The Black Raven

by Katharine Kerr

  “Just so, my prince,” Oggyn put in. “His arrogance astounds me.”

  “He mentions Tibryn’s son, the new gwerbret. What is he, still a child?”

  “Just that, my liege, about seven years old,” Oggyn said. “By a second wife. Nevyn, what did you say the child’s name was?”

  Nevyn read the letter aloud once again. “To the Usurper, Maryn, Prince of Pyrdon. It is my understanding that you hold among your court’s womenfolk Lillorigga, daughter of the Boar clan. Since she has been formally betrothed to me, I demand her immediate release and return to me at Cantrae. Braemys of the Boar, Regent to Lwvan, Gwerbret Cantrae.”

  That was all, but the salutation spoke clearly enough for a stack of parchments.

  “So!” the prince said. “He wants war.”

  “Just so, my liege,” Nevyn said. “He’s taken on his father’s feud.”

  “Well, it’s his right, and he’s doing the honorable thing.” Maryn frowned down at the table. “But I wish he’d seen his way clear to taking my pardon instead.”

  Nevyn nodded agreement. Before this summer’s fighting had given Maryn control of Dun Deverry, the lords of the Boar clan—Braemys’s father and uncle—had ruled in their half of the divided kingdom, though technically in the name of another child, young Olaen, who claimed to be king. They were all dead now, the would-be king and the two Boar lords as well, but the civil wars, it seemed, were not yet over, not with the Boar’s son to carry them on.

  “Perhaps we can use the lass as a bargaining point,” Oggyn said. “I always knew she would come in handy, like.”

  “Have you gone daft?” Maryn leaned forward and looked Oggyn square in the face. “Ye gods, after everything Lilli did for me, do you think I’d turn her over to my enemies?”

  Oggyn blushed a sunset-red from his beard up and over his bald pate.

  “My apologies, my prince. I fear me I’ve overspoke myself.”

  “You have. Remember from now on that Lady Lillorigga is my guest, not some sort of hostage.”

  “I will, my prince. I most humbly beg your pardon.”

  “Granted, of course. But I’d not hear of this again.”

  Slowly Oggyn’s color faded to normal. Maryn leaned back in his chair and looked absently away.

  “Unless Lilli wants to marry the man, of course,” Nevyn said. “Then Braemys’s loyalty can be the bride-price you exact.”

  Maryn turned to face him and looked for a brief moment murderous.

  “I’d not thought of that.” The prince buried the rage in a brief smile. “Perhaps the lady should be asked.”

  “It would be courteous, my liege.” Nevyn stood with a bow his way. “I’ll just go look for her. I hope you’ll forgive me if it takes some small while?”

  “Of course,” Maryn said. “This dun is as cursed confusing as a rabbit warren, I swear it!”

  In actuality, Nevyn knew where to find Lilli, up in her chamber in the royal broch, a narrow wedge of a room with bare stone walls. Dressed in green, Lilli herself was sitting cross-legged on her bed and staring at a page of the big leather-bound book lying in front of her. When Nevyn came in she looked up and smiled. Her blonde hair, cropped short at the jawline, hung untidily around her slender face.

  “How are you doing with the reading?” Nevyn nodded toward the book. “Do you remember all the letters?”

  “I do, but sounding them out one at a time is so tedious.”

  “No doubt, but it’s the best we can do for lessons. At the moment, anyway. When winter comes we’ll either be back in Cerrmor, or I’ll send for a scribe’s teaching book.”

  “Do you think we’ll go back?”

  “I have no idea.” Nevyn sat down on a wooden chest under the single window. “The prince will winter here, certainly.”

  Lilli glanced at the book and concentrated on closing it.

  “If the princess returns to Cerrmor,” Nevyn went on. “I’ll go, too. As my apprentice, you’ll come with me.”

  “Of course, my lord.” Her voice held steady. “We’ll be much more comfortable there.”

  “And safer. We’ve heard from Braemys.”

  Lilli looked up and laid a hand at her throat.

  “He still wants to marry you,” Nevyn said. “He claims you as his betrothed.”

  “Oh curse him!”

