Daggerspell

by Katharine Kerr

Since Otho the smith was very much on her mind, Jill suddenly remembered his riddle, that someday no one would tell her what craft to follow. If he were a friend of Aderyn’s, this “no one” had to be a dweomerman, too. While the men went on talking of the coming war, Jill slipped away and ran out of the dun. By the stream that ran behind it she sat down and watched the water sparkling with Wildfolk, who raised themselves up like waves to greet her. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. The dweomer seemed to have swooped out of the sky like a falcon, and it had her in its claws.

  The waiting got on everyone’s nerves as the hot summer day dragged on. With nothing but stream water to drink and meager, stale provisions from Dregydd’s stores to eat, the warband was in a sullen mood, while the merchant and his muleteers crept around in numb panic. Every-where Rhodry walked he heard the men talking of dweomer, and he could no longer cheerily dismiss their fears. Finally he went down to the gates, newly barricaded with big logs, and found Cullyn there, leaning meditatively against the barricade on folded arms and watching the ravens wheel over the dead horses out in the meadow. Rhodry joined him.

  “At least old Dregydd had shovels with him. Enemies or not, it would have ached my heart to leave those men unburied.”

  “That’s most honorable of you, my lord.”

  “Ah, it’s but my duty. I’ve been thinking about what old Aderyn asked you, about sticking close to me in the scraps, I mean. They’re going to be riding to mob me, sure enough, and I’d never ask a man to put himself in that kind of danger. Ride where you will on the field.”

  “Then I’ll ride next to you.”

  When Rhodry swung around to look at him, Cullyn gave him an easy smile.

  “My Wyrd will come when it comes,” Cullyn said. “It gripes my heart to think of a decent man like you being killed for a handful of coin. What are these lords, silver daggers?”

  “Well, my thanks. Truly, my thanks. I’m honored that a man like you would think so highly of me.”

  “A man like me, my lord?” Cullyn touched the hilt of his silver dagger, as if to remind Rhodry of his shame.

  “Ah, by the hells, what do I care what you did twenty years ago or whenever it was? You’ve ridden through more rough scraps than a lord like me ever even hears about.”

  “Well, maybe, my lord, but I—”

  In the ward behind them, yells exploded, jeers and curses and ill-natured taunts from the warband. Over it all, like the shriek of a raven, floated Jill’s voice, shrill with rage.

  “Oh, ye gods!” Cullyn turned on his heel and ran.

  Rhodry was right behind him. As they came round the side of the broch, they saw half the warband gathered round Jill, who yelled foul insults back as fast as they yelled them at her. Caenrydd came running from the other direction and elbowed himself into the mob, pulling or slapping his men away impartially, like a hunter slapping the dogs off the kill.

  “Now, what’s all this, you young swine?” Caenrydd snarled. “I’ll put stripes on your backs if you’ve been doing the wrong things to this lass.”

  “It isn’t that at all!” Jill was shaking in fury. “They’ve been saying I don’t have the right to carry this sword. Just let one of the little bastards try to take it away from me.”

  When the warband surged forward, Rhodry shoved his way through the pack, which fell back at the sight of him.

  “My apologies, fair maid.” Rhodry made her a bow.

  “I don’t want any cursed apology!” Jill snarled, adding a “my lord” as an afterthought. “I meant what I said. Just let one of them try to take it away. A challenge, I mean. Come on, you bastards, I’ll take any one of you on with my bare hands—if you have the balls to face me.”

  Rhodry was struck speechless. When he turned to Cullyn, he found the silver dagger his usual impassive self.

  “My lord? Over the years, I’ve learned it’s best to let Jill settle these things her own way.”

  “What?” Rhodry and Caenrydd spoke together. “She’ll get hurt.”

  “If I thought that,” Cullyn said levelly, “I’d have my sword out and swinging right now. I’ve seen this kind of scrap a hundred times, my lord, and I’ll wager Jill wins handily.”

  “Done, then,” Rhodry said. “One silver piece gets you two if your lass wins.”

  Shaking his head in bewilderment, Caenrydd set up a fair fight between Jill and Praedd, a beefy man who was the best brawler in the warband. Praedd was grinning at the easy fight ahead as he handed his sword belt over to Caenrydd. By then, every man in the dun was crowded round the contest ground. Rhodry noticed Aderyn, watching in horrified alarm, and the two men of the Westfolk, who were making wagers on Jill against any man who’d take them on.

