Daggerspell (45 page)

“Lad, lad, my son, please, listen to me. You still have one last chance. I know that someone was working on you, using you. Surrender now and make restitution. If any more men die because of you, you’ll be beyond forgiveness. Surrender now while you can still be helped.”

Aderyn looked so heartsick that Loddlaen sobbed once aloud. His father was standing there, offering to forgive him; his father had known all along what he’d only just discovered, that he’d been ensorceled, that he’d been weak and stupid enough to let himself be ensorceled by an enemy in disguise.

“Lad,” Aderyn said. “I beg you.”

Shame, embarrassment, a kind of self-loathing—they rose, choking him, turning suddenly to dirty smoke that filled the room and obscured Aderyn’s image. Loddlaen wanted to cry out, to reach out his hand to his father, but the smoke was making him gag, and all at once, he was furious, trembling and screaming with rage.

“Get out! Get out! I don’t need your help!”

Loddlaen called up power and threw a stream of pure force, a barrage of fiery light, but long before it could hit the image was gone. Loddlaen fell to his knees and wept in the midst of the churning, filthy smoke, which slowly, a wisp at a time, cleared of its own accord.

It was a long time before he could get himself under control. He rose and staggered to a small table, where a pitcher of mead and a goblet stood ready, poured himself a full goblet, and drank it straight down. All at once, he
could no longer bear to be alone. Goblet still in hand, he ran out of the chamber and hurried down the spiral staircase.

Lord Corbyn’s great hall was a hot, smoky confusion of men, sitting at tables, standing in the curve of the wall, talking in low voices, or merely drinking ale down as fast as the servants could pour it. Loddlaen took his usual place at Corbyn’s right. Across from him was Nowec, his eyes dazed as he looked around him. Even though Loddlaen had lost the others, he’d been able to keep his ensorcelment upon this lord. Corbyn was eating a slice of roast pork, biting into it, then cutting off the bite with a greasy dagger.

“Glad you came down, councillor,” Nowec said. “Your lord and I have just been discussing sending messengers to the gwerbret to sue for peace.”

“He’ll grant decent terms,” Corbyn said, his voice too loud with a false cheer. “But we’ve got to get the men on their way tonight. I’ll wager Rhodry invests us tomorrow.”

Both men looked expectantly at Loddlaen.

“Of course,” Loddlaen snapped. “You don’t need dweomer to tell you the obvious.”

Both lords nodded sheepishly. Corbyn fanged his pork and sawed off another mouth-filling bite.

“We need to know exactly where Rhodry is,” Nowec said. “Can’t have the messengers blundering right into them.”

Corbyn nodded his agreement, then belched. Loddlaen could stand them no longer.

“I’ll attend to it straightaway.”

As he hurried up to his chamber, he was sweating with fear. He was too afraid of Aderyn to scry on the etheric plane, and that meant he would have to fly. Trying to shape-change when exhausted was dangerous. Upon entering his chamber, he lit the candle lantern with a snap of his fingers. Seeing the flame spring to his call soothed him. He still had power, more power than those round-eared dogs even knew, him, Loddlaen the Mighty! He stripped off his clothes and threw them onto the bed. Not
even the mightiest masters of the dweomer could transform dead matter like cloth.

Loddlaen laid his hands far apart on the windowsill and stared up at the starry sky until he was perfectly calm. Slowly he felt power gather, carefully he invoked more, until it flowed through his mind like a mighty river. In his mind, he formulated the image of the red hawk, many times life size, proud and cruel, then sent the picture forward until it perched on the windowsill between his hands. At this point the hawk image existed only in Loddlaen’s imagination, and it was only in imagination that he transferred his consciousness over to the bird. He had spent years on tedious mental exercises that allowed him to imagine that he stood on the windowsill and saw the view below with the hawk’s eyes. Keeping his consciousness firmly focused in the hawk, he chanted the power word, a simple hypnotic device, that opened the door to the etheric for him. When he saw the view through the cold blue light, he knew that he’d transferred his consciousness up a level.

At this point, things had gone beyond simple imagination. When he glanced back, he saw his body slumped on the floor and joined to the hawk with a silver cord. He could have scried on the etheric with the hawk as a body of light, but he had a more dangerous plan. In his mind he chanted a second set of words, one that only the Elcyion Lacar knew, and saw the lips of his body twitch in rhythm. When he flexed the hawk’s wings, the arms below him raised. Now came the true difficulty. The etheric double of every person is like a matrix that holds and forms flesh; if the double is strong enough, the flesh will follow its lead. Loddlaen chanted, struggled, bent all his will into the imagining that is more than imagination until at last, with one final wail of chant, the etheric drew the physical into its new mold.

