Deverry #06 - The Westlands 02 - A Time of Omens

by Katharine Kerr

  His legs trapped by his dead horse Aethan lay on his back near the riverbank. A chance thrust had split his mail and gone through his side to catch a lung. Although he was still alive, at every rasped breath he drew a bubble of blood broke on his lips and trickled down his chin. Maddyn dropped to his knees beside him and half kicked the horse away, half pulled him free, then slipped an arm around his shoulders to cradle his head against his chest. Aethan stared up at him with cloudy eyes.

  “It’s me—Maddo. Do you want some water?”

  “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t. We’ve got to get Caudyr over here.”

  “Won’t do any good.”

  Like a spear in his own heart Maddyn felt the truth of it.

  “I’ll make a song for you. Just like you were a lord.”

  Aethan smiled up at the sky with bloody lips. It was a long time before Maddyn realized that he was dead. He shut Aethan’s eyes, laid him down, and sat back on his heels, simply sat there for a long time, staring at nothing, trying to put together a proper gorchan for Aethan and wondering why the words wouldn’t come. Out of nowhere, it seemed, Caradoc materialized and knelt down beside him.

  “He was a good lad. I’ll miss him.”

  Maddyn nodded. When Caradoc laid a hand on his arm, he shook it off, and after a few minutes the captain went away again—Maddyn never noticed in what direction or why. All at once he was so tired that the world seemed distant and faint, stripped of all color and sound. He lay down next to Aethan on the blood-soaked earth, threw one arm around him, and rested his head on his shoulder. Dimly he heard his own voice in his head telling him that he was daft, that nothing in this world or under it was going to bring Aethan back, but at the time, reason no longer mattered. Daft or sane, he wanted to stay there with Aethan for a while, just a little while before they dumped him into a shallow grave on the battlefield. Although he was never conscious of falling asleep, all at once it was dark, and Caradoc was shaking him hard.

  “Get up. Get up, or I’ll slap you up. You’ve got to come away.”

  When Maddyn sat, Branoic grabbed him by one hand and the captain by the other, and between them they hauled him to his feet.

  “Stay with him, Branno. I’ve got to get back to the prince. For the gods’ sakes keep him from watching the burying.”

  Maddyn let Branoic lead him like a blind man to the camp upriver, where the barges were safely tucked into shore and already campfires bloomed in the meadow. Branoic sat him down by one of the fires, then rummaged in a saddlebag and brought out a clean shirt.

  “You’re all over gore. Change—you’ll feel better.”

  Maddyn nodded like a half-wit and changed his shirt, tossing the filthy one onto the ground, then took the tankard of ale Branoic handed him.

  “Those bastards on the barges had ale with them all along, but they were holding out on us. Old Nevyn made them hand it over. Said if we were going to risk our necks for them they could at least stand us a drink.”

  Maddyn nodded again and drank a few sips. When Branoic sat down next to him, he saw that the lad’s calm was all a sham—tears were running down his face. Very carefully, very slowly, Maddyn set the tankard down next to his bloodstained shirt, then dropped his face into his hands and sobbed, howling like a child and rocking back and forth until Branoic grabbed him and pulled him into his arms to hold him still. Even as he wept, Maddyn heard his own voice rise to a keen, and for a long time that night he mourned, caught tight in the comfort of a friend’s arms. Yet even in the depths of his grief, he felt that the most bitter thing was that Aethan had never lived to see Cerrmor and the true king come into his own.

  “N-n-nevyn, I don’t understand,” Maryn said, picking each word carefully. “The enemy weren’t after me. They wanted Branoic. I was p-p-protecting him—or trying to, anyway.”

  “Trying, indeed!” Caradoc broke in, and he was grinning like a proud father. “You did a splendid job of it, my prince. You can swing that blade like a silver dagger, sure enough.”

  Maryn blushed scarlet from the praise, but he kept looking at Nevyn, waiting for his answer. The three of them were sitting at Caradoc’s fire, and talking softly to keep the rest of the men from hearing. Although he debated, Nevyn decided that after the spectacle he’d put on that afternoon, he might as well tell the whole truth of the tale.

