The Phantom Queen Awakes (13 page)

“And just why am I such a lucky sight?” he
said. “Has someone been taken ill?”

“Indeed, good Nevyn, or stranger than ill,”
Olwen said. “My mam and me, we were a-gathering of the laver weed,
and there was this castaway, come out of the water. She’s
half-dead, poor thing.”

“Ye gods! Here, I’ve not heard of any
shipwrecks.”

“No more have I. It’s a strange
thing.”

Nevyn tucked his trowel into the pocket of his
muddy brown trousers, then walked with her to the edge of the
cliff. Down on the beach, Cobylla had managed to get the lass to
the foot of the stairs. When Olwen called out, Cobylla looked up
and waved.

“She can’t climb,” Cobylla yelled up. “She’s
much too weak.”

As if to prove the point, the Bardekian
dropped to her knees on the sand with the suddenness of a sack of
meal falling from a wagon.

“Here, hold this.” Nevyn handed Olwen the
clump of herbs.

The old man trotted down the steps with a
vigor surprising in one his age. When he reached the women below,
he picked the lass up as easily as if she’d indeed been that sack
of meal. He said a few words to Cobylla, then carried the lass up
the steps while Olwen watched, amazed. Cobylla followed more
slowly, puffing and panting all the way. At the top Nevyn set the
lass down in the grass; she stared up at him, seemed to be about to
speak, then merely stared the more. Nevyn turned, reached down, and
gave Cobylla a hand up over the edge. Cobylla put her laver basket
down and began to wipe her sweaty face on the wide sleeve of her
dress.

“Well, it was lucky, all right,” Nevyn said to
Olwen. “That I was here, I mean. You have my thanks for rescuing
this poor child.”

“Why?” Olwen said. “Is it that you know her or
suchlike?”

“I don’t. It’s just that she’s very near
death.”

“I did wonder about that.” Olwen was about to
ask more, but she glanced at Cobylla and found her mother waving a
frantic hand behind Nevyn’s back. Olwen knew that wave; it meant
hold your tongue or get a good slap for disobeying. Still, she
couldn’t resist one more question. “She comes from far away,
doesn’t she?”

“Very far,” Nevyn said. “Hand me back those
herbs, and I’ll just be taking them and her both back to the dun
with me.”

Olwen and Cobylla stood together and watched
Nevyn saddle and fetch his mule. Although the canvas packs looked
bulky, close up Olwen could see how lightly they sat on the
animal’s back. She held the mule’s lead rope while Nevyn lifted the
lass up and settled her behind the pack saddle. Olwen got her
biggest surprise, though, when Nevyn spoke to the lass in the
strange language: Bardekian, it had to be, because the lass
answered him readily enough.

“Just telling her to hang on tight,” Nevyn
said to Olwen. “My thanks again, and we’ll be off.”

Nevyn strode away, leading the mule through
the grass toward the road. The lass clung to the swaying canvas as
the mule picked its way over the uneven ground.

“It’s a good thing you held your tongue.”
Cobylla whispered. “I’d not have you prying into old Nevyn’s
affairs.”

“What? Why not?”

“Why not, she says, and her my own daughter!”
Cobylla rolled her eyes heavenward. “The old man’s a sorcerer,
that’s why! Ask too many questions and get changed right into a
frog, most like, or somewhat else nasty.”

“So that tale’s true, Mam? I’d heard it,
but―”

“I’ve had it on the best authority, from Lady
Lovyan’s own maid. And would the noble-born be sheltering a common
old herbman in their dun and treating him like a lord? Of course
not! But Nevyn always takes our lady’s hospitality when he’s in
Cannobaen, doesn’t he? So, well, then, there you are!”

By this time Nevyn and his laden mule had
reached the dirt road. Olwen stared, her mouth slack as a
half-wit’s, as they turned onto it, heading west, an ordinary old
man leading an ordinary brown mule ― but then, there was nothing
ordinary about the lass from far away, and he had spoken to her in
her own strange tongue.

“Come along,” Cobylla snapped. “Let’s get
along home. We need to get this laver into brine before it shrivels
in the heat.”