Loddlaen the man was gone from the chamber. Only the hawk stood on the windowsill and stretched proud wings. With a harsh cry of triumph, Loddlaen sprang into the night and flew out over the dun. He loved flying, the
perfect freedom of drifting on the wind, the view from on high, where every fort and house seemed just a tiny toy, scattered by a child’s careless hand. Even in the hawk form, Loddlaen retained the etheric sight that was so important a part of the transformation. The countryside below glowed in the bluey night with the reddish auras of the living vegetation. Here and there were daubs of yellow glow where horses or cows huddled together. Following the cold black strip of road, Loddlaen flew south until he saw the gleaming mass of auras that had to be the men and horses of Rhodry’s army.

Loddlaen flew upward to gain height, then circled in a long sweep about the camp. His mind was alert, feeling out the etheric plane for the traces of Aderyn’s dweomer working. When he found none, he assumed that the old man was asleep or busy wasting his time by tending wounds. Then he heard a cry, the soft mournful note of the owl. With a start and a flap of terror, Loddlaen beat hard against the wind and gained more height. He saw a trace of silvery motion below him as the great silver owl sprang out of the trees. In stark terror, Loddlaen turned on the wind current and raced for the dun, beating his wings hard and steadily until he was sure he’d left the clumsier owl behind. Yet even though he reached the dun safely, as he settled onto the windowsill he heard or thought he heard a call, one soft note of mourning drifting in the night.

Toward noon of the next day, Rhodry’s army reached Corbyn’s demesne. Everywhere the farmhouses were shut up tight, with not so much as a chicken out in the farmyard. From bitter experience the farmers knew that the army of even a lord like Rhodry would steal any fresh food that came its way. Corbyn’s dun stood at the top of a low artificial hill in the middle of a big stretch of open pasture, but none of his lordship’s cows were to be seen when the army reached it. Leaving the carts behind, they trotted over, fully armed and ready in case Corbyn stupidly tried to sally, but they found the heavy iron-bound gates shut.
Up on the catwalks men stood half hidden by the merlons. Defiant at the top of the broch flew Corbyn’s green banner. Rhodry ordered his men to fan out and surround the fort. The investment had officially begun.

Just as the carts arrived, Corbyn sent out a herald, his aged chamberlain Graemyn, trembling even though he carried the beribboned staff that would have kept him safe from even the most murderous lord in all Deverry. When he saw the portly old man puffing down the hill, Rhodry dismounted and honorably walked a few steps to meet him—but he made sure he stayed out of bowshot of the dun.

“Greetings, Lord Rhodry. My lord Corbyn requests that you withdraw from his lands.”

“Tell your lord that I respectfully decline to fulfill his request. He is a rebel and under my proscription.”

“Indeed?” Graemyn licked nervous lips. “Even now messengers are riding to Gwerbret Rhys to sue for his intervention in this affair of war.”

“Then I’ll wait here with my army until His Grace arrives. You may consider yourselves under full siege until the gwerbret personally orders me to withdraw. Tell your lord also that he’s harboring a murderer, Loddlaen, his councillor, and that I demand he be turned over to me speedily for trial.”

Graemyn blinked twice, then trembled a little harder.

“I have sworn witnesses to Loddlaen’s crimes,” Rhodry said. “If Loddlaen is not delivered to me by nightfall, then your lord is twice in rebellion. There’s one more thing, good herald. Although I’m determined to prosecute this war against Corbyn, I’m extending pardon to Nowec and his men. All they have to do ride out and ask for it.”

Graemyn turned and fled, trotting as fast as his short breath would allow. Rhodry laughed, then walked back, shouting out orders to the army to settle in and start digging earthworks.

Needless to say, nightfall came without Loddlaen being handed over, but by then the army was firmly entrenched. The carts were drawn up in a circle and guarded by a narrow
ditch and bank; the tents were raised and surrounded by a broader one. Armed patrols trotted endlessly round the hill in case Corbyn tried to escape. As the men settled down to their well-earned dinner, Rhodry and Sligyn walked through the camp for an inspection.

“I wonder if any of this will do us the least bit of good,” Sligyn said gloomily. “It’s all very well for Aderyn to ramble on about stopping the messengers, but what could he have done? Can’t see one old man murdering them on the road, eh?”

