Darkspell

by Katharine Kerr

  “Here, good herbman,” he said, “are you truly sure we won’t be overheard?”

  “I swear it. I’ll lie to the gwerbret’s face if I have to protect you.”

  “Well and good, then.” He had a gulp of ale. “I think we’ve found the men who tried to poison my Da.”

  It took Jill a moment to remember the lie that Nevyn had told Ogwern, but the dweomerman sat bolt upright in his chair and smiled.

  “Oh, have you, now? Here, tell me everything.”

  “After you warned us, you see, we did some hard thinking. It had to be a stranger who put that oily-fur-what’s-it in Da’s ale, because he’s as fair as fair when it comes to splitting swag, and none of the lads would want him done away with. So we figure another gang’s trying to move in on us. So we all spread out, like, marking any strangers we saw and following them. We spread a bit of coin around, too, for information. And so just before noontide I had a bit of luck when this fellow comes into town to buy at the market fair. Someone told me he was a farmhand, but he was buying a cage full of rabbits. Now, I ask you, why would a farmer spend coin on rabbits when his fields are full of free ones?”

  “A better question than you can know, my friend.”

  “So I got my horse and followed the man out. I was being careful as careful at first, but he never even looked back once. From the way he sat on his horse, all slumped over, it looked as if he was ill or suchlike, so I could follow pretty close. He goes to a farm, all right, and I begin to think I’ve got a false trail. But I’m there and all, so I spread a few coppers around in the village nearby, and I hear a strange tale. That farm belongs to an old widower, who’s gotten a bit strange over the years. Now, everyone thought he didn’t have a soul in the world, but all of a sudden, like, he’s got guests. One of the village lads was chasing a lost cow up that way, and he saw a fellow saddling up an expensive horse out in the farmyard. Fortunately the lad had to keep after his cow, so he didn’t go down to ask nothing.”

  “Fortunate and twice fortunate,” Nevyn said softly.

  “That’s what I was thinking, too,” Bocc said with a nod. “Because I’ll wager those guests belong to some other gang, and the poor old man’s gone to join his wife in the Otherlands.”

  “I have the nasty feeling you’re right.” Nevyn got up and joined Bocc at his pacing. “Tell me exactly where this farm is and everything you can remember about the countryside.”

  The “everything” turned out to be a great deal. Apparently Bocc could memorize a place and turn it to a clear picture in his mind, because as he talked, he stared off into space, his eyes moving as he examined an image that no one else could see. The farm was up in the hills and quite isolated; once a month or so a neighbor would go up to see if the old man was all right, but otherwise, the villagers rarely saw him.

  “A perfect place for men to hide when they’ve got murder on their minds,” Nevyn said when he’d finished. “Now, listen, tell your father to leave this to me. I can’t explain why, but these lads are far more dangerous than you think.”

  “I will, then. Here, good sir, Ogwern swears that you’re dweomer.”

  “Does he, now? Isn’t dweomer just embroidery in a bard’s tale?”

  “Oh, you see many a strange thing when you work the streets. I know lords and merchants and suchlike scoff, but they’re not out in the streets at the bottom of things.”

  “So they’re not. Well, Ogwern’s a shrewd man, for all his fat, and I’m going to prove it to you. You want to get out of here without being seen, don’t you?”

  Bocc groaned as he remembered where he was.

  “Well and good, then,” Nevyn went on. “If you swear to me that you won’t steal anything while the spell lasts, I’ll make you nearly invisible for a few minutes.”

  Although Bocc swore in perfect sincerity, Jill was shocked. She’d never seen Nevyn be so open about his powers when there was no true need. When the old man led Bocc out into the shadows of the corridor, the thief suddenly turned into an oddly blurred figure. He had scuttled off only a few paces before he seemed to disappear. Rhodry swore aloud. Grinning broadly, Nevyn shut the door.

  “The hunt is up,” Nevyn announced. “The masters of the dark dweomer are known for eating raw meat but not for their skill at snaring rabbits. I’ll wager the farmhand is ensorcelled, too.”

  “They’re right at hand!” Jill snapped. “The arrogant bastards.”

  Rhodry was staring at the closed door, his mouth set tight and a little twisted, as if he’d eaten something bitter.