  “Well, my liege, it was an oversight on my part, though I’ll admit it was a lucky one, all in all. I want both of you to keep this a secret.” He glanced back and forth at prince and captain until they nodded their agreement. “Young Branoic has a natural talent for dweomer. Since it’s totally untrained, he can’t use it, mind—he’s not going to ensorcel anyone or suchlike. But consider our enemies, working in the dark, as it were, searching desperately for any trace they can find of the true king. Now, back in Pyrdon everyone knows what the prince looks like, but we’re a long way from home, lads. And so, as our enemies here scry and work their spells, what do they find but a magical—oh, what shall I call it? Here, you know how a hearthstone will radiate heat after the fire’s been burning for a good long time? You can see it glow red, and the air above it shimmers, like? Very good. Well, magical talent in a person puts out an emanation that’s somewhat like that. So here’s Branoic—tall and strong, a splendid fighter, a good-looking man—easy enough to mistake for a prince just on general principles, and on top of all that, he absolutely reeks of dweomer.”

  “They thought he was me!” Maryn burst out. “They might have k-k-killed him, thinking him me! I’d never forgive myself if they had.”

  “Better him than you, Your Highness,” Caradoc said dryly. “And I know Branno would agree with me a thousand times over.”

  “Just so,” Nevyn said. “You know, my liege, I’ll wager they think you’re the prince’s page. Excellent. Let’s let them go on wallowing in their error, shall we?”

  “What shall I do? S-s-saddle and c-c-comb his horse on the morrow? I will and gladly if it’ll help.”

  “Too obvious,” Caradoc said. “We’ll just go on like we were doing, Your Highness, if it’s all the same to you. Seems to have worked splendidly so far.”

  “So it has.” Nevyn thought for a moment. “Do you think I should go take a look at our Maddyn?”

  “Leave him alone with his grief, my lord. There’s naught any of us can do to heal that wound, much as it aches my heart. Ah, by the hells, he knew Aethan these twenty years at least, more maybe, ever since he was a young cub and fresh to a warband.”

  “That’s a hard kind of friend to lose, then, and you’re right, I’ll leave him be.”

  For a few minutes they sat there silently, looking into the flames, which swarmed with salamanders—though of course, only Nevyn could see them. Now that he’d rolled his dice in plain sight, he saw no reason to try to lie about his score, and Wildfolk wandered all over the camp, peering at every man and into every barge. Later, after the camp was asleep, he used the dying fire to contact the priests in Cerrmor. They needed to know that the one true king was only some three days ride away and that his enemies had tried to slay him upon the road.

  2.

  The year 843. We discovered that Bellyra, the eldest daughter of Glyn the Second, King in Cerrmor, was born upon the night of Samaen. The High Priest declared it an omen. Just as she was born on the night that lies between two worlds, and thus partook of the nature of both, so she was destined to be the mother of two kingdoms. Yet some within the temple grumbled and said that no good thing could come from such a birth that bridged the worlds of the living and of the dead, because she would belong to the Otherlands and only be a real woman on Samaen itself. She was, or so these impious traitors said, the lass who wasn’t there . . .

  The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn

  In the very heart of Dun Cerrmor, at the center of all the earthworks and the rings of stone walls and the vast looming circles of joined brochs and towers, lay a garden. Although it was only about thirty yard
s across, it sported a tiny stream with an equally tiny bridge, a rolling stretch of lawn, some rosebushes, and an ancient willow tree, all gnarled and drooping, that, or so they said, was planted by the ancient sorcerer who once had served King Glyn the First, back at the very beginning of the civil wars. By hiking up her dresses and watching where she put her feet, Bellyra could climb a good way up into this tree and settle into a comfortable fork where the main trunk provided a backrest. In the spring and summer, when the leaves were draped down like the fringe on a Bardek shawl, no one could see her there, and she would often sit for hours, watching the sun glint on the stream and thinking about the history of Dun Cerrmor and her clan, and indeed, at times, about that legendary sorcerer himself.

