The Black Raven

by Katharine Kerr

  “Your Highness!” Maddyn said. “You can’t go clambering about on ale barrels.”

  “Can you read, Maddo?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, then, there’s no use in your doing the clambering for me, is there now?”

  Maddyn glowered. Bellyra sent the two pages off, then moved a few steps away from him and watched them go. The hood of her cloak had slipped back to reveal her golden hair, caught back in a silver clasp, but in the cold light both seemed as dull as lead.

  “Elyssa said she had a bit of a chat with you,” Bellyra said abruptly.

  “She did, my lady. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thank you.” She turned to face him. “I never doubted it. But she also told me—” She broke off, staring up at him as if she were trying to read his thoughts through his eyes.

  Maddyn realized that he could remember nothing more about that talk with her serving woman at the same moment as he realized he desperately needed to.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” he said, “for being such a dolt, but have I done somewhat to distress you?”

  “Not in the least. Rather the opposite, actually.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “I suppose it is.” Bellyra hesitated for a moment. “Maddo, are you in love with me?”

  Maddyn felt his face burn beyond the power of the winter wind to cool it. He groped for words, found none, could only stare at her helplessly while she studied him with all the fierce concentration she brought to her beloved stones and inscriptions.

  “Oh dear Goddess!” Bellyra said. “You are. I didn’t really believe—oh Maddo, I’m so sorry I blurted like that.”

  Words—bard or no, he could think of not one. He should babble long apologies that he had presumed so far above him, he knew, but something deep in his soul refused to grovel and apologize. To belittle his feeling for her would be to kill part of his manhood. With that thought he found his tongue at last.

  “Is it a wrong thing to love a woman like you? The true wondering would be at a man who didn’t.”

  “Like my husband, do you mean?”

  “Him as well.” Maddyn turned, glancing around them, glancing up. No windows overlooked this sheltered space, but in a crowded dun like this one, privacy was more precious than gold, and who knew if they might be overheard or not? “Shall I find you another guard?”

  For a long moment she stayed silent.

  “Please don’t,” she said at last. “Or am I being horribly unfair to you?”

  “I don’t care.” He turned back. “I don’t care if you are or not. It would be worse, never seeing you.”

  “Very well, then. We’ll leave things as they are.”

  “Are you angry with me? You’re as far above me as any woman could be.”

  “Not in the least. If anything I’m—” She hesitated briefly. “I’m grateful to you.”

  If the prince had appeared at that moment, Maddyn would have slapped him across the face, royalty or no. He took a deep breath and calmed himself.

  “My lady,” he said, “you’ll never hear a wrong word from me again. I promise you that.”

  “That would be best, wouldn’t it?” She looked as if she might cry. “Ah ye gods, there are times when I wish I were a farmwife! I could please myself without worrying about the wretched kingdom.”

  The implication made him smile no matter how hard he tried to stifle it. She smiled in return, but at the same time it seemed she might weep. Maddyn risked—he risked everything, he felt, his life and happiness both with the simple gesture—risked raising a hand and touching her cheek with his fingertips, just once before he drew his hand away. Her smile steadied itself.

  “I’m glad you still want to be my guard,” she said. “But here come the pages back again.” All at once she laughed, her normal laugh, wicked with delight in life itself. “I mostly sent them away to have a private word with you, but you know, Maddo, I truly do want to read that inscription.”

  The pages had had the sense to bring a barrel short enough for the princess to climb upon it with some dignity. Maddyn twined his fingers together as if he were helping her mount a horse and gave her a boost up while the lads steadied the barrel. She read the inscription aloud, and he leaned back against the barn wall and listened to his heart, pounding as if he’d been running. He had never been so happy, he had never been so frightened. He could make no sense of his feelings and, finally, gave up trying.

  With her inscription read and memorized, the princess jumped down on her own before he could stop her.

  “I need to return to the women’s hall,” she said, “to write this down before I forget it.”

