The Black Raven

by Katharine Kerr

  “Ah, I didn’t know that. Could you tell me precisely how it’s done, then?”

  “I’ll be glad to, but I’ve got to go look in on my apprentice first.” Nevyn hefted the packets in his hand. “I need to brew up some medicaments for that cough of hers.”

  “Uh, well, I really would appreciate your immediate help.” Oggyn’s voice, normally so fluid, carried just a trace of desperation—only a trace, but quite enough.

  “And what’s all this?” Nevyn snarled. “Has the prince told you to decoy me off while he goes hunting Lilli?”

  Sweat broke out on Oggyn’s bald head.

  “Of all the—” Nevyn stepped around Oggyn and headed for the staircase.

  “Wait!” Oggyn came chasing after him. “Please, good Nevyn! Let us at least discuss this matter privately.”

  “Very well. Come along, then, and we’ll get clear of the great hall. You’re right enough—everyone’s staring at us.”

  They went upstairs to the council chamber, where a new set of maps and parchments lay thick as snow on the table.

  “Assorted letters patent,” Oggyn said with a wave at the clutter. “Now about this matter of your apprentice—”

  “I dislike being lied to,” Nevyn snarled. “That’s the true issue here, not what Lilli may choose to do. I realize that you could hardly refuse to do what the prince commanded.”

  “Just so. Truly, this entire thing has struck me as lacking in dignity from the first. I’m much too old to be a go-between. The prince should be considering affairs of state, not shoving love notes under doors.”

  “Precisely. I take it he went to her chamber, and you were supposed to hold me off?”

  “Just that. Apparently he’s there still. He told me he’d come down to the great hall once he’d spoken with her. He was expecting her to send him right away, you see, but that was some while ago. Most likely she’s finally allowed him to dip his bucket in her well.”

  Nevyn relieved his feelings with a few foul words.

  “I only hope,” Oggyn went on, “that His Highness will get his fill of the lass and end this affair sooner rather than later.”

  “No matter what the lass may think about it, eh?”

  “That’s no concern of mine. I hope I may count on your aid to get this matter tidied away as soon as possible.”

  “You mayn’t, actually. You’re forgetting that Lilli is my apprentice, and her welfare is my concern.”

  Oggyn took a sharp step back at this veiled reminder of dweomer.

  “Eventually the prince may well tire of her,” Nevyn went on. “But I’ll not have your meddling bring that day sooner than it needs arrive.”

  “Well, by the gods!” Oggyn snarled. “If you’re so concerned, then consider this! A speeded courier rode in this morning with news of Princess Bellyra. The barges are making good progress despite the rains, and she’s likely to arrive within the eightnight. It lies well within the princess’s power to make little Lilli’s life miserable.”

  “It does, but she won’t. I’ll see to that. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “You are in no position to tell me what I may or may not do.”

  “Indeed? I think me you misconstrue my position. Let us consider another matter for a moment, that of the child-king’s unexplained death. I have a witness to the lad’s death who can testify he was poisoned. I happen to know that you had access to the poison that killed him.”

  Oggyn went dead-white.

  “Arrogance is a luxury you can’t afford,” Nevyn went on. “I’ve refrained from laying the evidence before the prince simply because Olaen was doomed. If you’d not killed him, there would have been some sort of quasi-legal execution. But if Maryn knew that you personally murdered a child, even if he only suspected it, his honor would demand retribution—even though you did the killing for his sake. You know him well enough to know that.”

  Oggyn nodded. Sweat trickled down his face and began to soak his beard. His eyes flicked this way and that around the chamber, as if he were searching for more ways out than the door.

  “Now, then,” Nevyn said, “I suggest that you allow this affair to run its natural course. Do we understand each other?”

  “Perfectly.” Oggyn’s voice shook. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and began wiping his face.

  “You know, you sweat much too easily. In a man of your age it’s a bad sign. I’d attend to my health if I were you.”

