Daggerspell

by Katharine Kerr

  Slowly, Aderyn sniffled himself to silence, wiping his face on his sleeve. Gweran kissed him and set him down, taking his hand and drawing him close.

  “Well, bard?” Nevyn said. “Do you think this will bring rain?”

  “Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But either way, the god will be pleased.”

  “True spoken. And pious of you, truly.”

  The old man walked off, leaving Gweran puzzled and more than a bit uneasy. As the crowd dispersed toward the village, Gweran finally saw Lyssa, hurrying to meet them. Just behind came Cadda, with one of the riders who was carrying the still-sleeping Acern. When Gweran recognized Tanyc, he was annoyed. Here he’d told Doryn to keep this young lout away from Cadda. As he thought about it, he realized he’d seen a lot of Tanyc lately, still hanging around the lass, sitting near her when she and Lyssa were in the ward, or walking conveniently to meet them when she and Lyssa were leaving the dun.

  That very next morning, Gweran sought Doryn out when he came down into the great hall for breakfast. He waved the captain over to the side of the hall where they could be private and put his complaint to him. Doryn looked honestly surprised.

  “Well, curse the little bastard! I did talk to him, Gweran, and here he managed to convince me he didn’t give a pig’s fart for Cadda.”

  “There’s nothing like lust to make a man lie. Here, I’ll have a word with the lad myself later.”

  It was afternoon before Gweran could get away from his lord’s side long enough to go look for Tanyc, but when he found him, he found Cadda with him. Out in the ward, Tanyc was grooming his horse while Cadda stood beside him. She was telling him some long complex tale about her elder sister while Tanyc listened with an occasional nod. As Gweran strode over, Cadda made him a hurried curtsy.

  “I’m sure your lady wants you,” Gweran said.

  With one last smile in Tanyc’s direction, Cadda ran for the tower. Tanyc looked up, the currycomb in his hand.

  “My thanks,” Tanyc said. “By the hells, doesn’t that lass ever hold her tongue?”

  “Every now and then. You can’t find it as displeasing as that. You seem to seek out her company whenever you can.”

  Tanyc looked at him with a barely concealed contempt.

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. What’s it to you?”

  “Maybe nothing at all—as long as you fancy yourself as a married man someday. I warn you, if Cadda ends up with child, I’m speaking to Lord Maroic about it. I don’t care how many men in the warband you get to lie and swear they’ve had her, too. She’ll be your wife.”

  Tanyc’s hand tightened on the currycomb so hard that Gweran was surprised the wood didn’t crack. Rather than push things to a formal exchange of insults, Gweran turned and walked away. If things ever came to a fight, doubtless Tanyc could cut him to pieces with a sword. Tanyc, of course, knew it, too. When he told Lyssa that he’d spoken to Tanyc, she smiled, remarking that since she didn’t care for the man, she’d be glad to have him stop turning up constantly at her servant’s side.

  Over the next few days, Gweran made a point of keeping his eye on the situation. At first Tanyc seemed to have taken the warning to heart, but the morning came when Gweran saw Lyssa, Cadda, and the boys walking across the ward and Tanyc hurrying over to walk with them. Gweran hurried downstairs and ran to catch up with them. At the first sight of him, Tanyc made the woman a hasty bow and went back to the barracks.

  “Now, ye gods, Cadda,” Gweran snapped. “Your mistress has spoken to you, I’ve spoken to you—can’t you get it through your pretty head that he’s the wrong sort of man for you?”

  Cadda sniveled, grabbing her handkerchief from her kirtle and dabbing at her eyes. Lyssa patted her gently on the arm.

  “Gweran’s right,” Lyssa said. “Here, let’s go up to the chamber where it’s cool and have a nice talk.”

  “I want to walk with Da,” Aderyn said. “Can I, Da?”

  “You may.” Gweran held out his hand. “We’ll have a nice stroll and let the women have their chat.”

  They walked down to the river, a trickle of water in mud, and sat down in the rustling dry grass. Without a breath of wind, the heat clung round them. Aderyn stretched out on his stomach in the grass and plucked a dead stalk to play with.

  “Da? You don’t like Tanyc, do you?”

  “I don’t. Do you?”