  Side by side they walked together through the random maze of Dun Deverry while the pages followed at a respectful distance. Bellyra said nothing, and Maddyn refused to break the comfortable silence between them. He had been given more, he felt, than he could ever have hoped for. He would have to be content with it, too—he told himself that sharply, several times. They were walking uphill toward the main ward when they heard shouting and the jingling chime of bridle rings.

  “Sounds like a lot of men, my lady,” Maddyn said. “What—oh here, I’ll wager it’s your husband’s brother and his escort.”

  Maddyn was proved right when they reached the main ward. An orderly mass of dismounted men and horses filled every inch of it, it seemed, whilst over them tossed the ship banners of Cerrmor, the Red Wyvern of Dun Deverry, and the rearing stallion of Pyrdon.

  “I can’t see anything over this mob, my lady,” Maddyn said. “But from the banners I’d say it must be Riddmar.”

  “He comes at an ill-omened time,” Bellyra said. “Tonight’s Samaen.”

  “Ye gods! So it is. But here! He’s arrived now only by chance.”

  “Chance?” Bellyra was watching the crowd with eyes that seemed focused elsewhere. “I was born on Samaen, Maddo. Naught that happens on this day happens to me by chance.”

  The quiet way she spoke turned him cold. He heard a voice like bells chiming deep in his mind, tolling out one of the prophecies that the gods give now and then to bards. Riddmar’s coming was ill-omened indeed. The gods, however, refused to tell Maddyn why, and he kept his sudden fear to himself.

  Nevyn felt the omen as well, though his trained mind could separate the possible threat from the boy himself, who would be blameless in any danger his presence might bring. What that danger might be lay beyond his knowing, at least for the nonce; he intended to do everything he could to find out.

  Since he was standing just behind Prince Maryn in the doorway to the central broch, Nevyn got a good look at the boy. Riddmar, Second Prince of Pyrdon, was a lean child who shared his half brother’s blond hair, grey eyes, and ready smile. When Owaen presented him to the prince, Riddmar pulled off his riding hat and knelt on the steps with a certain grace.

  “You may rise,” Maryn said, smiling. “Welcome to Dun Deverry, brother.”

  “My thanks, Your Highness.” The boy got up, then bowed. “It’s awfully big, inn’t?”

  “Truly. And very confusing. Until you’ve been here for some while, don’t go exploring by yourself. You could well get lost.” Maryn paused, looking this way and that among the crowd in the ward. “I’ve no idea where my lady is. Nevyn?”

  “I’ll go look for her, my liege, if you’d like.” Nevyn stepped forward. “I believe I heard that she’d gone outside to find lore for her book.”

  “My thanks,” Maryn said. “But first—Prince Riddmar, this is Lord Nevyn, one of my councillors.”

  Nevyn bowed while the lad watched him wide-eyed.

  “Are you the sorcerer?” Riddmar said. “My father told me there was one. And he said I should never ever make you angry.”

  “I am indeed,” Nevyn said gravely. “But I assure you that I never turn anyone into a frog.”

  Riddmar smiled in sincere relief. Nevyn glanced around, saw Lilli standing off to one side, and beckoned to her. With a nod to Princ
e Maryn, Nevyn walked down the steps while Lilli hurried after. Together they made their way through the mob of armed men and horses. The Wildfolk of Air darted ahead of them and led them so purposefully that he knew that they must have spotted Maddyn in the general confusion. Sure enough, Nevyn found the silver dagger and the princess standing at a gate in the main wall. Behind them stood a pair of pages. Nevyn bowed to the princess. Lilli curtsied, but she stayed well back, and Bellyra never looked her way.

  “Your Highness?” Nevyn said. “Your husband requests you join him.”

  “Gladly.” Bellyra waved at the crowd. “Once I can get through.”

  “The grooms are beginning to take the horses to the stables, so you won’t have long to wait.”

  “Won’t you come with me, Nevyn?” Bellyra said. “There will have to be some sort of official meal or suchlike.”

  “Which is precisely what I’d prefer to avoid, my lady, if you’ll release me.”

  “Oh very well. There’s no use in my making you suffer.”

  “My thanks, Your Highness. My apprentice and I have a working on hand.”

