Darkspell (11 page)

“I called you here to ask you somewhat,” Glyn said abruptly. “You’re the only man I can trust to hold your tongue about it. Even priests talk among themselves like old women.”

“Old women hold their tongues better, my liege.”

“Yet this question of mine takes a priest’s kind of knowledge to answer.” And here Glyn paused. “I was hoping the dweomer might be able to advise me.”

“And does my liege think I have such knowledge?”

“He does. Is your liege wrong?”

“He’s not.”

Glyn smiled in triumph, very briefly.

“Then answer me this,” he went on. “If a man or a woman has sworn a vow in a temple, is there any way that the oath can be forsworn without offending the gods?”

“Well, only in rare circumstances. Suppose someone swore a wrong thing with the connivance of a corrupt priest, then that priest’s superior could pronounce the vow
invalid. It might also be possible for the person who swore the vow to renounce it by devoting the rest of their life to the god’s service, but that would be a tricky matter indeed.”

“That’s hardly the case here.”

“Oho! I take it my liege has noticed his brother pining after a forbidden thing.”

“He has, at that. It doesn’t take dweomer to see a horse in a chamber, good sorcerer.”

“True enough. I only hope that no one besides us has seen it, my liege. There are plenty of men who envy Dannyn.”

With a sigh Glyn nodded his agreement.

“If an old man may offer his liege advice,” Nevyn went on, “the king had best speak to his brother about this. It would be a terrible and impious thing for Dannyn to seduce Gweniver into breaking that vow.”

Glyn sighed and looked at the map.

“I should arrange for Dannyn to marry again,” he said. “I had thoughts of settling Lady Macla and the Wolf lands upon him, but I didn’t want him so far from my court all winter. Perhaps my selfishness was all for the best. No doubt Gweniver will visit her sister often.”

“No doubt, my liege. May I be so presumptuous as to ask you why you favor Lord Dannyn so highly? I find him worthy of your favor, mind, but most men don’t see their father’s bastards so clearly. Most prefer not to see them at all.”

“True enough. Well, you see, since my father claimed the throne for me when I was just a babe in arms, I was raised to be king. It sounded splendid to a lad: I’d claim the Holy City after glorious battles, I’d be the ruler of all I could survey, I’d save the kingdom from this war, and everyone would praise my name. But one day I was out in the ward, and I saw the stable hands tormenting this little lad. He was just about six, then, and I was eight. They were mocking him for a bastard, and when he tried to hit one of them, they mobbed him and started beating him. So I ran over and ordered them to stop. I felt most generous,
kingly indeed, defending this poor little creature.” He smiled in overscrupulous self-mockery. “So I picked the lad up and wiped his bloody nose for him, and by every god in the sky, I might as well have been looking into a mirror. I suppose it goes without saying that no one had ever told the young king that his father took fancies to kitchen maids. Well, I found out that morning. So I went storming into Father’s chamber like the king I felt myself to be and demanded to know what he thought he was doing. It’s a pity you couldn’t have seen the look on his face.”

Nevyn allowed himself a laugh.

“But at any rate,” Glyn went on, “I insisted on having Dannyn come live with me in the broch, because he was my brother, no matter what our father thought about it. And a bit at a time, he told me what he’d gone through, living mocked and scorned as a scullery lad, made to feel grateful for having scraps to eat. And so I began to think about what rulership means, good sorcerer, in my childish way. I made a solemn vow to Great Bel that never would I put my will above all else and worship it the way my father did. For that alone I’d honor Dannyn. He gave me a gift worth more than a hundred horses. But beyond that he’s the only man in this court who loves me for what I am, not for the influence and land he can get out of me. Do I sound a fool for caring about such things? I must, I suppose.”

“My liege is not a fool. My liege is one of the sanest men I’ve ever met, and lest you think that idle flattery, let me add that sanity is a curse in mad times like these.”

“Is it, now?” The king looked away, slack-mouthed for a moment. “True enough, I suppose. Well, my thanks, good sir, for your counsel. If things allow, I’ll come down to the garden one of these days and see how it’s getting on.”

Rather than returning to his weeding, Nevyn went back to his chamber after he left the king. His heart was troubled, wondering if Glyn was meant to rule as the only king in Deverry, hoping that such was his Wyrd, yet knowing that the future was closed to him. After he barred the door to ensure that he wouldn’t be disturbed, he stood
in the center of his small chamber and imagined that his right hand held a sword of blue fire. Slowly he built up the image until it lived apart from his will, no matter where he turned his attention. Only then did he use it to trace a circle of blue fire around him, imaging the flames until they, too, lived of their own will.

