Darkspell (29 page)

“I’ve been renounced?” He spoke flatly, even dryly. “I thought that was in the wind when I heard the guards talking about war on the border.”

“I’m afraid it’s true.”

“Well, Ristolyn’s ideas about virtue are going to stand me in good stead. It seems that the entire goal or end of my life has been to make a good death down in the market square. I’d say that fortitude would be the most appropriate virtue to that end, wouldn’t you?”

“Listen. You’re not going to hang if I have one cursed word to say about it.”

“Then that gives me hope. I suppose it’s hope. Maybe it would be better to hang and ride free in the Otherlands than sit here and molder. You know, I’ve been here longer
than I was a prince in Eldidd. Fancy that. Over half my life as Glyn’s guest.”

“I’ll wager the freedom of the Otherlands won’t look so attractive when the executioner’s putting a noose around your neck. I’ll return as soon as I’ve spoken to the king.”

It was late in the afternoon before court affairs would allow Nevyn to have a private word with his liege. They walked out to the walled garden behind the broch. By the ornamental stream a willow tree trailed long branches in the water; the roses were thick with blood-red blooms, the only touch of color in the tiny park land, carefully tended to look untended.

“I’ve come to intercede for Mael’s life, my liege,” Nevyn said.

“I thought you might. I’m half minded to release him and let him go home, but I see no way that I can, none. He’d be a bitter enemy there, and worst of all, how would Eldidd interpret my mercy? As a weakness, no doubt, and I can’t afford that. It’s the honor of the thing.”

“My liege is right about not being able to release him, but he might be useful again in the future.”

“He might, but again, will Eldidd take it as weakness?”

“The gods will count it as strength. Whose good opinion does my liege value more?”

Glyn plucked a rose, cupped it in his callused, broad palm, and considered it with a slight frown.

“My liege?” Nevyn said. “I’ll outright beg you for his life.”

With a sigh Glyn handed him the rose.

“Done, then. I can’t deny you that after all you’ve done for me. Eldidd has a clutch of heirs like a sly old hen, but who knows? The day may come when he’ll regret disclaiming Mael.”

Since she enjoyed the favor and patronage of the king’s most important councillor, Gavra’s herb business had prospered down in the city. She now owned her own house and shop in the merchant’s quarter and made plenty of coin to
support herself and her two children, Ebrua and Dumoryc, the prince’s bastards. For years Gavra had endured gossip branding her as a slut who had children by any number of men she fancied. She preferred it to having her children slain as heirs to an enemy line. Now that Mael was formally disclaimed, she considered telling the children the truth, but it was pointless. Even though he lived not two miles away, they had never even seen their father.

She supposed that the men who guarded Mael knew perfectly well that she was his mistress, but they held their tongues, partly out of masculine sympathy for Mael’s dull life, but mostly because they were terrified of what Nevyn would do to them if they spilled the secret. When she went up to the tower room that particular day, they even congratulated her about Mael’s reprieve from the hangman.

As soon as she was inside, she flung herself into Mael’s arms. For a moment they merely held each other tightly, and she could feel him shaking.

“Thank every god you’re going to live,” she said at last.

“I’ve been doing a good bit of thanking, truly.” He paused to kiss her. “Ah, my poor love, you deserve a proper husband and a happy life, not a man like me.”

“My life’s been happy enough, just knowing that you love me.”

When he kissed her again, she clung to him, feeling that they were two frightened children, clinging together in a dark full of nightmares. Nevyn will never let him hang, she thought, but oh, dear Goddess, how long can our dear old man live?

After three years of hard fighting, the Eldidd border war came to a stalemate when, in the middle of that summer, something happened for which none of the three sides was prepared: the province of Pyrdon rebelled against the Eldidd throne. Glyn’s spies, at a gallop, brought the news back that not only was it rebellion, but it looked to be a successful one. In Cwnol, formerly gwerbret of Dun Trebyc, the only large city in Pyrdon, the rebel forces had a leader so brilliant that his men whispered he was dweomer.

“Half of Pyrdon is still forest, too,” Glyn remarked. “He can have his men fade into the trees if they’re hardpressed, then fade right out again to attack in ambuscade. He seems to have a large force. Huh. I wonder if he’s getting coin from Cantrae.”

