The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  With one last sob Praedd slumped back against the wall.

  “It’s gone, captain. It just stopped. Whatever it was.”

  “Good. Now, come away from the door. There’s naught more you can do. Go outside and wait for the old man there.”

  He pressed himself against the wall to let Praedd sidle past, then went down to the door. From inside the cell he heard a howl of rage, and Merryc’s face appeared in the tiny barred opening. Mindful of what Nevyn said, Cullyn looked only at the bridge of the prisoner’s nose and held his gaze there. After a brief moment Merryc snarled like a dog.

  “You won’t be ensorceling me, lad,” Cullyn said, and calmly. “Now where’s the child? Tell me, or I’ll break you on the wheel myself, one bone at a time. I don’t have Nevyn’s scruples.”

  “What makes you think I know where she is?”

  “Tell me, or your death comes in pieces, and as slow as I can make it.”

  “In the shed directly in back of here. It’s full of sacks of turnips. That’s all I can see through her eyes, but I know she’s nearby.”

  With a sound halfway between a sob and a gasp, Tevylla rushed down the hall and out, nearly running into Nevyn, judging from the round of hasty apologies at the door. As the old man came hurrying down, Cullyn slowly and deliberately turned his back on Merryc. He could hear the evil dweomerman snarling again in sheer frustrated rage, but Nevyn was grinning.

  “By the hells, captain, from what Praedd’s been telling me even the Folk of the Air are afraid of Cullyn of Cerrmor!”

  “Not truly, my lord. I threatened them with you.”

  Nevyn actually laughed, a rusty chuckle like the creaking of an old gate, then handed over the big iron key, so Cullyn could unlock the chain. When they opened the door they found Merryc cowering in a corner with his arms thrown over his face. Cullyn grabbed him by the wrists, flung him forward, pulled him round and twisted his arms behind his back while Merryc screamed and swore in the Bardek tongue. Then Nevyn stepped in and looked him in the face before the man could close his eyes. Cullyn watched fascinated as Nevyn stared, merely stared, into Merryc’s eyes, but the gaze must have seemed like a hot iron to the prisoner, who babbled and writhed and twisted in the captain’s hands like a chicken who sees the cook’s hatchet lying on the block. All at once Merryc went rigidly still, and quiet.

  “There,” Nevyn remarked casually. “You can hand him over to me now. I’ll take Amyr and Praedd, if you don’t mind, to get him to the chamber of justice. Bring Tevylla and the child along after us, will you?”

  “I will, my lord. No doubt Tewa’s found the lass by now.”

  She had, indeed, and she was waiting for them outside with the terrified child clasped in her arms. Since Rhodda was getting too heavy for her nursemaid to carry for long, Cullyn took her and let her sob against his shoulder as they walked slowly back to the broch. Although he asked her a question or two, all she could say, between sobs, was that the bad man had a long long arm and that his mind pinched. Nevyn explained things more clearly in the chamber of justice.

  “Merryc did to her what he did to Bryc back last autumn. He caught her by her mind, because he realized that the Wildfolk would do her bidding. He could use her to use them, you see—or perhaps you don’t see, but that’s what happened anyway. That’s why I padlocked the door. The Wildfolk can lift a bar from its staples, but they can’t pick a lock.”

  “Ah.” Tieryn Lovyan had an odd expression, as if she were wishing she could allow herself the luxury of hysterics. “Well, whatever you say I’ll believe, Nevyn. Oh dear Goddess, I had so hoped Rhodda would be a … well, um, never mind that now. What shall we do with this creature?”

  Merryc was kneeling on the floor between a scowling Amyr and a Praedd who looked frankly murderous, with budding bruises on his face that made Nevyn’s talk of Wildfolk all the more believable. During the old man’s explanation Merryc had never even glanced up once, but now he slowly raised his head and looked at the tieryn.

  “Are you going to beg for mercy?” she said.

  “I won’t, but no more will I deny what the old man says.”

  “Very well. I’ve sent for a priest of Bel, and we’ll have your hearing as soon as he comes. Nevyn, does the child need to stay for this?”

  “She doesn’t, nor does Mistress Tevylla. Cullyn?”

