The year 837. Olaedd the high priest died in the spring. Retyc
of Hendyr was appointed high priest by the northern conclave. In
the summer a little lad with falling sickness was brought to the
temple. He had a seizure at Retyc’s feet, and cried out that
the king was coming from the west. When he awakened, he repeated
that the king was in the west, but he could give no reason why he
said it. Retyc declared the speaking a true one . . .
—The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn
Up on the dais of the great hall, Ogretoryc, king of all Eldidd
and what little of Deverry he could hold with his army, was
sitting in his high-backed carved chair. Behind him hung a finely
worked tapestry depicting Epona riding with her retinue of
godlets in the Otherlands. To either side of the tapestry were
long banners in blue and silver cloth, with the Dragon of
Eldidd appliqued in green. At the king’s feet lay a blue
and green carpet, covering a floor of inlaid slate. His bard sat
nearby; his picked guard stood behind him; two pages
waited with a golden goblet and a pitcher of mead. The king,
however, was asleep, slumped to one side and snoring, a
line of drool running from his toothless mouth down his
wrinkled, flabby chin. Out in the circular expanse of the
hall, the noble lords, their warbands, and the king’s own
men went on with their feasting and tried to ignore their
liege lord.
Because they were mercenaries, the silver daggers were seated
in the back and to one side of the hall, where they caught the
drafts from the door and the smoke from the fire, but by leaning
back on his bench, Maddyn could keep an eye on the dais and the
sleeping king. In only a few minutes, Prince Cadlew, heir to the
throne, mounted the dais and hesitantly went over to his father. A
lean man, his face positively gaunt, Cadlew was
tight-muscled and hard from long years in the saddle. His
raven-dark hair was heavily streaked with gray, and his
cornflower-blue eyes were webbed with crow’s-foot wrinkles,
yet he could still swing a sword with the best of them. Cadlew caught the king’s arm and shook him
awake. Surrounded by guards, with the pages trailing uncertainly
behind, the prince led his father away. The entire hall sighed in
relief. Caradoc leaned over to whisper to Maddyn.
“I’ll wager there’s plenty of men who’d rather see our
prince sitting on that fancy chair.”
“It’d be a safe wager, sure enough. Here, I’ve
been stewing with curiosity. What did the prince say when he called
you to his chamber this afternoon?”
“Offered to take us into his warband. I turned him
down.”
“You what?!”
“Turned him down.” Caradoc paused for a calm sip of
mead. “Thanked him for the honor, mind, but I’d rather
negotiate our wages summer to summer than swear fealty.”
“Ah, curse you to the ninth hell!”
“Listen, Maddo. I know it sounds splendid to think of
being honorable men again and all that, but a silver dagger’s
got to be free to change sides if he doesn’t want to hang
after a defeat.”
“Well, true-spoken. We’ve changed sides too often
before to be treated honorably, no matter what a prince says about
us.”
“Just that. Not a word of this to the others,
mind.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. You should know that
we’d all follow you to the death.”
Caradoc looked away, tears in his eyes. Maddyn was too
embarrassed to do more than leave him his silence.
While he sipped his mead, Maddyn considered the troop,
seventy-five strong, and everyone of them a blood-besotted man who
fought like a demon from hell. It had taken Caradoc three years,
but he’d scraped and scrounged and bargained until he had a
troop so valuable that the prince would consider taking them into
his own warband. Every one of them, too, had one of Otho’s
mysterious daggers at his belt. Some of the best smiths in the
king’s court had gone down on their knees to beg the dwarf
for the secret of that metal, but not even the offer of whole sacks
of gold coins and jewels would have softened Otho’s stance.
Once he had remarked to Maddyn that someday, when he found a
deserving lad, he’d pass the secret on, but so far, no such
paragon of smithly virtue had ever appeared.
After a hard summer’s fighting, the men of Eldidd, paid
and pledged alike, were back in winter quarters in the king’s
palace at Abernaudd. They’d fought late, that autumn,
skirmishing in the hills with Cerrmor troops, or riding raids up to the borders of
Pyrdon, which the people of Eldidd still insisted on calling a
rebellious province. The rumors were going round that in the spring
they’d make a proper attack on Pyrdon, but those rumors went
round every winter. The truth was that Eldidd couldn’t afford
to drain off men and supplies to conquer Pyrdon when it had two
bigger enemies at its eastern borders. Maddyn frankly didn’t
care where they rode in the spring. All that mattered was that for
the winter they’d be well fed and warm.
To avoid drunken brawls between his men and the king’s,
Caradoc led the silver daggers back to their own barracks before
the great feast was truly over. As they crossed the ward, Maddyn
lingered to walk with Caudyr, whose clubfoot slowed him down. With
the clatter of hooves and a jingle of tack, a squad of the
king’s personal guard came through the gates. Back from a
cold, long patrol, they were hungry and eager to get to the warm
feast inside. Even though there was plenty of room to pass, they
started cursing and yelling at Maddyn and Caudyr to move aside.
They were both willing, but Caudyr had no choice but to lurch
slowly along. One of the horsemen leaned over in his saddle.
“Move your cursed ass, rabbit! They should have drowned a
lame runt like you at birth.”
When most of the squad laughed, Maddyn swirled around, reaching
for his sword, but Caudyr grabbed his arm.
“It’s not worth it. I’m used to being the butt
of a jest.”