  “I just made a show in council of asking your opinion on the matter, but I’ll wager you don’t want to go through with the marriage.”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t let it trouble your heart,” Nevyn said. “If he turns nasty and tries to press the matter, I’ll reveal the truth.”

  “That he’s my …” Lilli forced out the word, “brother?”

  “Well, you only share a father, but that will be more than sufficient for the priests. They’ll forbid the marriage in an instant.”

  “Indeed. You know, sometimes I dream about my mother, and in the dreams I can feel just how much I hate her. She would have let me marry Braemys. She would have let me—well, she saw naught wrong with sleeping in her own brother’s bed, did she?” Lilli’s voice dropped. “Her brother. My father!”

  “Try not to hate her.” Nevyn made his voice soft. “It will only bind you to her memory.”

  Lilli started to speak, then coughed, a deep rasping noise that made her clap her hand over her mouth. She twisted round on the bed to hide her face, but he could hear her spitting something up. With her other hand she took a scrap of rag out of her kirtle and wiped her mouth and hand both.

  “That sounds nasty,” Nevyn said. “How long have you been coughing like this?”

  “Just since this morning.” Lilli turned back. “It’s the damp. I always get like this in the summer rains.”

  “Indeed? I’ll make you up some herbwater, and you’d best have a poultice for your chest, too.”

  “It’s naught.”

  “Huh! You’ll drink the herbwater anyway. As hot as you can stand it.”

  “Oh very well.” Lilli reached up to shove a strand of her awkward hair back behind her ear. “It’ll be a comfort, I’ll admit it.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as the prince has no need of me.”

  When Nevyn returned to the council chamber, he found Maryn waiting there alone, standing at the window and staring out at the rain. He turned when Nevyn shut the door.

  “I gave Oggyn leave to go,” Maryn said. “His blunder was eating at him.”

  “That was kind of you, my liege.”

  “Politic, anyway.” Maryn shrugged. “What does Lilli say?”

  “She has absolutely no desire to marry Braemys, Your Highness.”

  “Splendid! We’ll send the herald back with a message that will blister Lord Braemys’s ears for him.”

  “Shall we compose it now, my liege?”

  “Let me think on it a bit. We’ll consult later, and then I’ll summon a scribe—wait. Braemys sent his herald to carry a letter, but his herald shall hear my answer. Let it look like I’m not taking him seriously enough to have it written out.”

  Nevyn left the prince and went up to his own chamber, a small round room perched at the very top of a tower. It held a narrow cot, a single chair, a small unsteady table, a charcoal brazier, and a large pile of his belongings—sacks and small chests, mostly crammed with packets of herbs and roots, as well as what few pieces of spare clothing he owned. Into an empty sack he put the medicaments he needed, mostly licorice root and a few simples, then went back down.

  But when he reached Lilli’s chamber, he found the door open and her gone. Inside one of her maidservants was setting down a basket of charcoal near the bronze brazier that stood near the head of the bed.

  “Where’s your mistress, lass?” Nevyn said.

  “Gone off somewhere, my lord. A man from the king’s guards came up a little while ago and asked her to talk with him.”

  “One of the silver daggers? Which one?”

  “Branoic, my lord.”

  “Ah. I thought it mig
ht be he.” Nevyn paused as a thought struck him. “Here, about Prince Maryn? He’s not king yet.”

  “Oh, we all know what the priests say, my lord, but he’s king enough for us.”

  “I see.” Nevyn had to smile. “Well, my thanks. I’ll just leave these things here, then, for later. Don’t touch them.”

  “Have no fear of that, my lord!” The lass looked at his bundle with deep suspicion. “Are evil spirits going to pop out of that?”

  “I doubt it very much. Just don’t touch it, and you won’t be in any danger.”

  Nevyn was walking back down the corridor to the stairs when he met Oggyn, hurrying toward him and carrying an armload of the sort of parchment rolls chamberlains use to note taxes and other dues.

  “Lord Nevyn, a moment of your time,” Oggyn said. “There’s somewhat I want to lay before the prince, but after my horrible blunder, I’m a—feared to.”

  “Oh here!” Nevyn said. “I’d not worry about that if I were you. The prince has forgiven and forgotten.”

