Darkspell

by Katharine Kerr

  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.

  At the head of a small army, Gweniver returned to the Temple of the Moon late on a spring day when the setting sun washed the high walls with golden light. Leaving the men at the foot of the hill, she and Gwetmar walked up to the gates, which opened a crack to reveal Lypilla’s face.

  “It is you, Gwen!” she sang out. “When we saw the army, we thought it might be those wretched Boars coming back or suchlike.”

  “It’s not, at that. We’ve come to fetch Maccy. I promised her a wedding, and that’s what sh
e’s going to have.”

  “Splendid! The poor little thing’s been so heartsick. Come in, come in. It gladdens my heart to see you.”

  When Gweniver came inside, Macla ran to meet her and threw herself into her sister’s arms. The temple ward was full of women, watching as Maccy wept in joy.

  “I’ve been so worried, thinking you might be dead,” she sobbed.

  “Well, here I am. Now pull yourself together, Maccy. I’ve brought you a husband, and everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to have a big wedding down in the court itself.”

  Macla shrieked with joy and clasped her hands over her mouth.

  “So go get your things together while I talk with Ardda,” Gweniver went on. “Lord Gwetmar’s waiting for you.”

  “Gwetmar? But he’s homely!”

  “Then you won’t have to worry about him siring bastards on your serving women. Listen, you little dolt, he’s the only man in court who would have married you because he loves you, not for the dowry, so start counting up his qualities. You won’t see his face when he blows out the candle, anyway.”

  Macla groaned aloud, but she trotted off for the dormitory. Only then did Gweniver notice their mother, standing on the edge of the crowd. Dolyan stood with her arms crossed over her chest as if she were hugging grief, her eyes half-filled with tears. When Gweniver walked over and held out her arms, her mother turned half-away.

  “You’ve made your sister a good marriage,” Dolyan said in a trembling voice. “I’m proud of you.”

  “My thanks, Mam. Are you well?”

  “As well as I can be, seeing you like this. Gwen, Gwen, I beg you. Stay here in the temple.”

  “I can’t, Mam. I’m the only honor the clan has left.”

  “Honor? Oh, is it honor now? You’re as bad as your father, bad as all your brothers, talking of honor until I thought I’d go mad, I truly did. It’s not the honor that pleases you, it’s the slaughter.” All at once she tossed her head, and the words poured out in a rage-tide. “They never cared that I loved them; oh, it didn’t matter half as much as did their cursed honor, riding out, bleeding the clan white, and all to work grief on the kingdom! Gwen, how can you do this to me? How can you ride to war as they did?”

  “I have to, Mam. You have Maccy, and soon you’ll be dowager, back on our lands.”

  “Back on what?” She spit the words out. “A burnt home and ravaged lands, and all for the honor of the thing. Gwen, please, don’t ride!” And then she was weeping, sobbing aloud.

  Gweniver could neither speak nor move. The other women rushed to Dolyan’s side, swept her up, and hurried her away, but all the while they looked daggers back at this ungrateful wretch of a daughter. As Gweniver fled through the gates, she heard Dolyan keen, a long, high wail of grief. I’m dead to her already, she thought. The keen wailed on and on, high and bright in the morning sun, then stopped abruptly, as if the other women had taken her inside.

  “What’s so wrong?” Gwetmar snapped. “Who’s died?”

  “Nah nah nah. Naught’s wrong. Maccy’ll be out shortly.” She turned away and looked downhill, searching to see Ricyn among her men. “By the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell, it’ll gladden my heart to get back to Cerrmor.”

  Wherever Ricyn was, she couldn’t pick him out, but she saw Dannyn, sitting easily on horseback at the head of the king’s riders. Soon she would be riding to war under his command, and she thought to herself that the Goddess had sent her a splendid master in the arts of death.

  Although Nevyn had several apprentices in the art of herbcraft, the most capable was a young woman named Gavra, a tall, slender lass with raven-dark hair and hazel eyes. Since she’d been born the daughter of an innkeeper down in Cerrmor, she was used to hard work and also determined to better herself in life. In the two years she’d studied with him, she’d made excellent progress in learning the multifarious herbs and their uses. Accordingly, he allowed her to help him every afternoon when he tended the minor illnesses or accidents of the palace servants, who were below the notice of the official chirurgeons. Gavra also used her mind to good advantage when it came to court intrigue. Dannyn and Gweniver had been back in the dun only two days when the apprentice brought Nevyn an interesting bit of news.

  “Lord Oldac stopped me to speak with me today,” Gavra remarked.

  “Indeed. Has he been pressing his attentions on you again?”