Although Olwen followed her mother, she looked
back every now and then until at last, Nevyn and his mule had
passed beyond her sight.

****

Some miles west of town, Dun Cannobaen stood
near the edge of the cliffs. In most ways it was a typical Deverry
dun; a high stone wall enclosed a ward, cluttered with sheds and
pig-sties, stables and a smithy, while in the middle rose a squat
round broch tower. At the moment, a dragon pennant fluttered at the
top of the broch to show that Lady Lovyan, wife to Gwerbret Tingyr
of Aberwyn, was in residence. Outside the walls, however, rose a
marvel: a slender tower some hundred and fifty feet tall, wound
round by a flight of stone steps: the Cannobaen light. At night a
lightkeeper tended a fire on top of the tower to warn ships of the
dangerous shoals just off-shore.

Bardek merchant ships came close to wrecking
themselves on those shoals even in good weather. In the winter,
when the Cannobaen light guttered and turned faint in the driving
winds and rain, a ship that left its departure too late in the year
would come to grief, generally losing all hands. One summer storm
had swept over Dun Cannobaen just a few days past, but fortunately
the light had held steady, and no ships had foundered, not as far
as Nevyn knew. The lass clinging to the pack saddle presented
something of a mystery.

When Nevyn led his mule through the dun’s
gate, a page came running, followed by Lady Lovyan’s youngest son.
Lord Rhodry Maelwaedd hovered on the edge of manhood, a slender lad
turned positively thin by a bad illness the winter past. Although
he had the typical Eldidd coloring of raven-dark hair and
cornflower blue eyes, he was unusually handsome, almost girlishly
beautiful with a blush of tanned skin over his high cheekbones. He
bowed to Nevyn, then stood staring at the lass.

“A castaway,” Nevyn said, “or at least, she
came out of the sea this morning. It looks like you’ve been taking
the sun.”

“I have,” Rhodry said, “just as you ordered.
Here, shall I carry that poor little lass inside for
you?”

“I can carry her myself.” Nevyn tossed him the
leadrope of the mule. “You might stable Old Brown here for me. Just
leave the packs on the pack saddle. I’ll fetch them in a
bit.”

Rhodry may have been noble-born, but like
everyone else in the dun, he did whatever Nevyn told him to do. The
page hurried off to find Lady Lovyan. Nevyn lifted the Bardekian
lass off the mule’s back, then carried her inside to the great
hall, a round chamber filling the entire ground floor of the broch.
On opposite sides of the hall, a group of tables stood by a hearth,
a battered and chipped cluster of plank tables and benches by the
servants’ and warband’s hearth, a nicely polished table and chairs
at the honor hearth.

At the servant’s hearth a shabby lass stood
stirring a simmering kettle that held stew from the smell of it.
Too rich, Nevyn decided, for a patient who had starved for several
days. He carried the lass over to the table of honor, set her down
on a chair, then strode over to the opposite hearth.

“Is there breakfast porridge left?” he
said.

“Always, my lord,” the servant
said.

“Fetch me a bowlful, will you? But water it
down. It needs to be very thin.”

When Nevyn returned to the table of honor, he
found the castaway sitting in the straw on the floor.

“Here!” he said in Bardekian. “Wasn’t that
chair comfortable enough?”

“I can’t sit there.” She whispered so softly
that he had to lean over to hear her.

“You were told you had to sit below any free
man or woman?”

She nodded.

“What’s your name, girl?”

She never answered, merely stared at the straw
on the floor. Nevyn would have continued questioning her, but Lady
Lovyan was coming down the winding stairway in the center of the
great hall. This stairway was a piece of dwarven work, and
something of a marvel in itself, a tight spiral of iron rather than
the usual stone.

Although she’d grown stout over the years,
Lovyan was still a handsome woman with just one thick streak of
gray in her dark hair. That morning she’d dressed in blue, with a
kirtle in the blue and green plaid of Aberwyn round her waist. She
stood by the chair at the head of the table of honor and considered
the lass, who kept her gaze firmly on the floor.

