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

by Katharine Kerr

  Maryn was sitting at the head of the table of honor, and some servant or other had found a cloak in the red, silver, and black plaid of Cerrmor to drape his chair, and a shirt embroidered with the ship blazon of Cerrmor for him to wear, so that when he rose to greet her he was already the king in the eyes of every man there. He bowed, caught her hand and kissed it, and smiled at her in a way that set her hand shaking in his.

  “My lady,” he whispered. “I’m lucky as well as honored that you’re the Princess of the Blood.” And then he winked at her, as cheeky as a page.

  For an answer she could only smile, the blood hot in her face, and she felt as if she were falling from the highest tower in all of Dun Cerrmor, falling and falling, down and down into the little garden at its heart, falling toward yet never reaching the safety of the old willow and the tiny stream. He had conquered her, ridden in and captured her as well as the men without ever unsheathing his sword, and made her his prisoner for life. Although she was too young to see it at the time, only a few years later she realized that her Wyrd had given her an obsessive love that most women would have called a great treasure, but some, the wise ones, a cancer growing in her heart.

  With the summer’s battle season coming on, the priests lost no time in marrying the royal couple and investing Maryn as king. For a solid week both the dun and the entire city were given over to splendid festivities: mock combats, feasts, bardic competitions, guild parades, more feasts, regattas out on the harbor and dancing in the city squares. Wherever the new king went, the silver daggers went, too, as his personal guard of honor, all decked out in ship-blazoned shirts and red cloaks as a mark of their sudden status. Since the king had to attend every festivity, even if he could only stay for a little while, the troop sailed through those warm spring days on a drunken tide of laughter. Through the lot of them Maddyn wandered like a haunt, never smiling, talking only rarely, occasionally snarling at Branoic, who followed him everywhere, and then just as suddenly apologizing again. Yet even in his grief-shot rage he saw himself clearly, knew that part of his pain was the simple and certain knowledge that in time the pain would disappear, the mourning be over, and Aethan become only a memory kept alive by the death-song his friend the bard had made about him. In odd moments, when he could snatch a little peace from the celebrating, he would work on the gorchan and even at times get a word of advice or encouragement from one of the royal bards, who seemed to find his efforts at formal poetry touching in a childlike way.

  Just after dawn one morning, before either the king or Branoic was up and around, he slipped off by himself to a hidden corner of the ward and sat down on a pile of old burlap sacks to tune his harp. He worked mechanically, humming out the intervals and tuning up the strings without consciously hearing himself, because he was thinking of al the times he’d done this job when Aethan was sitting nearby teasing him about how slow he was, or how sour the harp sounded, or other little jokes that somehow never rankled. All at once he was aware of being watched and looked up to find the queen herself standing nearby. She was barefoot, wearing a shabby pair of blue dresses, with her uncombed hair streaming over her shoulders, and she was carrying a bowl of milk.

  “Your Highness! My apologies! I didn’t see you.”

  “Don’t get up and bow and all that. I just crept out to get a bit of milk for my cat. She had four kits in the last watch of the night.”

  “Well, my congratulations to her, then, but, Your Highness, you should have let a servant—”

  “Oh, I suppose you’re right, but truly, I’m not used to all this bowing and scraping, and having people swarm all around me all the time.” She yawned, covering her mouth with her free hand. “Maryn was still asleep when I left. I’d best get back, I suppose. But how come you’re sitting out here to play?”

  “I just wanted a private spot, like.”

  “Well, come with me, and I’ll show you a nicer one. It’s supposed to be only for the royal family, but Maryn was telling me how much he honors you and Caradoc and Owaen, so you can use it, too.”

  Scooping up his harp, Maddyn followed her inside one of the towers, up half a flight of steps, down another, round a corner and through a maze of corridors, into another tower and out again, until at last he recognized that they were in a corridor that would eventually lead to the tower that housed the royal family. She ducked out one last little door, and they were in a garden, planted with roses and an enormous willow tree, all gnarled and drooping with age.