  Nevyn stalked out of the chamber without looking back. All that afternoon he waited in the great hall for Maryn to show himself, but it was close to the evening meal before the prince finally came down the staircase with his usual bounding walk. He looked better rested than he had in weeks, smiling and somehow sleek, like a cat who’s just been fed. With him were Oggyn and the usual pages, but Nevyn was willing to wager that the councillor had told the prince nothing about their earlier conversation.

  Nevyn waited until Maryn was seated, then gathered up his medicinals and went to Lilli’s chamber. At the closed door he paused, reminding himself that being harsh with her would do no good for anyone, then knocked. No one answered, and he knocked again, more loudly. Still no answer, and he tested the door. It opened just enough for him to look in and see Lilli, sound asleep, wrapped in a tangled blanket on top of her bed. Her green dresses lay crumpled on the floor, doubtless where they’d been thrown. He started to close the door, but she woke, sitting up with a little cry.

  “Lilli?” Nevyn said.

  “Oh, it’s you, my lord.” She clutched the blanket around her. “Thank every god! I was dreaming about my mother.”

  “Shall I come in?”

  “Please!”

  While Lilli dressed, Nevyn busied himself at the hearth, lighting a fire and hanging a pot of water from the iron hook.

  “You must know,” Lilli said suddenly.

  “About the prince’s visit? It’s a bit obvious.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “What?” Nevyn glanced over his shoulder and saw her honestly frightened. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Well, I did what you told me was a wrong thing to do.”

  “Not in any absolute sense. Dangerous is perhaps the better word.” He got up, wiping his sooty hands on his brigga. “Come sit down, and we’ll talk while your medicine is heating.”

  Lilli came over, comb in hand, and sat down in a chair while he perched on the windowsill. Outside the last of the sunset brightened the dark towers of the dun, but the wards lay in shadow. The wind flowed, cool against his face.

  “It’s getting dark noticeably earlier every night,” Nevyn remarked. “Winter will be here soon with the snows, and you know what that means. Going elsewhere, to your brother’s dun, for instance, will be difficult.”

  “I do know.” Lilli was concentrating on combing her hair. “I’ll need to be very careful. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? With the princess here and all.”

  “Not just the princess. What about Branoic?”

  Lilli looked up on the verge of tears.

  “I should have just sent Maryn away,” she said. “I knew I should have. I wouldn’t hurt Branno for the world.” All at once she was crying. “I’ve been such a dolt!” She dropped the comb into her lap and hid her face behind her hands.

  “Here, here,” Nevyn said. “Don’t—or truly, why not cry? You’ll feel better for it. Lilli, my apologies. I forget how young you are. And this is the day that changes a woman forever, or so they always say.”

  Nevyn got up, glanced around, then fetched her a damp rag from the washbasin in the corner of the room. When he handed it to her, she wiped her face. He was pleased to notice that the tears hadn’t brought on her cough.

  “I truly don’t blame you for anything,” Nevyn said. “Maryn is another matter.”

  Lilli crumpled the rag and tossed it onto the table.

  “Please don’t berate him,” she said miserably.

  “I’ll try not to for your sake. Not his.”


  Lilli stared at the comb in her lap as if she were trying to memorize its image, then at last looked up.

  “I’ve heard that, too,” she said. “About the first time a man beds you being the most important day in a lass’s life. Well, that’s not true for me. You know what day truly changed me, my lord?”

  “I don’t. Which?”

  “The night my mother made me scry, and I saw you in the vision. Today with Maryn? Well, first it hurt and then it was wonderful, but ye gods, I grew up in a country dun. I saw lots of horses and dogs and suchlike doing the same.” All at once she smiled with some of her old spirit. “But the dweomer—that’s worth having, my lord. And that’s why I wept when I thought you might cast me off. I feel like I could die, just from loving Maryn so much, but to give up the dweomer—I really would die then, I think.”

  “If that’s truly how you feel,” Nevyn said, “then you’ve no need to worry about having to give it up.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly. Though I warn you: you’re going to have to proceed slowly with that weak chest of yours. Working dweomer puts a tremendous strain on the physical body. It’s like, well what? Like running for miles, say. If you’re fit and strong, you can run half the day, but if you’re not, then running that far would kill you.”

