Daggerspell

by Katharine Kerr

  “Did you find him?” Aderyn said.

  “I did.” Nevyn hesitated, but there was no easy way to break the news. “You’re right, my friend. Loddlaen is mad, stark, raving mad.”

  Aderyn wept, sobbing aloud like an elf. Nevyn patted him on the shoulder and tried to think of something comforting to say. There wasn’t. Loddlaen, after all, was Aderyn’s only son.

  While he swilled a wooden cup of ale, Lord Corbyn watched Loddlaen with all the devotion of a well-trained dog. Raven-haired, blue-eyed, Corbyn had once been a good-looking man, but now his eyes were puffy and his cheeks mottled with fine red lines. Loddlaen hated him, but he was a necessary tool, since he had reasons of his own to want Rhodry Maelwaedd dead. The darkness voice had promised Loddlaen that if Rhodry died, soon men and elves would kill each other all down the border. Loddlaen gloated over the promise like a jewel.

  “As soon as the men finish the noon meal,” Corbyn was saying, “we’ll be on our way and after him. They’ll be moving slower now that they have their supply train.”

  Loddlaen started to reply, but the darkness swirled out of nowhere and enveloped his mind. It was the first time that it had come unbidden, and Loddlaen was terrified.

  “Fear not. I’m your friend, and I’ve come to warn you. Someone has been spying on you. Someone breached your astral seal. Beware. Stay on guard.”

  The voice and the darkness disappeared so fast that Corbyn apparently had noticed nothing.

  “Does that plan suit you, councillor?” he said.

  “It does.” Abruptly Loddlaen rose and shoved his hands into his brigga pockets to hide their shaking. “I know I can always trust you in matters of war.”

  Without another word he stalked off, leaving Corbyn puzzled behind him, and walked to the edge of the area covered by the astral dome. Yet he was too shaken to check his various seals. For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder just who it was who spoke to him in the darkness.

  Sitting packed in together, standing along the walls, drinking ale and talking in a sea roar of laughter and jests, a hundred and eighty-seven men crammed into Dun Cannobaen’s great hall. Fifty of them were the fort guard that Sligyn had left behind, but the rest rode for the three lords sitting with Lovyan at the honor table—Edar, Comerr, and Gwryn. Lovyan had never doubted Edar’s loyalty for a minute, but she’d been pleasantly surprised when the other two had shown up at her gates. The servants bustled around to clear away the food from the noon meal and serve mead all round. Edar, a blond, beaky man in his twenties, finally said aloud what they’d all been thinking.

  “If Cenydd isn’t here by now, Your Grace, then he isn’t joining the muster, and that goes for Dromyc and Cinvan, too.”

  “So it does,” Lovyan said. “Well, Cinvan has the smallest warband in the rhan. Let him go over, for all I care.”

  The lords grinned and saluted her with their goblets. Caradoc ran to the table with a young silver dagger in tow.

  “Messages, my lady, from Lord Rhodry.”

  The silver dagger knelt and drew the message out of his shirt. As she took them, Lovyan noticed his smooth face and wondered how one so young could have earned the ill-omened dagger.

  “Carro, take this lad over to the men and get him some food, then fetch the scribe.”

  Although Lovyan was perfectly capable of reading the message herself, it would have hurt the scribe’s feelings. He snappily shook out the rolled parchment and cleared his throat several times as the lords leaned onto the table to listen. Rhodry described in terse detail the battle at the ruined dun, then ordered the reinforcements to ride northwest to meet him. He was making for a little tributary of the Brog while he tried to circle round Corbyn’s army.

  With a clatter of chairs being shoved back and the jingle of swords at their sides, the lords rose to do his bidding. The scribe leaned over to whisper.

  “A private note at the end, Your Grace. From Nevyn.”

  Lovyan snatched the parchment.

  “My dear Lovva,” the note ran. “Although the situation is grave, I have cause for hope. Our dweomer enemy is so daft that it’s a marvel he presents any threat at all. Aderyn and I will keep Rhodry safe, I’ll wager. May I beg you for a boon? The silver dagger who rode this message is not the lad she seems, but a lass, and someone dear to me. Would you give her proper shelter? Your humble servant, Nevyn.”