  Cullyn gave him a nod of agreement and carried the child out of the chamber of justice. As they were going down the long hall to the staircase, Tevylla turned to him.

  “My thanks, captain.”

  “Most welcome, but here, call me by my name, will you? You’re not part of the warband.”

  “Well, so I’m not.” She gave him a smile that was the more charming for being shy. “Till the morrow, then.”

  After he saw them safely inside, Cullyn wandered out into the ward, filled with the long shadows of Aberwyn’s many towered dun as the winter’s day came to its early end. As he walked out to the barracks, everyone he passed acknowledged him with some gesture of respect, a nod from the noble-born, a bow or a curtsey from the servants, a muttered “sir” and a staightening of their posture from the members of both warbands, the one that had served Gwerbret Rhys as well as the one Lovyan had brought with her. It struck him that evening that if someone had refused the gesture he would have been insulted, him of all people, a man who had ridden the long road as an outcast for all those years. He had grown solidly used to having a respected place in life, accustomed to knowing that wherever he went as Lovyan’s captain, he would have not only a bed to sleep in and a place at table but a certain acknowledgment that he was an important man in the derynrhyn. Yet that evening it also struck him, and for the first time, that something was missing in his new life. A woman of my own, he thought; by the hells, that would be good to have again. When he thought of Jill’s mother, dead for so many years now, he could barely remember her face.

  A stout man, shaved bald and wearing a heavy winter cloak over the linen tunic of his calling, the priest of Bel arrived soon after Cullyn had taken Tevylla and Rhodda away. Although Nevyn was wondering how the man was going to take talk of dweomer, Lovyan sidestepped the entire problem.

  “Praedd, Amyr, make that weasel stand up properly, will you? He can show some respect to the priest. Now, Your Holiness. This is the man who tried to murder my granddaughter this autumn. Nevyn’s proved the entire thing to my satisfaction, but I need your advice on the laws.”

  Nevyn turned to the priest.

  “Your Holiness, what’s the usual punishment for such a crime?”

  “Hanging, of course. Even though the child is illegitimate, she’s still a blood heir, and thus any attempt against her is an act not merely of attempted murder, but of fullblown treachery.” The priest frowned, rummaging through his vast memory. “The Edicts of King Cynan contain the most recent statement of this principle, but there are earlier precedents, the clearest, perhaps, being found in the ninth-century codification of Maryn the First.”

  “Well and good, then, Your Holiness,” Lovyan said. “On the morrow morn I’ll convene a malover. About two hours before noon, I think, would be suitable.”

  “Very good, Your Grace. I shall have the proper statement of precedents prepared at that time.” The old man turned his shrewd dark eyes on Merryc, who was standing stiffly between his guards. “Do you wish to talk to me, my son, or some other priest from our temple? It’s time to prepare your soul for Great Bel’s judgment hall.”

  Merryc smiled briefly, then spat on the floor. Praedd cuffed him as they dragged him away.

  Nevyn and Lovyan went up to the reception room of her suite, where the wind howled and banged at the glass in the windows and blew the occasional puff of smoke from the fire. Shivering in her plaid cloak, Lovyan stood by the hearth and rubbed her hands together.

  “That’s better,” she pronounced at last. “The Chamber of Justice is so wretchedly cold this time of year. Ah by the Goddess, Nevyn, I feel so old and weary! I’ve never sentenced a man
to hang before, and I’ll have to be there to watch it, too, I suppose.” She shuddered again. “Well, no one has to worry about my stealing the rhan out from under its real heir, the way so many regents have done. I shall be very glad indeed to turn it over when the time comes.” Although she was trying to speak lightly, her eyes were haggard with worry. “If the time comes, I suppose I should say.”

  “It will, Your Grace. It will.”

  Yet he could hear the weariness and wondering in his own voice.

  After the evening meal Nevyn went back to his chambers. With Elaeno to keep him company, he stood at the window and looked out and down to the distant harbor, where the foaming waves rolled in steadily and bobbed the boats around at the piers. There was a storm on the way, he supposed, but even between blows, the seas would stay high all winter long. No matter how badly he longed to be in Bardek, he was going to stay in Eldidd till spring.