  By circling the long way round by a devious little path between sheds and huts, they managed to avoid the mob in the main ward. Lilli walked with her head bent, looking only at the cobbles and the mud.

  “If you want to regain the princess’s favor,” Nevyn said at last, “you might consider giving up her husband.”

  Lilli looked up with tear-filled eyes. “I did try.” Her voice barely rose above a whisper. “Twice, in truth.”

  “Indeed? What did he do?”

  “The first time he just laughed. Yesterday he grabbed me and told me he’d never let me renounce him.”

  “Ye gods! Did he hurt you?”

  “He didn’t, but he did frighten me. I keep thinking, my lord, of what you said to me so long ago. Do you remember? You told me that because I kept refusing him it was a kind of ensorcelment.”

  Nevyn growled under his breath. “I do remember, and now you’re trapped good and proper, aren’t you? Well, mayhap in time things will change.”

  “I know that he’ll tire of me—”

  “That’s not what I meant. In time Bellyra’s good sense will reassert itself, and she’ll forgive you.”

  “I hope so, my lord. She was so good to me, and now she hates me.”

  “Well, I’m hoping that will pass, too. She’s terrified, Lilli, because she’s with child, and she’s sure the same old madness will come over her. Her fear colours everything.”

  “Will it happen again, the madness, I mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’ll pray it doesn’t.”

  “That’s all any of us can do, alas.”

  When they reached his chamber, Lilli hung her cloak on a peg in the wall, then took Nevyn’s and hung it next to hers while he heaped charcoal into the brazier. When he snapped his fingers, Wildfolk of Fire appeared and strewed flame over the black sticks. Lilli smiled and stretched out her hands to the warmth.

  “Will I ever be able to summon the salamanders like you do, my lord?”

  “Someday, if you do your lessons well. There’s many a long walk up that particular mountain, however, before you reach the top.”

  While Lilli cleared off his table and stacked the clutter on the floor, Nevyn opened the big canvas pack of herbs where he kept the wood box housing the curse tablet. He’d buried it deep inside, for fear a servant might find the thing, in the midst of cloth bags of herbs and roots. He fished it out and weighed it in both hands. He could have sworn the thing seemed heavier than it had before.

  In the center of the table he set the box down. With a stick of charcoal he drew a circle round it deosil; at each cardinal point, he physically drew a pentagram upon the table. When he called down the etheric light, it clung to the lines of the diagram and glowed silvery-blue. Only then, with the pentagrams radiating power, did Nevyn open the box and remove the lead tablet.

  In the midst of blue fire it glowed with a light of its own, poison-green and oily, somehow, just as Lilli had described it earlier. That he could see it so clearly troubled him. Nevyn shut the wood box and set the tablet upon it in the midst of the sigils drawn upon the lid.

  “Gods, it’s ghastly!” Lilli said.

  “It is that. Now, you take the chair and go sit by the door. Your part in this is simple. I’m going to try to banish the evil by driving it out and scattering it. I want you to watch the tablet and tell me if it appears to change.”

  Lilli did as he’d told her. Once she was safely at a distance, Nevyn raised his hands high over his head. He took a deep breath, and as he let it out he called upon the One True Light that shines beyond the gods. He could feel his voice as much as hear it, booming and vibrating through his chamber. When he shut his eyes, he saw the Light with the inner vision as a river of pure brilliance, circling the earth and flowing among the stars. Into his outstretched hands its power fell from the stars in a cascade of glowing white light. He felt it run down his arms, felt it pierce him like a spear and carry him away. His chamber disappeared into the blaze of white.

  With a wordless cry Nevyn flung his arms out to the side, so that it seemed he hung on a brilliant cross of light. Upon it he floated over the edge of the waterfall. The tumbling light roared in his ears and carried him down from the stars. Slowly the brilliance faded and he could see once again. He stood in his chamber, but the light, turned silver, trembled within him, no longer cold like water, but burning like fire. Although he heard Lilli cry out in awe, her voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away, and he bent his concentration to the tablet lying amidst the sigils.

