“What makes it so sweet? It’s all nicked and suchlike.”
“The Wildfolk enchanted it for me.”
She laughed again, and he smiled, but he’d told her naught but the simple truth. When he played, the gnomes swarmed closer, lying on the grass to listen with their little heads pillowed on their warty hands. One bold sprite even stroked the princess’s hair as if admiring its color. He had no idea of how long they sat together while he played through the pieces he’d learned from the court bards.
“Princess!” The voice took them both by surprise. “My dear princess! Your Highness!”
Bellyra jumped up like a guilty child. The owner of the voice, Lady Degwa of the Wolf, came trotting out of the door in the wall. All at once Maddyn realized that the woman meant to be queen of all Deverry had been unwise to sit around half-dressed with one of her husband’s retainers. All round eyes and fluttering hands, Degwa kept trying to be properly servile, but she was having trouble finding words.
“Oh do stop it, Decci!” Bellyra said at last. “I know I’ve been scandalous and terribly improper and all of that. But Maddyn’s known me since I was but a child, and I do so love the sound of his harp.”
“My apologies, Your Highness.” Degwa calmed, slightly. “I fear me I forgot myself. It was the surprise. We’ve been looking for you, and then I heard the music, and I thought I’d see if the harper had seen you, and never did I expect—”
“I know.” Bellyra cut her off. “But if I were going to besmirch my honor with a silver dagger, I wouldn’t do it in broad daylight out in the middle of a garden.”
“Er.” Degwa’s round little face had gone red. “Ah. Um. Of course not. Ah.”
“Let’s go in.” Bellyra smiled at Maddyn. “My thanks for the music.”
“You’re most welcome, Your Highness.”
Bellyra slipped her arm through Degwa’s and marched her back into the broch. Maddyn slacked the strings on his harp, then slid it back into the leather bag. I have known her since she was a child, he thought to himself. He could remember her as a skinny girl who had just taken her hair out of braids, married off to a boy she’d met but a fortnight before. It made him smile, remembering them as a pair of beautiful children thrust into a situation that would have drowned many a grown man. But they had survived, prince and princess both, and brought the kingdom with them safely into harbor.
She was a child no longer. Most certainly not a child.
Maddyn felt his heart turn over. He grabbed his harp and fled the garden for the safety of the great hall, where the rest of the silver daggers were already seated and eating. Maddyn laid his harp carefully on the floor next to his chair and sat down. Carrying his bowl of porridge, Branoic left another table to sit on the bench at his right.
“Practicing?” Branoic nodded at the harp.
“I was, truly. Here, Branno, I just had a thought. When you get that house and land, you’ll be needing a bard.”
“So I will.” Branoic grinned at him. “You don’t need to hint around, you know. You’ll always be welcome at my table.”
“My thanks. We’ll let Owaen have the prince’s guard to himself. It will do us both good to get away from court.”
“My dear princess,” Degwa said. “I hate to rebuke someone so far above my station in life, but the queen’s honor is the very soul of the kingdom.”
“Why do you think I don’t know that?” Bellyra said.
Degwa stopped, her mouth open, and blinked rapidly several times. Finally she pursed her lips.
“My apologies, Your Highness.” Degwa curtsied, then glanced at Elyssa, as if for support.
Standing amidst baled tapestries, Elyssa said nothing. With a deep dramatic sigh, Degwa walked to the other side of the women’s hall, where a heap of straw and several wood barrels stood ready to receive the princess’s collection of silver oddments. Bellyra flopped into her favorite chair and stared out the window at the blue sky.
“Were I but a little bird, I’d fly unto my love,” she sang, then merely spoke. “But instead of flying we’ll be absolutely crawling upriver on a barge.”
“Better than remaining here,” Elyssa said. “Or so I hope.”
“Better for me, anyway,” Bellyra said. “I do worry about you and Decci. If the dun’s as ghastly as everyone says, it won’t be very pleasant, living at court. Maybe you should stay here in Cerrmor till the new gwerbret’s named.”
“You took us into your service when we had naught.” Elyssa looked up sharply. “I’ll not be deserting you now.”