  “I truly hope you’re right. At any rate, it concerns the taxes and dues from this demesne, Dun Deverry’s own lands and holdings, I mean. Could you tell me when he’s well disposed to consider such things?”

  “Most assuredly, but I do think you could approach him yourself without harm.”

  “It’s not just that cursed blunder.” Oggyn looked puzzled. “Lately he’s been much distracted. Deciphering his moods is a difficult thing.”

  “Well, of course! Ye gods, he spent his whole life battling toward this day, when he’d have Dun Deverry for his own. Ever since he was a child, truly—and now he has it. And so it’s over, that entire part of his life. It’s left him feeling spent.”

  “I see. Ah, how I wish I had your wise knowledge of the hearts of men!”

  Nevyn refrained from making a sharp remark about hearts that resort to flattering those they in truth dislike. It was better to have Oggyn indebted to him, after all, than at odds.

  In the great hall of Dun Deverry low fires smoldered in the pair of hearths to drive off the damp. Although the drafts won the battle for the center of the room, near the fire it was warm enough for Lilli to breathe easily. She sat with Branoic on a bench close to the honor hearth, where her noble birth gave her the right to be. Branoic looked so uneasy at being out of his usual place among the Prince’s Guard that she laughed at him. Every time someone walked toward them he would half-rise from his seat, an act that only made him the more noticeable. Even for a Deverry warrior he was a big man, a good head over six feet tall and broad in the shoulders. When she’d first met him, the spring past, she’d thought him beefy, but the summer’s fighting had turned him hard-muscled and lean.

  “Oh, do sit still!” she said. “No one’s going to chase you away like a dog or suchlike.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be too sure of that. I keep wondering what your foster-brother would say if he saw me at your side.”

  “I doubt if he’d say anything.”

  “Huh! As if he doesn’t know that I’m common-born and a bastard to boot, while you’re a—”

  “A lady, sure enough, but one with no dowry, no land, and no kin but him. I see no reason to give myself airs.”

  “So!” Branoic grinned at her. “You don’t really enjoy my company. I’m merely the best suitor you can get, eh?”

  “Oh hold your tongue! What would you do if I said you were right?”

  They shared a laugh. Over the general noise in the hall, Lilli heard pages shouting, “the prince, the prince!” She looked up and saw Maryn coming down the stone staircase with pages marching before him and Nevyn and Oggyn trailing after, hard-pressed to keep up. Maryn never simply walked; he strode, always ready to leap like a stag, it seemed, just for the sheer joy of it. Although he was a handsome man, with blond hair and deep-set grey eyes, he could have been ugly and still captivated. Whenever he walked into a room, it seemed that he brought with him life and power, spilling over onto everything he touched and everyone he acknowledged. The entire great hall fell silent to watch him do something as simple as coming down the stairs.

  When she realized that Maryn was heading for them, Lilli stood and curtsied. Branoic slid off the bench and knelt on one knee, his head bent respectfully.

  “Good morrow, Lady Lillorigga,” Maryn said. “Branno, you can get up if you’d like.”

  “My thanks, my prince,” Branoic said. “My apologies for being where I don’t belong.”

  “Oh come now!” Maryn was smiling at him. “And how could I hold it against any man for wanting the company of such a beautiful lass as our Lilli?”

  Lilli felt her face burning with a blush. Maryn glanced her way, and for a moment their eyes met, just the briefest of moments before his gaze travelled on, but all at once she wondered if her hopeless feeling for him was so hopeless after all. She hastily looked away and saw Nevyn, watching all of this with his hands on his hips and steel in his ice-blue eyes. Behind him Councillor Oggyn stood clasping an untidy heap of parchments to his chest.

  “My liege?” Nevyn said. “My apprentice and I have work to do. If you’ll excuse us?”

  “Of course,” Maryn said. “You have my leave to go.”

  “My thanks. Oggyn wishes to discuss some important matters of finance with you, should that please Your Highness. I strongly suggest that you do so. Lilli, come along.”

  Nevyn turned on his heel and started back across the great hall. Lilli curtsied again to the prince, smiled at Branoic, then rushed after the old man.