  Some years before she’d found a dusty old codex in a storage room up at the top of a tower. Since her father had insisted that all his children be taught letters, she’d been able to puzzle out the eccentric script and discover that her new treasure was a history of Dun Cerrmor, starting when it was built—some ninety years before the war—and proceeding, year by year, down to 822, when, much to her annoyance, the history broke off in midpage, indeed in midsentence. Over the past few years she’d used the old book as a guide to explore every room in every tower that she was allowed into and, by using a bit of cunning, most of the ones that she wasn’t. With a stolen bottle of ink and reed pens that she made herself, she’d even continued the history, until almost all of the blank pages were full of scraps of information, gleaned from the scribes and the chamberlain, about the more recent additions and remodelings.

  No one had ever noticed her poking around. For most of her life, no one had paid much attention to her at all, other than to make sure she was fed, clothed, and put to bed whenever someone remembered that it was growing late. Even her lessons, in reading, singing, needlework, and riding, came at irregular intervals, when some servant or other had time for her. When she was nine, her brother the heir died, and then, for a brief while, she became important—but only until her mother had another baby boy.

  She could still remember the wonderful feasts and musical entertainments her father had given to mark the birth of a new heir. She could also remember the lies, the whispers behind his back, and the moaning coming from her mother’s chambers when the truth became inescapable: his second son had been born stone-blind and could never rule as king. Just a year after his birth, the baby disappeared. Bellyra never did learn what had happened to him, and she was still afraid to ask. She had, however, recorded his disappearance in her book with a note speculating that the Wildfolk had taken him away. And now her father was dead, and her mother living on Bardek wine in a darkened bedchamber. There would be no more heirs unless she herself provided them to some man the regent and the court would pick out for her.

  On that particular day she held the codex in her lap as she drowsed the afternoon away in the willow tree. She would read a few lines, almost at random, then daydream about how splendid the old days must have been, when her clan was strong and powerful, when its great kings had coffers filled with tribute and its mighty warriors had a chance of winning the civil wars. Now victory seemed profoundly unlikely, even though Cerrmor’s loyal lords all told her that the gods would help them put her on a queen’s throne in Dun Deverry. Every now and then Bellyra would look up through the leaves and consider the top of the tallest tower in the dun, just visible over the main broch. Once, or so her book told her, a hostage prince of Eldidd had languished in that tower for over twenty years. At times she had the awful feeling that she too would languish there, a prisoner for the rest of her life, until she died of old age and the Cerrmor line was dead.

  “They might just strangle me, of course,” she remarked to the tree. She often talked to the old willow, for want of anyone else to listen. “You hear about that every now and then, women being strangled or smothered to make sure they never have any babies. I don’t know which would be worse, I truly don’t, being dead or being shut up for ever and ever. The servants all say I belong in the Otherlands, anyway, so maybe it would be better to get smothered and be done with it. Or I could take poison. That would be more romantic somehow. I could write in my book, you see, as the poison was coming on. The noble Princess Bellyra raised the golden cup of sweet death to her lips and laughed a harsh mocking laugh of scorn for the beastly old Cantrae men pounding on her door. Hah hah, you dogs, soon I will be far beyond your ugly . . . ugly what? hands? schemes? Or here, how about, far beyond your murdering base-born hands. I like that better, truly. It has a ring to it.”

  The willow sighed in the breeze as if agreeing. Bellyra chewed on her lower lip and considered her plan. It would look splendid, once the Cantrae men broke down the door, if she were lying on her bed, her hair artistically draped across the pillow with a last sneer of defiance on her face. She would have to remember to put on her best dress, the one of purple Bardek silk that her nursemaid had cut from an old banqueting cloth they’d found in another storeroom. The Cantrae king might even shed a tear for her beauty and be sorry he’d been planning to smother her. On the whole, though, judging from what she’d heard about Cantrae lords, she doubted if they’d feel any remorse. Relief, more like, that she’d spared them the job.

