The Dragon Revenant (56 page)

“It’s not much of a cut, Your Grace,” Gwin said.

“Better get a chirurgeon anyway, eh?” Sligyn rumbled. “Where’s that blasted Talidd? Curse the man—he’s not much of host, eh?”

And Sligyn was honestly surprised when everyone burst out laughing.

It was well into the evaening watch by the time that Rhodry and his retinue came back to Lord Edar’s dun. Nevyn lingered in the great hall just long enough to hear that the would-be rebels had been properly shamed; then he insisted that Gwin come up to his chamber and have his wound treated. Jill came along, too—she’d done a clumsy but serviceable job of binding the wound earlier—and cut fresh bandages while he washed it out and stitched it up. Painful though the procedure must have been, not a muscle of Gwin’s face moved during it. Nevyn sent him back to the great hall with orders to drink a couple of goblets of mead, then helped Jill as she cleaned up.

“You look sad, child. I would have thought you’d be dancing in glee tonight.”

“Well, I’m happy enough for Rhodry’s sake.”

“Not your own? Come now, soon you’ll have a splendid wedding, and you’ll be the most powerful woman in all Eldidd.”

“Everyone keeps talking about my rotten wedding. Do you realize that Rhodry never even asked me to marry him? He just assumed that I was going to, and so does everyone, and you and Blaen are the worst of the bad lot, and I don’t want to be the wretched most powerful woman in all anywhere, curse you all!”

For a moment he thought she was about to cry, but instead she merely stood there openmouthed and shocked at her own outburst. Nevyn himself was so surprised that it took him a moment to find something to say.

“Indeed? Then what do you want?”

“I want to study dweomer and have Rhodry, too.”

“No reason you can’t.”

“Oh, stop treating me like a child or a half-wit!”

“I wasn’t aware that I was.”

“Then answer me honestly.” Her voice was calm again, even cold. “If I marry Rhodry, am I going to be able to master the dweomer? I don’t mean study the odd bit of lore or the odd mental trick. I want to be a master like you and serve the kingdom like you do, too. A couple of months ago, I could never have said that—it would have sounded conceited—but I know better now. That’s what I want, but if I marry Rhodry and get turned into his chatelaine and castellan and the mother of his heirs and the Goddess herself only knows what else, am I going to be able to have it?”

“You’re not, truly.” He stopped himself from adding, “not in this life, anyway.” She would have to ask before he could reveal that secret. “There just quite simply won’t be enough time.”

“So I thought. But can I just leave him? He needs me.”

For a moment the room spun around him. His face must have gone white, because Jill rushed over and took his arm.

“What’s wrong? Is it your heart? Here, sit down. There’s a big chest right behind you.”

With a sigh Nevyn sat and leaned back against the wall for support.

“My heart’s fine, my thanks. You just took me by surprise, and I
am
getting on a bit, you know. Are you honestly thinking of leaving Rhodry?”

“I am. I suppose you think I’m a fool. Most women would. Or a harridan—most men would think that.”

“I don’t think you’re either, frankly. I will say that the decision has to be yours and yours alone.”

“Well, I rather knew that.” She smiled at him, then turned to pace restlessly back and forth. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of advice, though. Do I have the right to leave him and put the dweomer first?”

“I’m the absolutely worst person in the entire kingdom to ask that question. Once, and a good long time ago it was, too, I had to make this same choice. I chose wrong.”

“You took dweomer instead of the woman you loved?”

“Not instead of, exactly. I could have had both. I was just so greedy and impatient for power that I saw her as a nuisance—which she wouldn’t have been at all—and so like the arrogant dolt I was, I deserted her.”

“I see. But I can’t have both.”

“That’s true enough.”

“Did she need you badly?”

“She did. Very badly, just because of the ugly circumstances she was born into. Without me, she had no life at all.”