“After all the cursed dweomer I’ve seen, I’m ready to believe anything. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

As it turned out, the wait was a short one. Round noon the next day, a guard ran up to Rhodry with the news that a noble lord, come with an escort of twelve men, was waiting just outside the camp. The lord turned out to be Talidd of Belglaedd, who owed direct fealty to the gwerbret. Since Rhodry could only assume that he was there with a message from Rhys, he was cursing inwardly as he bowed. A man of close to forty, Talidd looked shrewdly on the world out of narrow green eyes.

“And what brings you to me, my lord?”

“A very strange business.” Talidd turned to gesture to his men. “Bring those prisoners here.”

When they were led up, Rhodry recognized them as two of Corbyn’s men. They knelt at Rhodry’s feet and stared at the ground in humiliated shock.

“Did you know that my sister is Corbyn’s wife?” Talidd said.

“I didn’t. She has my sympathy.”

Talidd allowed himself a twitch of a smile.

“I should say she
was
Corbyn’s wife. When she and her women came to me at the beginning of this blasted war, I made a vow that she’d never go back to her piss-poor excuse of a husband even if you didn’t hang him. He’s driven her mad, stark raving mad! She’s been babbling about evil dweomermen lurking everywhere, and evil spirits taking Corbyn over, until I can’t stand it anymore.”

“By the hells!” Rhodry did his best to look shocked and horrified. “What a terrible thing!”

“So I thought. Well, then, yesternight these two ride in with a message from Corbyn, asking me ever so sweetly to raise an army and ride to lift the siege.”

Rhodry whistled under his breath at the gall of it.

“Cursed right!” Talidd snapped. “As if I’d break the gwerbret’s peace and meddle in somewhat that’s none of my affair, especially after the way he’s treated one of my blood kin! If your lordship agrees, I’m going to take these riders down to Rhys and present the matter. Corbyn didn’t send a letter, you see, so I need their testimony.”

“Naught would gladden my heart more. All I ask is that you let me show them off in front of the dun before you go, so Corbyn knows that my herald is speaking the truth when he says I’ve got them.”

They went into Corbyn’s chambers to discuss the news in private. Nowec perched on the windowsill, Corbyn paced back and forth, and Loddlaen sat in a chair and tried to project a calm contempt for this turn of events. Grunting like a pig, Nowec repeatedly rubbed his mustache with the back of his hand.

“It was cursed stupid of you to approach Talidd,” Nowec snarled.

“I didn’t!” Corbyn snapped. “Can’t you get that through your thick skull? I never sent any message to Talidd. I sent those two men to Aberwyn to sue for peace, just like we’d decided.”

Loddlaen swore in Elvish.

“A traitor,” Corbyn went on. “There has to be a traitor in the dun, and he judged Talidd’s mind to a nicety, too.”

“And just who would this traitor be?” Nowec said. “There’s no one here but us and our men, and I can’t see your two lads thinking that up on their own.”

“Just so.” Corbyn stopped pacing to turn on him. “I was wondering about that myself. I’m not the one who received the offer of pardon.”

When Nowec’s hand drifted toward his sword hilt, Loddlaen jumped up and got in between them.

“Don’t be fools,” Loddlaen snapped. “It would have been extremely easy for Rhodry’s men to take the messengers on the road and bribe them then and there.”

Corbyn sighed and held out his hand to Nowec.

“My apologies. I’m all to pieces over this.”

“And so am I.” Nowec shook his hand. “Well, can’t drink spilled ale, can you? The question is, what do we do now?”

“I haven’t given up hope yet,” Corbyn said with a flattering smile at Loddlaen. “Maybe there are other ways to send messages, ones that don’t require horses.”

Loddlaen felt sweat spring up on his back. Aderyn was right outside, waiting and watching for him to try to escape.

“Perhaps.” Loddlaen forced out a smile. “His lordship has been pleased with my subterfuges in the past.”

Corbyn smiled. Nowec began running his fingers through his mustache as if he meant to tear it out.

“If my lords allow,” Loddlaen went on, “I’ll retire to my chamber and consider the problem.”

Loddlaen ran up the staircase to his chamber, barred the door behind him, then flung himself down on his bed. All his talk of Rhodry’s bribing messengers was just so much chatter to keep up the two lords’ morale. He knew that Aderyn had to be the one behind the ruse. It would have been easy for the old man to ensorcel them and inject an image into their minds, to plant a clear and vivid memory of Corbyn telling them the message to Talidd. They would have no way of discovering that the memory was as false as a dream.