“Nor I,” Degwa put in. “Especially not now when it seems you need us more than ever.”
“Oh, Decci! You’re still worrying about Maddo, aren’t you?” Bellyra shook her head and grinned. “Don’t you ever let anything drop?”
With her hands full of straw, Degwa stopped wrapping to consider this seriously.
“Perhaps I don’t,” Degwa said at last. “But if I were you, Your Highness, I’d not be using his nickname so freely.”
Bellyra laid her head on the back of the chair and groaned.
“Don’t be a silly goose, Decci,” Elyssa put in, amiably. “Your Highness, I think we’ve got all the valuables packed, or we will when Decci finishes the silver. The servants can deal with the bedding and the rest.”
“Splendid!” Bellyra sat up straight again. “When shall we leave? On the morrow?”
“I think me that might be too soon,” Elyssa said, “judging from what Tammael told me. But after a pair of nights, surely.”
“Thank the Goddess!”
Bellyra got up and walked to the window to lean upon the sill. Down below she could see the polished ward of the dun and its beautiful stonework. She’d miss it, she supposed, but then, to her anywhere her husband might be was the most beautiful place in the world. Not long now, she told herself, and you’ll see him. She wondered if he would pretend to be glad that she’d arrived.
In the end they did take two barges with them to Dun Deverry, thanks to the taxes due Maryn as Gwerbret Cerrmor and the servants due Bellyra as his wife. What with the nursemaids, the children, the scribes, and the maids of her chamber, she travelled in a crowd. As for the taxes, live hogs, live chickens, the food to feed them on, plus sacks of meal, salt fish, dried beef, apples, cabbages, and cheeses made up Maryn’s dues from the farmers of his rhan, and the city folk owed him tanned leathers, lengths of cloth, refined salt, baskets, ceramic pots, and barrels of ale. A few merchants, those who held the charters to trade with Bardek, paid in silver coins, carefully weighed as well as counted and wrapped in bits of fine cloth. All of it needed hauling upriver along with the princess, her women, and their furnishings. Each barge was so laden that the bargemen hitched up a foursome of heavy horses instead of a pair to pull each barge.
“I feel like the richest farmwife in the world,” Bellyra said. “Those are fine pigs, aren’t they? And we have eggs to offer you as well, bard.”
Maddyn laughed. Along with the serving women they were standing on the river pier up at what was then the village of Dai Aver, where they were waiting for the servant girls to finish stowing the baggage. Their barge would travel first, of course, upwind of the livestock. Behind them in the road the silver daggers waited, each man standing beside his horse, or in a few cases, beside two horses. The escort would lead the women’s palfreys, ready for the last few miles to Dun Deverry, when the river road grew too steep for the barge horses. A parade of carts would meet them to carry the furnishings and goods. Bellyra glanced at the cloudy sky.
“I hope the weather holds,” the princess said. “It’s going to take us long enough to get there as it is.”
“At least you’ll have shelter on the barge, Your Highness,” Maddyn said. “But I wish the prince had summoned you before this. Summer’s all but gone.”
“So it is. I had rather hoped to be summoned before this as well.”
Maddyn winced.
“My apologies,” Bellyra said. “With half the folk in the
kingdom starved and turned out of their homes, I’ve no call to be pitying myself. Here, Maddo, if the weather holds, will you bring your harp on board to entertain us now and again?”
“I’d be honored, Your Highness. If of course your women won’t object?”
Degwa set her mouth to a tight line and said nothing. Elyssa hesitated, then gave bard and princess both a watery smile that might have meant anything.
“Well, once they hear your harp, they’ll understand. Ah, look. The bargeman’s sending one of the pages for us. We’ll talk later.”
Maddyn made her a bow and strode off to his men. Elyssa watched him go.
“There’s grey in his hair, but he’s a good-looking man still,” Elyssa said.
“It’s his music that commends him to me.” Bellyra put a touch of steel in her voice. “Shall we go on board?”
