The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  “Indeed? Then what do you want?”

  “I want to study dweomer and have Rhodry, too.”

  “No reason you can’t.”

  “Oh, stop treating me like a child or a half-wit!”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was.”

  “Then answer me honestly.” Her voice was calm again, even cold. “If I marry Rhodry, am I going to be able to master the dweomer? I don’t mean study the odd bit of lore or the odd mental trick. I want to be a master like you and serve the kingdom like you do, too. A couple of months ago, I could never have said that—it would have sounded conceited—but I know better now. That’s what I want, but if I marry Rhodry and get turned into his chatelaine and castellan and the mother of his heirs and the Goddess herself only knows what else, am I going to be able to have it?”

  “You’re not, truly.” He stopped himself from adding, “not in this life, anyway.” She would have to ask before he could reveal that secret. “There just quite simply won’t be enough time.”

  “So I thought. But can I just leave him? He needs me.”

  For a moment the room spun around him. His face must have gone white, because Jill rushed over and took his arm.

  “What’s wrong? Is it your heart? Here, sit down. There’s a big chest right behind you.”

  With a sigh Nevyn sat and leaned back against the wall for support.

  “My heart’s fine, my thanks. You just took me by surprise, and I am getting on a bit, you know. Are you honestly thinking of leaving Rhodry?”

  “I am. I suppose you think I’m a fool. Most women would. Or a harridan—most men would think that.”

  “I don’t think you’re either, frankly. I will say that the decision has to be yours and yours alone.”

  “Well, I rather knew that.” She smiled at him, then turned to pace restlessly back and forth. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of advice, though. Do I have the right to leave him and put the dweomer first?”

  “I’m the absolutely worst person in the entire kingdom to ask that question. Once, and a good long time ago it was, too, I had to make this same choice. I chose wrong.”

  “You took dweomer instead of the woman you loved?”

  “Not instead of, exactly. I could have had both. I was just so greedy and impatient for power that I saw her as a nuisance—which she wouldn’t have been at all—and so like the arrogant dolt I was, I deserted her.”

  “I see. But I can’t have both.”

  “That’s true enough.”

  “Did she need you badly?”

  “She did. Very badly, just because of the ugly circumstances she was born into. Without me, she had no life at all.”

  “But Rhodry’s gwerbret, and he’s got more prospects in life than any man but the High King himself. I keep saying he needs me, but he doesn’t, really. Ye gods, any lass in the kingdom would throw herself at his feet for the chance to marry him, and there’s hundreds better fit to be a ruler’s wife than I am. How am I going to devote myself to his wretched rhan, when all the time I’ll be wishing I could be studying my craft?”

  “That’s all true and splendidly logical, but can you bear to leave him?”

  She went still, utterly still, except for the tears that welled up in her eyes and ran in two thin trails down her face.

  “Nevyn, I keep feeling like I’m drowning. It’s not even Rhodry himself. It’s his position and his rank and Aberwyn and everything. It’s like a river, and it’ll just sweep me under if I let it.” All at once she tossed her head and laid a hand on her chest. “I really do feel sometimes like I can’t breathe. Do you think I’m daft?”

  “I don’t. I think you see things clearly. But you never answered my question. Can you bear to leave him?”

  The tears came again, and she stared at the floor for a long time before she answered.

  “I can, and I have to. I’m going to do it tonight.” She looked up. “I’m going to do it now, or I never will.”

  “I’ll be here and awake.”

  She started to speak, then merely nodded a distracted understanding and left the room. For a long time Nevyn stared at the closed door while his hands shook with a hope that he’d never allowed himself before, not once in the long four hundred years since he’d made his rash vow.

  Lord Edar’s chamberlain had of course given the gwerbret the most luxurious bedchamber in the broch, a big wedge of a room with an enormous bed, hung round with embroidered panels and covered in embroidered blankets. When Jill came in, she found candles burning in the silver sconces and Rhodry sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed and reading from a long piece of parchment. He tossed it aside and gave her a grin that wrung her heart.