  “What’s wrong, my love?’ she said.

  “That man’s a thief, and so’s Ogwern.”

  “Oh, come now, my innocent one, did you only just realize it?”

  “Don’t tease, curse it! He’s given us the help we need, and I should be rewarding him, but I’m honor bound to turn him over to Blaen.”

  “What! You can’t!”

  “Now, here, lad,” Nevyn broke in. “I despise thieves myself, but I’ve known about Ogwern for years and haven’t given evidence. Do you know why? Because as thieves go, he’s very small beer indeed. He keeps his lads in line, he never murders, and he does his best to prevent murder. With him gone who knows what vicious sort might come to power?”

  “That’s all well and good,” Rhodry said. “But here I am, my cousin’s guest, when by rights he should have turned me out on the road. I can’t hold my tongue and make a mockery of his justice.”

  “You dolt!” Jill felt like grabbing and shaking him. “Why are you making a fuss over this now? There’s dark dweomer all around us.”

  “That’s got naught to do with it. It’s the honor of the thing.”

  “Now, now.” Nevyn laid a paternal hand on Rhodry’s shoulder. “I know it’s a hard road you’ve got to ride, lad, choosing between two dishonors. Just look at me, will you? There, my thanks. Now, you’re not going to say a word to Blaen about the thieves. You’ve forgotten already, haven’t you? Young Bocc isn’t a thief, and neither is Ogwern. They just owe me a few favors; that’s why they helped us. You’ll remember that, lad.”

  When Nevyn took his hand away, Rhodry blinked like a man walking out of a dark room into strong sunlight.

  “Who was that fellow, anyway? A pot boy down in Ogwern’s inn?”

  “His son, actually,” Nevyn said. “You know I’m always willing to heal the poor for free.”

  “True, but it was good of him to run that risk, anyway. I’ll make sure Blaen gives him a reward.”

  It took all of Jill’s will to keep a normal expression on her face.

  “Rhodry, would you go fetch Blaen up here?” Nevyn went on. “I think we’ll be taking him up on his offer of the warband after all.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Jill turned to Nevyn.

  “Here!” she burst out. “You told me that ensorcelling someone is a wrong thing.”

  “It is, but not when it’s the only way to save someone’s life. When the word got out that Rhodry had turned Ogwern over to the gwerbret, how long do you think your lad would have lived?”

  “Not very. I was going to use that argument next, truly. The thieves wouldn’t think of him as an honor-bound man.”

  “Exactly. He would have been only a traitorous silver dagger to them. You know, child, I’m very glad I haven’t swore a vow that I’d never lie. Many dweomerfolk do, and it gains you the favor of the Lords of Wyrd, but I prefer to be a little more flexible about such matters.”

  He looked so sly that she had to laugh.

  “That’s a better mood,” he said. “Now, would you stand guard at the door? I’ve got to scry.”

  After the Wildfolk lit the firewood in the hearth, Nevyn knelt down and stared into the leaping flames. Since he knew the settled parts of Cwm Pecl quite well, he’d recognized the farm in question from Bocc’s description. In fact, many years ago he’d ridden there to treat a sick child. When he called up the memory of following the path on a sunny afternoon, immediately the image in th
e flames changed to the path as it looked now in the darkening light outside. In vision he followed the road up to the spot where the farm should have stood. Nothing was there but wild meadow, not a house, not a wall, not even a cow grazing nearby. So Alastyr had set an astral seal over it. With a snap of his fingers he put out the fire.

  “Did you see them?” Jill said.

  “I didn’t—which means they’re there. Oh, Alastyr can hide from me, sure enough, but he forgets what it means to make enemies of men who trust their eyes, not dweomer.” He smiled gently. “He’s about to remember.”

  Now that his mind was made up, Alastyr felt much calmer. He strode into the kitchen and found Sarcyn and Camdel sitting at the table. Sarcyn looked up with a satisfying cringe.

  “We’re leaving at the break of day,” Alastyr announced. “I’d rather take our chances with the Brotherhood than with the Master of the Aethyr.”

  “Well and good, master. I’ll pack some of the gear tonight.”

  “Good.” He turned to Camdel. “As for you, if you cooperate with us, you’ll live. We’re traveling fast, and if you cause the least bit of trouble, you die. Understand?”