  “Well, he was ever so polite, but I think me he had somewhat dishonorable on his mind. Master, would you speak to him? It’s cursed hard to insult one of the noble-born, but the last thing I want in life is one of his bastards—or any man’s, for that matter.”

  “Then speak I will. You’re as much under my protection as if you were my daughter, and I’ll cursed well go to the king if I have to.”

  “My thanks and twice over. But it wasn’t only his drunken smiles that troubled my heart. He had the gall to insult Lady Gweniver. I think she’s splendid, and I won’t hear that sort of talk from anyone.”

  “And just what did he say?”

  “Oh, he was insinuating things, more like, about the way she and Lord Dannyn spend so much time on the practice ground.”

  Nevyn snarled under his breath.

  “He said it more against his lordship than her holiness,” Gavra went on. “Asking me didn’t I think it strange that his lordship was so eager to teach Lady Gweniver his sport, but it vexed me nonetheless. I told him that a common-born servant like me was below having thoughts about his lordship one way or another, and then I marched off.”

  “Good lass. I’ll have to speak to Oldac about more things than one, I see. If it gets back to Gweniver’s ears that he’s been insulting her, he may die quite suddenly.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t ache my heart if he did.”

  The very next afternoon Gweniver and Dannyn came to the afternoon surgery. Gavra had just finished putting salve on the underfalconer’s scratched hand when the two strode in with the rattle and clang of full mail. Dannyn held a bloody rag pressed to his cheek.

  “Would you tend the captain here, good herbman?” Gweniver said. “He’s too embarrassed to go to the chirurgeon.”

  “If I could call a priestess a bitch,” Dannyn mumbled through the rag, “I would.”

  Gweniver merely laughed. When the captain took the rag away, his cheek was scraped raw, swelling badly, and dripping blood from two small nicks.

  “We were using blunt blades,” Gweniver explained. “But they can still raise a good bruise, and he refused to wear a helm for our lesson.”

  “Stupidity,” Dannyn said. “Mine, I mean. I never thought she’d get near me.”

  “Indeed?” Nevyn remarked. “It seems that the lady has more talent for this sort of thing than either of us would have thought.”

  Dannyn gave him so insolent a smile that Nevyn was tempted to wash the wounds with the strongest witch hazel he had. As an act of humility, he used warm water instead, forcibly reminding himself that Dannyn was not Gerraent, that while the soul was the same root, the personality had grown to a different flower, and that Dannyn had excuses for his arrogance that Gerraent had never had. Yet every time the captain’s cold eyes flicked Gweniver’s way, Nevyn was furious. When he left, Nevyn allowed himself a sigh for the foolish pride of men, which could hold a grudge for a hundred and thirty years.

  Gweniver herself lingered, looking curiously over the herbs and potions and chatting idly with Gavra, who mercifully said nothing about Lord Oldac’s slight. Although the lady seemed oblivious of them, Wildfolk followed her round the room, at times plucking timidly at her sleeve, as if asking her to see them. For some reason that Nevyn didn’t truly understand, the Wildfolk could always recognize someone with dweomer-power, and the little creatures found such fascinating. Finally they vanished with disappointed shakes of their heads. Nevyn suddenly wondered if Gweniver had stumbled across her latent dweomer-talents and was using them in the service of her Goddess. The thought made him turn cold with fear, and
something of it must have shown on his face.

  “Is somewhat wrong, good herbman?” Gweniver said.

  “Oh, naught, naught. I was just wondering when you’d be riding on campaign.”

  “Soon, after Maccy’s wedding. We’re going to sweep the Eldidd border on patrol. We might not even see any fighting, or so Lord Dannyn tells me, so don’t trouble your heart, good sir.”

  When she smiled, he felt the fear again, clutching his heart, but he merely nodded and said nothing more.

  The wedding festivities lasted all day, with mock combats and horse races, dancing and bard-song. By evening those few souls who were still sober were stuffed with food to the point of drowsiness. Before Gwetmar and Macla retired to their chamber for their wedding night, one last formality remained. Glyn summoned the couple, Gweniver, and a handful of witnesses to his chamber to oversee the signing of the wedding contract. Although normally the king himself would have had nothing to do with such a matter, the passing down of a great clan through the female line was an important affair. When Gweniver arrived, she was quite surprised to see Nevyn among the witnesses, the others being Dannyn, Yvyr, and Saddar.

  The king’s scribe read out the decree that turned Gwetmar into the head of the Wolf clan and bestowed Macla’s dowry upon him on the terms that he would rule as the Wolf and give all his loyalty to that clan. First Gwetmar made his mark on the parchment; then Gweniver made hers as her last act as the head of the Wolf. After Dannyn also made his mark, the other witnesses, learned councillors all, signed their names.