  “Very well, then,” Caenrydd said, stepping clear. “It’s on.”

  Jill and Praedd began to circle around each other, hands raised and ready. Praedd charged, swinging confidently, only to find Jill dodging in from the side. She grabbed his wrist as he punched, dropped to one knee, and somehow, just like dweomer, two-hundred-pound Praedd flew through the air and landed with a grunt amid the weeds. Still game, he scrambled back up, but this time he moved in cautiously. They feinted, dodged; Praedd swung in low from the side. Jill leapt straight up, kicked him in the stomach, and twisted down like a dancing girl. Gasping, Praedd doubled over, then forced himself upright. Jill danced in and clipped him neatly and precisely on the chin. With a sigh, Praedd closed his eyes and fell forward on the ground.

  The Westfolk yelled in triumph, and Cullyn laughed softly under his breath, but the warband was utterly silent, staring at Jill in disbelief and sideways at Rhodry in shame. Jill set her hands on her hips and glared at them.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Jill, enough!” Cullyn called out. “You’ve made your cursed point, and I have to ride with them.”

  “True spoken,” Rhodry said, stepping forward. “All right, men, go pour water over your sleeping comrade there. And don’t feel shamed on my account—I’ve just lost a good bit of silver myself.”

  Still, they must have felt the dishonor at the hands of a lass, because they frankly fled, stopping only long enough to scoop up Praedd and carry him away, with the Westfolk trailing after to make sure they collected their coppers. Rhodry made Jill a bow.

  “And where did you learn to fight like that?”

  “Da taught me somewhat, my lord, and I figured the rest out for myself.”

  Jill wiped the sweat off her face onto her shirt sleeve like a man, but still Rhodry’s heart skipped a beat. He’d never seen a lass like her, and she was lovely, oh, so lovely. Then he realized that Cullyn was watching him with grim paternal suspicion.

  “I’ll get those coins out of my saddlebags for you. And you’d best keep your hellcat here away from the warband for a while.”

  “I will, my lord. Have no fear of that.”

  As Rhodry hurried away, he was cursing himself for an utter fool. He knew that he should put this common-born lass with the dangerous father out of his mind for good, but he also knew that for some bizarre reason, he was falling in love again.

  That night, Lord Sligyn’s army camped on the banks of the stream that would eventually lead them to Rhodry. The men gathered in little groups, their campfires like flowers of light out in the dark wild meadow. As Nevyn wandered through the camp, he came across a man he knew, Sandyr, who rode for Lord Sligyn. A year ago, Nevyn had pulled a bad tooth for him and cured the infection, and apparently Sandyr remembered it kindly.

  “It’s Nevyn! Here, sit down at our fire, good sir. This is Arcadd and Yvyr. Lads, this is the best herbman who ever rode the kingdom.”

  Sandyr’s two comrades greeted Nevyn with small smiles and nods of their heads.

  “I was cursed glad when I saw you in the train,” Sandyr said. “I’d rather have you along than our lord’s chirurgeon any day.”

  “Oh, he’s a good man. He just doesn’t know teeth the way I do.”

  “Maybe so.” Sandyr rubbed his jaw at the memory
of that long-gone abscess. “But let’s hope that none of us need your cures after a scrap.”

  “Or here,” Arcadd said with a twisted grin. “I don’t suppose you have any herbs to protect a man against dweomer.”

  All three laughed uneasily.

  “Well, now, there aren’t any herbs like that,” Nevyn said. “I take it you all believe the rumors going around.”

  “Doesn’t every man in the army?” Sandyr went on. “But it’s not just wild talk. A couple of us have ridden to Corbyn’s dun with messages and suchlike. I’ve talked to men who saw this Loddlaen do things.”

  “Do things?”

  “I saw this myself,” Yvyr broke in, and his broad face was pale. “Back in the spring, it was, when our lord was trying to talk Corbyn out of rebelling. Lord Sligyn sends me to Bruddlyn with messages. And Corbyn treated me well enough, giving me dinner with his men. So there were these big logs laid in fresh on the honor hearth, and Loddlaen comes down with Corbyn. I swear it, good sir, I saw Loddlaen snap his fingers, like, and flames sprang up all over the logs, and they were big logs, no kindling or suchlike.”

