The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (46 page)

The
N
orth
C
ountry

WINTER 1117

Sleep and Trance are Lord Death’s twin sisters. A master of the dweomer befriends all three
.

—The Secret Book of
Cadwallon the Druid

Much to Niffa’s surprise, Verrarc and Raena came to her wedding. By whining and begging and generally clamping on to the subject like a stubborn ferret, she’d talked her mother into allowing the wedding early, on the first day of the new year, which Deverry folk call “Samaen.” During their long years of slavery, the people of the Rhiddaer had adopted the holiday and brought it with them to their new home. Although they considered the eve as ill-omened as we do in Deverry, they judged the first day of the new year itself a splendid time for starting something new.

When the sun hung nearly to the horizon, Niffa and her family trudged up the hill to the assembly ground near the peak of Citadel. In front of the stone council hall, which sported a colonnade and a flight of shallow steps, stretched a plaza paved with bricks. The servants of the Spirit Talker were sweeping it free of snow with brooms made of twigs, while Werda herself stood beside the heaped wood of an unlit bonfire. A tall woman, thin as the twigs, she wore her long grey hair down free, a sweep of silver over her blue cloak. In the fading light her hair seemed to gleam like the moon, the home of the spirits she had mastered.

Demet’s family, a veritable crowd of brothers and sisters, their wives, husbands, and children, came hurrying across the plaza, all talking and laughing except for Demet, who was smiling in tight triumph. When she saw him, Niffa felt her own blood pounding at her throat. He looked so handsome that night, blond and tall, and they had shared so many kisses and caresses. Tonight, finally—

“Niffa!” Dera’s voice snapped. “Stop smirking like that! It be unseemly.”

“I will, Mam.” Niffa wiped her smile away and tried to look composed and aloof. “I do apologize.”

Demet and his family stood on one side of the bonfire while Niffa and hers took the other. Werda’s manservant knelt and began fussing with flint and tinderbox; in this cold he struggled to raise a spark, but a wedding fire had to be kindled fresh, not lit from a hearth. Niffa looked round at the crowd of guests and saw off to one side Verrarc and Raena, splendid in a blue wool cloak with a huge clasp of gold and moonstones at one shoulder.

“What be her business here?” Niffa whispered to her mother.

“Well, it were needful I invite Verro for the formality of the thing. Never did I think he’d come, but if he did, well then, his woman be welcome, too.”

“No one did ask me if she be welcome.”

“Hush! And will you start your married life a miser, grudging hospitality?”

Niffa scowled down at the snow. She refused to apologize. Never would I have asked a viper to my wedding, either, she thought. Yet why was she so sure that Raena would somehow bite and poison them all? The patch of snow she so assiduously studied suddenly turned gold, and she heard the crackling of flames on kindling. She looked up to find fire blazing in the center of the heaped-up wood and spreading gold flames along the tendrils of dry twigs. It seemed to her that she saw the doom of Cerr Cawnen in that fire, that Raena would be the spark that burnt them all.

“What troubles you?” Dera caught her arm. “You look like death.”

“Naught, naught.” Niffa swallowed hard. “I uh, I well, I’ll be missing you, Mam, and living at home with you and the weasels.”

“Ah.” Dera patted her arm. “It be a hard thing, to leave your mother’s hearth, but truly, you’ll dwell nearby, just across the lake. At least you’ll not be going to some strange village. And we can spare you a ferret for a pet, like, when a litter comes.”

“If my new mother do allow.”

Demet’s mother, Emla, was standing next to her son. She smiled and waved at Dera and Niffa impartially. A tall grey-haired woman with a long sharp jaw, she was beaming with excitement. At least Demet’s family had wholeheartedly approved of his choice for a wife rather than spurning the ratter’s girl. Since Demet’s father had married a cousin, their family carried a strong stamp: like Demet they were all tall, blond, and rangy, even young Cotzi at ten summers, with angular faces that were handsome on the men if a bit unfortunate on the women. Small and dark as she was, Niffa felt like a ferret about to frolic with greyhounds. She could only hope they wouldn’t bite.

The ceremony itself went fast. With a sweep of one arm Werda called Niffa and Demet up to stand next to her near the fire. The crowd stood facing the three of them.

“Before us stand a young man and a young woman who would marry,” Werda began. “When we fled our homeland, when our homes were stolen from us by the Slavers, our gods did travel with us to the free lands. Thanks to them we did survive, and in return, they demand of us that we grow mighty in numbers, that we may worship them always and tend their earthly homes. Demet, a man must father many sons to gain the favor of the gods. Niffa, a woman must birth many daughters to gain the favor of the goddesses.” Werda paused to look at each of them. “Be you ready to lift up the burden of your people?”

“I am,” they answered together.

“Then the gods will bless you.” Werda paused again, this time looking over the crowd. “Kinsfolk and friends, you have seen these young people speak out in front of you. From now on, Demet is Niffa’s man, and she is his woman. It be needful for all of you to honor their marriage.” She was looking directly at Raena and Verrarc. “It be a holy thing, marriage. Let none meddle with it, for such do shame their tribe and kin.”

Niffa could see Raena wince and look down at the ground. Verrarc’s smile froze, but he kept it as he stared right back at the Spirit Talker. Silence hung over the crowd as a few at a time everyone turned to watch. At last Verrarc broke and looked away. With a little smile Werda continued.

“May the gods bless you always with health and children. May you always have enough food to feed your family, Demet, and may you, Niffa, divide it up evenly among them.”