  “Edar’s terms of fealty to Aberwyn. I see no reason to change them, but he wanted me to look them over just to be sure, so I did. Ah, my love, it’s so good to have a moment alone with you. I’ve been feeling like a hound on a leash. Every time I try to walk your way, someone yanks me back again.”

  When she said nothing, merely stood hesitating at the foot of the bed, his smile disappeared.

  “Is somewhat wrong, my love?”

  “I can’t marry you.” It came out in a blurt that made her despise herself. “I’ve got to leave you.”

  “I’ve never heard a jest I liked less.”

  “It’s no jest, Rhoddo. I don’t want to go, but I’ve got to. It’s because of the dweomer.”

  “What? I thought we’d settled all that. Back in Elaeno’s ship—remember?”

  “I do remember, but I didn’t say everything. I’m saying it now. I’ve got to study, and I can’t study if I’m married to you, and I’m leaving. On the morrow.”

  “Just hold your tongue! You’re not doing anything of the sort. If you need time for your studies, well and good, then. Time you shall have. I—we’ll—arrange things somehow. I don’t know how yet, but we will.”

  “I know you mean that with the best faith in the world, but it won’t ever happen. Be honest. You know it won’t. There’ll always be one thing or another that needs me to tend it, and if I don’t, then all the courtiers will gossip and tell you what a lazy wife you have, and after all a while, you’ll resent it, too. Or what if everyone starts muttering that I’m a witch? I’ve thought all this out, Rhoddo. What if you deny some lord a thing that he thinks he should have, and then he starts saying it’s because your woman bewitched you?”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don’t want you to go. Jill, how could you do this to me? Ye gods, you risk your life chasing after me, and just when we’re finally safe and I can shower you with comfort and privilege, you say you want to leave.”

  “I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.”

  “Just to study a lot of moldy old books with Nevyn? What are you going to do, wander around the kingdom with a mule and lance farmers’ boils for them?”

  “If I have to, I will. It’s not a bad calling, healing people’s ills.”

  “You’re daft!”

  “You just can’t understand what the dweomer means—”

  “Of course I can’t understand.” His voice was rising steadily. “There’s naught to understand except you’ve gotten this daft idea in your head, and now you won’t listen to reason.”

  “Rhodry, it aches my heart to hurt you this way.”

  He started to speak, then stopped himself. He got off the bed and walked over to catch her by the shoulders. His hands were so warm and comfortable that she wanted to weep.

  “Don’t go. Jill, please. I need you so much.”

  “You don’t need me. You just want me.”

  “Well, isn’t that enough? I love you more than I love my own life, and that’s not enough?”

  “I love you, too, but the dweomer—”

  “Oh, curse the dweomer! I don’t give a pig’s fart about dweomer! I want you.”

  “And I want you, but I can’t have you and the dweomer—”

  “So, I’m only
second-best, am I?”

  “That’s not what I meant! By the hells, you’re as stubborn as a mule and twice as nasty! Why won’t you listen to what I’m saying?”

  “Why won’t you talk sense, then?”

  Later it would seem to Jill that they argued for half an eternity. Even at the time she realized she was quarreling only to keep her pain at bay, that she was desperately trying to find some reason to hate or at least despise him, but merely realizing wasn’t enough to make her stop. Rhodry, she supposed, was genuinely furious with her; she needed to believe so, anyway. Round and round they went, the same circling arguments, the very same words, even, until she wondered what she wanted from him, why she was dragging out this agony instead of merely leaving. Finally she realized that she wanted him to say, very simply, that he understood, and that this was the one thing he never would say.

  “You don’t love me at all anymore, do you?” By then his voice was hoarse and cracking. “Tell me the truth. It’s some other man, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, don’t be an utter dolt! I’ve never loved anyone but you in my whole life.”

  “Then why could you possibly want to leave?”

  “Because the dweomer—”

  “See! It does mean more than me.”