  “There.” Bellyra looked around in satisfaction. “If you climb up into that tree, no one can see you, although, of course, if you’re playing, they’ll hear you. I used to come here a lot, but I won’t have time anymore.” She looked briefly sad. “Anyway, you can sit on the bridge if you don’t want to climb the tree, or just on the grass.”

  “My humble thanks, Your Highness. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to find it again, though.”

  “Oh, ask one of the pages. Tell them I said you could come here. I’d best get this milk to Melynna.”

  She trotted off back inside, and Maddyn walked across the bridge and sat down cross-legged by the little stream. In the warm sun, sheltered by the rise of stone all round him, he felt a bit more of his grief ease. Aethan would be proud, he thought, if he knew I’ve gained the queen’s favor. In a solemn crowd many-colored gnomes materialized around him, and his blue sprite appeared to hunker down near his harp and stare up at him.

  “Oh, I’ll heal, little one,” he said to her. “But you ease my heart, you truly do, with your concern.”

  When she smiled, an honest soft smile instead of her usual malicious grin, for the briefest of moments he thought he saw true feeling in her empty eyes. Then she yawned, showing her needle-sharp teeth, and lay down on her stomach in the grass to listen while he finished tuning the harp and started practicing a few runs and trills. Since he was quiet and alone, Maddyn lost all track of time that morning; he stopped playing only when his stomach protested loudly enough to make itself heard over the music. By then he could see the sun over the high walls around him.

  “Ye gods, it must be nearly noon!”

  At the alarm in his voice the Wildfolk vanished. He gathered up the harp and went back inside, wondering if he could find his way to the great hall, but as he stood uncertainly at the foot of a staircase, Branoic came pounding down.

  “There you are, you slimy little bastard! Where have you been? The whole cursed troop’s hunting for you, and part of Tieryn Elyc’s guard as well.”

  “What? What do they want me for? What have I done?”

  “Naught, you stupid dolt! We were afraid you’d drowned yourself or suchlike out of grief.”

  “Oh, by the Lord of Hell’s black balls! Have I been that bad off?”

  “You have, at that.”

  Branoic was studying his face with a fierce intensity, as if he were trying to read every clue that might be there, no matter how small, to Maddyn’s heart.

  “Ah well,” Maddyn said. “I wouldn’t do anything that foolish, not when the king needs every man he can get. I’ll swear it to you if you like.”

  “Your word’ll be enough for me.”

  “Done then. You have it.”

  As they were walking out to the ward, Maddyn was wondering how much more grief lay ahead of him in the long wars. Branoic, Caradoc, even sullen Owaen in his own arrogant way—they all meant far too much to him for comfort’s sake. A prudent man would have hardened his heart and sworn that he’d never let himself feel this kind of grief again, but then, Maddyn decided, he’d never been a prudent man, and he was too old to change his ways. Better to lose a friend than never find one, he told himself, truly, much better all round.

  In the bright sun they paused for a moment while Branoic yelled at a Cerrmor man to tell everyone he’d found the wretched fool of a bard at last, and Maddyn happened to look up to one of the high towers. When he saw the young queen, leaning out the window and laughing and waving to him, his blac
k hiraedd lifted a little more. At least she’s happy, he told himself, and by every god, we’ll all fight to keep her that way!

  Some days after the wedding, Nevyn remembered the lead curse-talisman that he’d found back in Pyrdon and been carrying ever since. Although he hated keeping it, he was quite simply afraid to destroy it, just in case melting or shattering it should work some harm to Maryn by an induced sympathy. Logically, the act of magic that had created the curse should have had no true power, because it fell somewhere between outright superstition and the lowest rank of dark dweomer, yet whenever he held the lead tablet in his hands, he could sense a malevolent power oozing from it like a bad smell. Three times he tried to perform banishings and exorcisms; three times it stayed stubbornly the same. He tried meditating about it and scrying over it, all to no result. Whoever had charged it with evil had worked a spell beyond his powers to remove.