  “And then one of Lord Oledd’s men went to Bruddlyn, too,” Sandyr took up the tale. “He walks in and Corbyn says, well, Loddlaen told me you were coming. The men in his warband swear he knows everything that goes on for miles and miles.”

  “It makes you wonder what else he can do,” Arcadd said. “Here, Nevyn, if you know herbcraft, you must know bones and muscles and suchlike. Do you think a dweomerman could turn someone into a frog?”

  “I don’t,” Nevyn said firmly. “That’s naught but a silly bard’s fancy. Now, here, think. All those tales say that the frogs are just ordinary frogs, right? Well, if someone did get turned into a frog, it would have to be a huge one. You can’t just go shrinking a man’s flesh down to nothing, but the tales never say a thing about frogs big enough to ride.”

  All three laughed and relaxed at the jest.

  “Well and good, then,” Sandyr said. “I pledged I’d die for my lord, and I don’t give the fart of a two-copper pig if it’s dweomer or a sword that kills me, but cursed if I liked the idea of hopping around in a marsh the rest of my days.”

  “The lasses you’d have,” Arcadd said mournfully. “All green and warty.”

  Nevyn joined in the general laughter. Jests were the best weapon these men had against the fear preying upon them.

  Toward midnight, when the camp was asleep except for the night watch, Nevyn sat over the dying coals of his fire to contact Aderyn. After their long years of friendship, all he had to do was think of Aderyn briefly before he saw the image of Aderyn’s face building up and floating just above the red glow.

  “There you are,” Nevyn thought to him. “Are you in a position to talk?”

  “I am,” Aderyn thought in return. “The camp’s asleep. I was just going to contact you, truly. Corbyn’s army is still camped where, I saw it last.”

  “No doubt they’re going to wait till we’re out of the dun, and then make a try at killing Rhodry. Is Loddlaen still with them?”

  “He is. Ah, ye gods, my heart’s half torn apart. What a dolt I was to train the lad!”

  Nevyn bit back the all-too-human temptation to say, “I told you so.” Aderyn’s image smiled sourly, as if he knew perfectly well that Nevyn was thinking it.

  “But I did,” Aderyn went on. “And now his misdoings are my responsibility—you don’t have to tell me that twice. What counts now is ending the matter.”

  “Just so. Do you still think he’s merely insane?”

  “I do. If he’d truly gone over to the Dark Path and its foul ways, he’d be hiding himself, not flaunting his gifts and meddling with petty lords.”

  “Now, that’s true spoken. Here, you know Loddlaen better than I ever will. It seems clear that he’s stirred up this blasted rebellion. Why? Is he trying to escape being brought to justice for that murder he did? If so, his scheme won’t work. It doesn’t matter who Corbyn’s overlord is. Gwerbret Rhys would haul him into the malover as readily as Lovyan would.”

  “True spoken, and I’ve been puzzling himself over this very question. At first I thought he had some scheme of killing me or at least the other two witnesses I’m bringing, but if that were true, why involve Rhodry and half the tierynrhyn? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t, and I think me we’d best find out just what he thinks he’s up to.”

  Aderyn laughed, a harsh mutter.

  “If we can. That’s the crux, my friend. If we can.”

  After he finished talking with Aderyn, Nevyn sat up brooding for a long time, hoping that Aderyn was right about Loddlaen only being mad. Truly, the lad had been unstable from the beginning. Studying dweomer demands a perfect stability of mind, a core of simple common sense, in fact, because the forces that dweomer invokes can tear an unstable mind to pieces, leaving it prey to delusions and fantasies. Loddlaen had never had iron in his soul, only the malleable silver of a raw psychic talent that should have been suppressed, not encouraged. At least, if Aderyn was right, Loddlaen was only misusing his dweomer, not immersing himself in strange and unclean things. Just as every light casts a shadow, so does a dark dweomer exist. The men who study it (and they never open their foul ranks to women) lust after power above all else and hoard it like misers, never helping but only harming other souls. They grub around the dark places of the Innerlands for peculiar magicks and keep themselves alive unnaturally by feeding on the vitality of spirits and living people alike. Nevyn was sworn to destroy such as them wherever he found them, and they knew it, and hid from him.