Laying aside the sword, he sat down in the center of the leaping, glowing circle and built up before him the mental image of a six-pointed star, glowing also with gold fire, a symbol of the center and balance of all things, and the source of the true kingship. Invoking the Kings of the Element of Aethyr, he stared into the hexagon formed in the center of the interlaced triangles and used it to scry, the way clumsier dweomerfolk use a stone or a mirror.

The visions came cloudy, barely forming before they dissolved, thrown together and torn apart like clouds in a high wind, and he saw naught there of Glyn’s Wyrd. Even in the Inner Lands (that is, the astral plane), the currents were troubled, the forces out of balance, the light shadowed. For every kingdom or people, there’s a corresponding part of the upper astral—some magicians call it a place, which will do—that’s the true source of the events that come to the kingdom on the Outer Lands, that is, the physical world, just as every person has a secret and undying soul, which determines what that person calls his will or his luck. The Deverry folk saw wars raging between ambitious men; those men saw themselves as the authors of their actions; Nevyn saw the truth. The petty squabbles of would-be kings were only symptoms of the crisis, like the fever is only the symptom of the disease, a painful thing in itself, but not the true killer. Deep in the Inner Lands, the dark forces of Unbalanced Death were out of control, sweeping all into chaos, with only a handful of warriors who served the Light to pit themselves against them. Although Nevyn was only the humble servant of those Great Ones, he had his own part of the war to fight in the kingdom. After all, a fever may kill a patient if it’s allowed to burn unchecked.

Now, mind that you never think of these forces of Unbalanced
Death as persons, some sort of evil army led by beings with a recognizable soul. On the contrary, they are forces as natural in their own way as falling rain, but they were, in this case, out of control like a river in flood tide, swelling over its banks and sweeping farms and towns before it. Every people or kingdom has a streak of chaos in its soul, weakness, greed, small prides, and arrogance, which can be either denied or given in to. When indulged, this convocation of chaos releases energy—to use a metaphor—which flows to the appropriate dark place in the Inner Lands. So it was with Deverry in that troubled time. The forces were swollen and sweeping down, exactly like that river.

How far could he intervene on the physical plane? Nevyn quite simply didn’t know. The work of the dweomer is subtle, a thing of influences, images, and slow inner working. Direct action in the world is normally so foreign to a dweomer-master that Nevyn was afraid to intervene until the time was exactly right. A wrong action, even to the right end, would only score another victory for Chaos and the Dark. Yet it ached his heart to wait, to watch the death, the sickness, the suffering, and the poverty that the wars were spreading across the kingdom. The worst thing of all was knowing that here and there were the evil masters of the dark dweomer, gloating over the suffering and sucking up the power released by the Chaos tide for their own dark ends. Their time will come, he reminded himself. For them is the dark at the end of the world, the curse at the end of the ages of ages.

But he as servant couldn’t send them to the dark before their time, any more than he could see if Glyn would someday rule a peaceful kingdom in Dun Deverry. With a sigh he broke off his fruitless meditations and banished the star and the circle. He went to his window and leaned out, watching the warriors hurry across the ward far below on their way to the great hall for dinner. Seeing them laughing and jesting stabbed guilt into his heart. His old fault had ripened the war, or so he saw it. Long ago, when he’d been a prince of the realm, he’d been given the choice
between marrying Brangwen of the Falcon clan, and thus making slower progress in learning dweomer (since he would have a wife and children to care for), or casting her off and devoting himself to the craft. In his clumsy attempt to have the best of both choices, he’d brought three people to their deaths: Brangwen herself, her brother Gerraent, who’d loved her with an incestuous and unholy passion, and Lord Blaen of the Boar, an honorable suitor who’d had the bad luck to be entangled with Gerraent’s madness.

If he’d only married Brangwen, he reproached himself, they would have had heirs, who would have had heirs in their turn to inherit the throne cleanly and prevent civil war. Perhaps. He warned himself that no man could know the truth of that. On the other hand, this matter of the Boars was more closely related to his mistake. Ever since they’d been given the Falcon lands as retribution for Blaen’s death, the Boars had swelled with pride and arrogance. It was their urging that had made Gwerbret Cantrae claim a throne that he was never meant to have. Nevyn himself had lived through all of these events, watching from a safe distance. His dweomer kept him alive, but not as a reward—as retribution, rather, until he could set right his ancient wrongs.