  The question was, then, what to do with it. His first thought was simply to bury the thing deep in some out-of-the-way spot in the dun, but since it had been meant to be buried, he would possibly be increasing its power by doing so. If he left it hidden in his chambers, someone might stumble across it or even be actively seeking it. The enemy who had worked the spell was still at large, after all, as either an honest opponent in Cantrae’s court or a traitor here in Cerrmor. Soon Nevyn would be accompanying the king on his ceremonial progress and his first campaign; if he carried the curse charm on his person, what would happen if he were captured and searched? It also occurred to him that if one of Maryn’s friends and allies found him with it, he would have some hard explaining to do. He considered taking it to one of the great temples down in Cerrmor town proper, but priests had been corrupted or temples entered and robbed too many times before for him to consider it safe there. If he threw it in the ocean, its slow dissolution might perhaps work the king harm.

  He wondered, too, if he should tell Maryn that the curse existed, but in the end he decided against it. For the rest of that summer, at least, Maryn absolutely had to project a supernatural air of confidence and calm if he were going to repair the shattered morale of his new kingdom. The slightest worry that might have tarnished his golden presence could well mean disaster later. Round and round Nevyn went on the problem until it occurred to him that there was indeed one person in the kingdom who could guarantee its safety, at least for as long as it mattered: the queen. She would never leave Dun Cerrmor until the war was over and Maryn crowned High King in Dun Deverry; if Cerrmor fell and she was captured, that disaster would mean Maryn was dead, all their hopes irrevocably crushed, and the lead tablet quite simply irrelevant.

  That very morning he went to Otho the dwarf, the silver daggers’ blacksmith, who had been given a big hut of his own for a forge and living quarters both. Even though he could trust one of the Mountain Folk to keep an oath of silence more than he could ever trust any human being, he told Otho only that he needed a strong casket of dwarven silver to contain something evil without ever mentioning what the vile thing might be. Otho worked night and day for the better part of a week and finally produced, on the evening before king and councillor were to ride out, an amazingly strong and heavy yet stunningly beautiful casket, with double walls, two locking lids, and a secret compartment in the bottom to hide the actual tablet.

  “I’ll solder up the compartment, and you put a few spells on it, my lord,” Otho said cheerfully, “and the Lord of Hell himself couldn’t get in or out of it.”

  “I believe you. Why, it must weigh close to two stones.”

  “Blasted near, blasted near. And I put all that fancy work round the top, just like you asked, so no one will wonder why it’s in a lady’s chamber. I rather fancy the way the roses came out, myself. The ladies do like a nice floral design.”

  “I like it myself, actually. Name your price, and I’ll get it for you.”

  For a long moment Otho hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again, and from the agonized look on his face he was a man sorely torn and troubled. Finally he sighed as if his heart would break.

  “Naught, my lord. Take it as a gift for the one true king arid his grand little queen.”

  “Otho! My humble, humble thanks.”

  “Hah! I know what you’re thinking. Never thought you’d see the day when I’d do a bit of work for free, did you?” All at once he grinned. “And no more did I.”

  That evening Maryn had one last council to hold with his warlords, and Nevyn took that opportunity to visit Bellyra up in the women’s hall, which his great age would allow him to enter. He found her sitting in a high-backed carved chair, with her newly chosen serving women sitting round her and a ginger cat and four kits lying on a green silk cushion nearby, but even in her red silk dress with a queenly brooch pinned to her shoulder, she looked so young and lost that he had grave doubts about his plan. Yet he had no other choice, and when she greeted him, warmly and yet with the right degree of distance between their stations, he could see in her eyes the strong woman she would become.

  “Your Highness, I beg a boon—a word alone with you.”

  “Of course.” She turned to her women and dismissed them with a gracious wave of one hand. “You may rejoin us in a bit, and we can all have a nice goblet of wine or suchlike.”

  Smiling and curtsying, they all withdrew, and he could hear them chattering down the hall on their way to round up a servant to fetch the refreshments. Without waiting to be asked Nevyn sat down next to her and launched into his story, though he did omit telling her about the dismembered baby, just to spare her feelings. As she listened her wide eyes grew even wider, and she became all still attention.

