seem to lie in another world – could they ever know of it. And less could they know that the man Raena hated as Rhodry Maelwaedd had been bound up with them in a knot of Wyrd, though he too had lived in another body and another life, back in those distant years. PART TWO (#) Deverry, 849 (#) The year 849. The spring brought terrible omens in the sky above the Holy City. A cloud shaped like a dragon flew overhead, and there was lightning. The sky turned the colour of copper, and a huge cloud like a spindle of black wool drew water from Lake Gwerconydd only to spit it out upon the land. So many refugees fled to Lughcarn that the city could not take them all in. High Priest Retyc gave them what food he could gather and sent them further east, where the farmlands had need of them. The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn In the midst of a clamour, Lillorigga, daughter of the Boar clan, sat on a bench in the curve of the wall and wished that she were invisible. The King’s great hall roiled with armed men, standing, talking, sitting, eating, calling out to one another and calling for ale. Spring had come and brought with it the annual muster of the King’s loyal lords and their warbands, but in the two enormous hearths at either side the hall, fires blazed and sent wafts of smoke into the hazy room. The stone walls of the enormous round hall oozed cold, for the attacking sun never made more than a brief sally into the tangled complex of brochs and outbuildings that made up the royal palace of Dun Deverry. Not that the hall looked particularly royal these days – a hundred long years of civil war had left the King poor in everything but men. Tapestries sagged threadbare and faded on the rough stone walls; straw and torn Bardek carpets lay together on the floor; the tables and benches listed and leaned, all cracked and pitted. The lords and the servants alike ate from wooden trenchers and drank from pottery stoups. Only the King’s own table retained some semblance of royal splendour. From where she sat Lillorigga could just see a page spreading a much-mended and somewhat stained linen cloth over it while others stood by with silver dishes and pewter mugs. Behind the boys came the royal nursemaid with cushions to raise the seat of the royal chair; King Olaen had been born just five summers ago. Lilli was the King’s cousin – they shared a great-grandmother through the maternal line – and her uncle, Burcan of the Boar, stood as regent to his young highness. Her rank brought her bows and curtsies every time someone passed her bench or looked her way. She answered each one with a nod or a smile, but she hated the way the various lords looked her over, as if they were appraising a prize mare ready for market. Soon her mother would be arranging her betrothal to some son or another of one of the King’s loyal men. She could only hope that when the time came, her husband would treat her decently. Across the hall a herald called out for the men to make way. A procession of women was descending the huge stone staircase, with at their head Queen Abrwnna, who, older than her royal husband, was almost a woman, no longer a girl. Behind her came her retinue of maidservants and noble-born serving women, who included Lillorigga’s mother, Merodda, a widow and sister to both Tibryn, Gwerbret Cantrae, and Regent Burcan. In the flickering dim light, Merodda looked no older than the young Queen. Her yellow hair lay smooth and oddly shiny, caught by a silver clasp at the nape of her neck. Her skin was the envy of every woman at court: smooth and rosy just like a lass, they said, and her with a marriageable daughter and all! She walked like a lass, too, and tossed her head and laughed with spirit. A marvel, everyone said, how beautiful she is still. If they only knew, Lilli thought bitterly. If they only knew – her and her potions! At the bottom step Merodda paused, looking over the great hall, then turned to speak to a page before she rejoined the Queen’s retinue at table. When Lilli realized that the page was heading for her, she rose, briefly considered bolting, then decided that if she angered her mother now, she’d only pay for it later. The page trotted over and made her a sketchy bow. ‘Honoured Lillorigga,’ he said, ‘your mother says you’re to come to her chambers when she’s finished eating.’ Lilli felt fear clutch her with cold, wet hands. ‘Very well.’ She just managed to arrange a smile. ‘Please tell her that I’ll wait upon her as she wishes.’ With barely a glance her way he turned and trotted back to the Queen’s table. Lilli saw him speak to Merodda, then take up his station for serving the meal. Lilli herself was supposed to eat at one of the tables reserved for unmarried women of noble birth. Instead she grabbed a chunk of bread from a serving basket as a page carried it by and left the press and clamour of the hall. Outside the sun was setting, dragging cold shadow over the courtyard, one of the many among the warren of brochs and outbuildings. Lilli hurried past the cookhouse, dodged between storage sheds, and slipped out a small gate into a much bigger court, the next ward out, ringed round by high stone walls that guarded pigsties, stables, cow sheds, a smithy, a pair of deep water wells – everything the dun needed to withstand a siege. At the gates of this ward someone was shouting. When Lilli saw servants hurry past with lit torches, she drifted after them, but she kept to the shadows. Down at the wall, the torchlight glittered on chain mail and a confusion of men, arguing about who would do what, a debate the captain of the watch finally ended – he ordered his guards to man the winch that opened the enormous iron-bound gates. They creaked open a bare six feet to let an exhausted rider stumble through, leading a muddy horse. ‘Messages for the King,’ he croaked. ‘From the Gwerbret of Belgwergyr.’ Servants rushed to take his horse. Lilli trailed after the messenger and the watch captain as they hurried up to the main broch. ‘Good news, I hope,’ said the captain. ‘Bad,’ the messenger said. ‘His Grace the gwerbret’s lost more vassals to the false king.’ Lilli felt suddenly sick. She trailed after the messenger and his escort as they hurried to the great hall. By then all the important lords had gathered around the King. On his cushions at the table’s head Olaen, a pretty child with thick pale hair, was eating bread and honey. At either side of him Lilli’s two uncles – Tibryn, Gwerbret Cantrae, and his younger brother, Burcan, the Regent – sat as a matched pair between the King and the rest of the gwerbretion and other such powerful lords who dined at this table. Both of them were handsome men, tall and warrior-straight, with the wide-set blue eyes they shared with their sister, Merodda, but unlike her they showed their age in grey hair and weather-beaten faces. As the guards hurried up, everyone stopped eating and turned to look. The messenger knelt before the King, then pulled a silver tube out of his shirt and handed it to Olaen with a flourish. Burcan leaned forward and snatched it, then gestured at the man to speak. The great lords huddled around, narrow-eyed and grim. At the Queen’s table the women fell silent and turned, leaning to hear the news. From her distance Lilli could hear nothing of what the messenger said, but a rustle of talk broke out, first at the royal table, then spreading through the great hall: more lords gone over to Cerrmor. With a curt nod, Burcan dismissed the messenger. King Olaen was watching the Regent with eyes full of tears. Lilli saw her mother turn and leave the Queen’s table, hurry up the staircase, and disappear into the shadows at the top. With a wrench of will, Lilli forced herself to follow. On the far side of the hall, near the stairway, a page was seating the messenger while a serving lass brought him ale. Lilli hesitated, then stopped beside the messenger, who hastily swallowed his mouthful of ale and started to rise. ‘Oh, do sit,’ Lilli said. ‘You must be exhausted. I just wanted to ask you if Tieryn Peddyc of Hendyr’s gone over to the rebels.’ ‘Not him, my lady. He’s steady as a stone.’ ‘I’m so glad. He’s my foster-father.’ ‘Ah.’ The rider smiled briefly. ‘No wonder you wanted to know. He and the Lady Bevyan are in good health and as loyal as ever.’ ‘My thanks.’ Lilli hurried away and climbed the staircase. Maybe Bevyan would come to court, then, with her husband when he joined the muster. She hoped – no, she prayed so, as hard as she could to the Lady of the Moon. Merodda had sent her and her wet nurse to Bevyan when Lilli had been a few weeks old; until she’d seen twelve summers, Bevyan had been the only mother she’d known. If only I could have stayed with Bevva – her eyes threatened tears, but she squelched them and at the top of the stairs paused for a moment to catch her breath. The fear clutched at her heart again, but she had nowhere to run or hide. With one last gasp, she hurried down to her mother’s chambers. Merodda herself opened the door. She was carrying a long taper in a holder, and in the candlelight her face, her hands, glistened like wax. ‘Good. You’re prompt tonight.’ In a pool of candle-light near the chamber windows stood Brour, the man her mother called her scribe – a skinny little fellow, with an oversize head for his body and wispy blond hair, so that at times he looked like a child, especially since his full lips stuck out in a perennial pout. Merodda laid her hand on Lilli’s shoulder and marched her down the length of the room. On the table in front of Brour, among the candles, stood a grinding stone, a chunk of something black that looked like charcoal, and a flagon of water. Apparently the scribe had been making ink, and a prodigious amount of it at that. He put a handful of powder ground from the ink block into a heavy silver bowl, then added water from a pitcher a little at a time, while he pounded and stirred with a pestle. ‘Here she is,’ Merodda said. Brour put his tools down on the table, then considered Lilli so coldly that she took an involuntary step back. Her mother’s hand tightened on her shoulder. In a hand black with dry ink Brour took the taper from Merodda and held it up to consider Lilli’s face. ‘No one’s going to hurt you, lass,’ Brour said at last. ‘We’ve just got a new trick we’d like you to try.’ ‘You have strange gifts, my sweet,’ Merodda said. ‘And we have need of them again.’ For a moment Lilli’s fear threatened to choke her. She wanted to blurt out a no, to pull free and run away, but her mother’s cold stare had impaled her, or so she felt, like a long metal pin pushing into her very soul. ‘Come now!’ Merodda snapped. ‘We women must do what we can to serve the King.’ ‘Of course, Mother. Of course I want to.’ ‘Of course? Don’t lie to me.’ Lilli blushed and tore her gaze away. ‘But I don’t care if you do or not,’ Merodda went on. ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ Brour grunted and set the taper down among the others. On the table the candles danced and sent light glinting onto the black pool in the silver bowl. Lilli found herself watching the glints, staring at them, caught by them while her mother’s hand slid from her shoulder to the back of her neck. She felt her head nodding forward, pressed down by the weight of a hand grown suddenly heavy. The ink pool seemed to surge and heave like waves on a black sea that swelled to fill her sight, to fill the room, it seemed, and then her world. As she sank down into the blackness, she heard Merodda’s voice chanting, low and soft, but she could distinguish not a single word. The syllables clanged like brass and seemed to reverberate in her ears, foreign sounds linked into alien words. In the blackness, a point of candlelight, dancing – Lilli swam toward it but felt her body turn to dead weight, as if she hauled it behind her when she moved. The point brightened, then dilated into a circle of light that she could look through, as if she’d pulled back a shutter from a round window and peered out at the sunny world beyond. From some great distance she heard Merodda’s voice. ‘What do you see, Lilli? Tell us what you see.’ She felt her mouth moving and words slip out like pebbles, falling into the black. In the window things appeared, creatures, vast creatures, all wing and long tails. Around them a bluish light formed and brightened, glinting on coppery scales, blood-red scales, a pair of beasts sleeping, curled next to one another. One of them stirred and stretched, lifting its wings to reveal two thick legs and clawed feet. A huge copper head lifted, the mouth gaped in a long yawn of fangs. ‘Wyverns. I see red wyverns, and now they’re flying.’ ‘Good, good.’ Her mother’s voice slid out like drops of oil. ‘Where do you see them?’ ‘Over a grassy plain.’ Down from the mountains they swept, their massive wings slapping the air, and to Lilli it seemed that she flew with them while her voice babbled of its own accord. They circled round a meadow where a herd of swine fed, then suddenly stooped and plunged like hawks. Shrieking and cackling they struck. The blood-red wyvern rose, flapping hard, with a big grey boar clutched limp and bleeding in its talons. In her vision Lilli flew too close. The wyvern’s enormous head swung her way. The black eyes glittered, narrowed, and seemed to pierce the darkness and stare directly at her. Lilli screamed and broke the spell. She staggered, stumbling forward, knocking into the table. A candle tottered and fell with a hiss and a stench into the black ink. ‘You clumsy little dolt!’ Merodda grabbed her by the hair and swung her round, then slapped her with her other hand. Lilli yelped and sank to her knees. Pain burned and crawled on her face. ‘Stop it!’ Brour snarled. ‘She can’t help it. She can’t control the trance.’ Merodda stepped away, but Lilli could hear her panting in ebbing rage. ‘She needs to be trained.’ Brour’s voice had turned calm again. ‘I don’t see why you won’t let me –’ ‘We will not discuss this in front of her.’ Merodda leaned down. ‘Oh, do get up!’ Lilli scrambled to her feet. ‘You may go to your chamber,’ Merodda said. ‘Leave us. And if you ever tell anyone what happened here –’ ‘Never, I promise. Never.’ Lilli could hear her own voice swooping and trembling. ‘I’ve never told before, have I?’ ‘You haven’t, truly.’ Merodda considered her for a long cold moment. ‘You have some wits. Now go!’ Lilli gathered up her long skirts and raced from the chamber. She dashed down the hall, ran into her tiny chamber at the far end, and barred the door behind her. For a long moment she stood in the twilight grey and wept, leaning against the cold wall; then she flung herself down on her narrow bed and fell asleep, as suddenly as a stone dropped from a tower hits the ground. That same spring evening, at the stillness before the sunset, Lady Bevyan of Hendyr stood at her bedchamber’s narrow window and considered the ward of her husband’s dun. Stone framed her view: the stone sides of the window slit when she looked through, the stone billow of the squat broch tower when she looked down, the stone walls of encircling fort when she looked toward the distant west and the silent gold of an ending day. All her life, stone had meant safety thanks to the civil wars, just as winter had meant peace, despite the snows, the storms, and the ever-present threat of hunger. Only lately had she come to think of stone as meaning imprisonment. Only lately had she come to wonder about a world in which summer, too, might mean peace. Not that such a world coincided with her world, not yet at least. Below her, deep in shadow, the preparations of war filled the cobbled ward: extra horses, tethered out for want of room in the stables; provision carts, packed for the morrow’s march. Her husband, Tieryn Peddyc of Hendyr, had called in his allies and vassals for the summer’s fighting, defending the true king in Dun Deverry from the would-be usurpers gathering on the kingdom’s southern borders. Or so her husband and his allies always called Maryn, Gwerbret Cerrmor, prince of distant Pyrdon – usurper, pretender, rebel. At times, when she wasn’t watching her thoughts, Bevyan wondered about the truth of those names. From behind her Bevyan heard a door opening and a soft voice. ‘My lady?’ Sarra, one of her serving women, stepped in the door. ‘Are you unwell?’ ‘I’m not, dear.’ Bevyan turned from the window. ‘Just taking a moment’s solitude. I’m trying to make up my mind about going to court. Tell me, do you want to go to Dun Deverry?’ Sarra hesitated, thinking. She’d come to Bevyan as an orphaned girl-child, long enough ago now that grey streaked her dark hair at the temples. ‘Well,’ Sarra said at last. ‘Our place is at Queen Abrwnna’s side, but oh, my lady, I shouldn’t admit such a shameful thing, but I’m ever so frightened of being caught in a siege.’ ‘So am I. The Cerrmor men are nearly to our lands, aren’t they? Sometimes I wonder what the summer will bring.’ Sarra laid a hand over her throat. ‘But we mustn’t give up hope yet.’ Bevyan make her voice brisk. ‘The gods will give us the Wyrd they choose, and there’s not a thing we can do about it.’ ‘True spoken.’ ‘As for things we can do something about,’ Bevyan paused for a sigh, ‘I’m worried about little Lillorigga. She’s the only reason I’ll be going, frankly, if I do go. I keep asking for news of her, but no one ever sends me any.’ ‘Well, certainly her mother wouldn’t bother.’ Steel crept into Sarra’s voice. ‘Do you think we could persuade the Lady Merodda to let us bring her daughter back here? For the cleaner air and all. When you had the fostering of her, she thrived, poor child.’ ‘Merodda might well be glad to be rid of her. It’s worth a try. I’ll tell you what. Let’s ride with my lord on the morrow, but there’s no reason that we need to spend all summer in Dun Deverry. If things do look grim, the lords will be sending their womenfolk away, anyway.’ ‘That’s true. Shall I tell the pages, then?’ ‘You should, indeed. We’ll need them to get our palfreys ready, and we need to fill a chest to go into one of the carts. There. I feel better already, with the decision made.’ But Bevyan paused to glance out the window. The sun was setting in a haze that sent long banners of gold across the sky, as if they were the pennons of some approaching army. The traitorous thought returned full-force. What if Maryn’s army ended the war this summer? He’d promised amnesty if he should conquer, promised full pardons even to the lords who’d fought most bitterly against him. What if next summer there would be no march to war? ‘My lady?’ Sarra said. ‘You look so distant.’ ‘Do I, dear? Well, perhaps I’ve got a bit of the headache. Let’s go down to the great hall and get somewhat to eat.’ In the great hall lords and riders gathered, standing more than sitting, drinking ale, talking in urgent voices, but they stood out of nerves, not for want of benches, and their voices seemed oddly quiet in the half-empty hall. Bevva ran a quick count of lords: a mere four of them, and each obliged to bring no more than forty men a-piece to augment her husband’s eighty and the gwerbret’s one-hundred-and-sixty. At the head of the table of honour sat her husband’s overlord, Daeryc, Gwerbret Belgwergyr, while Tieryn Peddyc sat to his right and their last living son, Anasyn, stood behind His Grace to wait upon him like a page. No one who saw them together would ever have doubted that Anasyn was Peddyc’s son. They shared a long face, long thin nose, and a pair of deep-set brown eyes, though Peddyc’s hair had turned solidly grey and Anasyn’s was still chestnut. When he saw his wife enter, Peddyc rose, swinging himself clear of the bench and smiling as he strode over to meet her. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I’d wondered if you were ill.’ ‘Not ill, my love, merely thinking. I’ve decided I’d best ride with you when you go to Dun Deverry.’ ‘Good.’ He let his smile disappear. ‘You’ll be safer there. I’m stripping the fort guard.’ Bevyan laid a hand on her throat. She wondered if she’d gone pale – her face felt so suddenly cold. ‘Well, we’ve not lost yet.’ Peddyc pitched his voice low. ‘If the time comes for you and your women to leave Dun Deverry, I’ll send you back with a full escort of men. Don’t worry about that. You’ll need to hold the gates long enough to negotiate a settlement with the Pretender.’ ‘I see.’ Bevyan swallowed heavily and freed her voice. ‘As my lord thinks best, of course.’ He smiled and touched her face with the side of his hand. ‘Let’s pray I don’t need to do that kind of thinking, Bevva. Come entertain our gwerbret. You and I will ride to court together, at least, and after that, only the gods know.’ Peddyc looked up, and when Bevyan followed his glance she realized that he was looking at the row of cloth banners in gold and green cloth, faded and stained with age, that hung above the main hearth – the blazons of the Ram from time beyond remembering. She could only wonder if someday soon an enemy hand would rip them down. ‘The omens?’ Merodda said. ‘The omens are hideous.’ ‘You sound frightened,’ Burcan said. ‘Of course I’m frightened. I suppose that makes me a poor weak woman and beneath contempt.’ ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Burcan, second son of the Boar clan and Regent to the King, allowed himself a wry twist of a smile. ‘I’d say it makes you sensible.’ Merodda sighed once and sharply. Close to the mid-watch of the night they were sitting in her private chamber, she in a carved chair by the fire, he in another near the table. The candles burning there were freshly lit, and Brour and his bowl of black ink both had long since been tidied away. ‘I wish I had better news to tell you,’ she went on. ‘But we have an enemy here at court.’ ‘I don’t need omens to tell me that. Everyone envies our clan.’ ‘This is different. In the omen a red wyvern dropped out of the sky and slew a boar.’ ‘What? I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles.’ ‘I thought it was clear enough. The King’s blazon is a green wyvern, and so someone close to but not of the royal family must be plotting to drop down upon us and supplant us.’ Burcan started to speak, then merely stroked his thick grey moustaches while he considered. ‘You’re right,’ he said at last. ‘It’s perfectly clear, now that you’ve explained it. I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to grasp things like omens.’ ‘You don’t need to. You have me.’ They shared a smile. In the hearth the fire showered sparks as a log burned through and fell. Burcan rose, then strode over to take wood from the basket and lay it upon the flames. For a moment he stood watching it burn. ‘Any idea of who this enemy might be?’ he said. ‘Not yet. You’re right about the envy. There are a lot of clans with reason to hate us. I just hadn’t realized how deep the hatred must run.’ ‘I’ll think about it. A wyvern, was it? Someone with a touch of royal blood themselves, maybe.’ ‘There! You’re beginning to puzzle this out.’ ‘Am I? Maybe so. Don’t know if I like it, though. That so-called scribe of yours – are you sure we can trust him?’ ‘I don’t know. He came to me for the coin, and if someone offered him more, I can’t swear he wouldn’t change his loyalties.’ ‘Thought so. I don’t like the man.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He comes from the south coast, doesn’t he?’ ‘Not truly. He’s from the northern lands, though he did live for some years in Cerrmor.’ ‘Still! How do you know he isn’t a Cerrmor spy?’ ‘I have ways to tell when someone’s lying, as you know perfectly well. There’s somewhat else, isn’t there?’ Burcan scowled at the floor. ‘I don’t like the way he treats you,’ he said at last. ‘What? He’s always courteous.’ Burcan raised his head and looked at her. His eyes searched her face, probing for some secret. Merodda stood with a little laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous of poor Brour.’ ‘I don’t like the way he’s always in your company.’ When Burcan rose to join her, she laid one hand flat on his chest and looked up, smiling at him. In a moment he laid his hand over hers. ‘My dear brother,’ she said. ‘He’s little and ugly. You’ve got no reason to vex yourself on his account.’ ‘Good. And the moment you think he might turn disloyal, tell me. I’ll have the matter taken care of.’ Travelling with Gwerbret Daeryc’s entourage, his attendant lords and their joined warbands, plus their servants and retainers, was no speedy thing, especially with carts along and a whole herd of horses. Rather than jounce around in a cart with the maidservants, Bevyan wore a pair of her son’s old brigga under her dresses and rode her palfrey, as did Sarra. In the long line of march they travelled just behind the noble lords, although at times Peddyc would drop back and ride beside Bevyan for a few miles. It was pleasant, riding in the spring weather through the ripening winter wheat and the apple trees, heavy with blossoms, so pleasant that Bevyan found herself remembering the first days of her marriage, when she and Peddyc would ride together around his lands, alone except for a page trailing at a discreet distance. They had brought such a shock, those days, when she realized that she’d been married to a man that she would learn to love. Now of course her lord, his hair streaked with grey, rode grim and silent, and behind them came what of an army he and his overlord could muster. Along the way the entourage sheltered at the duns of various lords who owed men to either the tieryn or the gwerbret, or at least, they’d been planning to do so. Their first night, when they came to the dun of a certain Lord Daryl, they found the place empty. Not a chicken pecked out in the ward, not a servant stood in the broch. While Daeryc and the men waited out in the ward, Bevyan followed Peddyc through rooms stripped bare. ‘They even took the furniture,’ Bevyan said. ‘Even the bedsteads. It’ll be a long hard haul of it they’ll have, getting those all the way to Cerrmor.’ Peddyc nodded, glancing around what had once been the lord and lady’s bedchamber. All at once he smiled, stooped, and pulled something out of a crack between two planks. ‘A silver piece,’ he said, grinning. ‘Well, I’ll take that as tribute. Here’s one bit of coin that won’t buy a horse for the Usurper’s army.’ Their second night on the road brought an even nastier surprise. Lord Ganedd’s dun was shut against them, the gates barred from inside. Daeryc and Peddyc sat on their horses and yelled out Ganedd’s name, but no voice ever answered. No one appeared on the walls, not even to insult the two lords. Yet the place felt alive and inhabited. In the long silences Bevyan heard the occasional dog bark or horse whinny. Once she thought she saw a face at a window, high up in the broch. When Peddyc and Daeryc rode back to their waiting entourage, they were red-faced and swearing. ‘Are they neutral, then?’ Anasyn asked. ‘Or gone over to the Usurper?’ ‘How would I know, you young dolt?’ Peddyc snarled. ‘Oh, here, forgive me, Sanno. No use in taking this out on you.’ When the entourage camped, out in a grassy field stripped of its cows, Bevyan had the servants build a separate fire for the womenfolk. All evening, as they sat whispering gossip and fears, they would keep looking to the men’s fire, some twenty feet away, where Peddyc and Daeryc paced back and forth, talking together with their heads bent. The third evening, then, they rode up to Lord Camlyn’s dun with dread as a member of their entourage, but the gates stood open, and Camlyn himself, a tall young man with a shock of red hair, came running out to the ward to greet them with four grey boarhounds barking after him. He yelled the dogs into silence, then grabbed the gwerbret’s stirrup in a show of fealty and blurted, ‘Your Grace, what greeting did you get at Ganedd’s door?’ ‘A cursed poor one,’ Daeryc said. ‘I’m glad to see you held loyal to the true king. This autumn, when we ride against Ganedd, his lands are yours.’ At dinner that night the talk centred itself upon broken fealties – who had gone over to the Usurper, who was threatening neutrality, who was weaselling any way he could to get out of his obligations for fighting men and the provisions to feed them. Since in the poverty of Camlyn’s hall stood but one honour table, Bevyan heard it all. She shared a trencher with Camlyn’s wife, Varylla, at the foot of the table. In unspoken agreement the two women spoke little, merely listened. By the time the page poured the men mead, Gwerbret Daeryc had forgotten tact. ‘It’s the cursed Boar clan that’s the trouble,’ he snarled. ‘Men would rally to the King, but why should they rally to the Boar?’ ‘Just so,’ Camlyn said. ‘The wars have made them rich while the rest of us – huh, we’ll be out on the roads like beggars one fine day.’ The two men were looking at Peddyc and waiting. ‘I’ve no love for Burcan or Tibryn,’ he said. ‘But if the King had chosen them, I’d serve in their cause.’ ‘I like that if –’ Daeryc paused for a careful bite of food; he could chew only one side of his mouth, since most of his teeth were gone. ‘I’d do the same. If –’ Peddyc glanced down the table and caught Bevyan’s glance. She answered the unspoken question with a small shrug. It seemed safe enough to voice their long doubts here. ‘Well,’ Peddyc went on. ‘They say that King Daen made Burcan regent when he was dying. I wasn’t there to hear him.’ ‘No more was I,’ Camlyn snapped. ‘Nor I either. And with Daen’s widow such close kin to the Boar …’ Daeryc let his words trail off into a swallow of mead. ‘Hogs root,’ Camlyn said, seemingly absently. ‘If you let hogs into a field, they’ll tear it up with tusk and trotter till the grass all dies.’ ‘There’s only one thing to do in that case,’ Peddyc said. ‘And that’s turn them out of it.’ ‘Only the one, truly.’ Daeryc hesitated for a long time. ‘But you’d best have a swineherd with well-trained dogs.’ The three men looked back and forth at one another while Bevyan felt herself turn, very slowly, as cold as if a winter wind had blown into the hall. She glanced at Varylla. ‘I should so like to see the embroideries you’ve been making,’ Bevyan said. ‘You do such lovely work.’ ‘My thanks, my lady.’ Varylla allowed herself a shy smile. ‘If you’ll come with me to my chambers?’ As they headed for the staircase up, Bevyan caught Peddyc’s eye. He winked at her in thanks, but his smile was forced. Why shouldn’t it be, she thought, if they’ll be talking treason? Late on the next day, with Lord Camlyn and his men as part of the army, Gwerbret Daeryc’s entourage came to the city, which rose high on its four hills behind massive double rings of stone walls, ramparted and towered. A cobbled road led up to the main gates, ironbound and carved with the King’s blazon of the wyvern rampant. To either side honour guards in thickly embroidered shirts stood, bowing as the gwerbret and his party rode through. Yet as soon as they came inside to the city itself, the impression of splendour vanished. Ruins filled the space inside the walls – heaps of stone among rotting, charred timbers from the most recent siege; heaps of dirt covering stone razed long years past. Most of the remaining houses stood abandoned, with weed-choked yards and empty windows, the thatch blowing rotten through the streets. In the centre of the city, though, around and between the two main hills, Bevyan did see some tenanted homes, surrounded by kitchen gardens. A few children played in the muddy lanes; more often the people she saw were old, stooped as they tended their produce or sat on a bench at their front door to watch the gwerbret’s army ride by. No one called out a greeting or a cheer. Bevyan turned in her saddle to look her husband’s way. ‘It’s even worse this summer,’ she remarked. ‘The city I mean. It’s so desolate.’ ‘Just so,’ Peddyc said. ‘Everyone who could get out of here did.’ ‘Where did they go?’ ‘To kinsfolk, I suppose. The gods all know that there’s plenty of farmland lying fallow these days. Hands to work it would be welcome enough.’ ‘It’s so eerie, seeing all these empty houses. There can’t be any militia left to help hold the city walls.’ ‘There’s not, truly.’ Peddyc looked abruptly away. ‘If there’s a siege this summer, we’ll have to cede the Usurper the town and hold the dun.’ Or try to – Bevyan seemed to hear that thought hanging in the air like a rebel lord. All at once she realized that this summer could easily bring her husband’s death. She had faced widowhood for so many years that the thought merely angered rather than frightened her. The dun at least seemed in good repair. Through ring after ring of warding stone they rode, winding round on a spiral path to the top of the hill. A small village huddled around the final wall – the houses sheltering the King’s important servants, the blacksmiths and the like. Inside the palace ward itself Bevyan saw plenty of armed men, and these did cheer when they saw Gwerbret Daeryc and his contingent. Outside the double doors to the great hall, pages and servants stood waiting to take horses and unload carts. Bevyan waited until Peddyc had dismounted, then allowed him to help her down. ‘I have to attend upon the gwerbret,’ Peddyc said. ‘Of course, my love.’ Bevyan patted his arm. ‘I’ve been here often enough to take care of myself and my women.’ With a nod Peddyc strode off, yelling orders to his men. Anasyn followed his father without even a look back. Bevyan smiled – her son was growing up, all right, at home in the King’s own dun. ‘Bevva!’ Dashing like a dog greeting its master, Lillorigga raced across the ward and flung herself into her foster-mother’s arms. Laughing, half on the edge of tears, Bevyan hugged her tight, then held her by the shoulders. ‘Let me look at you, dear,’ Bevyan said. ‘Oh, you are so tall now! Oh, it’s so good to see you!’ Lillorigga beamed. She was tall, yes, and far too thin, far too pale, with her long blonde hair hanging limp and dead around her face. Bevyan first suspected roundworms, always a problem in a winter dun, even the King’s, but then she wondered, thinking of Lady Merodda. In the bustle of the open ward, with armed men trotting by, with servants flocking around, they could not talk openly, not even of matters of health. ‘Come with me, dear,’ Bevyan said. ‘I’ve got to get our things into our chambers, and then we can talk.’ At the Queen’s orders, or so the servant said, Lady Bevyan and her serving woman had been given a large suite in the King’s own broch. While the servants hauled up chests and satchels, and Sarra fussed over each, Bevyan and Lilli stood by a window and looked down into the inner ward. This high up, sunlight could gain the walls and stream into the room. Lilli held her hands out to the warmth and laughed. ‘It’s been a hard winter, has it?’ Bevyan said. ‘It has, truly. I’m so glad of the spring, although …’ Lilli let her voice trail away. ‘Although it brings the wars again?’ ‘Just that. Oh Bevva, I’m so sick of being frightened.’ ‘Well, we all are, dear, but the gods will end it when they will and not before. There’s so little that we womenfolk can do.’ Lilli turned to her with a look so furtive that Bevyan forgot what she’d been about to say. ‘Lilli, is somewhat wrong?’ ‘Naught, naught.’ Yet she laid a skinny hand on her pale throat. ‘You’ve been ill, haven’t you, dear?’ Bevyan said. ‘A bit. I’m fine now though, truly I am.’ Lilli turned her back and looked out over the chamber. ‘Sarra, there you are! Did you have a decent journey?’ And what was the child hiding? Soon enough, Bevva knew, she’d unburden herself of the secret. She could wait until Lilli was ready to tell her. The dun, it seemed, held more than one trouble. At the evening meal in the great hall, Peddyc was seated at the King’s table as a mark of honour, while Anasyn went with a pack of unmarried lords. Bevyan and Lilli sat together at one of the tables for the noble women and shared a trencher, though they talked more than ate. Although the young king came down early, escorted by Regent Burcan, the Queen made a much later appearance, sweeping into the hall in a crowd of young women. Queen Abrwnna was a pretty girl, about Lilli’s age, with striking green eyes and coppery hair that in the uncertain firelight shone with streaks of gold among the red. That evening it seemed the Queen had been weeping; her eyes were bloodshot and her full mouth screwed up into a most decidedly unpretty scowl. As the retinue walked by on their way to the table reserved for the royal womenfolk, Bevyan noticed that one of the Queen’s serving women, also young and lovely, had a scowl of her own and a rising purple bruise on the side of her face. ‘Oooh, that’s nasty,’ Lilli whispered. ‘I take it Abrwnna found out about Galla and Lord Aedar.’ ‘Some sort of love affair?’ ‘Just that, and I’ll wager Abrwnna’s ever so jealous. There’s a sort of fellowship of young lords devoted to her, you see – the Queen that is, not Galla. They all wear her token into battle, a bit of one of her old dresses I think it is. Anyway, she absolutely hates it when one of her serving women dallies with one of them – her sworn lords I mean.’ Bevyan laid her table dagger down and considered the Queen’s retinue, settling itself at table. ‘How interesting,’ Bevyan said mildly. ‘How many of these lords are there?’ ‘Only six. It’s ever so great an honour to be taken among them.’ ‘No doubt. I do hope their devotion’s an innocent one.’ Lilli blinked in some confusion. ‘Well,’ Bevyan went on. ‘The King’s wife absolutely has to be above suspicion. How else will men believe that she’s carrying the true heir once she’s with child?’ ‘Oh, that!’ Lilli smiled, her confusion lifting. ‘Well, the King’s but five summers old, and he won’t be getting her with child soon anyway.’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘Oh.’ Lilli turned solemn. ‘Oh, I do see what you mean.’ During the rest of the meal, Lilli pointed out the various lords of the Queen’s Fellowship, all of whom were reasonably good-looking and generally wealthy. Bevyan told herself that she was turning into a small-minded old woman, but she couldn’t help but wonder about the safety of this arrangement when she saw the various lords bowing over the Queen’s hand and kissing it. Upon the virtue of the Queen rested the honour of the blood royal; not for her the small freedoms of other noblewomen. As the wife of a mere tieryn, Bevyan’s own rank would hardly allow her to admonish the Queen. She did her best, therefore, to put the matter out of her mind. Toward the end of the meal, Bevyan and Lilli were sharing dried apples when a page came trotting over. He bowed low to Bevyan, then turned to Lilli. ‘Your mother wishes to see you,’ he announced. ‘In her chambers.’ Lilli turned dead-white. ‘What’s so wrong, dear?’ Bevyan said softly. ‘Oh, she’ll want to talk about my marriage.’ Lilli turned anguished eyes her way. ‘I hate it when she does.’ Plausible, yes, but Bevyan had fostered too many children to miss a lie when she heard one. Lilli got up and ran across the great hall. As she watched her go, Bevyan was thanking the Goddess in her heart for her decision to come to Dun Deverry. And yet, that evening Lilli had inadvertently spoken the truth. When she arrived at her mother’s chamber, she found both her uncles waiting. For the occasion the table had been spread with a white cloth; candles gleamed and among them stood a dented silver flagon and pottery goblets. Burcan sat across from Merodda in a cushioned chair while Gwerbret Tibryn stood by the hearth, where a small fire burned to take off the chill. ‘Come in, child.’ Merodda pointed to a footstool placed near her chair. ‘Sit down.’ With a curtsy to her uncles, Lilli did so. Both Burcan and Tibryn considered her for a long cold moment. ‘It’s time you married,’ Merodda announced. ‘You’ve been out of fosterage for what? Two winters now?’ ‘It’s been that, Mother.’ ‘Very well, then. We’ve been discussing the matter. We need to determine how best your marriage could serve the clan, you see.’ They all seemed to be waiting for her to say something. Lilli pushed out a watery smile and clasped her hands tightly to hide their shaking. After a moment Merodda went on. ‘Your uncle Tibryn wants to marry you to one of his allies in Cantrae, up in the Northlands. Tieryn Nantyn.’ ‘He’s so old!’ Lilli regretted the blurt the moment she’d said it and shrank back, expecting her mother to slap her. Instead, Merodda laid a warning hand on her shoulder and squeezed, but not painfully hard. Tibryn glowered, his mouth set in a thin line under his heavy moustaches. ‘Worse than that,’ Burcan snarled. ‘He’s a brutal man who’s already buried one wife.’ ‘So he did,’ Tibryn said levelly. ‘But who’s to say he had somewhat to do with her dying? Or have you been listening to women’s gossip?’ His eyes flicked to his sister and then away again. ‘And why shouldn’t she listen?’ Burcan snapped. ‘Lilli’s her only daughter.’ ‘Your Grace?’ Merodda broke in. ‘To have her only daughter sent so far away would grieve any woman in her old age.’ ‘Oh ye gods!’ Tibryn rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘You should have been a bard, Rhodi! The poor old woman and her daughter!’ ‘Don’t be such a beast! I do want Lilli near court. You’re my eld brother and the head of our clan, but surely I’m not forbidden to speak as a mother?’ ‘The gods could forbid it, and it wouldn’t keep you quiet.’ Tibryn allowed himself a short bark of a laugh. ‘So why would you listen to a mere mortal man? Nantyn is important to me. So far all the northern lords have held loyal to us, but this talk of the Usurper’s pardons is troubling a lot of hearts.’ ‘There are other ways to bind a man to his gwerbret,’ Burcan said. ‘There’s that bit of land in dispute twixt him and me. I’ll cede it if you think it necessary.’ Tibryn turned toward his younger brother, seemed to be about to speak, then hesitated. Burcan looked steadily back at him. ‘If the matter vexes you as much as that,’ Tibryn said at last, ‘then very well.’ ‘My thanks, Your Grace.’ ‘And mine, too,’ Merodda put in. She let Lilli’s shoulder go and leaned back in her chair. ‘My humble, humble thanks.’ Tibryn made a snorting sound, no doubt at the thought of Merodda being humble. Lilli realized that she’d been holding her breath and let it out with a small sigh. ‘Who else, then?’ the gwerbret said. ‘If we’re not to send her off to a northern lord, where’s the best place for us to spend this coin?’ ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Burcan said. ‘Perhaps it would be best to keep it in the clan. All things considered. Do you want your niece and her child held hostage one day by someone who just went over to the Usurper? Turning Lilli over might be a good way for a new man to prove his loyalty.’ ‘True enough.’ Tibryn paused to swear with a shake of his head. ‘There’s your lad Braemys.’ ‘Hmph, well,’ Burcan said. ‘I was thinking about one of the conjoint lords –’ ‘Why? If we’re keeping her close to the clan’s hearth, then let’s do so. Some of our distant cousins would slit my throat gladly if it came to saving their own necks with the Usurper. They’d do the same for you.’ ‘I can’t argue with that, but –’ ‘But what?’ Tibryn waved the objection away. ‘A cousin marriage is a grand way to keep land in a great clan, anyway. Lilli will bring her late father’s land as a dowry, of course, since her brothers are dead, too. I’d like to see Braemys have it. The holding will be worth keeping in the Boar’s hands.’ He turned to Merodda. ‘As the Regent’s son, he and his wife will be living at court much of the time.’ ‘Just so, Your Grace.’ Merodda favoured him with a brilliant smile. ‘Brother? You look troubled.’ Actually, Lilli decided, Burcan looked furious enough to choke her; then the look vanished in a wry smile. ‘It makes a man feel old, seeing his youngest son marry,’ Burcan said and smoothly. ‘Happened to me, too.’ Tibryn nodded. ‘Well, let’s consider the matter settled. Rhodi, how about pouring some of that mead?’ ‘Of course.’ Merodda got up from her chair and started toward the table, then glanced back. ‘Lilli, you don’t have any objections, do you?’ ‘None, Mother. I’ve always known I’d marry where the clan wished.’ ‘Good,’ Tibryn said. ‘Good child. Braemys is a well-favoured lad, anyway, and a good man with a horse.’ ‘And what about you?’ Merodda turned to Burcan. ‘Does this suit you well enough, brother?’ Burcan raised bland eyes. ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘We’d best start discussing the dowry and the bride-price.’ ‘Oh come now,’ Tibryn said. ‘The land she brings should be enough for any man, Burco!’ ‘Very true.’ Merodda turned to Lilli. ‘You may leave us now.’ Lilli rose, curtsied, and gladly fled. She hurried down the stone staircase to the first turn, then paused, looking out over the great hall, roaring with armed men in the firelight. Braemys had left Dun Deverry some days earlier, she knew, gone off to his father’s lands to muster their allies, but then, his father would have to be the one to inform him of the betrothal, anyway. Perhaps Uncle Burcan would send him a messenger; more likely the matter would wait until her cousin returned to court. She wondered if he would be pleased instead of feeling merely relieved she wasn’t someone else. Lilli did however spot Lady Bevyan, standing by the royal table with two of Queen Abrwnna’s serving women. Smiling, Lilli trotted down the steps and made her way over to her foster-mother, who greeted her by holding out one arm. Lilli slipped into that familiar embrace with a comfortable sigh. With nods and farewells, the serving women drifted away. ‘My, you look pleased!’ Bevyan said. ‘The talk with your mother wasn’t as bad as all that, then.’ ‘It wasn’t. They’ve settled my betrothal, and it’s not to one of Uncle Tibryn’s awful vassals.’ ‘Good! I was afraid they’d be considering Nantyn.’ ‘They were, but Uncle Burcan spoke up for me. It was such an odd thing, Bevva! He even offered to cede Nantyn some land somewhere if Uncle Tibryn wanted to give the old sot that instead of me.’ ‘Well, may our goddess bless him for it!’ Bevyan’s voice sounded oddly wary. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he’d do such a thing, Burcan that is.’ ‘But he did, and now I’ll be marrying Braemys, my cousin, you know?’ Bevyan’s arm tightened fast and sharp around her shoulders, then released her. Lilli stepped away and looked at her foster-mother, whose face had gone as bland as her uncle’s had, a few minutes before. ‘Is somewhat wrong with him?’ Lilli said. ‘Not in the least. A decent young man and quite well-spoken, he is.’ Her voice wavered ever so slightly. ‘Well. I’ll wager you’re glad to have it settled, dear.’ ‘I am, truly. And this way I’ll be staying at court, and I’ll still be able to see you, now and again.’ ‘Just so, and that will be lovely.’ But the distant look in Bevva’s eyes – it was fear, Lilli realized suddenly – bespoke thoughts that were far from lovely. She hovered, wondering what could be so wrong, until Bevyan broke the mood with a little laugh. ‘It’s so noisy here,’ Bevva said. ‘Shall we go up to my chambers? Sarra will want to hear all about your betrothal.’ With that, both Bevyan and the evening returned to their normal selves. Up in Bevva’s suite various court ladies joined them for a long gossip. Lilli felt like a cat lying down for a good nap by a fire, all safe and warm at last. Here in the company of other women she could forget, for at least a little while, the black ink and its secrets. In the morning Bevyan’s suspicions woke with her. While she dressed, they seemed to sit on the edge of her bed, muttering in low voices, ‘Could it be? Could it really be?’ One never knew what Merodda might be thinking; she did, after all, lie as easily as a bard sang. Finally she could stand it no longer and went to Merodda’s chambers, just to hear what she could hear, she told herself, just to prove herself wrong. When Merodda’s maidservant let Bevyan in, she found the lady washing her face. In the corner of her bedroom stood a crockery basin on a wooden stand. Dressed in a plain white shift, Merodda was dabbling a thin cloth in strange-smelling water. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment, Bevyan. I shan’t be able to talk while I’m doing this.’ ‘Of course. I’m in no hurry. Is it a herb bath, dear?’ Merodda gave her a brief smile for her only answer, then wrung out her cloth and began wiping her face with it. Every now and then she’d dip a corner of the rag back in the basin, but Bevyan noticed that she never let it get too wet and that she kept her lips tightly closed the while. No doubt the stuff tasted as bad as it smelled. When she finished, she laid the cloth at her windowsill to dry, then rinsed her hands with clean water from a crockery pitcher that stood on the floor. ‘Now then,’ Merodda said. ‘What did you wish to speak with me about?’ ‘Lilli told me about her betrothal last night.’ ‘Ah, did she? What do you think of Braemys?’ ‘He’s a very decent lad. A bit close kin, perhaps.’ ‘Oh, Burcan wanted a cousin marriage. It’s the lands, of course. With my sons dead, my poor dear Geredd’s lands came to Lilli. It’s a nice holding.’ ‘It is, indeed, and worth the Boar’s keeping.’ Merodda picked up a bone comb and began combing her hair, starkly gold in the sunlight. Another herb potion, or so Bevyan supposed, kept it that girlish colour. ‘I did foster the lass,’ Bevyan said. ‘I’m not merely prying.’ ‘Of course not! And you did a fine job, I must say. Lilli’s turned out to be a lovely child with very courtly ways.’ ‘My thanks. I’m so glad you’re pleased.’ ‘And I am.’ Merodda hesitated, glancing away. ‘I did the best I could for her, with this marriage. I hope you believe me about that. I did the best I could.’ ‘What? Of course I believe you! No doubt your brothers did the real deciding, anyway. I’m just so glad that Tibryn didn’t send her off to Nantyn to be beaten to death.’ ‘That was my worst fear.’ Merodda looked at her again, and never had Bevyan seen a woman more sincere. ‘It truly was.’ ‘Then we can both thank the Goddess – and Burcan – that it didn’t happen.’ ‘Ah. Lilli told you about the way he intervened.’ ‘She did. It was very good of him.’ For a moment they considered each other. ‘It was,’ Merodda said at last. ‘But Braemys is a decent lad. Lilli will be very well provided for, and I’ll be able to keep her near me at court much of the time. She’s my last child, after all, the last one these wars have left me. I know that you can understand how I feel.’ ‘Unfortunately, I can. You know, dear, I’d never do anything that would ever harm Lilli.’ Merodda nodded, then hesitated, studying Bevyan’s face. It was a habit of hers, to peer at someone so intently you would have thought she was reading omens in their eyes. Bevyan had always assumed that she was nearsighted and nothing more, but this morning the scrutiny bothered her. ‘I shouldn’t take up more of your time,’ Bevyan said. ‘Oh, Bevva, don’t be foolish! It’s good to see you. In fact, may I ask you a favour?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Come with me on an errand. I’ve got to consult with the heralds on an odd matter. Unless perhaps you know: is there a clan named the Red Wyvern among the Usurper’s following?’ ‘I have no idea. I vaguely remember hearing the name once, years and years ago, but that’s all.’ ‘Then let me dress, and we’ll pay the heralds a visit.’ Merodda smiled; Bevyan smiled; the suspicions began their nattering again. And yet what was she to do, Bevva asked herself? Come right out and ask: Lilli is Burcan’s child, isn’t she? You’re marrying her off to her own brother, aren’t you? In one of the side brochs the King’s heralds lived and had their scriptorium, where they copied over and preserved the genealogies of the various clans and their intermarryings as well as the devices proper to each. When the two women arrived, a servant trotted off to fetch the chief herald himself, leaving them in the sunny room. A row of tables with slanted tops sat underneath the windows, while on the walls hung small shields, each about a foot high, the official record of each device. Merodda began circling the room and studying the shields, but what caught Bevyan’s attention was a glass sphere filled with water that sat upon the window ledge. She was just puzzling over it when the chief herald himself, Dennyc, trotted in with low bows for the Regent’s sister and her companion. ‘Ah, there you are, good herald,’ Merodda said. ‘My thanks for attending upon us.’ ‘It’s my honour, your ladyship. And what may I do for you?’ ‘I’ve a question,’ Merodda said, pointing. ‘On this shield here, whose device is this? The red wyvern, I mean.’ ‘Sadly, the clan that bore it is long gone.’ Dennyc ambled over to join her. ‘The last heir died before I was born, and so I know only what my predecessor told me. They held land off in the west and were related to the blood royal of both Deverry and Pyrdon. Just exactly how I don’t remember, though I could of course look it up for you.’ ‘Oh, do spare yourself the effort. It doesn’t matter.’ Merodda suddenly laughed. ‘Since they’re long gone.’ Bevyan could only wonder why, but there was no doubt that Merodda looked profoundly relieved. Dennyc bowed again. ‘I’d been hoping for a word with your ladyship,’ the herald said. ‘I understand that she’s betrothed her daughter to Braemys of the Boar.’ ‘I have, indeed.’ ‘Ah, I was thinking, you see, being as I do study such things, your ladyship, the best to serve my king and all who serve him, that perhaps the marriage is a bit too much of a close one.’ For the briefest of moments Merodda went as a still as a rabbit in the bracken when it hears the hounds. Perhaps it was merely the bright light in the room, but she went a little pale around the mouth as well – again, for a brief moment. With what must have been an effort, she smiled. ‘Cousin marriages are common in all the great clans,’ Merodda said. ‘Just so, my lady.’ Dennyc bowed with the air of a man who wasn’t quite sure of what else to do. ‘But there have been so many first cousin marriages among the Boar that I thought perhaps it was my duty to warn her ladyship, merely warn her of course as the decision will always remain hers and her brothers, but,’ he paused for a brief breath, ‘perhaps if there were some other candidate who pleased her ladyship equally well –’ ‘There’s not.’ Merodda spoke firmly but politely. ‘My thanks, good Dennyc. Lady Bevyan, shall we go?’ ‘As you wish, my lady.’ Bevyan and Merodda parted company at the door of the King’s broch, but all that morning, as she walked in the gardens as part of the Queen’s retinue, Bevyan found her worry gnawing at her. Apparently the news of Lady Lillorigga’s marriage had reached royalty as well as the heralds. With a wave of one slender hand, Abrwnna motioned Bevyan up to walk beside her. ‘I hear your foster-daughter is to marry Lord Braemys,’ the Queen said. ‘She is, Your Highness.’ ‘And here I was going to take him into my fellowship.’ Abrwnna tossed her head with a ripple of red-gold hair in the sunlight. ‘I’m glad now I didn’t.’ ‘I see, Your Highness.’ They walked a bit further down a gravelled path to a wall where climbing roses were just beginning to bud. The Queen picked one and forced the tiny petals open with her thumb. ‘I let your son know that he’d be welcome to join my fellowship. He declined. Did you know that?’ ‘I didn’t, Your Highness. I hope you weren’t offended.’ ‘Of course I was. But it’s not your fault.’ Before Bevyan could think of a tactful comment, the Queen dismissed her again. As Bevyan was entering the great hall for dinner with her women behind her, chance brought her face to face with Regent Burcan, followed by his own retinue. They smiled and exchanged pleasantries, but Bevyan found herself studying his broad face, the distinctive wide blue eyes, the thin mouth, both so like Lilli’s – but like her mother’s as well, she reminded herself. ‘I must congratulate you, Regent,’ Bevyan said at last. ‘I hear you’ve made a good marriage for young Braemys.’ Burcan’s expression changed; he kept smiling, but his entire face went tight from the effort of doing so. ‘Lilli will make him a good wife,’ Burcan said, and his voice was oddly tight as well. ‘And she brings a nice parcel of land with her.’ ‘So she does. My congratulations to the lad.’ As Bevyan made their way through the tables to her own seat, she glanced back to find Burcan staring after her, his face set and unreadable. All at once she realized that letting him see her suspicions would be dangerous. After the meal, there in the great hall before the assembled lords and the King himself Tibryn announced the betrothal of his niece to his nephew. Everyone cheered and called out their congratulations while Lilli smiled and blushed – everyone but the Queen, that is, who pouted. Bevyan could only hope that Lilli could keep her happiness safe from jealousy as well as death, that little bit of happiness allowed to a woman in the midst of the endless wars. As always, the black ink seemed to rise out of the basin in a vast wave, catching her, pulling her under. This time the wave seemed so real that Lilli gagged and coughed, sure that she would drown. She could feel her mother’s hand pressing on her neck and pushing her down into trance. All at once she floated in blackness, and the choking vanished. ‘Tell us what you see.’ The words swam after her, imploring. ‘What do you see, Lilli?’ At first, nothing – then in the blackness the familiar circle of light appeared. Lilli floated through and found herself back in the dun, back in her mother’s chambers, in fact, but a pale sunlight poured in through the open windows. ‘Who’s there, Lilli?’ The voice sounded so strange, all syrupy and drawn out, that she could not tell if Brour or Merodda spoke. ‘Who do you see?’ ‘No one. But there are things.’ A wooden chest stood open; dresses lay scattered on the floor; an empty silver flagon lay in the ashes on the hearth. In one corner sat a little doll, made of cloth scraps stuffed with hay. Lilli recognized it as something that had belonged to her years ago; Sarra had made it for her, and Bevyan had embroidered the little face. With a laugh she ran to it and picked it up, hugged it to her chest as she used to do, back in Hendyr. ‘Can you leave the room?’ The voice poured into her ears. ‘There’s no door to be seen.’ ‘Look into the chest.’ Still holding her doll, Lilli skipped across the chamber. She leaned over the chest and nearly screamed. Only her fear of her mother’s slap kept her from screaming. Yet she must have made some sound, because the voice sounded urgent. ‘What is it?’ ‘Brour’s head, just his head, and the neck’s all black with old blood.’ ‘Come back!’ Her mother’s voice said, and this time it was clearly her mother’s. ‘Come back now. Go through the window.’ Lilli found herself floating up and out, as light as a dandelion seed, up up into the blue sky and through the sky to candle flame. She found herself on her knees by the table in her mother’s chamber. Merodda knelt in front of her, her waxy face sweaty-pale in the dancing candlelight. ‘We’ve done enough for one night,’ Merodda said. ‘You need to rest.’ ‘Just so,’ Brour said. ‘Just so.’ With Merodda’s help Lilli got to her feet. In a moment her head cleared enough for her to stand without help. ‘Shall I go with you to your chamber?’ Brour said. ‘Will you get there safely?’ ‘I will, truly.’ Lilli couldn’t bear to look at him, not with the vision of his severed head still hanging behind her eyes. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Lilli hurried across the chamber and out, but as she closed the door she paused briefly and glanced back to see Brour and Merodda standing facing each other like a pair of swordsmen. She shut the door quietly and for a moment leaned against it to gather her strength. All at once she realized that she was – of course – no longer holding the doll. She would have wept, but she was learning that tears were merely her reaction to the scrying sessions and no true thing. Yet all that evening and on into the night she found herself missing that doll. In her dreams she searched for it in strange chambers filled with armed men, who never noticed her as she crept along the walls and slipped through half-open doors. In the morning when she woke, she reached for the doll, which had always slept with her when she’d been a child. ‘Of course it’s not there, you dolt,’ she told herself. ‘You lost it when they brought you back here.’ What if somehow her mother had found and kept it? Perhaps it really was in that chamber, where she’d seen it in vision. Toward the middle of the morning, when she was sitting in the great hall, she saw her mother and Bevyan both in attendance upon the Queen. No doubt the three of them would go to the royal women’s hall and be busy there for some long while. Although she felt foolish for doing so, Lilli hurried upstairs. In her mother’s chambers she found not the doll but Brour, sitting sideways by the window so that the sunlight could fall upon the pages of an enormous book, about as tall as a man’s forearm and half-again as wide, that he’d laid upon the table. With his lower lip stuck out, and his big head bent in concentration, he looked more like a child than ever. When she walked in, he shut the book with some effort. She could smell ancient damp exhaling from its pages. Grey stains marred the dark leather of its bindings. ‘I can’t read, you know,’ Lilli said. ‘You don’t have to worry about me seeing your secrets.’ ‘Well, that’s true.’ Brour smiled briefly. ‘Are you looking for your mother, lass? She told me that she’d be waiting upon the Queen all day.’ ‘Ah, I thought so. I just wanted to see if I’d left a little thing here.’ ‘Look all you please.’ Brour waved his hand vaguely at the chamber. Feeling more foolish than ever Lilli walked around, glancing behind the furniture, opening the carved chests, which held nothing but her mother’s clothes. Brour clasped his book in his arms and watched her. ‘You don’t see my head in there again, do you?’ he said at last. ‘I don’t, and may the Goddess be thanked. That was truly horrible.’ ‘I didn’t find the omen amusing, either.’ His voice turned flat. Lilli shut the last chest, then leaned in the curve of the wall to watch him watch her. His short thick fingers dug into the leather bindings of his book. ‘It must have scared you,’ she said. ‘A fair bit, truly. What do you think the meaning was?’ ‘I’ve no idea. My mother never tells me how to interpret the things I see.’ ‘No doubt.’ Brour made a little grunt of disgust. ‘She treats you like an infant, doesn’t she? You should be learning how to use your gifts.’ Lilli laid one hand at her throat. ‘Does that frighten you?’ Brour went on. ‘A pity, if so.’ ‘I never asked for any of this. I hate doing it, I just hate it.’ Brour considered her for a moment, then laid his book on the table. ‘You hate it because you don’t understand it. If you understood it, you wouldn’t hate it.’ All at once he smiled at her. ‘I’ll make you a promise about that.’ Lilli hesitated, then glanced at the door. She could leave, she should just leave, and find some of the court women to keep her company. ‘By all means, go if you want,’ Brour said. ‘But don’t you even want to know what it is you’re doing, when you scry at your mother’s whim?’ ‘I’m seeing omens,’ Lilli snapped. ‘I know that much.’ ‘Ah, but where are you seeing them?’ The question caught her. She’d so often wondered just that. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Do you?’ ‘I do indeed.’ Brour smiled again, and he seemed much kinder than she’d ever thought him to be. ‘Come now, won’t you sit down? Explaining where portents come from is no short matter.’ Lilli took a step toward the table, then stopped. ‘If my mother finds out about this, she’ll beat me.’ ‘Then we’d best make sure she knows nothing.’ Brour pointed at the chair across from his. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered why Merodda doesn’t want you to learn dweomer?’ ‘I have, truly.’ ‘She wants to use your powers for herself, that’s why. When you learn about your gifts, you’ll be able to use them for yourself, and she won’t be able to force you to do what she wants.’ Lilli walked over and sat down. Brour smiled and opened his book. ‘There’s a picture in here that I want to show you,’ he said. ‘It shows what the universe looks like.’ Circles within circles, drawn in black ink – at the centre sat the Earth, or so Brour called it, and each circle around it bore a name. ‘This is Greggyn lore,’ Brour said. ‘It came over with King Bran during the Great Migration. The sphere – that’s what these circles represent, spheres – above and surrounding the sphere of the Earth belongs to the Moon. The next one belongs to the Sun. We’ll learn about those higher ones when it’s time. There’s too much for you to remember all at once.’ ‘That’s certainly true.’ Lilli put her elbows on the table and leaned forward to study the picture. ‘It gives me such an odd feeling, seeing this.’ ‘Ah, no doubt the knowledge is calling to you.’ In truth the feeling was more like terror, but she decided against telling him that. She listened carefully as he explained how the matter of each sphere interpenetrates the one below it. ‘Only on the earthly world do all the others exist,’ Brour finished up. ‘Here they reach completion. And that means from here you can reach all the others. That’s what you do when you go into trance. You leave your body and go to one of these other worlds.’ The terror stuck in her throat. That’s what people do when they die, Lilli thought. They leave their bodies and go to the Otherlands. ‘Now, omens of the future exist in the upper astral,’ Brour pointed at a circle. ‘That’s where your mother sends you.’ ‘My mother sends me there? I thought you were the one who did that.’ ‘Not I, child. Your mother knows as much about these things as I do.’ Abruptly he looked away. In the hall, a noise – someone walking, several people, all talking at once. Lilli leapt to her feet. Brour shut the book. The sounds grew louder – and went on past. Lilli let out her breath in a long sigh and realized that Brour had lost the colour in his face. ‘You’re scared of her, too, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I can’t deny it.’ Lilli stared. She’d never thought to see a man frightened of a woman, not anywhere in her world. ‘I’d best go.’ She got up. ‘I don’t dare have her find me here.’ ‘Just so. But come back when you can, and I’ll tell you more.’ Lilli ran out of the chamber, slammed the door, and raced down the hall. At the staircase she paused to smooth her hair and catch her breath, then decorously descended to the great hall below. I’ll never go back, she told herself. I’ll never look at that book again. At dinner that evening she sat next to Bevyan, whose warmth drove all thoughts of dangerous magic from her mind. They discussed Lilli’s dower chest, which she’d started filling while she was still at Hendyr, although, as she admitted, she’d been lax of late. ‘Well, dear, Sarra and I are here to help,’ Bevyan said. ‘The first thing we’ll want to do is the wedding shirt for Braemys, and then the coverlet for your new bed.’ ‘We should have all summer,’ Sarra put in. ‘They won’t be holding the wedding till the campaigning’s over.’ ‘That’s true.’ Lilli felt oddly cold, and she rubbed her hands together. ‘I hope naught ill happens to Braemys.’ ‘Ai!’ Bevyan shook her head. ‘You’re a woman now truly, aren’t you, dear? You’ve joined the rest of us in worrying about one man or another.’ That night, as she lay in bed and tried to sleep, Lilli was thinking about Braemys. She’d always liked her cousin, who had also been fostered out to Peddyc and Bevyan. Whether or not they married, she certainly didn’t want him to die in the summer’s fighting. And now, if he did die, whom would she be forced to marry in the autumn? Nantyn or some other old and drink-besotted northern lord like him. Uncle Tibryn would never allow his mind to be changed a second time; the miracle was that he’d allowed it once. Her mind like a traitor turned up Brour’s image, saying: you could use your gifts for yourself. What if she could read omens about Braemys’s wyrd? What if she could know what was going to happen to her, instead of feeling like a twig floating on a river, twisting this way and that with the current beyond her power to break free? She sat up in bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. Through the window she could see a slender moon, rising between two towers, enjoying all the freedom of the sky. In the morning, when Lady Merodda announced a hawking party, Lilli feigned a headache and stayed behind, moaning against her pillows like an invalid. As soon as she could be sure that they were well and truly gone, she got up, dressed, and hurried to Lady Bevyan’s suite. She needed advice, even though she could never mention dweomer to Bevyan. Merely being around her foster-mother would help her think, Lilli decided. Bevyan would give her a kind of touchstone to judge the worth of these strange things. But Sarra met her at the door. ‘Oh, Bevva’s not here.’ Sarra paused for a triumphant smile ‘She was invited to go hawking with the Queen.’ ‘She was?’ ‘She truly was, and I’m ever so pleased. It’s such an honour!’ Of course, but Lilli was wishing that Bevyan had been honoured on some other day. She went downstairs, hung around the great hall for a miserable while, then found herself thinking again and again of Brour’s book and the secrets it held. At last, with a feeling of surrender, she returned to her mother’s chambers. Brour was sitting at the table by the window, but instead of his book, parchment and ink lay in front of him. ‘Ah,’ he said, grinning. ‘You came back.’ ‘I did. Did you really mean what you said, about I could use my gifts for myself?’ ‘I did. I’ll swear that by any god you like. Now, I’m just writing a message for your uncle, telling his son that you and he will marry. When I’m done, I’ll take it back to Lord Burcan, and then we can look at my book again.’ Lilli sat down, elbows on the table, and watched him write, forming each black letter carefully on a parchment used so many times that it had been scraped as thin and flabby as cloth. The scribe who lived in Burcan’s dun would be able to look at those marks and turn them into speech again – Lilli shuddered, but pleasurably. It seemed a dweomer of its own. ‘My congratulations, by the by.’ Brour paused to pick up a little pen knife. ‘Or is the betrothal a bad one?’ ‘It’s not, but one I’m well-pleased with.’ ‘Good.’ He smiled, and it seemed to her that he was sincere. ‘I’m glad of that. Some day you’ll be able to use your gifts to help your husband, then, as well.’ ‘I’d like that. I just hope my mother doesn’t find us out. She can always tell when I’m lying, you know. Is that dweomer?’ ‘It is, most certainly.’ Lilli caught her breath. ‘Ah,’ Brour went on, ‘but what you don’t understand is that dweomer can be countered with dweomer. I’ll teach you how to defend yourself against your mother’s prying.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Really. It’s a beginner’s sort of trick but a useful thing to know.’ Lilli smiled. ‘I’m beginning to think I’ll like these studies.’ ‘Oh,’ Brour said, solemn-faced, ‘I’m sure you will. I truly am.’ After a morning’s desultory hunt, the Queen’s party rode down to the grassy shore of Lake Gwerconydd for a meal. While the pages bustled around, spreading out a cloth and opening baskets of food, the women turned their horses over to the men of the Queen’s guard and their hawks to the falconers. With Merodda and Bevyan in tow, the Queen ran down to the water’s edge, where small waves lapped on clean sand. She threw herself down on her back in the thick grass and laughed up at the sky while Bevyan and Merodda sat more decorously beside her. ‘It feels so good to be out of the dun,’ the Queen said. ‘Don’t you think so, Lady Bevyan?’ ‘I do, Your Highness.’ Bevyan paused for a hurried glance back – the men were all staring at the Queen. ‘It’s a lovely sunny day.’ ‘Perhaps Her Highness might sit up?’ Merodda said, smiling. ‘She has a great many men in her retinue, and dignity is never amiss.’ Abrwnna stuck out her tongue at Merodda, but she did sit, smoothing her white riding dresses down over her knees. ‘I’m quite sure my guards know their duty,’ the Queen said. ‘And they’re all very loyal to the King. Well, to your brother, my lady Merodda. He picked them, after all.’ ‘My brother acts purely in the King’s interests,’ Merodda said. ‘Any loyalty paid to him is loyalty paid to our liege.’ ‘Oh please!’ Abrwnna wrinkled her nose. ‘You don’t have to pretend around me. We all know who really rules the kingdom.’ A page was approaching. Bevyan laid a warning finger across her lips. ‘Your Highness?’ the boy said. ‘The meal is ready.’ ‘Very well.’ Abrwnna rose and nodded his way. ‘Shall we go, my ladies?’ While they ate, with the pages hovering around in attendance, Abrwnna kept the conversation to court gossip. Her maidservants supplied her with every scrap of scandal in the dun, apparently, to augment what she gleaned herself. She ran through various love affairs or the possibility of them as if she were reciting the lists for a tournament. ‘So you can see, Bevva,’ Abrwnna finished up, ‘all sorts of things happened this winter while you were gone.’ ‘Indeed,’ Bevyan said. She reminded herself to tell Peddyc about this use of her nickname. ‘Long winters do that to people, and with so many widows sheltering here under your protection, I suppose things might get a bit complicated.’ ‘Very, and I haven’t told you the best bit yet. Lady Merodda’s brother was the biggest prize of all. The Regent might as well be a nice fat partridge, for all the hawks that are set upon him.’ Merodda, who was buttering bread, smiled indulgently. ‘Well, Your Highness,’ Bevyan said. ‘He has access to the King, and that does make a man attractive.’ ‘Just so. The worst thing happened though. It was right before the thaw. Two of the court ladies were fighting over Burcan, just like dogs fighting over scraps of meat. It was Varra and Caetha.’ ‘Caetha? I’d heard she left us for the Otherlands.’ ‘She did, and here’s the thing. It looked like she was gaining the Regent’s favour – everyone said he was much taken with her – when suddenly she died. Everyone said Varra poisoned her, it was so sudden. And then Varra left court and went home to her brother, which makes me think she really did do it.’ ‘Oh, my dear liege!’ Merodda looked up with a little shake of her head. ‘I doubt that very much. Here – it was at the bitter end of winter, and we all know what happens then to the food, even in a king’s dun.’ She glanced at Bevyan. ‘The poor woman died after eating tainted meat. It was horrible.’ ‘But she’s not the only one who ate it.’ Abrwnna leaned forward. ‘Merodda had some, too.’ ‘And, Your Highness, I was quite ill.’ Merodda shuddered as if at the memory. ‘Caetha wasn’t strong enough to recover, I’m afraid. It happens.’ ‘Indeed, it does happen, and a sad sad thing,’ Bevyan said. ‘There’s really no need to talk about poisoning people.’ And yet, despite her sensible words, Bevyan found herself wondering about Merodda’s herbcraft. If she could wash her face with ill-smelling water and keep her skin as smooth as a lass’s, what other lore did she know? No doubt the Queen had no idea that poor dead Caetha’s real rival had been Lord Burcan’s sister. Since it was the Queen’s pleasure to ride, the women returned to the dun late in the afternoon. Side by side Merodda and Bevyan walked into the great hall, where the men were already congregating for the evening meal. They watched the Queen and her maidservants flit through the crowd like chattering birds and chase each other, giggling, up the stone staircase. Bevyan could just see on the landing a handful of young lords, each marked as a member of the Queen’s fellowship by a twist of green silk around their right sleeve. They bowed to the ladies and walked with them up the stairway and out of sight. ‘Bevva?’ Merodda said suddenly. ‘You don’t suppose Abrwnna has a lover, do you?’ ‘It’s one of my fears, truly. She talks of little else.’ ‘Just so. Being married to a child is a difficult thing for a lass like her.’ They exchanged a grim glance, for that moment at least allies. Later that evening, Bevyan remembered to ask Lilli about the lady Caetha in the privacy of her suite. Lilli repeated the story of the tainted meat and added that Caetha had died clutching her stomach in agony. ‘How terrible!’ Bevyan said. ‘I take it that your mother was ill as well.’ ‘She was. She’d eaten from that same meat.’ Lilli considered with a small frown. ‘But she wasn’t anywhere as ill as poor Caetha, though she threw up ever so much and told us all how much pain she was in.’ ‘That’s an odd way of putting it, dear. Do you think she wasn’t in pain?’ ‘Oh, my apologies. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’ Lilli laid a pale hand at her throat. ‘She was; of course she was. It was awful to hear her moan and not be able to do anything for it.’ ‘No doubt. You poor child! Well, I’m so sorry about poor Caetha.’ ‘Oh, indeed. We all were.’ Yet once again Bevyan wondered. Often over the next few days Lilli found herself drawn back to her mother’s chamber and Brour. She felt as if she were living the lives of two different girls. In the afternoons, she would sit and sew with Bevyan and the other women, talking over the news of the royal dun while the embroidery grew thick on the pieces of Braemys’s wedding shirt. But in the morning, she would watch her mother to get some idea of Merodda’s plans, and once they were established – a country ride, perhaps, or a session in the Queen’s chambers – Lilli would slip upstairs for a lesson. Oddly enough, Brour always seemed to know that she was coming and would be waiting for her. ‘Is that dweomer?’ she demanded one morning. ‘The way you know I’m coming?’ ‘It’s not. I am your mother’s scribe, after all. She tells me when she’ll be occupied, and then I assume you’ll be coming up here. Although, to tell you the truth, sometimes I worry about her laying a trap for us, like.’ ‘So do I. But today I know she’s gone with the Queen to the temple down in the city, so she should be busy for a fair long while.’ ‘Good.’ Brour considered, tapping his fingers on the closed book. ‘I’ve got a thing of great import to tell you. Repeat back to me what I told you about the Wildfolk.’ ‘They are creatures of the Sphere of the Moon as we are of the Earth. They have eyes that see and ears that hear but not true wits. The dweomermaster can command them at will but should never trust them.’ ‘Excellent! And what of the Lords of the Elements?’ ‘They too are spirits, but of the Spheres of the Planets. They have the beginnings of true wits and thus are wily and hard to command.’ ‘Well done again. You have a fine mind, lass.’ Lilli blushed. ‘What I’m thinking of doing,’ Brour went on, ‘is the evocation of one of the Lords of Earth. There’s a thing I need to find, buried in the earth around this dun. I’ve asked here and there among the servants and the retainers, but no one knows where it lies.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Haven’t you ever thought it odd that this dun doesn’t have a bolthole, a way out in case of siege?’ ‘You mean it doesn’t?’ ‘Not so as anyone remembers. And yet I’ve looked over the chronicles of the kings, as the bards and the priests have kept them. This war’s raged a long time, a hundred years and more, and as will happen in a war, the fortunes ebb and sway. There were times back in the early days when it looked black indeed for the true king here in Dun Deverry, times when one usurper or another had this city sieged. And each time the King disappeared from the dun and just like dweomer turned up in the Boar’s own city of Cantrae, where he could rally his loyal men and ride back with an army to lift the siege.’ ‘Was it dweomer, then?’ ‘I doubt it very much.’ Brour smiled briefly. ‘I think there was a bolthole, some underground way out of this dun, and it must surface a fair distance from the city, too. Doubtless it was a well-kept secret, and it may have been too well-kept. It seems to have died with the last king to use it, and that was fifty years and more ago.’ ‘If you could find it again, then you’d have the King’s favour for a certainty. I’ll bet Uncle Burcan would be ever so pleased.’ ‘No doubt. So much so that I’m going to ask you to keep this a secret. Your uncle hates me, and I want to win him round, you see. I don’t want someone else running to him first.’ ‘I’ll keep it secret, I promise.’ ‘My thanks, lass. Now, let me tell you what we’re going to be doing. The best time for this ritual is in the dark of night, but we’ll need to practise it first.’ ‘I get to help?’ ‘You do indeed. You’ll have to slip out and join me once I find a place where it’s safe to study it. But pay attention now. There are many strange things you need to learn.’ ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got a few moments to ourselves, love,’ Peddyc said. ‘When we’re both awake.’ ‘So am I,’ Bevyan said. ‘I’ve stationed Sarra in the antechamber for a sentinel.’ He laughed and sat down in the chair opposite hers. The afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows and fell across them, a golden blanket. Peddyc yawned and stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘You look weary,’ she said. ‘I am that. I’ve spent the afternoon with our Burcan. That’s enough to weary any man. At least good news is coming in. None of the northern lords have gone over to the Usurper. They’ll hold firm while the border holds.’ ‘And how long will that be?’ Peddyc shrugged. ‘For this summer at least,’ he said finally. ‘Hendyr’s become important. I find myself being courted.’ ‘Ah. That’s interesting.’ ‘Well, ours is the last big dun on the border to the west of here. The King’s forces have to hold it. If it falls to the enemy, then Prince Maryn can outflank us and start moving into the northlands.’ ‘Prince Maryn? I’ve never heard you call him that before.’ Peddyc winced. ‘A foolish slip, my love. May the gods keep me from doing it in front of Burcan.’ He hesitated for a long moment. ‘Well, Maryn’s a prince over his own lands, no matter what any of us think of his claim to the throne of Deverry.’ ‘Pyrdon – just so.’ They fell silent, considering each other, considering – Bevyan supposed – just how much it was safe to say aloud, even in the privacy of their chambers. ‘I’d best get back.’ Peddyc rose and glanced toward the window. ‘The sun’s getting low, and there’s to be yet another council of war.’ ‘When will the army march?’ ‘I’ve no idea. Soon. It will have to be soon, or we’ll find the Usurper at our gates.’ He paused to rub his face with both hands. ‘Gwerbret Daeryc brought that up this afternoon. Burcan said that he was waiting for more messages from the Northlands. One of the younger lords took offence for some reason, and everything turned into wrangling. A lot of pounding on the table and reminding each other of our rank.’ ‘That sounds awful.’ ‘Oh, it was. I’m of two minds, my love. You know how I feel about the Regent as a man, but he’s the only leader we’ve got or are going to have. And without a leader, we’re all –’ He paused for a long moment. ‘Well, I’d best be gone. No doubt I’ll be back late tonight, but if you’re awake, I’ll tell you what decision we’ve reached.’ ‘My thanks. Queen Abrwnna has asked me to join her women tonight after the meal, so I may have gossip to tell you.’ ‘Good. It gladdens my heart to see you in her favour.’ ‘Is it her favour? Or are we being watched?’ Peddyc considered, his head tilted a bit to one side. ‘Well,’ Bevyan went on. ‘You’ve just told me how important Hendyr is. I keep thinking of the dinner we had in Lord Camlyn’s dun, and I wonder how skilled Daeryc is at hiding what his heart feels.’ ‘Not very.’ Peddyc gave her an ironic smile. ‘You speak very true, my love. I hadn’t thought of that. There are times when Daeryc looks at the Regent, and the look on his face – you’d think he’d bitten into rotten meat.’ ‘Just so. I’ve seen it. And Daeryc is our overlord. If they suspect him, won’t they suspect you?’ Peddyc nodded, thinking. ‘My thanks for the warning,’ he said at last. ‘I need your sharp eyes. I’ll do my best to act the loyal vassal around Burcan, then, and I just might have a private caution for His Grace Daeryc, too.’ Although Bevyan was undoubtedly rising in the Queen’s favour, as yet she hadn’t been invited to eat at the royal women’s table. Her usual bench stood close enough to the Queen, however, for her to watch Abrwnna and her women as they sat giggling together over their meat and bread. Not far away, though at enough distance for propriety, the Queen’s Fellowship shared a table while immediately behind them sat the sons of various high-ranking nobility, Anasyn among them. Bevyan enjoyed watching her son, grown so tall and strong, taken into the company of his peers. She had tried over the years to distance herself from him; she had mourned his brothers too bitterly to wish to repeat that particular grief. Yet she was proud of him and his courtly manners as well. Although the lords around him were drinking hard and laughing, Sanno watched his ale and spoke only quietly if at all. Instead of ale, the young men of the Queen’s Fellowship had been drinking mead, or so Bevyan heard later, and rather a lot of it. All at once one of them shouted, someone else swore, a third oath rang out and stilled the general clamour. Bevyan rose to look just as the Queen’s men leapt up, knocking over benches, to rush the lords at Anasyn’s table. Bevyan saw Anasyn jump free and grab a friend from behind just in time to keep the lad’s sword in its sheath. The fight devolved into shoving and cursing. A table went over with the crack of breaking pottery. Someone swung a punch, someone else reeled back with a bloody nose, but the older lords were on their feet and running, calling out to one another like hounds coursing for game. They grabbed the combatants and dragged them apart, then for good measure dragged them clear out of the great hall. ‘And what was all that about?’ Lilli said. ‘Oh, who knows?’ Bevyan said with a shrug. ‘Men will take insult and so easily, too.’ And yet she saw Anasyn, hurrying across to her through the confusion and beckoning her to join him. With a gesture to Lilli to stay put, Bevyan headed to the curve of the wall and a little space free of gawkers, where he joined her. His right sleeve was soaked through with mead, as if someone had thrown a goblet-full. ‘There you are, Mother,’ Anasyn said. ‘Father said I should tell you what happened.’ ‘Oh did he? It was more than some stupid insult, then.’ ‘Truly. Someone proposed a wager, you see, on how soon one of the Queen’s Fellowship would bed the Queen, and which one it would be. Well, they overheard, and –’ ‘Oh ye gods! So the gossip’s got as bad as all that? Who started it?’ Anasyn shrugged for an answer. Out in the great hall everyone was sitting back down; a pair of pages were righting the overturned benches and picking up trenchers from the straw while assorted dogs wagged their tails and watched, hoping for another spill and sudden meal. ‘Your father was right to let me know,’ Bevyan said. ‘I’ll have a word with Merodda about this. As far as I can tell, she’s the only one with any influence over the lass.’ ‘So I’ve heard.’ ‘Which reminds me, dear. The Queen tells me you were offered a place in her fellowship.’ ‘I turned it down.’ ‘So she said. I was just curious –’ ‘I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s lap dog and run with a pack of them. It’s disgusting, watching them fawn over her.’ I see, Bevyan thought. So my lad’s fallen in love! Aloud, she said, ‘And quite right, too. Well, I’d best see how the poor lass fares.’ The Queen’s hall in Dun Deverry occupied an entire floor of the royal broch. Carved chairs, heaped with faded and torn cushions, stood on threadbare Bardek carpets, while sagging tapestries covered the walls between the windows. When Bevyan came in, she expected to find the Queen in tears over this insult to her honour, but instead Abrwnna was pacing back and forth in front of a cold hearth while her maidservants cowered out of her way in the curve of the wall. One of the girls was crying, and her messy hair, pulled every which way in long strands, gave evidence of her royal mistress’s bad temper. Merodda, however, was calmly sitting on one of the wide windowsills as if to take the air. None of the Queen’s other serving women were in evidence. ‘There you are, Lady Bevyan,’ the Queen said. ‘I have need of your counsel.’ ‘Indeed, Your Highness?’ Bevyan made a curtsey in her general direction, since she kept pacing. ‘Indeed. Lady Merodda tells me I should disband my fellowship.’ ‘Ah. I fear me that I agree with her.’ ‘I don’t want to!’ Abrwnna swung round and threw one arm up, as if she were thinking of slapping the older women down. ‘They’re mine and I don’t want to!’ ‘No one can force Your Highness,’ Merodda put in. ‘Bevyan, Her Highness asked my opinion, and so I gave it.’ ‘As I have given mine,’ Bevyan said. ‘And there we’ll let the matter drop if Her Highness commands.’ ‘Well, I cursed well do!’ With a deep breath Abrwnna caught herself and lowered her hand. ‘We do not wish to hear this matter discussed in our presence.’ ‘Very well, Your Highness,’ Bevyan said. ‘So be it.’ In years past Dun Deverry had sheltered three times the men who lived there now. In its tangle of wards and towers stood many an empty building – sheds and stables, mostly, but in a small ward far from the King’s residence rose a deserted broch. Its lower floors stored arrows, stones, and poles for pushing siege-ladders off walls, but the top floor stood empty except for a stack of tanned hides, all stiff and crumbling from age. These Lilli and Brour hung over the windows until, after a lot of struggling and cursing, not a crack of sunlight gleamed. ‘Good,’ Brour said. ‘We don’t want anyone seeing our lantern and coming up here.’ ‘How did you find this place?’ ‘I’ve been searching for the bolthole for weeks, so I’ve been prying into all sorts of deserted places. I remembered this one when I decided to try a ritual.’ ‘Do you think anyone else comes up here?’ ‘There weren’t any tracks in the dust.’ Lilli looked around the room – an ordinary sort of room for Dun Deverry, yet no one had been up here for years, if the dust and the cobwebs could be trusted. ‘I hope my mother doesn’t want me to scry this evening.’ ‘She won’t,’ Brour said. ‘She told me she’d be attending upon the Queen again. Is somewhat wrong with Her Highness, do you know?’ ‘I don’t, but I’ll wager it’s that fight in the great hall last night. Everyone is saying that the Queen’s honour was insulted, and no doubt she’s ever so upset.’ ‘No doubt. Well, that should keep your mother nicely occupied, then.’ ‘Truly.’ Lilli paused for a sneeze. ‘It’s so dusty up here! Will the Lords of Earth like that?’ ‘I’ll sweep up a bit before we start. Now you’d best run along before someone misses you. I’ll go back later. We don’t want anyone seeing us come in together.’ When Lilli returned to the royal broch, she found servants standing around gossiping about the insult to the Queen’s Fellowship, if not the Queen herself. During their afternoon of sewing, Bevyan seemed worried about the incident as well. ‘What’s causing the trouble,’ Bevyan said, ‘is having all these young hotheads packed in together, waiting for the summer’s fighting to start. The Regent needs to lead his men out soon.’ ‘I don’t understand why he hasn’t already,’ Lilli said. ‘Do you, Bevva?’ ‘Well, I don’t truly know, but Peddyc’s shared his guesses with me.’ Bevyan hesitated, thinking something through. ‘I’d say that the Regent doesn’t have enough men to stand against the Usurper, and they’re trying to round up more.’ ‘Oh. Oh, that means we’re going to lose, doesn’t it?’ Bevyan and Sarra both looked up from their sewing and stared at her. Lilli felt her face grow hot. ‘I’m sorry,’ Lilli stammered. ‘I shouldn’t have – oh gods! I always say the wrong thing – I’m sorry.’ ‘No need to apologize, dear,’ Bevyan said. ‘But it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to lose. The Regent thinks he can find the men we need, and Peddyc seems to agree with him. One good victory, and a lot of the lords who went over to the Usurper will swing back to the King’s side.’ If, Lilli thought, if we can gain the victory in the first place. ‘The waiting’s just so awful,’ she said aloud. ‘Just so, dear, just so.’ Bevyan sighed and bent her head back to her work, but all at once she seemed old, and to Lilli’s sight the streaks of grey in her pale hair suddenly spread and turned dead-white while her skin turned a cold dead grey to match it. Lilli nearly cried out. She’s just weary! she told herself sharply. You’re just seeing things again. As soon as the evening meal was finished, Merodda and Bevyan went to wait upon the Queen, and Lilli could slip unnoticed from the great hall. In the abandoned tower she found Brour waiting for her. As she climbed the stairs, she saw a broom leaning against the wall on the landing, and the wooden floor inside had been swept clean. Brour himself was sitting in the middle of the circular room, while all around him huge shadows danced on the rough stone walls. He’d lit four lanterns and set them equidistant from one another. ‘They sit at the four directions, as far as I can reckon them anyway.’ Brour rose to greet her. ‘East west, north south. It’s in the pillar of light above each lantern that you’re to imagine the great lords of the elements when the time comes.’ ‘Very well,’ Lilli said. ‘We’re going to practise this a lot, aren’t we?’ ‘Many times over, truly. It has to be done just precisely right. Tonight I’m merely going to tell you the different parts and what they mean. Oh, and I want to give you a lesson on hardening your aura.’ ‘My what?’ ‘It’s like an egg of invisible light that surrounds every living person. It’s the effect of the etheric plane interpenetrating the physical. When you throw a stone into a pond, the ripples spread. And what are the ripples? A pattern in the same water as fills the pond. Think of the aura as being somewhat like that.’ Lilli stared at the floor and tried to think. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘It’s not an easy thing to understand.’ Brour sounded amused. ‘But spend some time thinking on it, and see what comes to your mind. But the point is, once you learn to control yours, your mother won’t be able to pry into your mind again.’ ‘Splendid!’ Lilli looked up and found him smiling. ‘There’s nothing I’d like more!’ ‘No doubt. Let’s begin.’ ‘Braemys rode in this afternoon,’ Burcan said. ‘He’s brought the news I’ve been waiting for.’ ‘Indeed?’ Merodda said. ‘Good or ill?’ ‘Good. The northern lords have agreed to strip their fort guards. We’ll have a full army when we march.’ Merodda allowed herself a brief smile, which he returned. Late in the evening, they were sitting alone in her chamber by the light of a smoky fire. Outside, rain hammered against the walls, and every now and then the south wind lifted the leather hides hung at the windows. ‘Have there been any omens?’ Burcan said. ‘I’ve not had Lilli scry this past few days. I was waiting to hear your news. You need to have some knowledge of how things are before you can interpret an omen, you see.’ ‘Very well, then. Huh, I’ll have to remind Brae to have a word with her. About their betrothal, I mean.’ ‘If he’s not too busy for a courtly gesture, of course.’ Her sarcasm earned her a sour smile. Burcan hesitated, studying her face. She knew what he wanted to know, what they all wanted to know, Bevva and that beastly little herald, too, and her women servants – they’d all suspected for years, after all, who her lover might be. She could see it in their narrowed eyes, hear it in the hesitations of their speech. In the hearth a log burned through and dropped in a gush of flame and a scatter of coals on stone. ‘Rhodi?’ His voice hesitated, stumbled. ‘Do you really think this marriage is an, um, er, well, allowable thing?’ She smiled into the fire. On the hearthstone the coals were winking out, one at a time. She heard him move uneasily in his chair, then sigh. ‘I’d best get on my way,’ Burcan said. ‘Daeryc and the other gwerbretion are waiting for me.’ ‘So late?’ ‘I promised I’d tell them when we’ll march as soon as I’d spoken to the King. He was asleep when I stopped in there, but I spoke, anyway.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I didn’t say I’d wait for his answer.’ ‘And when will you march?’ ‘As soon as the full northern contingents ride in. They’re on their way.’ In the morning, when Lilli came down to the great hall, she found Braemys waiting for her near the foot of the staircase. He was a tall lad, as all the Boarsmen were, blond and blue-eyed and with the clan’s squarish face as well. Since last they’d met, his upper lip had sprouted a line of hair that could be called a moustache for courtesy’s sake if naught else. When he saw her, he strode over and bowed. She curtsied in return. ‘My lady,’ Braemys said. ‘Does this betrothal please you?’ ‘It does. What about you, my lord?’ ‘Well enough.’ He turned to look away – when she followed his glance, Lilli could see Uncle Burcan standing near the doorway. ‘I’d best get myself to the council of war.’ He turned and strode off to join his father. Lilli watched them as they made their way through the crowded hall and out. Ah well, she reminded herself, he’s ever so much better than Nantyn. Over the next few days Lilli had scant time to worry about her betrothed. He was much involved with the councils of war, while she and Brour had their practising to do. Once as well, late of a rainy night, her mother called her to scry in the black ink. With Brour holding the long candle as usual, Lilli stared into the silver bowl, where shadows danced, black on a deeper black. She could hear the wind howling around the broch, and as the spell took her over, the sound transmuted into voices, screaming and crying out. ‘Tears and rage.’ It was the only thing Lilli could say about the wailing. ‘I hear tears and terror.’ She could feel her mother’s hand squeezing the back of her neck. ‘Try to listen,’ Merodda hissed. ‘What are they saying?’ ‘No words. Weeping and fear.’ In the blackness images were beginning to form of headless riders on black horses, huge, towering over entire cities as they galloped through a stormy night. The wailing faded away, and Lilli heard her own voice start describing the omens. Swords that burned with blue fire formed a huge wall in front of Dun Deverry. An army all dressed in red threw itself against the wall but fell back, tattered and dying, only to regroup on a far hill. ‘They’re riding again,’ Lilli said. ‘I see them riding – wait. It’s going away, it’s all going away.’ In the basin the flaming swords winked out like sparks on a hearth stone. The images turned pale and watery, then faded in turn. For a moment, blackness – then lantern-light revealed a pleasant chamber with bright-coloured tapestries on the walls. In the middle of the chamber stood an elderly man with a shock of untidy white hair. He was leaning over a table and staring into a basin of water. All at once he looked up – looked right at her with ice-blue eyes that seemed to pierce her very soul. ‘Well, here’s a surprise!’ He sounded amused, and his voice was oddly resonant for someone who looked so old. ‘Who are you, lass? You’ll hurt yourself spying on me like this, if you’re not careful.’ Lilli started to answer but found she couldn’t speak. All at once the vision broke. The image separated into pie-slice fragments like the design on a shattered plate – then disappeared. A white-faced Brour was shaking her by the shoulder. ‘Are you back? Are you back?’ ‘I am, Brour. What’s so wrong?’ ‘I’d rather like to know that myself,’ Merodda said. ‘Why did you stop her?’ ‘Because that old man is dangerous. He’s the Usurper’s personal advisor and a sorcerer of the greatest power.’ ‘I saw into Cerrmor?’ Lilli said. ‘You did.’ Brour paused to wipe his sweaty face on his sleeve. ‘Or Nevyn tricked you into revealing yourself.’ ‘Who?’ Merodda broke in. ‘No one? Don’t talk in riddles.’ ‘I’m not. That’s his name, nevyn, Nevyn, some miserable jest of his father’s, it was, naming his son no one.’ Merodda was studying her scribe with her mouth caught in a sour twist. With a long sigh Brour composed himself. ‘I studied under the man,’ Brour said. ‘I know him quite well.’ ‘He wasn’t trying to trick me,’ Lilli said. ‘He was as surprised as I was.’ ‘Ah.’ Brour considered this for a long moment. ‘Still, you’d best not scry again tonight. He’ll be looking for you. It’s too dangerous.’ ‘What?’ Merodda snapped. ‘But the omens –’ ‘Will have to wait,’ Brour said. ‘It’s too dangerous, my lady. Truly it is. I’ll gladly explain.’ ‘Do so.’ Merodda turned to Lilli. ‘Leave us.’ When Lilli hesitated, Merodda raised a ringed hand. Lilli left and hurried down the corridor to her chamber. Once safely inside, she went to the window – the floor was soaked with rain, but outside the storm had ended. Overhead a pale moon seemed to race through the sky as torn clouds scudded past. ‘He looked kind,’ Lilli whispered. ‘Truly kind. If he’s the sort of man Cerrmor has on his side –’ She shook her head to drive the traitorous thoughts away. Yet that night she dreamt about Cerrmor, or some dream image of it, at any rate, since she’d never been there, and of Nevyn, who seemed to be trying to find her in the middle of a vast maze of stone walls and hedgerows. When she woke to a flood of sunlight across her bed, the dream stayed with her. She dressed and was just thinking of looking for Brour when he knocked at her door. ‘It’s me,’ he called out. ‘Are you there, Lilli?’ ‘I am.’ She unbarred the door. ‘Come in. I’ve had the oddest dream.’ ‘I thought you might.’ Brour hurried in, then shut the door behind him. His round child’s face was pale and stubbled, as if he’d waked all night. ‘What’s so wrong?’ Lilli said. ‘A number of small things that all add up to trouble. Nevyn spotting you, and then your dear mother’s lack of sense. She refuses to stop this dangerous scrying.’ ‘Dangerous because of Nevyn?’ ‘Just so. If he makes a link with you, he’ll be able to spy through your eyes.’ ‘Well, it’s not as if I know very much about the King’s plans.’ ‘You’d be surprised what you know without knowing you know it.’ Brour smiled briefly. ‘What troubles my heart is a selfish fear, though. I don’t want Nevyn tracking me down.’ ‘Oh. Why not?’ Brour’s eyes blinked rapidly; then he shrugged. ‘I was a cursed poor student,’ he said. ‘And I left before I truly should have.’ Lilli hesitated, hearing pain in his voice. Something more than that had gone wrong, she suspected – something too shameful for Brour to admit. ‘It was all a long time ago.’ Brour paced over to the window, paced back again. ‘But I’ve made up my mind. Once we work the ritual and find the bolthole, I’m leaving Dun Deverry.’ ‘Oh, don’t go!’ ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here. Your mother and uncle have grown suspicious of me for some reason, and they’ll kill me when the time seems ripe. You remember the omen of my head in a chest? Well, I’m sure it was quite true. I was hoping to win your uncle round by finding the bolthole, but now I think I’ll just leave by it. Safer all round. Then once I’m gone, you can tell Burcan about it, and you’ll get the gain and favour.’ ‘My thanks. But I wish you weren’t going.’ ‘You could come with me.’ Lilli gasped and laid her hand at her throat. ‘Just think about it,’ Brour said. ‘My offer is strictly honourable. I’ll treat you like my daughter. Come with me and be my apprentice. And save your skin, too, when this miserable dun falls to the enemy.’ Lilli felt the blood pound in her throat. ‘I’ve got to get back to your lady mother.’ Brour looked as if he might spit at the mention of her name. ‘But think on it, Lilli. I beg you.’ After he left, Lilli wandered over to the window. For a long time she stared out at the many-towered view without truly seeing it. She had a decision to make, and for the first time in her life, she couldn’t go running to Bevva with it. Over the past few days, Merodda had become more and more aware of Lady Bevyan’s growing influence over the young Queen. Abrwnna included Bevyan in every royal progress through the town and every hawking party, visit to the temples, or special evening meal in the royal hall. At times, when Merodda went up to the women’s quarters, she would find Bevyan there alone, listening to one of the Queen’s rambling conversations. ‘I was glad at first,’ Merodda remarked to Brour. ‘Abrwnna can be a tiresome little thing.’ ‘Indeed, my lady? But you’re not pleased now?’ ‘Well, I don’t want to see myself displaced in the Queen’s favour.’ ‘Ah. That would be a great loss, truly.’ Merodda considered him for a long moment. His head bent over his work, he was writing out a proclamation of Lilli’s betrothal for the heralds. She would regret his death when Burcan killed him, but Burcan’s favour was the centre of her life, the one thing she desperately needed, far beyond even the favour of the Queen. If he wanted Brour gone, then gone he’d be. Brour stuck his reed pen into a hole in the side of his ink pot, then picked up a handful of sand from a tray behind him and sprinkled it over wet words. ‘What do you think of Bevyan?’ Merodda said. ‘I rather like her, my lady, from what little I know of her, but I don’t know much at all.’ ‘Well, true-spoken.’ She hesitated, wondering what she wanted him to say. ‘It’s of no matter. Tonight I’ll be in the Queen’s quarters, attending upon Her Highness. If anyone else wishes to see me, they’ll have to wait.’ ‘Very good, my lady.’ Brour picked up the sheet of parchment and tipped the sand back into its tray, then laid it down and got back to work. That evening Merodda tried to reach the Queen’s side early, but it seemed that the entire court was conspiring against her. As she made her way from the great hall, one person after another stopped her – servants asking for orders, lords hoping to wangle some favour from the Regent, ladies wanting to chat, a page with a message from Burcan. By the time she reached the women’s hall Bevyan was there ahead of her, sitting at Abrwnna’s side on a footstool while the Queen lounged in a cushioned chair. Her maidservants were laying a little fire in the hearth and lighting candles, while two serving women sang a song of love, trading off verses, and a third played a clumsy harp, all to keep the Queen amused. In vain, that – Abrwnna was scowling. When Merodda came in, she turned her head to acknowledge her, then waved a hand at the music-makers. ‘Oh don’t!’ Abrwnna snapped. ‘I hate that song.’ The music stopped. The singers glanced at each other, then arranged smiles. The would-be harpist looked close to tears. ‘This is all unbelievably tedious.’ Abrwnna lay back with her head resting on the chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘I think I’m going to die of boredom.’ ‘Well, Your Highness,’ Bevyan said. ‘We could play a game of carnoic or wooden wisdom.’ ‘I’m sick of games.’ ‘Your Highness?’ the lass with the harp said. ‘If your husband the King joined us, we could have a proper bard come in to entertain.’ ‘I don’t want my beastly husband here. He sucks his thumb when he listens.’ All the women glanced sideways at each other. Merodda found an empty chair and sat down. Their tasks done, the maidservants scurried away. ‘I want to go for a walk in the night air,’ Abrwnna announced. ‘Very well, Your Highness,’ Bevyan said. ‘We’ll all have a nice stroll in the gardens.’ ‘I don’t want anyone to come with me.’ ‘Your Highness!’ Merodda broke in. ‘That would be most unwise.’ ‘I don’t care if it’s unwise or not! I want to be alone.’ The serving women all began talking at once, but Bevyan rose, faced Abrwnna, and caught the lass’s glance with hers. ‘My poor dear child,’ Bevyan said. ‘I know how unbelievably dreadful this all is. My heart aches for you. I can hear in your voice just how tired and lonely and frightened you are.’ ‘Well, I am, and all of those things!’ Abrwnna seemed on the edge of tears. ‘When we were riding today, I just wanted to turn my horse and gallop away, just ride off somewhere and be lost. Anything would be better than another summer of this beastly war.’ Merodda felt a sudden chill – so! Bevyan had been riding with the Queen, while she’d been left behind. ‘Well, we can all understand that.’ Bevyan sat again, but she turned the footstool so the Queen could see her face. ‘But you feel it much more keenly than any of us.’ ‘I’m just so tired,’ Abrwnna whispered. ‘It’s just not fair.’ ‘It’s not, truly,’ Bevyan said. ‘We did ride such a long way today. Shall I comb out your hair for you? And then perhaps you can sleep. The morning will bring the sun and better things.’ ‘I’d like that.’ Abrwnna turned to one of her women. ‘Fetch my combs for me.’ While Bevyan combed the Queen’s hair, she kept up a flow of chatter in her soft, dark voice that soothed the Queen the way stroking will soothe a frightened cat. She allowed Bevva to lead her to her bedchamber, too, and tuck her in. When Merodda left the women’s hall that night, she wondered if everyone she met could smell her fear – it seemed to trail behind her like smoke. To be supplanted this way! How could she possibly allow it? Out in the deserted broch Lilli and Brour were ready at last to work the ritual of evocation. At each of the four directions stood a candle lantern which Brour lit from a fifth. In one curve of the wall lay a couple of cloth sacks – supplies, he said. On the floor he’d drawn a big circle with flour. ‘It’s a bit wobbly, isn’t it?’ Brour said, frowning at the mark. ‘Well, the circle that really matters is the one I’ll visualize, anyway.’ Lilli sat down cross-legged in the centre of the circle, facing their approximate east. Brour had brought a big pottery bowl for her scrying; they didn’t dare risk Merodda noticing that the silver basin had gone missing. He filled it with ink from a leather bottle and set it down in front of her. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’ ‘I am.’ Lilli took a deep breath to steady her nerves. ‘Let’s begin.’ Brour stood directly in front of her, again facing east, and raised his arms high above his head. For a moment he gathered breath; then he began to chant in an odd vibrating growl of a voice. The words themselves meant nothing to her; they were Greggyn, she supposed, or some other ancient tongue. From his telling, however, she knew that he was invoking the Light that dwelt beyond the gods and drawing it down into himself to give power for the working. He lowered his arms till they were straight out from his shoulders and chanted again, waited, then let his arms drop. To Lilli it seemed that the room had suddenly become larger – and crowded. Although she could hear nothing but Brour’s hard breathing, she felt that the room buzzed with life and noise, like the great hall on some state occasion. Brour held out one hand as if he were holding a sword and began to chant again. As he growled out the sacred words, he slowly turned, east to south to west to north and east again, drawing a circle of blue light out on the astral plane – or so he’d told her. Again, she could see nothing of this, but all at once she realized that the stone walls of the broch shimmered in a faint silvery light, as if some reflection of the magic had come through to her sight. ‘I invoke thee!’ Brour began to intone in Deverrian. ‘I call unto thee! O Great King of the Element of Earth, I invoke thee into my presence! Show thyself and be known, in the names of the great sigils of the elements and the Lords of Light!’ Brour turned toward the north, and Lilli twisted round so that she could see. The candle lantern set there threw a mottled pillar of light up the stone wall, at first no different than any of the others in the room. ‘I invoke thee! Lord of Earth and the North, home of the greatest darkness, come to me and show thyself!’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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