  “I don’t. He scares me.”

  “Well, the captain tells me he’s a hard man.”

  Aderyn nodded, twisting the grass stalk into a loop.

  “You know what, Da? He doesn’t bother us to see Cadda. When we walk, you know? He comes to see Mam.”

  Gweran felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Aderyn tried to tie a knot in the slippery stalk, then gave up and started chewing on it.

  “Are you sure about that?” Gweran asked.

  “I am. You told me to watch what people do, remember? So I was watching Tanyc, because I don’t like him, and I wondered why I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he looks at Mam. And he always bows to her so nice, and he talks to Cadda, but all the time, he’s looking at Mam.”

  “Oh, he is, now?”

  Aderyn started slitting the grass stalk with his fingernail and trying to braid the pieces. Gweran looked at the sluggish river and felt his rage flaring, just as when a spark gets into dry grass—it creeps along, smokes, then flares to a sheet of flame, racing along the meadowland. That bastard, Gweran thought, and does he think I’ll back down without a fight over this?

  “Da? What’s wrong? Don’t look like that.”

  “Oh, naught, lad. Just worrying about the cursed drought.”

  “Don’t. Nevyn’s going to fix it.”

  Gweran forced out a smile. He had no time to worry about silly prattle about the herbman.

  “Let’s get back to the dun. It’s a bit hot out here, and there’s a thing or two I want to keep my eye on.”

  “What I want to know is this,” Aderyn said. “Why do herbs work on fevers and stuff?”

  “Well, now,” Nevyn said. “That’s a very long question to answer. Do you want to listen to a talk?”

  “I do. This is all splendid.”

  They were kneeling on the floor of Nevyn’s hut and working with the herbs, turning them over to dry them evenly. Almost every day, Aderyn came down to help and study herbcraft. After his long loneliness, Nevyn found the boy’s chatter amusing.

  “Very well,” Nevyn went on. “There are four humors, you see, in every human body. They match the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. When all the humors are in perfect balance, then a person is healthy. Each herb has more or less of the various humors; they balance things out if someone is sick. If someone has a fever, then they have too much fiery humor. A febrifugal herb has lots of cool watery humor and helps balance the fiery out.”

  “Only four humors? I thought there should be five.”

  Nevyn sat back on his heels in sheer surprise.

  “Well, so there are. But only four in the body. The fifth rules the others from the spirit.”

  Aderyn nodded, carefully memorizing the lore. More and more, Nevyn was wondering if the lad was meant to be his new apprentice. The wondering made him weary. Since a dweomerman could have only one apprentice at a time, he could never take Aderyn on while bringing Brangwen to the dweomer to fulfill his vow.

  At times, in the hope of seeing Lyssa, Nevyn would take Aderyn back to the dun on horseback. Often in the hot afternoons, the various members of the household would be sitting on the grassy hill. Since Nevyn was now well known, one or the other of them would come over to ask him some medical question or to buy a few herbs or suchlike. It was there that he met Tanyc one afternoon and saw his Wyrd tangle around him like a fisherman’s net round its prey.

  Leading the horse, Nevyn and Aderyn were walking up the hill when Nevyn noticed Cadda sitting with one of the riders, a hard-eyed southern man. Aderyn noticed it, too, and went skipping over.

  “Cadda, I’m
going to tell Mam on you. You shouldn’t be here with Tanyc.”

  “Hold your tongue, you little beast!”

  “Won’t. Won’t, won’t, won’t. I’m going to tell.”

  Tanyc got up, and something about the way he looked at Aderyn frightened Nevyn into hurrying over.

  “Slapping a bard’s son is a good way for a man to get his name satirized,” Nevyn remarked.

  “And what’s it to you, old man?” Tanyc swung his head round.

  As their eyes met, Nevyn recognized Gerraent’s soul in the arrogance blazing out of his eyes.

  “You better not insult Nevyn,” Aderyn said. “He’s dweomer.”

  “Hold your tongue! I’m in no mood to listen to nonsense from a flea-bitten cub.”