“But Rhodry’s gwerbret, and he’s got more prospects in life than any man but the High King himself. I keep saying he needs me, but he doesn’t, really. Ye gods, any lass in the kingdom would throw herself at his feet for the chance to marry him, and there’s hundreds better fit to be a ruler’s wife than I am. How am I going to devote myself to his wretched rhan, when all the time I’ll be wishing I could be studying my craft?”

“That’s all true and splendidly logical, but can you bear to leave him?”

She went still, utterly still, except for the tears that welled up in her eyes and ran in two thin trails down her face.

“Nevyn, I keep feeling like I’m drowning. It’s not even Rhodry himself. It’s his position and his rank and Aberwyn and everything. It’s like a river, and it’ll just sweep me under if I let it.” All at once she tossed her head and laid a hand on her chest. “I really do feel sometimes like I can’t breathe. Do you think I’m daft?”

“I don’t. I think you see things clearly. But you never answered my question. Can you bear to leave him?”

The tears came again, and she stared at the floor for a long time before she answered.

“I can, and I have to. I’m going to do it tonight.” She looked up. “I’m going to do it now, or I never will.”

“I’ll be here and awake.”

She started to speak, then merely nodded a distracted understanding and left the room. For a long time Nevyn stared at the closed door while his hands shook with a hope that he’d never allowed himself before, not once in the long four hundred years since he’d made his rash vow.

Lord Edar’s chamberlain had of course given the gwerbret the most luxurious bedchamber in the broch, a big wedge of a room with an enormous bed, hung round with embroidered panels and covered in embroidered blankets. When Jill came in, she found candles burning in the silver sconces and Rhodry sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed and reading from a long piece of parchment. He tossed it aside and gave her a grin that wrung her heart.

“Edar’s terms of fealty to Aberwyn. I see no reason to change them, but he wanted me to look them over just to be sure, so I did. Ah, my love, it’s so good to have a moment alone with you. I’ve been feeling like a hound on a leash. Every time I try to walk your way, someone yanks me back again.”

When she said nothing, merely stood hesitating at the foot of the bed, his smile disappeared.

“Is somewhat wrong, my love?”

“I can’t marry you.” It came out in a blurt that made her despise herself. “I’ve got to leave you.”

“I’ve never heard a jest I liked less.”

“It’s no jest, Rhoddo. I don’t want to go, but I’ve got to. It’s because of the dweomer.”

“What? I thought we’d settled all that. Back in Elaeno’s ship—remember?”

“I do remember, but I didn’t say everything. I’m saying it now. I’ve got to study, and I can’t study if I’m married to you, and I’m leaving. On the morrow.”

“Just hold your tongue! You’re not doing anything of the sort. If you need time for your studies, well and good, then. Time you shall have. I—we’ll—arrange things somehow. I don’t know how yet, but we will.”

“I know you mean that with the best faith in the world, but it won’t ever happen. Be honest. You know it won’t. There’ll always be one thing or another that needs me to tend it, and if I don’t, then all the courtiers will gossip and tell you what a lazy wife you have, and after all a while, you’ll resent it, too. Or what if everyone starts muttering that I’m a witch? I’ve thought all this out, Rhoddo. What if you deny some lord a thing that he thinks he should have, and then he starts saying it’s because your woman bewitched you?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t want you to go. Jill, how could you do this to me? Ye gods, you risk your life chasing after me, and just when we’re finally safe and I can shower you with comfort and privilege, you say you want to leave.”

“I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.”

“Just to study a lot of moldy old books with Nevyn? What are you going to do, wander around the kingdom with a mule and lance farmers’ boils for them?”

“If I have to, I will. It’s not a bad calling, healing people’s ills.”

“You’re daft!”

“You just can’t understand what the dweomer means—”

“Of course I can’t understand.” His voice was rising steadily. “There’s naught to understand except you’ve gotten this daft idea in your head, and now you won’t listen to reason.”

“Rhodry, it aches my heart to hurt you this way.”

He started to speak, then stopped himself. He got off the bed and walked over to catch her by the shoulders. His hands were so warm and comfortable that she wanted to weep.