  In silence they walked up the stairway, slowly to let her catch her breath, but once they reached her chamber and the door was safely barred, Nevyn turned to her.

  “I’ve warned you before,” he snapped. “The prince may amuse himself with women as he chooses. For the women in question, it’s not such a lighthearted thing.”

  “I know, my lord.”

  “Then try to remember it! Here, Lilli, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I don’t want to see you become a cast-off woman with a bastard child—and no place at court anymore because the princess hates you. I doubt me if you’d like the life you’d have then.”

  “I wouldn’t, my lord. I know you’re right, but I feel ensorcelled or suchlike. When he walks into a room, it’s like the sun follows him in, and everything becomes larger and more alive.”

  Nevyn stared at her for a moment, then did the last thing she would have expected: he laughed.

  “Well, after a manner of speaking,” Nevyn said at last, “you have been ensorcelled, you and half the kingdom with you. Some years ago, when I was desperately hoping for peace and doubting that I’d ever see it again, Maddyn the bard gave me an idea. If a prince came along who seemed to be dweomer, everyone would flock to his banners. And so I found Maryn and made him look as magical as a king out of the Dawntime. Wildfolk follow him everywhere, Lilli. They cast glamours over him like cloaks.”

  Caught without words, Lilli sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You no doubt respond more than most people,” Nevyn went on. “You have the dweomer gifts, even if you can’t see the elemental spirits yet for yourself. In time you will, and then you’ll understand what I mean about the glamour.”

  “Oh ye gods! I feel like such a dolt.”

  “Why? I happen to cast a rather good spell. It’s fooled thousands of other people, after all.”

  At that Lilli could look up and find him smiling at her. She started to laugh, but in the damp air of her chamber her lungs ached. The laugh turned into a racking cough.

  “Huh, that sounds worse and worse,” Nevyn said. “I’ve brought some medicinals for it. Let me brew you up some, and then I need to ask Oggyn about getting you a chamber with a proper hearth. I’d forgotten about this dun, how cold it always seems to be.”

  “Did you live here once?”

  “Once. Before you were born. A very very long time ago.”

  Although Lilli wanted to ask more, he turned away and began to rummage thr
ough his sack of medicinals so resolutely that she knew the subject had been closed.

  That evening the prince summoned Nevyn to his private quarters in the heart of the royal broch. A page led him up a winding stone stair to a heavy oak door, worn smooth and grimy with age and smoke. It opened into a dim suite of rooms hung with threadbare tapestries and stuffed with decrepit furniture. Fat candles burned in smoke-stained sconces on the stone walls. Nevyn picked his way around three carved chests to sit in one of the many chairs the prince offered him. It creaked alarmingly under him. The prince himself perched on the edge of a wobbly table.

  “The splendor of the royal palace!” Maryn said, grinning.

  “Indeed, my liege. These people certainly never rid themselves of anything, did they?”

  “Not their chairs nor their kingdom, not willingly. Though if the siege had gone on all winter, most of this would have ended up as firewood.”

  “Most likely, truly.”

  The prince paused, as if thinking something through. Nevyn folded his hands in his lap and waited. The guttering light from the candles threw shadows across the beamed ceiling and made him remember a time when torches had lit this room, two hundred years ago. He’d been young and a prince himself, then, and this broch new-built. More than two hundred years now, he thought. Gods! No wonder I grow weary!

  “There’s a matter I need attended to,” Maryn said abruptly. “It concerns the lady Lillorigga.”

  “How so, Your Highness?”

  “No matter how much we consider Lilli a daughter of the Rams of Hendyr, and certainly Tieryn Anasyn calls her naught but sister, by birthright she’s still a Boar. When I proscribe the Boar clan and attaint their lands, it will go ill with her if she falls under the dominion of the proclamation.”

  “I’m very glad you remembered that. I’m afraid I’d quite forgotten.” Nevyn was more than a little annoyed with himself for it. “I’ll speak to the priests of Bel tomorrow and take Anasyn with me. Before the god they can proclaim her kinship.”

  “Splendid! Do that, please.”

  “I take it that you don’t hold out much hope for Braemys’s swearing fealty.”