Daggerspell (19 page)

When their eyes met, Jill felt that she’d somehow become shameful and failed him. She disliked the way her father was looking at her, too, a cold appraisal that made her feel unclean. Abruptly he looked away, and she knew that he was as troubled as she was. She sat there miserably and wished that she could talk to her mother. It was only later that she remembered the young rider telling her she was pretty. In spite of herself, she was pleased.

On a day when the trees stood scarlet, and a cold drizzle turned the streets to muck, Nevyn rode into Dun Mannanan. He rented a chamber in the inn, stabled his horse and pack mule, then wrapped himself in his patched cloak and hurried to the shop of Otho the silversmith. For reasons of its own, the dweomer watched over the band of silver daggers; since most of them were decent enough lads who had only committed one grave fault, they came in handy for those rare times when the dweomer needed some help from the sword. Nevyn knew every smith in the kingdom who served them, though few were as strange as Otho, a dwarf in long exile from the kingdoms of his race far to the north. When Nevyn appeared at his door, the silversmith greeted him heartily and took him into the workshop, where a fire burned on the hearth.

“Would you care for a bit of mulled ale, my lord?”

“I would. These old bones are feeling the damp.”

Otho allowed himself a smile at the jest. They had, after
all, known each other for some two hundred years. Nevyn pulled the only chair in the room up to the fire and held out his hands to the heat while Otho bustled around, filling a metal flagon with ale from the barrel by the wall, adding a stick of Bardek cinnamon, then popping on a lid to keep the ashes out when he stood the flagon in the coals.

“I was hoping you’d ride my way,” Otho said. “I might have a bit of news for you. That lass of yours, the one you’ve been vexing yourself over for so long, is it time for her to be reborn again?”

“She’s been born, actually. Here, have you seen her?”

“I may have, I may not. I don’t have the second sight, my lord, or the dweomer neither, as well you know. But a passing strange little lass rode my way this summer. Her name was Jill, and oh, she’d been born some thirteen summers ago, I’d say. Her father’s a silver dagger, you see, and he has his daughter riding with him. It’s truly strange to see a human being treat his child so well, but that’s neither here nor there. His name’s Cullyn of Cerrmor. Ever heard of him?”

“The man they say is the best swordsman in Deverry?”

“The very one, and he is, too. His mark is the striking falcon.”

“Oh, by the gods! It could be. It just could be.”

Otho got a clot of rags and gingerly took the flagon from the fire, then poured the steaming ale into a pair of tankards. Thirteen would mark the right number of years since I saw that vision, Nevyn thought, and it would be like Gerraent to end up with that dagger in his belt. If she were wandering with a silver dagger, it was no wonder he’d never found her in all his long years of trying. Suddenly he felt weary. For all that Cullyn of Cerrmor had great glory, it would be a hard job to track him down. Otho handed him a tankard.

“When they left here, they rode north. Cullyn took a hire with a merchant who was taking a caravan of our … ah, well, special imports into Deverry.”

“Special imports indeed. Here, Otho, when are you going to mend your ways?”

“It’s your people, not mine, who make such a stinking fuss over excises and the King’s tax.”

Although Nevyn was tempted to ride after the pair, by that time of year it would already be snowing up north, and for all he knew, Cullyn would be riding elsewhere. Nevyn decided to carry out his original plan of returning to his home in western Eldidd for winter. After all, he reminded himself, this Jill might not even be his Brangwen reborn. She wasn’t the only soul in the kingdom marked for the dweomer, and the falcon device might well be a simple coincidence. Besides, he also had Lord Rhodry Maelwaedd of Aberwyn to consider. He was as much a part of Nevyn’s Wyrd as Brangwen was, being as Lord Blaen had died so needlessly that night thanks to Prince Galrion’s fault.

Although Nevyn had been planning on riding straight to Aberwyn, he took the precaution of scrying Rhodry out first and so saved himself a wasted trip. When he called up Rhodry’s image in the burning coals of a fire, he saw the lad out riding in the forest preserve of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn—a stretch of virgin forest near the little town of Belglaedd. Nevyn assumed that he would have no chance to meet the young lord, simply because the preserve was closed to all but gwerbretal guests, but even so, he went to Belglaedd on the off chance that Rhodry might ride into town for some reason. There, as he later came to realize, the Lords of Wyrd took a hand in the matter.