  Tanyc started to swing open-handed at the boy, but Nevyn caught him by the wrist. The Wildfolk flocked to him and lent him so much raw strength that no matter how Tanyc struggled, he couldn’t break the herbman’s grip. Nevyn pulled him close, caught his gaze, and stared deep into his eyes while he let his hatred burn—and dweomer lay behind it. Tanyc went dead white and stopped struggling.

  “I said leave the lad alone,” Nevyn whispered.

  Tanyc nodded in terrified agreement. When Nevyn released him, he turned and ran for the gates of the dun.

  “Cadda, take Addo back to his mother,” Nevyn said. “I’m going back to the farm.”

  So all the actors in their grim little farce were there, even Gerraent, face to face again in a way that Nevyn had never foreseen. He realized that he’d fallen into a last vestige of royal pride, which values only the prince and princess and sees those around them only as supernumeraries. For the next few days, Nevyn stayed away from the dun and his old enemy, but in the end, Lyssa came to him, turning up at the farm one day with the plausible excuse that she’d come to fetch Aderyn home. Nevyn sent the boy out on an errand and offered Lyssa the only chair he had, a wobbly three-legged stool. She perched on it and looked idly around at the hanging bunches of drying herbs.

  “The smell in here is so lovely. It’s kind of you, sir, to be so patient with my Addo. You should hear him chatter about it at dinner—today we learned about dog’s tooth herb, today we dried the comfrey roots. His father hardly knows what to think.”

  “Does it vex Gweran? Most men want their sons to show an interest in their own calling.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t, because my man is the best-hearted man in the world. I think he’s glad to see Aderyn taking such an interest in something. He’s been a strange child from the moment he was born.”

  Nevyn smiled, quite sure of that.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have more children. You seem to love your lads so much.”

  “Well, I hope and pray to have more soon.” Lyssa looked away, her eyes dark. “I had a daughter, you see, between the two lads, but we lost her to a fever.”

  “I’m truly sorry. That’s a hard thing for a woman to bear.”

  “It was.” Her voice went flat from remembered grief. “Well, doubtless it was my Wyrd, and my poor little Danigga’s, too.”

  Nevyn felt a cold touch as he wondered if indeed it was her Wyrd, since she’d drowned a child with her on that terrible night. So she had. The dweomer-cold ran down his back as he realized who that child might have been if it had lived to be raised with himself and Rhegor: a great master of dweomer indeed. Lyssa smiled, looking out the door.

  “Here comes our Aderyn now,” she said.

  Although she was only speaking casually, “our” Aderyn meaning only the “Aderyn we both know, not some other Aderyn,” her words turned Nevyn cold to the heart. I swore I’d raise the child as my own, he thought. A vow’s a vow.

  That night, Nevyn went down to the ash tree by the riverbank and sat down to watch the slow water run. As it came clear, his Wyrd lay heavy on him. In this life, Brangwen was gone from him; she would have to repay Blaen for the hopeless love of her that had led him to his death, and repay Aderyn, too, for cutting short his previous chance at life. Nevyn owed Blaen and Aderyn a debt as well, since his scheming had left Brangwen there with her brother’s lust. Only once those debts had been repaid could he take her away for the dweomer. Yet Aderyn would be under his care for the next twenty years, because the dweomer is a slow craft to learn. In twenty years, Nevyn was going to be over ninety. And what if he had to wait for her to be reborn again? He would be well over a hundred, an unthinkable age, so old and dry that he would be helpless in a chair, like a thin stick or drooling babe, his body too old for the soul it carried, his mind a prisoner in a decaying lump of flesh. At that moment Nevyn panicked, shaking cold and sick, no longer a master of the dweomer but an ordinary man, just as when a warrior vows to die in battle, but as the horns blow the charge, he sees Death riding for him and weeps, sick of his vow when retreat is impossible.

  Around him a tremor of night wind picked up cool, rustling the canopy of branches above him. Nevyn rested his face in his hands and called on his trained will to stop himself from shaking. A vow’s a vow, he told himself. If I wither, then let me wither, so long as I fulfill that vow. The wind stroked his hair like a friendly hand. He looked up, realizing that it was no natural wind, but the Wildfolk, sylph and sprite, half-seen forms and the flick of shining wings, a face showing here only to vanish there. They came to him as friends and felt his agony, clustering sympathetic lives forming from the raw surge of elemental life. Nevyn felt his weariness ebb away as they freely poured out some of their life to him, a gift between friends. He rose, walked forward, and stared up at the sky, where glittered a great white drift of stars, the Snowy Road, splendid, unreachable, but shining with promise. When he laughed aloud, his laugh was as full and clear as a lad’s. He saw his Wyrd open in front of him, maintained by his work in the Wildlands. He would have life for the task, no matter how long it took as men measure time.