And now all the actors in that ancient tragedy were gathered here in Cerrmor. That night at dinner Nevyn looked round the hall and marked them all: Blaen, eating with the rest of the Wolf riders as Ricyn, their captain; Gerraent, sitting at Glyn’s left as his brother; Brangwen, with the blue tattoo of a Moon-sworn rider on her cheek. They were all twined together still, but it was Gweniver’s lot in this life that ached his heart the most.

Nevyn was seated at a table on the floor of the hall with the scribe and his wife, the head groom and his, the two underchamberlains, and the widowed Master of Weaponry, Ysgerryn. That particular evening Ysgerryn noticed Nevyn watching the lady Gweniver as she ate, and mentioned that earlier Dannyn had brought her in to be fitted with a coat of mail.

“Fortunately, I’d saved some mail that fit Dannyn himself
before he’d reached his full growth,” Ysgerryn went on. “It could have been broken apart and made larger, of course, but it was such a nice bit of work, I kept it for one of the young princes someday. It came in handy now.”

“So it did. And what did the lord think of having the lady wear his old armor?”

“Oddly enough, he was pleased. He said somewhat about it being an omen.”

I’ll just wager he did, Nevyn thought, curse him!

Once the meal was over, Nevyn started to leave the hall, but he noticed Dannyn coming over to sit with Gweniver at her table. He lingered below the dais to eavesdrop, but Dannyn was only asking her an innocent question about the mail.

“Oh, ye gods,” she said with a laugh. “My shoulders ache like fire from wearing the thing! It must weigh a good two stone.”

“It does, at that,” Dannyn said. “But keep wearing it every cursed minute you can stand to have it on. I’d hate to lose a man of your spirit just because of a lack of training.”

With a drunken grin young Lord Oldac leaned across the table, a beefy blond lad with entirely too high an opinion of himself.

“A man?” he said. “Here, Dannyn, what’s happened to your eyes?”

“They can see the blue tattoo on her face. As far as anyone under my command is concerned, she’s a man, or as much like one as matters.”

“True spoken, of course.” Oldac wiped his mead-soaked mustache on the back of his hand. “But here, Gwen, there’s no denying that you’re a good-looking enough wench to make a man forget.”

As fast and straight as a grouse breaking cover, Dannyn rose and leaned over to grab Oldac by the shirt. While goblets rolled and spilled and men shouted, he hauled the kicking, yelling lord across the table. With a last hoist he dumped Oldac at Gweniver’s feet.

“Apologize!” Dannyn snarled. “No one calls a lady and a priestess a wench.”

Dead silent, every man in the hall was watching. Oldac gasped for breath and hauled himself up in a kneel.

“Most humbly I apologize,” Oldac gasped. “Never will I call you that again, Your Holiness. I beg your Goddess to forgive me.”

“You’re a fool,” Gweniver said. “But your apology is accepted.”

Oldac got up, smoothed down his mead-soaked shirt, and turned on Dannyn.

“May the Goddess forgive my slight,” he said. “But as for you, bastard …”

When Dannyn laid his hand on his sword hilt, men rose from their seats.

“Does his lordship wish to offer me a formal challenge?” Dannyn’s voice was as mild as a lady’s maid.

Trapped, Oldac looked this way and that, his mouth working as he debated the choice between honor and certain death. Dannyn waited, smiling. At the table of honor, the king rose.

“Enough!” Glyn yelled. “A pox on both of you for fighting in my hall! Danno, get back here and sit down! Oldac, I wish to speak with you later in my apartments.”

Blushing scarlet, Oldac spun on his heel and ran out of the hall. His head down like a whipped hound, Dannyn slunk back to his brother’s side. As Nevyn left, he was wondering about Gerraent, as he tended to think of him in weak moments. It seemed that he was determined to treat Gweniver honorably and to ignore that long-buried passion which had to be working its way to the surface. More power to the lad, Nevyn thought. Maybe he’ll get free of it in this life. And yet with the thought came a clammy touch of dweomer-cold down his back. There was danger working here, danger of which he was unaware.