  Camdel nodded a cowed agreement. Alastyr turned on his heel and strode back to the ritual chamber. He had to keep up his guard.

  The plan was risky, Nevyn knew, but he had to act fast. As he sat on horseback in the torch-lit ward with Jill and Rhodry, Nevyn shuddered. The battle ahead would be a hard one, and against two opponents if this apprentice had the skill to fight alongside his master. Around him twenty-five of Blaen’s best men were saddling their horses, while the gwerbret walked through, speaking to a man here and there. Although Nevyn was throwing his dice on a long wager by taking his grace along, he needed to have something to use as a distraction.

  “Now, remember what I told you,” he whispered to the two silver daggers. “At a certain point we’re slipping away from the warband.”

  They nodded agreement. With a jingle of tack and scabbards, the warband mounted. Motioning to Jill and Rhodry to follow, Nevyn rode over to the gwerbret.

  “Your Grace is sure he knows how to find the farm?”

  “A blind man could find it from the instructions you gave. Don’t worry, good sorcerer. We’ll dig these rats out of their holes.”

  When the warband rode out, Nevyn kept Rhodry and Jill with him at the very rear. He tossed his reins to the lad and told him to lead his horse along. Since he was needed to go into a light trance, it would be difficult enough to stay in the saddle without worrying about guiding his horse. As the warband clattered down the night-dark road, Nevyn slowed his breathing and withdrew his consciousness from the world around him. To an observer he would have looked half-asleep, his head bobbing in time to the horse’s motion. Through half-lidded eyes he watched the warband and set to work.

  First he called upon the Great Ones and saw a beam of imagined light come to him. He meditated upon it, saw it ever more clearly in his mind, until at last it lived apart from his will, a great swath of light shaped like a sword. In his mind he caught it by the hilt and used the blade to trace a mighty sphere of light around and above the war-band. Because of the motion of the horse and the noises around him, it was a hard struggle to concentrate, but eventually he got the sphere solid and the seals—the five-pointed stars of the Kings of the Elements—set at each ordinal point and at zenith and nadir. As soon as the sphere glowed bright, he invoked the great Light that shines behind all the gods and begged permission to meddle with darkness. Slowly, carefully, he withdrew the light from the sphere while leaving its structure until there was nothing left but a solid sphere of darkness, invisible to normal eyes but a shield against scrying.

  With the sphere created, Nevyn could bring his mind back to the normal world. He was shocked to find that the warband had traveled a good three miles; working dweomer on horseback was even harder than he’d expected. For the next hour or so, he merely rested, until they were about three miles from the farm. He went briefly back into his trance, called up the light, and let it stream back into the waiting sphere, but he cast a new wrap of darkness over Jill, Rhodry, and himself. Now he could only hope that Alastyr had the common sense to keep a scrying watch. If he had, he would see that sphere, blazoned with the sigils of the light, riding straight for his hiding place. Nevyn wanted him to panic, and to panic thoroughly.

  “Jill, Rhodry,” he whispered. “Now!”

  They slowed their horses to match his pace, tagging after the warband for a few hundred yards until there was a good distance between them and the unsuspecting gwerbret. With a quick wave of his hand Nevyn led his two silver daggers off the road at a trot. They turned down a side lane that led to the farm by a narrow but more direct route than the road, galloped into a stand of birches, then made their hidden way through the trees. By the time Blaen noticed they were gone, they would be well ahead of the warband.

  At length, when they came to a little stream running in a valley between two hills, Nevyn pulled his tiny warband to a halt.

  “Very well, silver daggers. The farm lies just on the other side of this hill. Here are your orders. I’m going to lie down and go into a deep trance. You two tie up the horses, then stand guard over my body. It’s just possible that Alastyr will send his apprentice out to try to kill me.”

  “He’ll never get past my sword,” Rhodry said.

  “No doubt—but if I lose this battle, we’ll meet someday in the Otherlands.” He turned to Jill. “If I die, child, pray with all your heart and soul to the Light that lies behind the moon, and don’t you tell me that you don’t know what I mean.”