  It was that night that he learned this lesson: no one is ever given a Wyrd too harsh to bear, as long as it is taken up willingly and fully, deep in the soul.

  At times, Lyssa would leave Acern with Cadda and walk to the farm to fetch Aderyn back from the herbman. She liked these moments of solitude when she could walk alone, away from the busy press and chatter of her life among the women of the household. She also found herself drawn to old Nevyn, for reasons she couldn’t quite understand. Well, he’s a wise, kind man who’s traveled much, she would tell herself, it’s always interesting to meet someone new. Reason enough, of course, but at times she went to see him because she felt safe there, out of the fort and away from Tanyc. She knew perfectly well that young rider was pursuing her and lived in dread that her husband might notice. Lyssa simply had too much to lose to be interested in adultery—a high social position, a good husband, wealth, comfort, and above all, her children.

  On an afternoon when the heat lay as palpable as a blanket over the land, Lyssa left the dun earlier than usual and dawdled her way down the dusty road to the farm. About halfway along stood a copse of aspen trees, where she decided to rest for a few minutes. She walked into the parched shade, glanced round for a place to sit, and saw Tanyc, waiting for her. He stood as still as one of the trees, his head a little to one side, and he was smiling, looking her over with the sort of admiration a man gives to a beautiful horse in a market.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

  “What do you think? I wanted a word with you.”

  “I’ve naught to say. You’d best get back before the captain finds you gone.”

  When he stepped toward her, she drew back, her hand at her throat, her heart pounding.

  “I’ve got to be on my way. My lad will come along soon enough if I’m not there to meet him.”

  This likely witness gave Tanyc pause. Abruptly Lyssa realized that she was afraid he would rape her. For all his good looks, Tanyc repelled her in a way that she couldn’t understand—like seeing a dead animal rotting in the road. She knew the repulsion was daft; rationally, she could admit that he was decent enough for a rid
er.

  “May I walk with you a ways, then?” Tanyc made her a courteous bow.

  “You can’t!” Lyssa heard her voice rise to a scream. “Leave me alone.”

  She found herself running, racing out of the copse like a startled deer and running running running down the road until she was sobbing for breath and drenched with sweat. Half in tears she spun around, but mercifully, he hadn’t followed.

  That night, it was so hot that it took a long time to get the children to sleep. The boys tossed and turned and whined on top of the blankets no matter how soothingly Lyssa talked to them. Finally Gweran came in and sang them to sleep. Lyssa went to their chamber, changed into a thin nightdress, and lay down. In a bit, Gweran joined her. He hung the candle lantern up on the wall and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Don’t you have to return to our lord?” Lyssa said.

  “I begged his leave. I need to talk with you.”

  In the shadowed light his eyes were cold, questioning. She sat up, feeling her hands shaking, and twisted a bit of her dress between her fingers.

  “Here, my sweet,” he went on. “You’ve been keeping dangerous company these days.”

  “Oh, am I now? Who?”

  “Tanyc. Who else would I mean?”

  She clenched the cloth so hard that her fingers ached.

  “My lord, I swear to you that I want nothing to do with him. Do you doubt me?”

  “Never. But I don’t want my woman raped out in the stables.”

  When Lyssa started to cry, partly in relief, partly from seeing her worst fear shared, Gweran pulled her gently into his arms.

  “My poor, sweet little lass,” he said. “Here, here, don’t weep like that.”

  “How can I not weep? Ah, ye gods, if you come to doubt me, what will you do? Cast me off? Cut my throat, and all for a thing I’d never do?”

  “Hush, hush.” Gweran stroked her hair. “I’d die myself before I’d do you the slightest harm.”

  As suddenly as they’d come, her tears vanished before a new fear. She looked up and found his face set and grim.