  Across the garden came a scrape of sound, the door into the broch opening on un-oiled hinges. She went still, her hands freezing on her book.

  “Bellyra! Princess!”

  The voice belonged to Tieryn Elyc, and through the leaves she could just see him, standing on the edge of the little bridge across the stream. To Bellyra the tieryn always seemed as ancient as the sorcerer of her daydreams, but in truth he was just forty that year, and still as lean and muscled as many a younger man, even though his blond hair was indeed going heavily gray, and fine lines webbed round his blue eyes.

  “Bellyra! Come along, I know you’re out here. The cook told me where you’d be.”

  With a sour thought for Nerra’s treachery, Bellyra tucked her book into her kirtle and began to climb down. As the tree began to shake he crossed the bridge.

  “There you are,” he said with a low laugh. “You’re getting a bit old to climb trees like a lad, aren’t you?”

  “Just the opposite, my lord. The older you get the easier it is, because your legs are longer.”

  “Ah. I see. Well, you know, you’d best take care, Your Highness, because you’re the only heir Cerrmor has.”

  “Oh, come now. No one’s going to let me rule in the female line.”

  “The point, Your Highness, is to keep you safe so you can marry the one true king when he reaches Cerrmor.”

  “And when, my lord, will that be? When the moon turns into a boat and sails down from the sky with him on it?”

  Elyc let out his breath in a little puff and ran both hands through his hair. With something of a sense of shock, Bellyra realized that he was close to tears.

  “My apologies, my lord. Oh, here, don’t cry. I truly am sorry.”

  Elyc looked up, his eyes murderous—then he laughed.

  “I feel as weepy as a wench, true enough, Your Highness. You have sharp eyes for one so young.”

  “It comes from living here, actually. You’d have them, too, if you had to grow up in the palace.”

  “No doubt. But listen, lass, for lass you are though a royal one, it doesn’t do to tread on men’s hopes when hope is all they have. Remember that.”

  “Indeed? Well, how do you think I feel, knowing I’ll probably get smothered before I’m fifteen and even betrothed, much less married to anyone?”

  Elyc winced, and for a moment she was afraid that he truly would cry this time.

  “Your Highness,” he said at last. “Cerrmor can still field an army of over three thousand loyal men . . . ”

  “And Cantrae’s got close to seven thousand. I heard you telling Lord Tammael that.”

  “You little sneak! What were you doing, dreeping around the great hall when we thought you were in bed?”

 
“Just that. It’s my hall, isn’t it, since I’m the heir and all, and so I’ll sneak around in it if I want to.”

  All at once he laughed in genuine good cheer.

  “You know, Your Highness, at times you truly do have the royal spirit. But listen to me. Once the true king comes, a good thousand of those Cantrae men are ours again. Their lords have gone over to Dun Deverry out of fear and naught else, and they have a hundred years’ worth of reasons to hate the Boars and their false king. Give them hope, and they’ll flock to our banner.”

  “Well and good, my lord.” She suddenly remembered that she was supposed to act regally at moments like these, not slang her cadvridoc like a fishwife. “Truly, we have great faith in your understanding of matters military.”

  Although it seemed to her that Elyc was suppressing a smile, he did make her a passable bow.

  “Now, good regent, did you want me for some reason?”

  “Not truly. I was just worried, wondering where you’d got to.” He paused to glance round at the towering rise of stone. “You’re probably safe enough out here.”

  “Unless an assassin comes creeping under the walls.”

  “Oh, indeed? Has the bard been amusing you with lurid tales?”

  “He hasn’t. Look, see where the stream comes out from under the wall over there? Well, that water comes from the dairy room, where they store the cheeses and suchlike. The running water keeps them cool in summer. But it gets into the dairy room through this underground tunnel that leads all the way outside the dun walls to that big stream that goes through the market district down to the river. The tunnel was built in 769 by Glyn the First when the sorcerer was here, the one who posed as a gardener to gain the king’s confidence and . . . ”