  “Not more than you. More than love itself.”

  “That’s ridiculous! No woman feels that way. Who is it? It can’t be Nevyn, and Salamander’s back in Bardek, and—”

  “Rhodry, hold your ugly tongue! There isn’t any other man. You’re just trying to salve your cursed wounded pride.”

  “May the gods curse you! Why shouldn’t I try to find some shred of pride to cling to? I’m the one who’s going to have to announce to the entire rhan of Aberwyn that a silver dagger’s daughter didn’t find me good enough for her.”

  All at once she saw the way out. It was a lie, of course, an utter and complete he, but at that moment she was desperate to break the chains of recrimination and hurt that were binding them round.

  “Well, I’ve got pride of my own, and how do you think I could live shamed, after you cast me off one fine day?”

  “Jill! I’d never do such a thing! Haven’t you listened to one cursed word I’ve said?”

  “There’s somewhat you don’t know.” She turned away, embarrassed that she’d stoop so low.

  “What is it?” His voice had changed to a frantic sort of worry. “What’s so wrong?”

  “I’m barren, you dolt. Couldn’t you put that together on your own? After all these years, you’ve never gotten me with child, and there’s little Rhodda at home, waiting to call you father. It’s not your trouble.”

  He was silent for so long that she finally forced herself to look at him. For the first time in that miserable evening he was weeping. She felt that she could taste her lies as a fetid thing in her mouth, but she forced herself to go on.

  “You’ve got to think of Aberwyn, Rhodry. What’s going to happen to the rhan in twenty years’ time when there’s still no heir? I can’t do that to Aberwyn and her people, not even for the man I love, and I love you with all my heart and soul.”

  “You could still—” He stopped his rush of words, hesitated, then wiped the tears from his face before he went on. “Forgive me. I was going to say that you could still be my mistress, but you can’t. After everything we’ve gone through, the battles we’ve fought—you couldn’t live like that.”

  “Thank the Goddess herself that you understand! I refuse to grovel around your wife and hear her gloat every time she has a babe.”

  “Oh, my love.” He could barely speak. “Of course you couldn’t do that. Ah, by every god in the sky! I’m sorry I pushed you this far. Forgive me. Oh ye gods, forgive me, too, for cursing the bitter Wyrd you’ve given me!”

  “You do understand why I’m going?”

  “I do.”

  He slipped his arms around her and held her close while they sobbed in one another’s arms, but she was weeping because she hated herself for lying to him. It’s a silver dagger’s ruse, she told herself, and that’s all you are at heart, a rotten silver dagger still.

  “I’ll never love another woman,” Rhodry said. “I promise you that.”

  “Don’t bind yourself to that! I wouldn’t want you to, ever. But you can promise me this: never love another woman the way you loved me, and I’ll promise you I’ll never love another man that same way.”

  “Done, then.”

  When he bent his head to kiss her, she twisted away.

  “Please don’t kiss me, my love. It’ll only make things worse.”

  Before he could answer she turned and fled, running from her lie as much as him. She flung open the door and burst out into the corridor only to charge smack into Gwin. She grabbed him by the collar and shoved him back against the wall.

  “Were you spying on us?”

  “Couldn’t understand a word you said. All I heard was the gwerbret yelling, and I’m supposed to be his bodyguard now, you little hellcat!”

  When Jill let him go, she realized that it was sheer luck that had kept her from reopening his wounded shoulder. She took a deep breath to calm herself down.

  “My apologies, truly. You’d better go in. He needs someone to talk to.” She started off down the corridor, then hesitated. “Oh, Gwin? Guard him well, will you? He’s going to need you badly in the next few weeks.”

  Then she hurried on, leaving him staring puzzled after her, and ducked into the safety of Nevyn’s chambers. The old man was standing at the open window, and she realized with a profound shock that the first hint of dawn was turning the eastern sky gray.

  “Nevyn, I’ve got to get out of here. Can’t we just pack and leave right now?”