“Don’t go. Jill, please. I need you so much.”

“You don’t need me. You just want me.”

“Well, isn’t that enough? I love you more than I love my own life, and that’s not enough?”

“I love you, too, but the dweomer—”

“Oh, curse the dweomer! I don’t give a pig’s fart about dweomer! I want you.”

“And I want you, but I can’t have you and the dweomer—”

“So, I’m only second-best, am I?”

“That’s not what I meant! By the hells, you’re as stubborn as a mule and twice as nasty! Why won’t you listen to what I’m saying?”

“Why won’t you talk sense, then?”

Later it would seem to Jill that they argued for half an eternity. Even at the time she realized she was quarreling only to keep her pain at bay, that she was desperately trying to find some reason to hate or at least despise him, but merely realizing wasn’t enough to make her stop. Rhodry, she supposed, was genuinely furious with her; she needed to believe so, anyway. Round and round they went, the same circling arguments, the very same words, even, until she wondered what she wanted from him, why she was dragging out this agony instead of merely leaving. Finally she realized that she wanted him to say, very simply, that he understood, and that this was the one thing he never would say.

“You don’t love me at all anymore, do you?” By then his voice was hoarse and cracking. “Tell me the truth. It’s some other man, isn’t it?”

“Oh, don’t be an utter dolt! I’ve never loved anyone but you in my whole life.”

“Then why could you possibly want to leave?”

“Because the dweomer—”

“See! It does mean more than me.”

“Not more than you. More than love itself.”

“That’s ridiculous! No woman feels that way. Who is it? It can’t be Nevyn, and Salamander’s back in Bardek, and—”

“Rhodry, hold your ugly tongue! There isn’t any other man. You’re just trying to salve your cursed wounded pride.”

“May the gods curse you! Why shouldn’t I try to find some shred of pride to cling to? I’m the one who’s going to have to announce to the entire rhan of Aberwyn that a silver dagger’s daughter didn’t find me good enough for her.”

All at once she saw the way out. It was a lie, of course, an utter and complete he, but at that moment she was desperate to break the chains of recrimination and hurt that were binding them round.

“Well, I’ve got pride of my own, and how do you think I could live shamed, after you cast me off one fine day?”

“Jill! I’d never do such a thing! Haven’t you listened to one cursed word I’ve said?”

“There’s somewhat you don’t know.” She turned away, embarrassed that she’d stoop so low.

“What is it?” His voice had changed to a frantic sort of worry. “What’s so wrong?”

“I’m barren, you dolt. Couldn’t you put that together on your own? After all these years, you’ve never gotten me with child, and there’s little Rhodda at home, waiting to call you father. It’s not your trouble.”

He was silent for so long that she finally forced herself to look at him. For the first time in that miserable evening he was weeping. She felt that she could taste her lies as a fetid thing in her mouth, but she forced herself to go on.

“You’ve got to think of Aberwyn, Rhodry. What’s going to happen to the rhan in twenty years’ time when there’s still no heir? I can’t do that to Aberwyn and her people, not even for the man I love, and I love you with all my heart and soul.”

“You could still—” He stopped his rush of words, hesitated, then wiped the tears from his face before he went on. “Forgive me. I was going to say that you could still be my mistress, but you can’t. After everything we’ve gone through, the battles we’ve fought—you couldn’t live like that.”

“Thank the Goddess herself that you understand! I refuse to grovel around your wife and hear her gloat every time she has a babe.”

“Oh, my love.” He could barely speak. “Of course you couldn’t do that. Ah, by every god in the sky! I’m sorry I pushed you this far. Forgive me. Oh ye gods, forgive me, too, for cursing the bitter Wyrd you’ve given me!”

“You do understand why I’m going?”

“I do.”

He slipped his arms around her and held her close while they sobbed in one another’s arms, but she was weeping because she hated herself for lying to him. It’s a silver dagger’s ruse, she told herself, and that’s all you are at heart, a rotten silver dagger still.