  “Oh, by the gods!” Lovyan laughed aloud. “Carro, run and fetch that silver dagger to me. Tell her to bring her meal and finish it here.”

  “Her, Your Grace?”

  “Just that. I must be going blind or suchlike.”

  When the silver dagger brought her trencher of bread and meat to the table, Lovyan could see that, indeed, she was female and quite pretty at that. She introduced herself as Jill, the daughter of Cullyn of Cerrmor.

  “Well, isn’t this interesting? So you’re the daughter of a famous man. Have you known Nevyn long, child?”

  “Only a few days, Your Grace, but truly, I never met a man I like more, for all his dweomer.”

  “I felt much the same, when first we met. Now, finish your meal. After we see the warbands off, we’ll get you a bath and find you a chamber up in the women’s quarters.”

  When they came out to the ward, the riders were already bringing their horses into line, and the carters were hitching their teams to the carts. Every lord in the tierynrhyn owed Lovyan his fully provisioned warband for forty days a year—and not one day more. Her heart was heavy as she wondered if Corbyn would make the war drag on beyond that just so she would have to pay the lords to serve longer. Sligyn, of course, would fight at his own expense for as long as necessary. She doubted the others, even though they gathered around her with every show of respect.

  “Until you join up with Rhodry, my lords,” Lovyan said, “Edar will be your cadvridoc.”

  “My thanks for the honor, Your Grace,” Edar said with a bow. “I’ll send a man back with a message as soon as we’ve found them. Let’s hope it’s quick.”

  “Indeed. May the gods ride with you.”

  Lovyan and Jill stood in the doorway of the broch and watched as the army slowly got itself into a line of march and filed out the gates of the dun.

  “If you’ve been riding with your father, you must have seen this many a time.”

  “I have, Your Grace, and every time, I’m half sick with fear, wondering if I’ll see Da again.”

  Lovyan was suddenly struck by what life would be like out on the roads with no family to turn to if her father were slain. It gave her a sick feeling. No matter what had happened to her husband, she herself would always have been safe, an important member of her vast clan. She caught Jill’s filthy hand and squeezed it.

  “Well, here, child. You’ve come to a safe place now. For Nevyn’s sake alone I’d offer you my shelter, but I’d be a poor excuse for a noble-born woman if I couldn’t care for the orphan of a man who died in my service. No matter what happens, you’ll have a place in my retinue.”

  Jill started shaking, a little tremor of her whole body.

  “Your Grace is truly the most generous lord I’ve ever met. If ever you have need of my sword, then it’s at your disposal.”

  It was such a masculine way of thanking someone that Lovyan nearly laughed.

  “Let’s pray things never come to that. But you have my thanks.”

  “So Corbyn’s taking our bait?” Rhodry said.

  “He is,” Nevyn said. “I found the army farther east than I expected. They’re angling round to follow you, sure enough.”

  “Splendid.” Rhodry glanced up at the sun—about three hours after noon. “What of the men from Cannobaen?”

  “They’re on the way. Aderyn can tell your messenger exactly where to find them.”

  “I’ll detail a man straightaway. My thanks.”

  After the messenger rode off, Rhodry led the army a bit farther east, then decided to make camp and wait for the reinforcements, who, according to Aderyn, were riding fast and le
tting their provisions follow. Rhodry felt profoundly ungrateful, but he thought to himself that all this dweomer aid, as useful as it was, was a cursed unsettling thing to have around you. The rest of the noble-born doubtless agreed. When just at nightfall Edar rode in, he was swearing in amazement at the ease with which the messenger had found the reinforcing army.

  “At first I thought it was some trick of Corbyn’s,” Edar said. “But Comerr recognized your man.”