  Jill caught her breath with a gasp, but even though his heart ached for her, Nevyn had no more time for words. He spread his cloak on the ground, lay on his back upon it, and folded his arms over his chest, positioning each hand on the opposite shoulder. First he invoked the Lords of Light, then lay quietly, gathering strength. Nearby Jill and Rhodry stood with drawn swords. As he closed his eyes, he wondered if he’d ever see them again.

  Slowly and carefully within his mind, Nevyn summoned his body of light, a pale-blue simulacrum of his own form, but stripped down to the essentials and joined to his solar plexus by a silver cord. When Nevyn transferred his consciousness over to this form, he felt as if the physical body were dropping sharply away. For the briefest of moments he felt nauseated; then he heard a sound, a click like a sword striking a shield, and he was looking out of the simulacrum’s eyes. His physical body lay below him in a world filled with the blue light of the etheric plane. Since he’d withdrawn from it, his own body looked like a lump of dead flesh and nothing more, but he could see Jill and Rhodry as two egg-shaped whorls of flame, their auras pulsing round them. The trees and the grass glowed dull red with vegetable-life force.

  Nevyn rose about ten feet above his body, the silver cord paying out behind him like a fisherman’s line, and looked round. The stream that flowed through the valley might well be useful, he decided, because crossing running water in the body of light is dangerous in the extreme. In the blue light the stream ran silver, and above it drifted its elemental current, visible as a troubled, shifting wall of smoky stuff, a snare if only he could get his weasel into it. He rose higher and drifted toward the crest of the hill. It was time to throw his challenge.

  Down on the other side of the hill was a grassy meadow, and in it lay the farmstead, a crumbling roundhouse behind an earthen wall, some sheds, a few fruit trees so old that their life glow was more a brown than a red. Nevyn smiled to himself; the seals were down. Alastyr must have scried out the warband and let them fall in panic. All at once he saw a man run out of the house and head toward a shed with his arms full of saddlebags. He decided that he’d best keep his enemies too busy to think of killing Camdel.

  Out of the glowing blue light Nevyn fashioned a spear shape with his mind, then threw it hard for the running man’s dark-shot aura. When it struck, the fellow dropped the saddlebags and screamed aloud. Although his physical body
would feel no pain, his trained mind must have felt it searing like a hot iron. With the swoop of a striking falcon, Nevyn flew over the farmhouse as the man ran back inside.

  “Alastyr!” he called out in a long exhalation of thought. “Alastyr, I’ve come for you!”

  He heard an answering howl echo through the blue light. Like a snake striking up from the ground, Alastyr rushed to meet him. His simulacrum was a huge, black-robed figure, hung with rich jewels and woven with sigils. The silver cord was wrapped thrice about his waist like a kirtle and hung with severed heads. The face that peered through the hood was pale and cruel, the eyes a glitter of dark in a white ghost. Nevyn called upon the Light and felt his own body of light pulse and glow with its power. In answer Alastyr swelled up and blackened as if he would suck up every light in the universe and put it out. The battle was joined: to see who could break up the other’s body of light and drive the soul within, naked and helpless, into the power of the greater forces behind each warrior.

  Nevyn struck first with a wave of light that made Alastyr bob and float like a bit of jetsam on the sea. He thrust again, sending his enemy swooping up, but as he followed, he felt Alastyr’s own forces working on him—a decay, as if a thousand claws pulled at him and tried to tear him apart. Much of his will was diverted to keeping his simulacrum together, pulling down more and more light and building it up as fast as Alastyr could rend it. The rest of his power went for attack, a rain of golden arrows and long spears that drove Alastyr this way and that as Nevyn circled round, edging, pressing him with light that beat against the darkness and shrank it back.

  His whole strategy was to force Alastyr out of the blue light and into the first sphere of the Inner Lands proper, where he would have mightier forces to command. As yet Alastyr was too strong. The dark eyes within the hood burned and raged. Nevyn kept hammering him, striking with spears of light, while Alastyr sent out wave after wave of darkness to claw and bite him in return. When Nevyn struck hard enough to tear some of the pompous sigils off the black robe, Alastyr howled like an animal and pulled back. Nevyn risked trying to build a gate behind him, using part of his will to pin the dark enemy and part to open a path to the Inner Lands. Too soon—Alastyr slipped away and sent out a flood of darkness like a wild sea.