  “True spoken.” Lilli considered for a moment. “I do understand, my lord, but couldn’t I just practice my reading in the lore book? It’s been dreadful, lying here ill with naught to do. If I only read and don’t try to do the work—”

  “Very well. Humph. If I’d not let you get so bored, mayhap you would have had the sense to turn the prince down.”

  She looked up startled, then laughed. Nevyn found himself laughing with her. Well, that’s that, he told himself. No use in cursing over spilt ale! What mattered now would be how well he could ease the inevitable heartbreaks when they came. As long as Maryn didn’t get Lilli with child before he tired of her, she would weather this affair well enough.

  As the barges made their slow way upriver, the silver daggers rode on the towpath. When it rained, and it rained for most of the trip, the women could retreat into the wooden shelter built on deck, and the chickens could have their coops covered with canvas, but the men rode wet as their horses plodded along. Fortunately, a great many of Maryn’s vassals, old and new, had duns along the river, and at night the princess and her women sheltered with them. Her escort most often slept in the stables, but since the stables were warm and dry, no one complained.

  Finally, though, when they reached Camrydd Bridge, the weather cleared. Princess Bellyra invited Maddyn and his harp onto the barge to play for her and her women. He had to admit that it was pleasant, sitting in the sun while the barge glided noiselessly through the water. The princess had a chair; her serving women sat on crates; the nursemaids and the little princes sat on the deck with Maddyn, though he insisted that the nurses keep the boys away from his harp. He knew a fair number of instrumental pieces and played mostly those, not trusting his voice in front of discerning noblewomen, but eventually Bellyra asked him outright for a song.

  “Your Highness, truly, I’m not much of a singer.”

  “Don’t be so modest.” Bellyra gave him a wicked grin. “Besides, we’re bored, so we won’t care.”

  “Now really, Your Highness,” Elyssa said, laughing. “Don’t be unkind to the poor man! You play most charmingly, Maddyn, silver dagger or no.”

  “My thanks, my lady. Very well, Your Highness. If you won’t banish me from your lands, I’ll sing for you.”

  Although Maddyn started off with ballads, and the women listened with sincere interest, those grim tales of death and love betrayed, of cattle raids and blood feuds, soon struck him as out of place on such a lovely morning. Under the rain-washed sky the river ran full and silently between green banks. In the trees by the riverbank, birds sang. Out in the meadows grazed white cattle with rusty-red ears, and now and again a cowherd and a pair of dogs sat in the grass, keeping guard.

  “I don’t know very many courtly songs,” Maddyn said. “I’ve not the voice for them.”

  “Oh, do stop being modest!” Bellyra said. “What about something droll? You know, those ones about the jolly tavernmen and suchlike.”

  “My dear princess!” Degwa broke in. “I doubt if any of those are suitable.”

  “Your doubts are quite correct, my lady,” Maddyn said. “Well, let me think. Here’s a song I made up about a fox who was too clever for his own good.”

  As he sang about Farmer Owaen’s chickens and the greedy fox, the women laughed, and Elyssa even began singing harmony to the nonsense chorus. Prince Casyl favored him with a stare of intense interest as well. When he finished, Bellyra clapped.

  “Very nice,” she said, smiling. “Though I wonder, truly, what inspired you, bard. That fox and his comeuppance—I think me I’ve met him. What did Oggo do to deserve this?”

  Suddenly Lady Degwa folded her hands in her lap and set her mouth in a sour line.

  “I trust I’ve not offended Your Ladyship,” Maddyn said.

  Degwa made a small snorting sound, got up, and swept inside the wood shelter.

  “Oh curse my tongue!” Bellyra muttered. “I forgot about Decci.”

  “So did I,” Elyssa said. “I’ll just go speak to her.”

  Maddyn waited until Elyssa had gone inside. The walls on the barge’s cabin were so thin that he could hear the women murmuring, but the words were incomprehensible.

  “What have I done, Your Highness?” Maddyn said.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Bellyra said. “I should never have said anything, and then she’d have missed the point. Degwa can be a bit dense.”