  “Well, there’s somewhat odd afoot. Uh, come have somewhat to eat, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  As the noble-born sat around a campfire together and shared a meal, Rhodry had the unpleasant job of convincing still more of his allies that the rumors of dweomer were true and twice true. With Sligyn on his side, the job was easier, because no one had ever seen Sligyn give in to the slightest touch of whimsy or fancy. For a long time they sat in silence, the noble-born as cowed as their men. Rhodry wondered why none of them—and he included himself in this—were comforted by the knowledge that they had dweomer on their side. Finally he realized that they all felt insignificant, mere playing stones on a game board of the dweomer’s choosing. For weeks Rhodry had thought of himself as the focus of the rebellion and his death as its goal. Now he’d become only a pebble, set down as one small move in a war between Aderyn and Loddlaen.

  That night, long after the other lords had gone to their tents, Rhodry walked down to the banks of the stream. In the light from the stars and the waning moon, he could see quite well, an odd talent that he’d had since childhood but kept strictly to himself. Out in the meadow surrounding the sleeping camp, guards prowled back and forth on watch. The stream itself ran silver, flecked with foam as it chuckled over the rocks. All day Rhodry had been troubled by a premonition, and now it clung to him with cold arms. Something was going to happen to him, something important and irrevocable—and for a warrior, there was only one thing that something could be. He didn’t want to die. It seemed wretchedly unfair that he was going to die, when all his death would mean was that Loddlaen had jumped one of Aderyn’s stones and taken it off the board.

  When he heard someone moving behind him, he swirled, his sword half drawn, but it was only Cullyn, stumbling a bit in the darkness.

  “I just wondered who was out here, my lord. It’s my turn on watch, you see. Is somewhat wrong?”

  “Naught. I was just thinking of Carnoic. Ever play that game, silver dagger?”

  “Oh, every now and then, my lord. There’s not much challenge in it.”

  “You think so, do you? Well, then, when this war’s over, we’ll have to sit down and play, and you can teach me what you know.”

  Cullyn smiled briefly, as if he were wondering if they’d live to sit down to a board together. Rhodry felt the premonition again as a clench of his stomach. Something irrevocable was about to happen, something that had guided his whole life here, to this moment and to Cullyn of Cerrmor.

  “I’d best get back to my post, my lord.”

  “So you’d better. Here, Cullyn, tomorrow on the line of march, you come ride beside me.”

  “What? Here, that’s too big an honor for a dishonored man like me.”

  “By the hells, it’s not! Have any of the noble-born made me an offer to stick close to me in the fighting? You ride with me, and you eat with me, too.”

  It was later that same night that Nevyn felt the dweomer-warning, a cold, clammy prickling down his back that brought him suddenly and completely awake. His first thought was that Corbyn might be riding to make a night strike on the camp, and he crossed his arms over his chest and went into a trance in order to do a little scouting. In the body of light he soared up high over the camp, dimly glowing from the indrawn auras of the sleeping men. Above him in the dark blue light of night on the etheric, the stars blazed, great silver orbs of pure energy. He could see far, but nothing moved in meadow or woodland except a few deer, off on the horizon.

  If the danger wasn’t from Corbyn, it might well be from Loddlaen. Nevyn turned his attention to the etheric and saw, far above him, a tiny shape like an isolated tongue of fire. Nevyn knew that Loddlaen had been trained to assume an elven-style body of light—a huge silver flame as opposed to a human-shaped form. With a grim little smile, Nevyn darted up fast, but the flame shape fled, rushing away through eddying currents of the blue light. Nevyn might have caught him, but he saw a more curious prize. Shadowing Loddlaen at a long distance was one of the Wildfolk, a peculiarly bent nexus of dark lines and dim glow. Nevyn summoned the light and made a silver net, woven of the malleable etheric substance, then swooped after the creature.

  In an exhalation of terror it fled from him, but Nevyn called upon his own Wildfolk, who swarmed round, jostling it, shoving it back, thrusting it finally out of the swarm where he could net it easily. Swelling, flashing, it struggled against the lines of force, but the net held, and he hauled it in like a fish. Now came the trick. With the struggling Wildfolk firmly in hand, Nevyn floated back to his body. He hovered above it, fought the pull of the flesh, stayed fully conscious as he slipped back in. The fight was painful; rather than merely lapsing back into normal consciousness, he felt the melding in every bone and vein as he took up residence in his body again. Yet in spite of the pain he kept the etheric net tight and brought, at last, the captured Wildfolk back with him.