Demet caught Niffa around the waist, pulled her close, and kissed her. The crowd broke out cheering and clapping. When she took another kiss from him, everyone laughed. She let him go and turned to wave just in time to see Verrarc and Raena slipping away into the darkness. Good! she thought. I’ll not have that woman poisoning our rejoicing time!

The rest of the guests all trooped downhill to Dera and Lael’s house, where Verrarc’s gift of a barrel of ale stood open and ready. All of the guests had brought their own tankards and some food, too, to make a resplendent feast of bread, sausages, cheese, and other winter foods. Niffa and Demet stood by the door and greeted each guest in turn. While Dera heaped wood on the hearth for light, Lael placed himself by the ale barrel and started dipping it out into the wall of tankards thrust his way. The women began handing out food; everyone was laughing and talking.

“Never have I been this happy before,” Niffa said. “Not in my whole life.”

“No more I.” Demet slipped his arm around her waist and squeezed. “I be truly glad we didn’t have to wait till the dark time of the year.”

“Oh, I knew I could bring Mam round.”

He laughed and kissed her. She started to put her arms around his neck, but she saw someone coming down the side path: Verrarc, but alone.

“And a good eve to you, Mistress Niffa,” Verrarc said. “I did think I’d stop by and have a word with your mother, if that sit well with you.”

All at once Niffa felt like that miser indeed, begrudging him and his woman when she felt so rich with happiness.

“Of course, Councilman! And where be Raena?”

“Ah well, she did feel a bit poorly and did decide to stop at home.”

“But you come in, then, man,” Demet said. “And I thank you, too, for that barrel of ale.”

Verrarc smiled at him in an oddly grateful manner, as if Demet were the one who was rich and powerful, and slipped into the party. Niffa watched him as he stayed close to the wall and worked his way round to Dera, standing on the far side of the room.

“It mayhap were a bit sour-minded of Werda,” Demet muttered, “to shame him and his woman that way.”

“She deserved it,” Niffa snapped. “Sleeping ’twixt two pairs of blankets like that.”

“Well, it gladdens my heart to hear that you don’t approve of such carrying on.”

They laughed and kissed each other.

The laughter and the talk went on until the ale barrel stood empty and the table clean of food. While Dera wiped the table down with a rag, Lael went into the other room and brought out a new wool blanket. He laid it over the table, and one thing at a time Niffa placed her dowry upon it: two dresses, a nightshirt, a long-handled cooking knife, an iron griddle of Dwarven workmanship, and four copper pieces in a leather pouch. Her cloak she kept out to wear. When Lael tied the corners of the blanket together to form a proper bundle, Niffa could see his eyes glistening with tears. Dera wept openly, snuffling into a large rag. Emla flung a long arm around her shoulders.

“I do keep thinking of our Jahdo,” Dera said. “I do wish with all my heart that he’d be here seeing his sister marry.”

Councilman Verrarc looked abruptly at the floor and started studying the planks.

“He’ll come home, sister,” Emla said. “Come the spring we’ll bring the god of the roads a sacrifice to see him safely home.”

Lael handed the bundle to Cronin, Demet’s father, who took it in both long, calloused hands.

“Come along, daughter,” Cronin said. “It be time to go home.”

Cronin and Emla led the way as Niffa, Demet, and the wedding guests left the house and her old family behind. When Niffa glanced back, she saw that Verrarc stayed, talking with Dera in the pool of firelight; then her father shut the door. Laughing and singing, the wedding procession wound its way down Citadel to the jetty at the lake shore, where much to everyone’s surprise, they found the Council barge waiting, all decked out with lanterns so that it glowed in the misty night.

“Councilman Verrarc’s orders,” the barge captain said. “Congratulations, young Niffa! Now come you all aboard, and we’ll set to poling you across.”

More laughter and a lot of cheers—Verrarc’s generosity had just spared the wedding party a long drunken row. As the barge pushed off, the men in the party began to sing, trading off verses of songs bawdy enough to make Niffa blush.

Demet’s family lived in a rambling compound built partly on stilts, partly on solid ground, over by the south city gate. In the big common room a fire lay ready in the hearth. As custom demanded, Demet knelt down to light it fresh while the guests threw off cloaks and headed for the second feast of the night, spread out on a pair of tables at the far side of the room.

“Come along, daughter,” Emla said. “And I’ll bestow upon you a chamber of your own.”

Since they were the youngest married couple in the compound, they received a plank room out over the lake. Although it stood the farthest from the central hearth, the warmth from the water filtered up through cracks in the floor. Niffa could hear the lake splashing against the pilings underneath, and the room sighed like a ship in the wind. The room held a wooden chest, where Niffa unpacked her dowry goods, and a big square bed. Emla hung the candle lantern from a long brass hook on the wall.

“There be no one to either side of you here,” she said with a wink. “You’d best be making yourself comfortable. Demet will be finishing that fire about now.”

With another wink Emla took herself off to her guests. Niffa laid her new blanket over the old ones, then hung her cloak on another hook near the door. Since the room turned out warmer than she’d been expecting, she took off her dresses as well and tossed them into the chest. With a little shiver for the cold sheets she slid into bed and found a nice warm hollow in the old mattress.

Distantly she heard the singing in the common room and more immediately the water sounds. They threatened to turn into omen-voices, whispering of secrets and danger, but Demet opened the door and slipped into the room.

“You do look so beautiful in my bed like that,” he said, smiling. “I’ll treasure this night forever.”

“And so will I. Come get warm.”

He hung his cloak over hers, then stripped off his tunic and threw it into the wood chest. When he sat down on the bed to unlace his boots, she ran a hand down his bare back and felt him tremble. At last he pulled the boots off and dropped them onto the floor, then stood to strip off his leggings. She held up the blankets and let him roll into bed.