  The strip of lead appeared shrunken, its poison light dimmed, while the pentagrams drawn on the table seemed to float free of the wood, as if they were made of shiny black metal instead of charcoal. Nevyn raised his arms and brought his hands together over his head. He saw the light as a spear, rising up from deep within him, rising up through his arms and out of his hands until it seemed he held a spear of blinding white. He could feel its weight, feel the warmth of the fire blazing at the tip.

  “In the name of the Great Ones!”

  Nevyn swung his arms down and thrust the spear of light deep into the talisman. It shrieked like a live thing, or so he heard it, and twisted round the point. White light drowned it and boiled; it seemed he could see red steam rise and hear it hiss. He could feel the light flow down his arms, flow through him and out his fingertips while the tablet writhed. It might have melted, had only Nevyn possessed another spear of light, but all the power he had gathered, he had already spent.

  Nevyn staggered back, let his arms fall to his sides, and caught himself just before he collapsed onto the floor. He could summon no more power, could physically bear to channel no more light than what he had already gathered, but still the tablet sat on the tabletop, a dull grey strip, gleaming with oily light.

  “Blast it!” Nevyn whispered. “Wretched thing!”

  Lilli grabbed his arm and guided him to the chair. He sank gratefully onto it and listened to his breathing, hard and ragged in his chest.

  “The curse is weakened,” Lilli said. “But it’s not gone.”

  “I know.”

  “For a moment you were winning.” She sounded on the edge of tears. “The light-it was so beautiful, I thought it had to win, and the lead seemed to be melting, just for a moment.”

  “Win? That’s an odd word to use, but truly, I suppose it was a battle of sorts.” Nevyn glanced around the chamber, which still glowed and shifted like flames to his dweomer-touched eyes. “Get me some water, child.”

  Drinking the water, icy cold from a metal flagon he’d set on the windowsill earlier, brought him firmly back to his body and its normal perceptions. He banished the etheric fire from his magical diagram and scattered the grains of charcoal, returning the table to its normal self as well. The curse tablet went back into its box, and the box back into its hiding place.

  “I wonde
r what went wrong?” Nevyn said. “It felt as if I simply weren’t strong enough, and that may be, but when the power of the Light came upon me, I thought it was potent enough to wipe away all manner of evil things.”

  “Just so.” Lilli frowned in thought. “When you fashioned the spear, my lord, I had the oddest feeling. It was rather like you’d missed your mark, but that didn’t make sense, because the white light covered the whole tablet.”

  “So I thought at the time. But, here, that’s an interesting thought. Would you say I’d not found the heart of the tablet?”

  “Somewhat like that. It’s so hard to find words for this kind of thing.”

  “It is, indeed. Huh.” Nevyn fell silent, remembering as best he could the downpouring of the Light and its rush through his mortal flesh. “There’s somewhat about this wretched tablet that I’ve overlooked, perhaps. I’ve simply never had much affinity for it. That’s been a problem from the very first.”

  “But I do.”

  “True spoken, but you’ve not had the training to do this sort of work. Don’t you even think of trying such a working! Do you understand me?”

  “I do, my lord.” Lilli managed a faint smile. “I’m just as glad, to be honest. I know that I’m but an apprentice.”

  “Good. Someday, perhaps, if you work hard, you’ll be able to channel the Light through your blood and bone, but that’s years away. And I sincerely hope we’ve destroyed this wretched thing before then.”

  “Will you try again, my lord? Is there some other spell you can cast?”

  “I doubt it, unfortunately. I’ve spent many a long night thinking about it, and this was the best I could come up with. But we can change the conditions around the working. Perhaps it’s the astral tides that are wrong. They run so low this time of year. Perhaps in the spring they’ll be stronger and me with them.”

  But even as he spoke, he doubted it.

  The first snow melted quickly, and the weather turned dry if achingly cold. Princess Bellyra bundled herself up in two cloaks and started a new part of her researches, a catalogue of the various towers and outbuildings scattered around the main broch complex. It struck Maddyn as an odd thing to do, but since it made her happy, he was willing to follow her around.