  “Will you take this thing and hide it, Your Highness?”

  “I will, but I do wish you hadn’t told me what it was. If this casket’s got a secret compartment, you could just have shoved it in and sealed it up.”

  “You have to know what you’re guarding, Your Majesty, and besides, never would I leave such an evil thing in someone’s presence without their consent.”

  “Well, you’re right, of course. Very well, I shall gush over the casket itself, and be very casual about what I put in it, as if it doesn’t really matter much. And if ever anyone asks me for it, I’ll refuse because to give it away would break poor stunted Otho’s heart.”

  “Splendid, Your Highness! The exact right thing to say.”

  Yet even as he spoke, he felt a cold line of dread coil round his heart, wondering if he’d just given danger for a gift. Oh, don’t be a dolt, he told himself irritably—the wretched thing can’t have that much power, or you’d know! And sure enough, once it was bound inside the dwarven silver and sealed with his spells, he could no longer sense the slightest trace of evil leaking from either tablet or casket. On the morrow morning he and Otho together presented the casket to the queen, who in a fine show of being ever so surprised and pleased gave the dwarf a kiss, which made him blush and stammer and curse publicly—but from then on, Otho was the queen’s man, heart and soul.

  And together at the head of an army, Nevyn and Maryn set out on the long ride that later historians call the Rousing of the River Valley, the summer that would eventually bring lord after lord and warband after warband round to the new king’s side and turn the hope of victory from an impotent dream to a sound gamble. Since he could foresee neither success nor failure that bright morning as they left the towering stone rings of Dun Cerrmor behind, Nevyn could only hope that he’d made the right decisions in more than the matter of the curse-tablet. Although the dweomer and the priesthoods had schemed and plotted and planned for many a long year, the matter was now far beyond their control. With the High King rode not their politicking, but his Wyrd.

  The Wmmglaedd copy of the chronicle broke off in the middle of a page. Jill suddenly realized that gray morning light had overwhelmed her candle flame, and that her back was aching and stiff from her long night’s trance. With a grunt of pain she turned from the lectern and found t
he fire dead in the hearth. Annoying though it was to lose the rest of the story, she didn’t really need it, she supposed, because she could now remember the detail she needed. Otho the dwarf had made the rose ring for the queen to give to Maddyn the bard, years later, just as a token of thanks for some little favor he’d done her. In the closed and cloistered atmosphere of that court, where all the women were as confined and guarded as a treasury, there were those who had chosen to misunderstand the token, just—or so Jill suspected, looking back—to give themselves something to do. Whatever the reason, envy had come of it, and whispering rumor. What came of it she didn’t know, though she could guess that the story had ended badly. In fact, as she thought about it, her ignorance was so complete that she could assume that Branoic had died shortly after the ring was made and given—in some battle, most like.

  Those battles were long gone, their stories told by a thousand bards and chroniclers, but their repercussions still echoed, though it was two hundred years and more ago. And what of the other people involved? The young queen, for instance—would in time her soul reappear to add another knot to this puzzle piece? Jill felt that in its own way, the dweomer owed Bellyra a great deal to make up for that ancient tragedy. And what about those women who had helped move the tragedy along? They too had a debt to pay, perhaps, to the rose ring and its bearer. Otho the dwarf, of course, was still alive, though getting on in years even for one of the Mountain People. Did he still have some tie or bond with the ring he’d created so long ago? And then, of course, there was the soul once known as Maddyn—Rhodry of Aberwyn now—who’d been reunited with the rose ring and who wore it still . . . or again. With Nevyn gone, these problems were all hers to solve, these people hers to guard and guide. It was time she set about it.

  Yawning and stretching, a servant came into the hut with a bowl of milk and bread and a fresh pitcher of wash water.

  “Good morning, my lady. His holiness was wondering, by the bye, how long you were planning on staying with us? He’s in no hurry for you to leave, mind. Just a-wondering.”