  Nevyn sat up and found a very peculiar prize indeed struggling in his hands. On the physical plane it was a gnome of sorts, but even more deformed and ugly than usual—twisted, shrunken shoulders, stubby legs, enormous hands, and a snarling warty face with tiny eyes and long fangs.

  “Someone’s shaped you, hasn’t he? Someone’s worked some strange magick indeed upon you.”

  Paralyzed with terror, the gnome went limp in his hands. Nevyn let his feeling flow out to it, a deep pity, a sympathy, in fact, a kind of love for this creature deformed against its will. When he released it, the gnome threw itself against his chest.

  “You’re safe now. You’ll never have to go back to your master again. Was your master Loddlaen?”

  The gnome looked up and shook its head in a no.

  “Indeed? How very interesting! Come with me, little brother. I’m going to summon your king here, on this plane. I think it might be safer all round.”

  With the gnome riding on his shoulder, Nevyn left the sleeping camp and went a good ways away, where he could sit down and work in private. In his mind he built up a flaming pentagram of blue light, then pushed the image out until it seemed to stand in front of him, a glowing star some six feet high. The gnome saw it, too, and stood transfixed as Nevyn slowly chanted the secret names of the King of the Element of Earth. The space inside the star changed into a silver swirl of pale light, light of the sort that never shone on land or sea, and in that light appeared a figure, vaguely elven, yet glowing so brightly that its form was hard to discern.

  “One of my kind has tormented this little brother,” Nevyn said aloud. “Will you take it into your charge?”

  The voice came back only within his mind.

  “I will, and my thanks, Master of the Fifth of Us, Master of the Aethyr.”

  When the figure held out pale glowing hands, the gnome ran to it and threw itself into the sanctuary of the King. The silver light disappeared; there was only the blue star, which Nevyn methodically banished. He stood up and stamped thrice on the ground to end the working.

  “As our Cullyn would say,” Nevyn remarked to the night wind, “oh, horseshit, and a pile of it!”

  Nevyn hurried back to camp to wake Aderyn. He knew that only a master of dark dweomer could have deformed the gnome in that particular way. This dark master was in for a shock, too, when his little messenger never returned. The question was, Why was the dark dweomer spying on Loddlaen?

  • • •

  On the morrow, Rhodry made sure that Cullyn rode next to him, even though Peredyr and Daumyr both made nasty remarks about silver daggers. The army set out, angling toward the northeast, and in a mile or two reache
d the settled farmlands of Eldidd. The roads and lanes rambled between fenced fields, farmsteads, pastures, and stretches of open meadow and woods, all jumbled together with no true pattern. Since there was no law that made farmers will all their holdings to only their eldest son, the land got cut up into a patchwork that made any kind of straight travel difficult. At noon, they stopped to rest on a strip of unused land between triangular fields of cabbages and turnips.

  While Cullyn and Rhodry were sharing a chunk of salt meat to go with their soda bread, Aderyn trotted over, looking grim.

  “Corbyn’s army is turning south, lord cadvridoc. They’ve stopped about three miles away.”

  “Well and good. Then they’re as sick of this cursed game of Carnoic as I am.”

  Rhodry tossed the chunk of meat to Cullyn, then rose, painfully aware that all the lords were looking at him for their orders.

  “We’re leaving the baggage train under the guard of the spearmen. The rest of us will arm and ride to meet them. If the bastards want a chance at me so cursed badly, then let’s give it to them.”

  They cheered him and what they saw as his courage, never knowing that Rhodry had the simple desire to get dying over with—unless, perhaps, Cullyn guessed how he felt, because the silver dagger merely looked distracted, as if his thoughts were far away.

  Thanks to Aderyn’s detailed report, Rhodry knew exactly where to draw up the army. Corbyn was marching his men down the road as straight as he could; it was not the Deverry way to hedge and maneuver for position once a battle was unavoidable. A mile north, the road crossed a big cow pasture. As the army clattered along, frightened farmers stared at them from the fields or ran away from the roadside. When the marchers reached the pasture, there wasn’t a cow in sight. From long experience, the peasantry knew something about the art of war.