In the autumn rains Lilli coughed. She always had, and she always would, she supposed, even though the proper hearth in her new chamber helped considerably. While the rain poured over the dun she spent long afternoons in her chair by the fire and worked on her visualization exercises. The work—learning to create mental images and then hold them steady—was tedious in the extreme, but to her it became a refuge. When she was visualizing the elaborate pictures Nevyn set her, she simply could not think about Maryn, and as long as she was working in her chamber, Maryn could not trick her into his company.
Besides the visualization, she had breathing exercises to do, and these seemed more like real dweomer to her. Nevyn had told her that soon she would combine the two halves of this program in a practice that would lead her to proper, controlled visions rather than the upwelling of omens that had so troubled her before. She spent long hours on her work, brooded over her work, lived for her work, until at times she dreamt about her work.
Yet the cough continued, troubling her concentration. Nevyn seemed worried about it as well. One particularly nasty afternoon he came to her chamber with an iron pot and bags of herbs. Whilst he brewed up infusions of pennyroyal and horehound, he asked her detailed questions about when and where she found herself coughing.
“It’s much much better by the fire, my lord,” Lilli said. “I truly do doubt if it matters.”
Nevyn considered her for a long moment.
“You’re all wrapped up in shawls,” he said. “But you still look far too thin. Your face glows with fever whenever you get tired. It matters, Lilli.”
“Well, perhaps so.”
“You know, I think I may have made a mistake. I thought the trouble you have breathing was a result of the ghastly way your mother and Brour misused your dweomer gifts. You know enough now to see how important proper breathing is to the work.”
“I do, my lord. It’s like I can suck up aethyr from the air or suchlike, and it feeds me.”
“It should, most certainly. But I look at you and I wonder if it’s draining you instead. I begin to wonder if your troubles stem from such a basic and ordinary root that I’ve overlooked it.”
“What would that be?”
“An illness.” Nevyn gave her a rueful smile. “A congenital weakness of the lungs due to imbalanced humors. You most assuredly seem to have an excess of the cold and moist humors, because such an excess collects in the lungs. Your body would try to balance it out with the warm and dry humors of the air, you see.”
“Oh. That sounds worrisome.”
“It is. I think you’d best devote yourself to getting well. Lay aside those dweomer exercises I gave you, just for a fortnight, say.”
“But I was finally getting somewhere with them!”
“I realize that, but you’ll be able to pick them up again. Not quite where you left off, I’ll admit it, but close enough. You need to rest.”
When she opened her mouth to argue he caught her glance and held it. What could she do, confess that she wanted the work to keep Maryn out of her mind and heart?
“I’m just the apprentice,” Lilli said at last. “As you wish, my lord.”
Under Nevyn’s orders she began spending much of her day in bed. Although he visited regularly, she spent most of the day alone, longing for distractions. Needlework she could do in bed, sitting up propped by pillows. On the third morning she got out the pieces of the wedding shirt that would have been Braemys’s and laid them out flat on her table. They might be made to fit Branoic if she added extra panels down the sides. She would have to pick off the Boar blazon, of course, from the front yokes and substitute whatever device the heralds might draw up for him.
Bevyan had embroidered those blazons. The thought of destroying even these small pieces of her work drove Lilli to tears. She folded the front section back up and returned it to her chest. She would use the back and sleeves of the shirt and simply work a new front, matching the bands at hem and yoke.
With a rustle a note slid under the door. Lilli sprang, grabbed the handle, and flung the door open. Councillor Oggyn stood there, dead-pale from his beard to his naked scalp.
“You?” Lilli snapped. “You’re the one who—”
“Not!” Oggyn squeaked. “I’m but the page, delivering these.”
“Well, no insult meant, good Councillor, but that gladdens my heart.”
Oggyn smiled and returned to his normal color.
“No insult taken,” he said. “I’m old enough to be your grandfather, my lady.”
“Just so. Very well, Oggyn. I’ve caught you red-handed, and so you have to confess. Who’s writing me these notes?”
“Oh come now! Surely you must know without my having to name him out?”
“I want him named out. I hate not being sure.”
“Let me put it this way. He’s a man of the highest possible estate.”