“So this is our castaway?” Lovyan said. “The
poor child!”

“She is,” Nevyn said. “She’s utterly
exhausted.”

“No doubt.” Lovyan paused to sit down,
smoothing her dresses under her. “We had that one bad storm, but I
certainly haven’t heard of any shipwrecks. She comes from far away,
doesn’t she?”

“She does,” Nevyn said. “Bardek, in fact.
Fortunately I know their language. I studied physick there some
years back.”

“Fortunate, indeed! Do tell her she’s safe
here.”

“I already have. She’s either too drained to
speak much, or she’s simply not willing to tell me her name. Huh.”
He paused to consider the problem. “Now, if there wasn’t any
shipwreck, she may have simply fallen from the deck or even jumped.
I do know she was a slave. There’s a brand right there on the back
of her neck.”

Lovyan winced with a little shudder of
disgust. The lass sat stone-still between them on the floor, her
hands clasped in her lap and her gaze fixed on the empty air. When
Nevyn opened the second sight, he could see that her pale grey aura
hung shrunken around her ― except in one location. Around her
swollen belly flickered light of a silvery-blue.

The servant hurried over, carrying a wooden
bowl. She curtsied to her ladyship, handed Nevyn the bowl, and
scurried off again. Nevyn inspected the bowl ― lukewarm oat
porridge, liberally swirled with butter and thinned with boiled
water ― then knelt beside the girl.

“Can you swallow a spoonful of this?” he said
in Bardekian. “It’s very smooth and should go down easily, even
with your mouth so cracked and sore.”

When he held out a full spoonful, she turned
her head away.

“Come now, surely you must be starved after
being in the water for so long.”

She neither moved nor spoke.

“You’re with child.” Nevyn brought out his
best weapon. “Do you want your child to die?”

She jerked her head up.

“I won’t hurt you,” Nevyn went on. “No one
here is going to turn you over to your master. You’re escaping from
slavery, aren’t you?”

At that she looked up and turned toward him.
When he held out the spoon again, she took the mouthful. Her lips
moved as she chewed the food and swallowed it.

“No,” she spoke at last. “Not escaping.” She
smiled, but there was something terrifying in that smile, her thin
lips drawn back from strong white teeth, her eyes far too wide and
unblinking. “There’s no escaping now.”

“Well, we’ll just see about that! If they come
looking for you, they’ll have our ladyship’s troop of soldiers to
deal with.”

Nevyn offered her another spoonful, which she
took. When she held out her hands, he gave her the bowl. She
continued eating, but slowly, carefully, pausing between each
bite.

“Why won’t you tell me your name?” Nevyn said
during one of these pauses.

“I have no name.”

“Come now, surely they must have called you
something!”

“Before, I was Evy.”

“Before what?”

She took another spoonful of the porridge and
looked away. Nevyn waited, but she held to her silence until she’d
finished the porridge. She handed him the bowl and
spoon.

“Thank you.” She folded her hands in her
lap.

“Do you want more water?” Nevyn
said.

“Please.”

The page, all goggle eyes and curiosity,
brought a tankard of water. She held it in both hands to drink in
cautious sips.

“Now, you won’t be able to eat much at one
time for a few days,” Nevyn said. “But I’ll make sure you get
plenty of food. We don’t want you dying, after all.”

“Oh, I’m already dead.” She looked at him,
then began to laugh, a high-pitched hysterical giggle.

When Nevyn grabbed her by the shoulders, she
fell silent, but her eyes once again grew wide with terror. An
animal in a trap, Nevyn thought. His own eyes began to ache until
at last she blinked and released them both.

“Why did you say that?” Nevyn made his voice
as soft and gentle as he could.

She turned her head away, then lifted the
tankard again and resumed drinking. Nevyn stood up with a
shrug.

“I’d be hysterical, too,” Lovyan said, “if I’d
been adrift at sea for days.”

“So would I, most like,” Nevyn said. “But I
think me somewhat stranger’s at work here, my lady. I’ve got an
idea of what it might be, but I hope to every god that I’m
wrong.”