The people of Belglaedd and the outlying farmers both knew and honored Nevyn, because he was the only source of medical care that most of them had. The tavernman insisted on putting him up for free and then rattled off a list of symptoms about the pains in his joints. For the next week Nevyn had little time to think about his tangled Wyrd as family after family came to buy his herbs and ask his advice. On the eighth morning, Nevyn had just gone out to the muddy tavern yard for a bit of sun when a rider
trotted up in a splash of muck. He wore a blue cloak blazoned with the dragon device of Aberwyn.

“’Morrow, aged sir,” the rider said. “I hear there’s a good herbman in town. Do you know him?”

“I am him, lad. What’s the trouble?”

“I’ve just come from the lodge. Lord Rhodry’s cursed ill.”

Talking all the while, the rider helped Nevyn load his supplies onto his mule. Rhodry had been caught out in the rain and stubbornly gone on hunting even though he was soaking wet. The only people at the lodge with him were a pair of servants and five of his father’s men, none of whom knew the first thing about physick.

“And what’s his lordship doing out here this time of year anyway?” Nevyn said.

“Ah, well, sir, I’m not free to say, but he got into a bit of trouble with his older brother. Naught that was serious.”

Although the gwerbret probably considered his hunting lodge to be charmingly rustic, it was as imposing as many a dun of a lesser lord. In the middle of a cobbled and well-drained ward rose a three-story broch, surrounded by enough outbuildings and stables to house a party of a hundred guests. An aged manservant led Nevyn up to the second floor and Rhodry’s chamber, sparsely furnished with one carved chest, a bed with faded hangings, and his lordship’s shield hanging on the wall. Although there was a brazier heaped with coals glowing in the middle of the room, the damp seeped out of the very walls.

“Ye gods!” Nevyn snapped. “Isn’t there a chamber with a proper hearth?”

“There is, but his lordship won’t let us move him.”

“Indeed? Then I’ll deal with his lordship.”

When Nevyn pulled back the bed curtains, Rhodry looked up at him with gummy eyes. At sixteen, he’d grown into a lanky lad, getting close to six feet tall, and still as handsome as ever—or he would have been handsome if his hair weren’t plastered to his forehead with
sweat, his lips not so badly cracked that they were bleeding, and his cheeks not flushed with a hectic glow.

“Who are you?” Rhodry mumbled.

“A herbman. Your men fetched me.”

“Ah, curse them! I don’t need—” He began to cough so violently that his body went rigid. He propped himself up on one elbow and spasmed, choking until Nevyn grabbed him and hauled him upright. Finally he spat out green rheum.

“You don’t need me?” Nevyn said drily. “I may only be a commoner, your lordship, but you’re following my orders.”

Rhodry’s lips twitched in a faint smile as he trembled with fever. Nevyn laid him down again and turned to the frightened manservant.

“Get that chamber with the hearth warm. Then pile extra pillows on the bed, and start heating me a big kettle of water. When you’ve done all that, send a man back to Aberwyn with a message. Gwerbret Tingyr needs to know that his son is ill.”

All that afternoon, Nevyn worked over his patient. He fed Rhodry infusions of coltsfoot and elecampe to bring up the phlegm, hyssop and pennyroyal to make him sweat, and quaking aspen as a general febrifuge. As the medicines cleansed his humors, Rhodry coughed until it made Nevyn’s own sides ache to hear him, but at last he began to breathe freely instead of gasping for every breath. Nevyn let him lie down then, propped up on the mound of pillows. The fever still played on his face like firelight.

“My thanks,” Rhodry whispered. “Owaen? Does he still live?”

For a moment Nevyn was too puzzled to answer him; then the memory came back, of another life when he’d tended battle wounds on the body this soul wore then, and a friend lay dying nearby.

“He does, lad. Just rest.”

Rhodry smiled and fell straight asleep. So, Nevyn thought, he’s reacting to my presence, is he? In his feverish
state, Rhodry had somehow come across that long-buried memory.

All the next day, Nevyn brooded over his patient, forcing him to drink bitter infusions of herbs even though Rhodry swore at him and complained that he couldn’t get another loathsome mouthful down. Finally, that evening, the fever broke. Rhodry was well enough to eat a little thin soup, which Nevyn fed to him a mouthful at a time.

“My thanks,” Rhodry said when he was finished. “It’s a marvel, you turning up like this. Do you remember meeting me on the Cantrae road all those years ago?”

“I do, truly.”