“I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, my liege,” Nevyn said. “And it would behoove us to send some, too.”

For the rest of that summer the Eldidd border stayed quiet, and by autumn it appeared that while Cwnol would be fighting for a long time, he had great chance of success. When Glyn sent the rebel messages, they went addressed to Cwnol, king of Pyrdon. As a final gesture Glyn betrothed Prince Cobryn’s six-year-old daughter to Cwnol’s seven-year-old son, a mark of royal honor that Cwnol repaid by increasing his raids into Eldidd. Yet even though the matter ended so well for the Cerrmor side, Nevyn was heartsick. As the endless war dragged on, the kingdom was torn into pieces.

On a day wet with autumn rain, Nevyn went up to the tower to see Mael, who was, as usual, working on his commentaries. As such projects will, this one had grown far beyond the simple introduction to Ristolyn’s thought that Mael had originally planned.

“This aside is going to end up a cursed chapter!” Mael stuck his pen into the inkwell so hard that the reed nearly broke.

“So many of your asides do, but good chapters, withal.”

“It’s this question of what constitutes the greatest good, you see. For all its brilliance, Ristolyn’s argument doesn’t quite satisfy me. His categories are a bit limited.”

“You philosophers are always so good at multiplying categories.”

“Philosopher? Ye gods, I wouldn’t call myself that.”

“Indeed? What else are you?”

Mael’s face went slack in openmouthed amazement. When Nevyn laughed, he sheepishly joined in.

“Naught else, truly,” Mael said. “For twenty years I’ve thought myself a warrior, chafing at the bit like a warhorse and lusting for the freedom to fight once again. I’ve been
deluding myself for at least ten of them. Here, I wonder if I even could ride to war now. I can see myself, sitting there on horseback, wondering what Ristolyn meant by the word end’ while someone knocked me right off mine.”

“You don’t look displeased.”

Mael wandered over to the window, where the rain slashed down as silver-gray as his hair.

“The view from here is a different one than I ever had before. You don’t see things as clearly in the dust of a battlefield.” Mael leaned his cheek against the cool glass and looked down. “Do you know what the cursed strangest thing of all is? If I didn’t worry so much about Gavra and the children, I’d be happy here.”

Nevyn felt a dweomer-touched slap of knowledge. It was time for Mael to be released. Because he had accepted, he could go free.

“Tell me somewhat. If you were free to do so, would you marry Gavra?”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I? I’ve no place at a royal court anymore. I could legitimatize our children, too—if I were free to do so. Truly, I am a philosopher. I’ll even debate the hopeless and the impossible.”

When he left Mael’s chamber, Nevyn was considering the weather. Since it rarely snowed along the seacoast, travel was a possibility, though an unpleasant one, all winter. He went straight to his chamber and contacted Primilla through the fire.

Gavra’s shop occupied the front half of a house just across the street from her brother’s tavern. Every morning, when she came out to set to work, she would look around at the shelves stacked with herbs, the barrels, the jars, the dried crocodile hanging under the eaves. My house, she would think, and my shop. I own it all, just me. It was a rare woman in Cerrmor who owned property in her own name rather than in that of a husband or brother—in fact, it had taken Nevyn’s personal intervention to allow her to do so. With winter coming, bringing her plenty of customers with fevers and congested lungs, chilblains and aching
bones, her business was prospering. She also had another pressing matter to contend with: Ebrua’s betrothal. Although she herself had let love rule her, she was determined to make a solid, conventional, arranged match for her daughter.

Fortunately, the lad that Ebrua herself favored was a decent lad of sixteen, Arddyn, the younger son of a prosperous family who dealt in tanned hides. After she discussed the formal betrothal with the lad’s father, she went up to the dun to consult with Mael. In a way the trip was foolish; he’d never met Arddyn’s family and had seen his daughter only from a great distance. But Mael listened gravely, turning his brilliant mind to the problem with such intensity that she knew he wanted to pretend, as she did, that they had some kind of normal life together.

“It sounds like a good match for people like us,” Mael said at last.

“Oh, listen to you, my royal love. People like us, indeed!”

“My lady forgets that I’m naught but a humble philosopher. Here, when I finish my book, the priests at the temple will have fifty copies written out by the scribes, and I’ll get a half of a silver coin apiece. That, my love, is my sole fortune in the world, so let us hope that Arddyn’s clan won’t be greedy about the dowry.”

