Dawnspell. Katharine Kerr
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that again!’ Caradoc mugged a doleful expression. ‘As much as I admire your craft, good smith, I have to say that your wits are a bit thin in places. Elves, indeed!’
‘Mock all you want, but elven blood makes a man unreliable.’
‘It’d make any man unreliable to have a myth in his clan’s quarterings.’ Caradoc ran one finger down the silvery blade of Otho’s axe. ‘But talk about elves all you want, just so long as you keep working your witchcraft on metals. When we’re all as rich as lords and the most famous free troop in all of Deverry, you’re going to make us swords out of that warlock’s metal of yours.’
‘Hah! You’d have to be a king to afford that, my friend. You’ll be blasted lucky if you ever get rich enough to have so much as a dagger out of it.’
After Maddyn and Aethan had their horses settled and fed in the stables, one of the men, Stevyc by name, came to help them carry their gear into the broch. When he picked up the big leather bag that held Maddyn’s harp, he broke into a grin.
‘Which one of you is the bard?’
‘I am,’ Maddyn said. ‘But not much of one, a gerthddyn, truly, if that. I can sing, but I don’t have a true bard’s lore.’
‘And who gives a pig’s fart who some lord’s great-great-great-grand-dam was? This is a bit of splendid luck.’ Stevyc turned, calling out to Caradoc, ‘Here, captain, we’ve got a bard of our own.’
‘And next we’ll be eating off silver plates, like the great lords we are.’ Caradoc came strolling over. ‘But a bard would have come in handy this winter, with the pack of you causing trouble because you had naught better to do. Well and good then, Maddyn. If you sing well enough, you’ll be free of kitchen work and stable duty, but I’ll expect you to make up songs about our battles just like you would for a lord.’
‘I’ll do my best, captain, to sing as well as we deserve.’
‘Better than we deserve, Maddyn lad, or you’ll sound like a cat in heat.’
After a rough dinner of venison and turnips, Maddyn was given his chance to sing, sitting on a rickety, half-rotted table in what had once been the lodge’s great hall. He’d only done one ballad when he realized that his place in the troop was assured. The men listened with the deep fascination of the utterly bored, hardly noticing or caring when he got a bit off-key or stumbled over a line. After a winter with naught but dice games and the blacksmith’s daughter for entertainment, they cheered him as if he were the best bard at the King’s court. They made him sing until he was hoarse, that night, and let him stop only reluctantly then. Only Maddyn and Otho knew, of course, that the hall was also filled with Wildfolk, listening as intently as the men.
That night, Maddyn lay awake for a long while and listened to the familiar sound of other men snoring close by in the darkness of a barracks. He was back in a warband, back in his old life so firmly that he wondered if he’d dreamt those enchanted months in Brin Toraedic. The winter behind him seemed like a lost paradise, when he’d had good company and a woman of his own, when he’d seen a glimpse of a wider, freer world of peace and dweomer – a little glimpse only, then the door had been slammed in his face. He was back in the war, a dishonoured rider whose one goal in life was to earn the respect of other dishonoured men. At least Belyan was going to have his baby back in Cantrae, a small life who would outlive him and who would be better off as a farmer than his father would be as a warrior. Thinking about the babe he could fall asleep at last, smiling to himself.
On the day that Maddyn left Brin Toraedic, Nevyn spent a good many hours shutting up the caves for the summer and loading herbs and medicines into the canvas mule-packs. He had a journey of over nine hundred miles ahead of him, with stops along the way that were crucial to the success of his long-range plans. If he were to succeed in making a dweomer king to bring peace to the country, he would need help from powerful friends, particularly among the priesthoods. He would also need to find a man of royal blood worthy of his plans. And that, or so he told himself, might well be the most difficult part of the work.
The first week of his journey was easy. Although the Cantrae roads were full of warbands, mustering to begin the ride to Dun Deverry for the summer’s fighting, no one bothered him, seemingly only a shabby old herbman with his ambling mule, his patched brown cloak, and the white hair that the local riders respected as a sign of his great age. He followed the Canaver down to its joining with the River Nerr near the town of Muir, a place that held memories some two hundred years old. As he always did when he passed through Muir, he went into the last patch of wild forest – now the hunting preserve of the Southern Boar clan. In the midst of a stand of old oaks was an ancient, mossy cairn that marked the grave of Brangwen of the Falcon, the woman he had loved, wronged, and lost so many years ago. He always felt somewhat of a fool for making this pilgrimage – her body was long decayed, and her soul had been reborn several times since that miserable day when he’d dug this grave and helped pile up these rocks. Yet the site meant something to him still, if for no other reason than because it was the place where he’d sworn the rash vow that was the cause of his unnaturally long life.
Out of respect for a grave, even though they could have no idea of whose it was, the Boar’s gamekeepers had left the cairn undisturbed. Nevyn was pleased to see that someone had even tended it by replacing a few fallen stones and pulling the weeds away from its base. It was a small act of decency in a world where decency was in danger of vanishing. For some time he sat on the ground and watched the dappled forest light playing on the cairn while he wondered when he would find Brangwen’s soul again. His meditation brought him a small insight: she was reborn, but still a child. Eventually, he was sure, in some way Maddyn would lead him to her. In life after life, his Wyrd had been linked to hers, and, indeed, in his last life, he had followed her to the death, binding a chain of Wyrd tight around them both.
After he left Muir, Nevyn rode west to Dun Deverry for a first-hand look at the man who claimed to be King in the Holy City. On a hot spring day, when the sun lay as thick as the dust in the road, he came to the shores of the Gwerconydd, the vast lake formed by the confluence of three rivers, and let his horse and mule rest for a moment by the reedy shore. He was joined by a pair of young priests of Bel, shaven-headed and dressed in linen tunics, who were also travelling to the Holy City. After a pleasant chat, they all decided to ride in together.
‘And who’s the high priest these days?’ Nevyn asked. ‘I’ve been living up in Cantrae, so I’m badly out of touch.’
‘His Holiness, Gwergovyn,’ said the elder of the pair.
‘I see.’ Nevyn’s heart sank. He remembered Gwergovyn all too well as a spiritual ferret of a man. ‘And tell me somewhat else. I’ve heard that the Boars of Cantrae are the men to watch in court circles.’
Even though they were all alone on the open road, the young priest lowered his voice when he answered.
‘They are, truly, and there are plenty who grumble about it, too. I know His Holiness thinks rather sourly of the men of the Boar.’
At length they came to the city, which rose high on its four hills behind massive double rings of stone walls, ramparted and towered. The wooden gates, carved with a wyvern rampant, were bound with iron, and guards in thickly embroidered shirts stood to either side. Yet as soon as Nevyn went inside, the impression of splendour vanished. Once a prosperous city had filled these walls; now house after house stood abandoned, with weed-choked yards and empty windows, the thatch blowing rotten in dirty streets. Much of the city lay in outright ruin, heaps of stone among rotting, charred timbers. It had been taken by siege so many times in the last hundred years, then taken back by the sword, that apparently no one had the strength, the coin, or the hope to rebuild. In the centre of the city, around and between two main hills, lived what was left of the population, scarcely more than in King Bran’s time. Warriors walked the streets and shoved the townsfolk aside whenever they met. It seemed to Nevyn that every man he saw was a rider for one lord or another, and every woman either lived in fear of them or had surrendered to the inevitable and turned whore to please them.
The first inn he found was tiny, dirty, and ramshackle,