  “But—”

  Bellyra leaned forward and lowered her voice.

  “Oggyn’s courting her,” she said. “He fancies himself with a noble-born wife, and ye gods, she was widowed so young, I can’t begrudge her the pleasure she takes in his attentions.”

  “Oh by the gods! I feel like the worst dolt in the world! I’d not have wounded the lady’s feelings had I known.”

  “And you wouldn’t have, truly, had I held my tongue. Now don’t go troubling yourself about it.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They’ll be a while. So you absolutely must tell me what Oggyn did to earn a flyting.”

  When Maddyn told her of the councillor’s bribetaking, the nursemaids leaned closer, all ears. Bellyra giggled, then turned solemn.

  “I shouldn’t laugh. That was truly greedy of Oggyn, and ye gods, Owaen might have killed him.”

  “I was a—feared he might, truly.”

  “I’ve seen Owaen, over the years and all, in my husband’s company, and he frightens me. He looks to me like he might kill a man for one wrong word.”

  “Your Highness has the right of it.”

  Bellyra shuddered, turning away, looking out over the sunny meadows.

  “I hope to every god that the wars will be over soon,” she said. “Do you think they will be, Maddo?”

  “I do, Your Highness. Next summer there should be one good battle, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “I’ll pray you’re right, and that my husband lives to enjoy the peace. I’ve never fancied myself regent to an infant son.”

  “Now here, Your Highness! The prince has men like me all round him, and we’d rather die ourselves than let the least harm come to him.”

  “Would you?” She turned back, and tears glistened in her emerald eyes. “Ah Maddo!”

  “We would, every last one of us.”

  His hands ached from wanting to reach out and envelop hers, to hold them tight and draw her close. He looked down and began slacking the strings on his harp.

  “I doubt me if I can play more today, Your Highness,” he said.

  “You’ve entertained us long enough. Shall I have the bargemen put into shore? No doubt you’d prefer riding with your men, and I suppose I’d best go soothe Degwa.”

  As worrisome as the curse tablet might be, t
he matter of the Cerrmor gwerbretrhyn presented a more direct danger to the prince’s dominion. Messages had come in from Pyrdon, finally, which lay far off to the west, a long ride even for speeded couriers. King Casyl was overjoyed that Maryn had remembered his half brother so generously.

  “He wants to send Riddmar to live at my court,” Maryn said. “It seems a prudent move. If Eldidd does makes a strike on Pyrdon, then its second heir will be away and safe. And once the lad’s here, Eldidd won’t be heaping blandishments upon him, either.”

  “Your father was always a farseeing man, my liege,” Nevyn said.

  Maryn nodded. He was holding the rolled letter in one hand, slapping it rhythmically on the other palm.

  “Father wants to send him here straightaway, before the snows,” Maryn said. “I’d best send an escort to meet him halfway.”

  “That would be wise. Now that Hendyr’s lord is your vassal, Riddmar will be in no danger, but the honor of the thing matters.”

  “I’m sending men from the Cerrmor warband. After all, they’ll be Riddmar’s men once I’ve won the kingship. And then as a gesture Oggyn thought some of the silver daggers should accompany them as my personal envoys.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “I thought of putting Branoic in command of the whole lot.” Defiance edged into Maryn’s voice. “It would be a considerable honor for him.”

  “My liege, that’s unworthy of you.”

  Maryn tossed the rolled letter on the table. Nevyn folded his hands in his lap and waited. At last Maryn looked at him.

  “True spoken,” the prince said. “I’ll send Owaen.”

  “My thanks.”

  Maryn smiled, but ruefully.

  “It will be good to get Cerrmor settled,” Nevyn said.

  “It will. I wonder if the Council of Electors will see fit to support my candidate.”

  “So do I. We’ll have to put some thought into that.”

  Maryn got up and started pacing. He went from window to wall and back again, over and over, until Nevyn felt like screaming at him to sit down.

  “What’s troubling you so badly, my liege?” Nevyn said instead.