The Spirit Stone. Katharine Kerr
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said. ‘I’ve linked it up through the Kings of the Wildlands to the golden root of dominion. Not a word of this to anyone, mind.’
‘And is there anyone else in Dun Deverry who’d know what I was talking about if I told them?’
‘Not half likely, is it?’ Nevyn glanced at Affyna.
She smiled again. ‘Any woman who marries a priest learns to hold her tongue.’
One piece at a time, smoothing out wrinkles, Nevyn wrapped the opal back up in its silken shrouds. He returned it to the pouch, then wiped the dweomer circle away from the table. Olnadd got up and opened the shutters to let in the spring air.
‘And what kind of man is our king?’ Nevyn said. ‘I knew his grandfather, you see, but I haven’t been at court in a cursed long time.’
Olnadd considered, rubbing his chin.
‘Hard to say. Now, he used to be the wild sort, Casyl, when he was the Marked Prince, but wedding the sovereignty changes a man. He’s held the kingship only a year now, but he seems to be steadying down.’
‘Seems to be?’
‘Well, he’s a splendid warrior. Very useful just now.’ Olnadd considered again, picking up his cup and twisting it between his long fingers. ‘But the emotional sort. Given to quick judgments and – well – gestures. Things fit for bard songs, a lot of talk about honour – you know the sort.’
‘How easy is it for a subject to see his highness? I’ve brought a good bit of coin to bribe servants.’
‘You’ll need it, but I can smooth your way and save some of your silver. The scribes all come to the temple, of course, for worship. The head scribe’s an interesting sort. Truly, he should have come to us for the priesthood, but he has a taste for power. Coin will be out of place for our Petyc. We’ll go down to the bookseller’s and see what we can find.’
‘A bookseller? Ye gods, Dun Deverry’s turning into a grand city indeed.’
‘It is, at that. We might find a rare volume, even, but if not, there’ll be somewhat there that will make a decent gift. Then I’ll introduce you. Petyc will speak to the chamberlain if he likes you. A little gift might be in order for the chamberlain, but a few coins in a pouch should do. There’s naught subtle about him, truly.’
‘My thanks. I’d like to get this settled before King Casyl goes off to the summer’s fighting.’
‘Oh, I’ve no doubt you can. The gossip tells me that he won’t ride north for another fortnight or so.’
‘Well and good, then. Ye gods! Another war in Cerrgonney!’
‘Now, now!’ Affyna paused for a sly smile. ‘The king never says war. It’s a rebellion, according to him.’
‘And when did the Boar clan swear fealty to the royal Wyvern?’ Nevyn said.
‘Oh, according to our present king’s father, it was round about 962 or so. Gwerbretion, he called their lords, and how could they be gwerbretion if they hadn’t sworn to him?’ Olnadd rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘We can’t doubt the king, can we now? He had it on the best authority – his own.’
They all shared a laugh but a grim one. In truth, Cerrgonney had been an independent kingdom for the past hundred and thirty-odd years, though kingdom was perhaps too grand a word for that rocky land filled with feuds, factions, and petty hatreds. The High King’s vassals, however, would support a war more readily if it were presented as putting down a rebellion rather than outright conquest.
‘And of course his scribes will write down what he tells them to,’ Affyna said, ‘and the royal bards sing the correct verses.’
‘Indeed,’ Nevyn said. ‘But ye gods, another war with the cursed Boars. I wonder if we’ll ever see the end of them?’
‘Now here!’ Olnadd gave him a grin. ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’
‘I can’t, alas. The dweomer tells a man what he needs to know and little else.’
That night Nevyn retired early to the small spare guest chamber to work an elaborate piece of dweomer. As much as false omens and pretentious glamours annoyed him, he knew that he’d need them. He’d worked too hard on the opal talisman to have the king accept it lightly, and if he simply gained an audience and handed it over, the king most likely would underestimate its importance. Many years before, Nevyn had successfully used a certain kind of magical trick to shorten a rebellion against the current king’s grandfather. Quite possibly he could use it to benefit the grandson as well.
Nevyn lay down on the bed, slowed his breathing, and visualized the sigils that would lead him out to the etheric plane. In his mind he saw the blue light gather; then suddenly it flooded the room. The walls, dead things, turned black, while the air and its spirits pulsed around him with a sapphire glow. To travel on this plane he would need his body of light, but he had worked this dweomer so often that it came to him almost automatically. He’d created from the etheric substance a body, solid blue against the flux, shaped like a man wearing brigga and a shirt, though lacking detail, and joined to his solar plexus by a silver cord. Nevyn transferred his consciousness into it and looked down at his physical body, lying inert and apparently asleep on the bed below. He rose up higher, slipped out of the house, and hovered in the air. Above him the stars gleamed, great silver whorls and streaks against the night sky.
Down below, flickering in the silvery-blue etheric light, the houses and streets of Dun Deverry spread out, black and sullen with stone and tile. Here and there a garden or a tree gleamed with a reddish vegetable aura. Here and there as well the bright ovoid auras of human beings and animals hurried through the streets or disappeared behind dead wooden doors. Yet in an odd way the city itself did seem alive. Its history was so long and so troubled that images from the astral plane had spilled over, as it were, into the etheric, so that Nevyn could see superimposed pictures from all its times of violence and hope.
The tangle of images formed a dense flood, rising and swelling – the streets shrinking, changing place, broadening, disappearing altogether; houses rising, aging, and falling; fires raging through the streets; ghostly crowds of those who’d lived and suffered here rushing to and fro, then disappearing, leaving the desolation of the Time of Troubles, when a tiny village huddled inside shattered walls, only to swell again as the prosperity of peace returned. In the midst of the swirling flood of images, a few unchanging points stood out – the huge temple compound of Bel on one hill, the smaller temple of the Moon Goddess on another, each glowing under a silvery dweomer-shield created by the priests and priestesses. Yet always, under the mutating images, the city, the Holy City, shimmered with power, the soul of the kingdom simply because so many thousands of people believed it so.
In the centre of the city, in the heart of the glowing, surging magical web stood the king’s dun, a cluster of tall towers on the highest hill. With barely an effort Nevyn drifted towards it through the rippling etheric light. He had been born on that hill well over three hundred years ago. All the history that had taken place since his birth rose up in a second wave of images and lapped over the dun, then swirled back to allow his memories to flood over it in their place.
Once again Nevyn could see the brochs of his youth with their rough chambers and crude furnishings. In that torch-lit chamber of justice he’d infuriated his father and so set in motion the terrible mistake responsible for his unnaturally long life. With a flicker of light the image changed into the larger, more polished royal compound he’d visited as a simple herbman, then he watched the buildings crumble as rebellion and strife broke out among the great clans. In the civil wars he had installed a new king in a dun that was half in ruins from the long years of siege and betrayal.
Among the images of place he saw the empty simulacra of persons long dead, what ordinary folk call ghosts. He saw his father striding through the ruins, shouting soundless orders to vanished servants. His mother ran after, begging mercy for her unfortunate son. The Boars of Cantrae appeared, all swagger and rage. Prince Maryn and his tragic queen, Bellyra, walked through a translucent great