“I think they’ll take her interest in my shop, and maybe a bit of silver.”

“Blasted good thing. It’s an unlucky lass who has a philosopher for a father.”

As Gavra was leaving the dun, she met Nevyn, who companionably slipped his arm through hers and escorted her down to the shop. Since the children were making the evening meal in the kitchen, they could talk in private. Nevyn laid a couple of big logs in the hearth and lit them with a snap of his fingers.

“Chilly today,” he remarked. “I’ve got somewhat truly important to tell you. I think I have a very good chance of getting Mael released.”

Gavra caught her breath with a gasp.

“Don’t tell him yet,” the old man went on. “I don’t want to raise his hopes only to dash them, but you need to know. You’ll have much to settle before you leave.”

“Leave? Oh, here, is Mael going to want me to go with him?”

“Now, if you ever doubted that for a minute, then that’s the first stupid thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

Suddenly Gavra had to sit down. She perched on a stool near the fire and wove her shaking hands together.

“I’m afraid there’s no choice but to send him back to Eldidd,” Nevyn said. “Do you want to go?”

She looked at the shelves, at the room, at everything she’d worked for so long to have. She’d be leaving her married daughter behind, too, and what was Dumoryc going to say when she introduced a stranger as his father?

“I suppose I do.”

Nevyn raised one bushy eyebrow.

“Well, ye gods,” she went on. “Eldidd? It’s a long way from here. But what would Mael do without me? He’d starve. Or do I flatter myself unduly?”

“Not in the least, and you know it blasted well.” The old man paused for a grin. “It’s likely that you’ll end up living on the western border of Eldidd, and there’s not a decent herbwoman out there for miles, or so I’ve been told.”

“Truly? What do the folk do for their ills?”

“Rely on what lore’s been passed down in their clans, most like, some of it good, some of it murderous. You know the sort of thing. ‘My gram always used foxglove tea for warts.’ They’ll do it even though old gram left a trail of corpses behind her. There’s a real need for a woman like you.”

Gavra hesitated on the edge of a retort, but she knew he’d found the best lure of all.

“I see. But it’ll be so much hard work, building up a new practice, educating people …”

“Hah! If you had a life of leisure, what would you do?”

“Go mad, most like. Oh, very well, Nevyn, you win.”

“Imph. I wasn’t aware we were fighting a duel.”

Gavra laughed, then went on thinking aloud.

“Well, let’s see. If I build up a new practice for Dumoryc, I can leave Ebrua this one—and the shop! It would be a splendid dowry. We could write the marriage contract exactly as we wanted it if I did that. She’ll never have to worry about her in-laws turning her out in shame just to snag her dowry.”

“Just so.”

“Eldidd begins to sound interesting.” She looked up with a smile. “And, of course, I love my man, too. I’ll simply have to go with him.”

For a variety of reasons Nevyn decided to secure Mael’s release in the spring. For one thing, the kings of the Wild-folk warned him that the winter would be full of bad storms. The most pressing reason, however, lay with Mael himself, who would refuse to leave his imprisonment until he saw his book properly copied, a task that would take months. While the scribes down at the temple of Wmm worked on the book, Nevyn worked on the king, whose honor was the councillor’s biggest ally.

Generous man that he was, Glyn found Mael a profound embarrassment, too pathetic to murder no matter how legal a murder it was, especially now that the learned priests praised him as a brilliant scholar and an ornament to the kingdom. When he judged the time was right, Nevyn asked Glyn outright about releasing Mael and letting him return quietly to Eldidd.

“It would be best, councillor, truly. Try to scheme out some reason for his honorable release. May the gods blast me if I’ll have Eldidd sneering at my weaknesses, but I can’t stand the thought of that prince moldering up in the tower any longer.”

In the end it was the Pyrdon rebellion that provided the necessary reason. Since Eldidd desperately needed a quiet summer if he was to bring his rebels to heel, he offered Glyn gold to refrain from raiding. Not only did Glyn take the bribe, he solemnized the occasion by offering to release his captive in return for a token ten horses. After
many an exchange of heralds and some peculiar stalling on Eldidd’s part, the deal was set and signed. Only then did Nevyn tell Mael of his good fortune, when winter was already lightening into spring.