“Its eerie. I was just trying to be courteous. I never dreamt you’d save my life someday. I must have cursed good luck.”

“So you must. So you must.”

When Rhodry fell asleep, Nevyn went down to the great hall for his dinner. The men in the young lord’s warband insisted on treating Nevyn like a hero. They brought him his food like pages and crowded round to thank him while he ate. One of them, a beefy lad named Praedd, even insisted on bringing Nevyn a goblet of mead.

“Here, good sir. If you ever need our aid for anything, me and the lads will ride out of our way to give it.”

“My thanks. I take it you men honor Lord Rhodry highly.”

“We do. He’s young yet, but he’s got more honor than any lord in Eldidd.”

“Well and good, then. And what of Lord Rhys, the heir?”

Praedd hesitated, glancing this way and that, and he dropped his voice when he answered.

“Don’t spread this around, like, but there’s plenty of men in Aberwyn who wish Lord Rhodry had been born first, not second.”

Praedd bowed and hurried away before he could say anything else indiscreet. As Nevyn thought over what he’d said, he felt a cold dweomer-warning ripple down his
back. There was trouble coming in Aberwyn. Suddenly he had a brief flash of vision, saw swords flashing in the summer sun as Rhodry led a wedge of men into a hard-fought battle. When the vision faded, Nevyn felt sick at heart. Was there going to be a rebellion to put Rhodry in the gwerbretal chair when Tingyr died? Perhaps. Dweomer-warnings were always vague, leaving the recipient to puzzle out their meaning. Yet he could guess that, once again, he would have important work to do in Aberwyn when the time came.

The guess turned to a certainty late on the next afternoon. Nevyn was up in Rhodry’s chamber when a manservant rushed in with the news that Rhodry’s mother, Lady Lovyan of Aberwyn, had arrived with a small retinue. In a few minutes, the wife of the most powerful man in Eldidd swept into the room. She threw her travel-stained plaid cloak to the waiting servant and ran to Rhodry’s bedside. A solid woman in her early forties, Lovyan had an imposing beauty, her raven-dark hair just streaked with gray, her cornflower blue eyes as large and perfect as her son’s.

“My poor little lad,” she said, laying a hand on his forehead. “Thanks be to the Goddess, you’re not fevered anymore.”

“The Goddess sent a good herbman. Mother, you didn’t need to ride all this way just for me.”

“Don’t babble nonsense.” Lovyan turned to Nevyn. “My thanks, good sir. I’ll see you’re well paid for all of this.”

“It was my honor, my lady. I’m just thankful that I was close at hand.”

Nevyn left them alone, but later he returned to find Rhodry asleep and Lovyan sitting by his bedside. When Nevyn bowed to her, she came over to talk where they wouldn’t waken him.

“I’ve spoken to the servants, good Nevyn. They told me that they feared for his life until you came.”

“I won’t lie to you, my lady. He was very ill indeed. That’s why I thought you should be notified.”

Lovyan nodded, her mouth slack with worry. In the fading light, she looked intensely familiar. Nevyn allowed himself to slip into the dweomer sight and saw her clearly—Rodda, bound to Blaen again as mother to son. At that moment, she recognized him as well, and her eyes grew puzzled even as she smiled.

“Now, here, do you ever ride to Aberwyn? I must have seen you before, but surely I’d remember a man with such an unusual name.”

“Oh, my lady, you may have seen me when you rode by in the street or suchlike. I’d never be presented to a woman of your rank.”

Nevyn felt like laughing in triumph. Here they were, three of them come together at the same time as he’d had news of the lass who might be Brangwen. Surely the time was ripening, surely his Wyrd was leading him to one of those crisis points when he would have the chance to untangle it. In his excitement, he forgot himself badly. The fire was growing low; he tossed on a couple of big logs, then waved his hand over them. When the flames leapt up, he heard Lovyan gasp. He spun round to face her.

“My apologies, my lady, for startling you.”

“No apology needed, my lord.” Lovyan pronounced the honorific slowly and deliberately. “I’m most honored that a man like you would stoop to treating my son for a fever.”

“I see that my lady doesn’t dismiss tales of dweomer as nonsense fit only to amuse children.”

“Her ladyship has seen too many odd things in her life to do anything of the sort.”

For a moment they studied each other like a pair of fencers. Then Nevyn felt the dweomer prod him, force him to speak, as if his mouth would burn if he didn’t speak out the truth.