  Scattered over a wild meadow, the army of Lord Corbyn and his allies lay asleep under the starry sky. Surefooted in the dark, Loddlaen picked his way through the camp and out with a muttered word to one of the guards. The stink of so many unwashed humans was making him feel ill, and he walked a good long ways away from camp before he flung himself down in the grass to rest. He was tired—he was always tired these days—yet when night came, he could not sleep. He pressed both hands against his forehead and tried to steady himself. The despised smell that he’d left behind him seemed to cling to his body and clothes. Suddenly he saw the smell, a thick gray cloud of smoke, swirling around him in some unfelt wind. It was only a vision, an illusion, but he had to fight to banish it. Many visions came to him unbidden these days, just odd little things, voices half heard, things half seen, and always he could understand the cause, but still they were terrifying, because he knew that they should never have come at all. A dweomerman works long years to open his mind to the Innerlands, but at the same time he has to close his mind at will, to draw a veil between himself and unseen things. No matter how hard Loddlaen tried to close that veil, things slipped through.

  When he looked up at the stars, they were dancing and leaping, sending long points of light like reflections off a polished blade. Hastily he looked away, but creatures seemed to be crawling through the grass, like little weasels, sniffing him out. He flung up one hand and made the banishing sigils in the air. When he looked the weasel things were gone, and the stars steady. With a sigh that was half a groan, he flung himself face down to lie full length in the grass. The broken light from the stars seemed to dance in his mind, dazzling him. He summoned up an image of darkness, a soft, warm darkness like sleep, and let the image suffuse his mind until at last it seemed to him that he stood inside that warm, comforting dark, safe at last. He’d stumbled upon this trick of summoning a dark some months before; it was the only way he could get any rest. Now, it came to him easily, swiftly, every time he called, as if it came of its own will.

  Yet even wrapped in dark, he could not sleep. His hatred was there in the blackness with him, the hatred he bore toward the stinking human beings he was forced to use as allies, and even more, the hatred he bore toward the Elcyion Lacar. It seemed he heard his hatred talking to him in a child’s voice, until that voice became his own. There he’d been, practically an outcast in the elven camps, and a
ll because his father was a wretched human being. Oh, everyone had been kind to him; that was the worst wound of all, the galling way that everyone had been ever so kind, as if he were a half-wit who needed tender care. They were smug, the Elcyion Lacar, so smug, secure in knowing that they’d live for four, maybe even five hundred years, while as for him, well, how long did a half-breed live, anyway? No one truly knew; at any moment, he might look in the mirror and see the beginnings of that inevitable human corruption into death that men called old age. He hated them all, men and elves alike.

  The hatred burned so bright that it threatened to wipe the darkness away. Loddlaen steadied himself and thought only of the dark, let it soothe and blanket him. Voices came out of the darkness, as they usually did, comforting him, agreeing with him that he’d been ill-used, promising him that he would get his revenge on the Elcyion Lacar and Eldidd men both.

  “Loddlaen the Mighty,” the voices said. “Master of the Powers of Air, no man can touch you, no man can best you, not you, Loddlaen the Mighty.”

  “It’s true,” he answered them in his mind. “I shall have vengeance.”

  “Splendid vengeance for all that these dogs made you suffer.” One familiar voice was as soft and smooth as perfumed oil. “Remember, slay Rhodry Maelwaedd, and all the vengeance you have ever sought will be yours. Rhodry must die—remember, remember.”

  “I remember, and I swear to you I will.”

  He heard a ripple of satisfied laughter, and then the darkness turned thick and warm. At last, he could sleep.

  At dawn on the morrow, the camp came awake fast. Lord Sligyn walked through, yelling orders and keeping the men busy until the horses had grazed their fill and everyone was ready to march. All morning they pushed on fast upriver. Nevyn felt his excitement at seeing Brangwen turn to a curious sort of dread. What was her personality in this life like? What would she think of him? For all his vast age and true dweomer, Nevyn was man enough to want her to like him. Finally, about an hour before noon, they came to the ruined dun.

  Rhodry and his men were at the gates to greet them with cheers. Since there wasn’t enough room in the ward for the army to ride in, the men dismounted outside and sat with their horses while the noble-born went in. Looking for Aderyn, Nevyn slipped in, too, and found him and the two elves waiting for him by the dun wall. Jennantar and Calonderiel bowed low.