  “We can. My poor Jill, I—”

  “Oh, don’t pity me! I can’t stand it, and I don’t deserve it. I lied to him, Nevyn. I stood there and told him I was barren, and that’s why I couldn’t marry him.”

  “And what’s so wrong with that? No doubt he had to have some reason, one he could understand and cling to.”

  “But a lie’s a wretched way to start a new life.”

  “True, but there are lies, and then there are bandages for the soul.”

  The dawn was full and golden by the time Jill and Nevyn were saddling their riding horses out in the ward, and Cullyn came out of the barracks to join them. He glanced at the laden pack mule, then nodded in understanding.

  “You’re not marrying Rhodry.” It was no question.

  “I’m not, Da. I just can’t. It’s the dweomer.”

  “Ah.”

  He looked round the ward, glanced down at the cobbles, then turned to look back at the stables.

  “I’ll ride with you aways. Let me just fetch my horse.”

  As he walked off, Jill realized that she’d be leaving him behind irrevocably, too. For the briefest of moments she wavered; then she caught Nevyn watching her.

  “You were right,” he said. “The sooner we get on the road, the better.”

  They took the south-running road from Belglaedd, heading toward the coast road that ran to Deverry proper, just as the sun was turning hot with the promise of summer. When, after about an hour, Cullyn paused his horse in the road and announced he’d best be getting back, Nevyn rode a little ways along to give them a private word with each other. Cullyn led Jill down a side lane into an apple orchard, where the branches, heavy-laden with white blossoms, hung down over a whitewashed stone fence, so that it seemed they sat on horseback in the midst of clouds.

  “Well, my sweet, it’s a strange road you’ve chosen to ride.”

  “It chose me, Da, and a long long time ago.”

  He nodded his agreement, his eyes distant, as he thought something through. Through the perfumed mist around them the sun came in shafts.

  “A better road than mine,” he said at last, and he rose in the stirrups to catch a branch and break off a cluster of apple blossoms. “Want some?”

  He broke the cluster in half, handed her a s
prig, then tucked the other behind one ear with a laugh for the surprise on her face.

  “A warrior’s like these flowers, Jill. Like them we have our splendor in the spring, and it’s over cursed soon. I’ve been lucky enough to see my summer through, but not a lot of us are. Think about that when you remember me.”

  “I will, Da. Promise.”

  He watched while she tucked the sprig behind her ear; then he turned and rode off without another word. Her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them away, thinking how odd it was that her last sight of him would be with flowers in his hair.

  Rhodry rode home to Aberwyn on a day that seemed to have been arranged by the gods as the perfect backdrop for spectacle: brilliantly sunny, yet cool with a soft spring wind that kept the banners snapping and the horses’ manes flowing. All along the road the grass and the spring wheat stood tall and green; the trees shimmered in new leaf. Farmer and lord alike rushed out as the procession rode by to cheer and wave to their new overlord. When they reached the city gates, they found them mobbed with well-wishers, and the city walls, too, were lined with a cheering crowd. As they worked their way along the twisting streets to the dun itself, women threw flowers and little children ran after the warbands, turning the trip into a ragged parade.

  “Looks like they’re glad to see you, Your Grace,” Cullyn remarked.

  “No doubt.” Rhodry grinned at him. “It means there won’t be war. They’d welcome the Lord of Hell himself if he had a clear claim to the rhan.”

  From Cullyn’s slight and ironic smile, he knew that his captain agreed.

  At the massive gates of Dun Aberwyn Lady Lovyan stood waiting, wearing the plaid of Aberwyn in her role as regent, but her kirtie was woven of the browns and reds of the Clw Coc to remind everyone that she was a lord in her own right as well. She was also wearing the ceremonial sword of the gwerbrets, slung over her shoulder in an antique baldric, because she was too short to carry it gracefully in a sword belt. As Rhodry dismounted, she strode to meet him, and the golden hilt winked and the jewels sent long sparks of sunlight around her face.