“No riddles! Is it Prince Maryn or isn’t it?”
“Oh, of course it is!”
Oggyn bowed, then hurriedly trotted away before she could ask any more questions. Lilli shut the door and sat on her bed to sound out the words.
“You trouble my dreams and my waking hours. When will you take pity on me?”
Huh! Lilli thought. What would happen if I gave in to him? I suppose he’d find me tedious without the challenge. She put the letter down on the bed beside her, then arranged her pillows and lay down to drowse the afternoon away. Although she was tired, she was no longer exhausted, and she realized that she’d not coughed much at all that day. Nevyn was right, she told herself. I’ve been ill.
She dozed off, then woke not longer after. The sound that had wakened her came again—a knock at the door, Nevyn most like.
“Come in, my lord,” she called out.
Maryn stepped in, shut the door behind him, and barred it. For a moment he stood leaning against the door and smiling, on the verge of laughter, really, as he watched her. She sat up, crossing her arms over her chest, so sleep-muddled that for a moment she thought she was dreaming.
“Oggyn told me you caught him,” Maryn said, smiling. “I thought, well, since you know, I might as well come make my plea myself.”
“My liege—” Lilli found herself stammering.
“Don’t.” He sat down beside her, and his smile was gone. “Don’t call me that. Not my liege, not Your Highness, none of that. I’m not the prince, Lilli, but a man who can’t sleep for love of you.”
He sat close, leaning toward her, and she had no strength to pull away. She felt as if she’d drunk mead; his warmth flooded her and made it difficult to think. His eyes were as grey as storm clouds and as dangerous.
“What shall I call you, then?” She could hear her voice shaking.
“Marro will do.” He moved closer, smiling. “Do you want me to leave? I will if you ask me.”
She knew that she should send him away. She remembered all her worries and her fears, remembered Nevyn’s strictures and even Bellyra’s unhappiness, but they were all voices heard in some distant room, barely comprehensible. Slowly he bent his head, hesitated, his lips half-parted, waiting perhaps for her to tell him to leave. She kne
w that she could force herself to speak and send him away. He reached out with one hand and touched her face with his fingertips, stroked her cheek, brushed her hair back, his touch gentle, soft. All at once she realized that he was trembling, afraid perhaps that she would still speak and forbid him. That he would find her capable of wounding him trapped her. When his fingers touched her lips, she turned her head and kissed them.
Early in the afternoon, Nevyn collected the proper herbs from his chamber, then went downstairs, heading for the royal broch and Lilli. Although she’d seemed improved that morning, her illness troubled him. He was keeping from her the truth that such a disease threatened to end her dweomer studies unless he could rid her of it once and for all. Studying dweomer with weak lungs could lead to a deadly imbalance of aethyr by bringing more of the fifth element into the blood than the person could assimilate—or so the lore ran. Whether it was accurate or not, the end result was all too well known: consumptions and fevers that could kill the student. As he was crossing the great hall on his way to the staircase, Oggyn hailed him. Nevyn waited and left the councillor catch up.
“May I have a moment?” Oggyn said. “The prince has charged me with finding a suitable holding to settle upon Branoic the silver dagger, and truly, this raises all manner of vexing questions.”
“Such as?” Nevyn said.
“Well, if I make the holding too small, I insult Branoic. If it’s too large, then I’m insulting our liege’s noble-born vassals. And then there are all the other silver daggers, or I should say, those to whom our liege extended a boon. How many of them, do you think, will want land? If the whole three and twenty do, things could turn ugly.”
“Oh, come now! The Boar clan’s holdings are huge. There’ll be plenty of land to go round when the prince attaints them.”
“Your point’s well taken, but the prince’s vassals will want those attainted lands for themselves or for their younger sons.” Oggyn paused, chewing on his lower lip. “I’ve got maps up in the council chamber. Could you come look them over with me? I’d like to settle these matters as soon as possible.”
“No doubt, but you’ve got months to do it in. Maryn won’t be able to dispose land till he’s been given the kingship.”
The Black Raven Page 27