  “That’s all there is to it, I suppose,” Nevyn remarked. “Or have you ever heard of a ship making the crossing from here to, say, Surtinna in the winter?”

  “Not successfully.” Elaeno considered the problem for a moment. “I’ve never heard of anyone even trying it, to tell you the truth.”

  “There’s folly and then there’s absolute madness, eh?”

  “Just so. Even if you didn’t run head on into a big storm, and that’s an enormous ‘if,’ you could knock your craft to pieces in the swells, or lose sails tacking endlessly into the bluster, or get blown so far off-course your crew could starve before you reached land. We have an old proverb at home: no man nor demon neither can command the wind.”

  “And a true one it is.” All at once Nevyn was struck by a thought. “But asking it a favor might be a very different thing indeed.”

  Later that night, when the dun was asleep, Nevyn wrapped himself in two cloaks and went out into the formal gardens. As he walked across the lawns, they crackled underfoot; in the moonlight a rimy frost lay glittering on the dark mounds of mulched rosebushes and the frozen water in the dragon fountain. When he found a sheltered corner out of sight of the broch, he made a vast five-pointed star of blue light in his mind; then he imagined it so clearly that it seemed to float in front of him in midair. Very quietly, yet so intensely that it seemed his whole body vibrated with the sound, he chanted aloud the names of the Kings of Air. Although the night had been still, as soon as he finished the call, the wind came to him, pouring from the center of the star in a rush and snap of power that made his cloak flap round him. (When he glanced round, though, he saw that nothing else in the garden was moving.) Stately and shimmering on the wind’s back rode the Kings. They spoke only in pictures and feelings, of course, not in words, but in a while Nevyn managed to get his request across, that for a little space of time he wanted the wind to serve him and take a ship across to the islands. With an exhalation of graciousness they agreed, lingering round him for a moment, then gusting off to leave him shivering in the hushed garden with only a sylph or two for company. Hurriedly he withdrew the star back into himself. He wanted to get back to his fireside and a tankard of mulled ale.

  For the rest of that night he sat up, brooding his plans and fighting his worries, until at last, when the dawn came, he could sleep for a couple of hours, waking just in time to make his appearance at the regent’s malover. In spite of her qualms of the night before, when the time came to sentence Merryc to hang, Lovyan’s voice was rock-steady. The Bardekian himself was so withdrawn, so enfolded into his own mind by some dark discipline that he seemed at times to be nothing but a portrait statue of himself, as if he’d already left the present moment to stand in some hypothetical descendant’s garden among the statues of their mutual ancestors. His actual death would come as an anticlimax to Merryc, Nevyn supposed, just as Sarcyn’s had to him.

  “It may be one of the things I hate the most about the dark dweomer,” Nevyn remarked to Elaeno later. “The way it takes men with real talent and spirit and breaks and warps them to its own foul purposes. I’ve met more than a few of these apprentices, and every one was as twisted and ugly as those pitiful Wildfolk they keep around them.”

  “The men are much worse off, I’d say. It’s a long sight easier to heal the poor Wildfolk.”

  “You’re right enough. Well, I think me that the time is coming for a little revenge on our part. Once we’ve found Jill and Salamander, and—one hopes—Rhodry, too, we’ll see about making the Dark Brotherhood pay for their crimes.”

  “Good. I’m going to be glad to see spring come, believe me.”

  “Spring? Oh, of course, I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet! We’re going to Bardek straightaway. I asked the wind, and it agreed to take us straight there, safe from storms and suchlike.”

  Elaeno started to speak, thought better of it, shut his mouth, reconsidered once again and opened it, then finally made a strangled sort of sound deep in his throat.

  “Is somewhat wrong?” Nevyn said.

  “Naught. Why, what could be wrong? If the wind agrees, well then, who am I to argue? I’ll just hunt up my first mate and tell him to gather the crew. I take it that the regent will provision us?”

  “No doubt. Hum, I haven’t spoken to her yet, either, and I suppose I’d better straightaway. How long will it take you to get the ship seaworthy and ready to sail?”

  “Two, three days, depending on how many men her grace details to help us.”

  “I’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need, you can depend on that.”

  Although Nevyn of course told Lovyan the truth about their destination, she agreed that a small deception was in order. They let the rest of the court think that, in order to get a jump on next year’s trading, Elaeno was sailing to Cerrmor, a tricky journey in winter though a possible one as long as a ship hugged the coast. Nevyn himself, or so the story went, was traveling with him to confer with Gwerbret Cerrmor about the vexed political situation in Eldidd. Although no close relation, Ladoic of Cerrmor was kin to Rhodry on the Maelwaedd side, and thus a possible ally in this unspoken war for the rhan.

  “I shall give you new clothes to take with you, too,” Lovyan said. “And one of Aberwyn’s minor seal rings as well as what coin I can scrape together. You’d best go as my councillor, Nevyn, not merely my friend. They always say that every Bardek archon starts his career as a merchant, and so I’ll wager they understand just how rich the Aberwyn trade is. They’ll want to be on the right side of her ruler.”

  “Just so. Do you think some of Rhodry’s men would volunteer to come with me? I can pass them off as an honor guard, and I fear me I might need a few good swords before this scrap is done. I’d take Cullyn, but you need him more. Hanging Merryc doesn’t mean Rhodda will be safe. I’ll wager he’s not the only rat in the granary.”

  “I agree, unfortunately. As for the men, I doubt very much if you’ll have a shortage of volunteers. You’d best take only ten, though—any more would be suspicious.”

  “I’ll have Cullyn pick them out, then.”

  “Good. And think up a new name, will you, since I’m going to give you letters patent to carry and so on. ‘No one’ just simply won’t do. Didn’t you use another name around the King’s herald? Was it your real name? I had the odd feeling it was.”

  “You were quite right. Even though my father chose to change it later out of spite, Galrion was what my mother named me.”

  “How antique-sounding!”

  “Then it suits me perfectly, because if ever a man was a living relic, it’s me. Very well, Your Grace. We’ll do our best to bring Rhodry back for you.”

  “Not just for me, Lord Galrion. For Eldidd.”

  While Elaeno and his first mate worked with the crew that afternoon, Nevyn went up to the tower for one last visit with Perryn, or so he thought of it. Although Perryn’s physical health was sound again, he still spent long hours lying in bed and staring at the ceiling or sitting at the window and staring at the sky. When Nevyn came in, he found the lord at the latter, watching the sullen
drift of gray clouds coming up from the southeast.

  “How’s your breathing today?”

  “Oh, er, ah, well, clear enough, I suppose.”

  “Good, good. You should make steady progress from now on.”

  Perryn nodded and went back to staring at the clouds.

  “Come now, lad.” Nevyn put on his best jolly-but-firm bedside manner. “You’re not going to hang or suchlike, you know. It’s time to start thinking about making somewhat of your life.”

  “But, um. I mean, er, ah, well, I just keep thinking about Jill.”

  “I’m sorry, but she’s forever beyond you.”

  “I know that. Not what I meant, you see. Er, well, I was thinking about what you said, some weeks back, I mean. About not stealing things because well, ah, it’s meddling and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Do you remember somewhat of that?”

  “I do, and I’ll admit to being pleased you’re thinking it over.”

  “I have been, truly, and it aches my heart I was so stupid, about er, well, you know, um, well, about Rhodry, I mean. I hated him because Jill loved him, and here he was rather ah … er … important.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit late to be worrying about that now.”

  “I know, and that’s what aches my heart. I want to make restitution, but I don’t have anything to give as lwdd. A couple of coppers, a horse—well, er, ah, he’s not truly my horse, I suppose—but the saddle and suchlike are mine. It doesn’t add up to a cursed lot, does it?”

  “It doesn’t at that. You might be able to pay Aberwyn some service, though I can’t see you fighting in the war if things come to that.”

  “I could be a groom, or train for a farrier. I’d do it gladly, if it would help.”

  “Well and good, then. We’ll talk about it when I come back.”

  “I heard the servants saying you were going to Cerrmor. Can I go, too? My heart aches with fear all the time, wondering what Cullyn would do if you weren’t here to protect me.”

  “He doesn’t even know what you’ve done.”