As they went on, Caudyr tried to hurry.
“Look at him hop!” called another guardsman.
“You were right enough about the rabbits.”
At that, the squad leader, who’d drifted on ahead, turned
his horse and trotted back.
“Hold your tongues, you bastards!” It was young
Owaen, and he was furious. “Who are you to mock a man for a
trouble that the gods gave him?”
“Oh, listen to you, lad!”
Like a bow shot, Owaen was out of his saddle. He ran over to the
guardsman and grabbed, pulling him down and dumping him on the
cobbles before the startled fellow could react. With an oath, the
man leapt up and swung at him, but Owaen dropped him with one
punch. The laughter and catcalls abruptly stopped.
“I don’t want to hear anyone else mock a man for a
trouble he can’t help.”
Except for the nervous horses, stamping restless hooves, the
ward was dead silent. Puzzled as much as pleased, Maddyn kept his
eyes on Owaen, who was barely seventeen, for all that he’d
been riding to war for the past three years. Normally he was the
most arrogant man Maddyn had ever met. Wearing the Eldidd dragons
on his shirt wasn’t enough for Owaen, who had his own device
of a striking falcon marked on his shirt, his dagger, his
saddle—on every piece of gear he owned, from the look of it.
He was also the best swordsman in the guard, if not the entire
kingdom, and his fellow riders knew it. When the squad dismounted,
it was only to pick up the unconscious man and sling him over his
saddle to carry him away. With a small, friendly nod in
Caudyr’s direction, Owaen followed them.
“Now that’s a puzzle and a half,” Caudyr said.
“Owaen’s the last man I ever thought would do such a
thing.”
“No more did I. I know that Caradoc thinks highly of the
lad. Maybe he’s right, after all.”
In the barracks a couple of the men were building a fire in the
stone hearth. Others sat on the line of bunks and talked of dice
games. Pale, mousy Argyn, who was one of the most cold-blooded and
vicious killers in the warband, was already asleep, but for all
that he was snoring like a summer storm, no one disturbed him to
shut him up. The long room smelled of sweat, woodsmoke, and horses,
especially of horses, since the troop’s mounts were stabled
directly below the slatted floor. To Maddyn, it was a comfortable
kind of smell that said home to him after all these years of riding
in one warband or another. He sat down on his bunk and took his
harp out of its padded leather bag.
“Here, Maddo!” Aethan called out. “For the
love of every god in the Otherlands, don’t sing that same
blasted song about King Bran’s cattle raid, will you?”
“Ah, hold your tongue. I’m trying to learn it.”
“And don’t we all know it?” Caradoc broke in.
“I’m as sick as I can be of you missing that stanza in
the middle and going back over it.”
“As the captain orders. But don’t be taking my head
off, then, for never knowing a new song.”
In sheer annoyance he put the harp away and stomped out of tne
barracks, followed by a small crowd of disappointed Wildfolk, who
tugged at his sleeve and his brigga leg to try to get him to go
back and sing. When he ignored them, they disappeared, a few at
a time, but all of them with reproachful looks on their tiny
faces. He went straight to the kitchen hut, where there was a
scullery lass, Clwna, who liked him well enough to sneak out to the
hayloft with him every now and then. By his reckoning, she should
have been done with her work. The kitchen hut’s door was open
to let a cheerful spill of light fall across the cobbles, and
clustered around it were the king’s hunting dogs, waiting
hopefully for scraps. Maddyn kicked his way through the pack and
stood in the doorway. The scullery boys were washing the last of
the kettles at the hearth, and the cook herself, a gray-haired,
woman with enormous, muscular arms, was perched on a tall stool
and eating her own dinner out of a wooden bowl.
“I know what you’re after, silver dagger,
Clwna’s gone already, and no doubt with another of
you lads.”
“No doubt. With my lady’s gracious permission,
I’ll wait here for a bit to see if she comes back.”
The cook snorted and pushed a strand of hair back from her
forehead with her little finger.
“You silver daggers are a strange lot. Most men
would be howling with, rage if their wench slipped out with another
lad.”
“We share what we get when we can get it.
I’m just glad that Clwna’s a sensible lass.”
“Sensible, hah! If you call it sensible to get yourself
known as one of the silver daggers’ women. I’m fair
minded to beat some sense into the lass, I
am.”
“Oh, now here! How could, you be so cruel to deny us a
bit of comfort, when we’re fighting for the very honor of
Eldidd?”
“Listen to him!” The cook rolled her eyes heavenward
to invoke the gods. “Out of my kitchen, bard! You’re
giving the scullery lads wrong ideas.”
Maddyn made her a mocking bow and left, shoving his way
through the dogs. As he crossed the ward, it
occurred to him that the entire troop had
been in the barracks when he’d left it. While he was
willing to share Clwna with other silver
daggers, the thought of sharing her with an outsider griped
his soul. He ducked inside the back door of the great hall and
snagged himself a torch from one of the sconces, then searched
through the ward with a growing sense of righteous
irritation. In the aftermath of the feast there were lots of
people about: servants bringing firewood and barrels of ale,
glutted riders strolling slowly back to barracks or privy,
serving lasses intent on flirtations of their own or running similar errands for their noble mistresses. About halfway to the
stables he saw his prey—Clwna walking along arm in arm with
one of the king’s guard. From the disarray of her dresses and
the bit of straw in her hair, Maddyn knew that his suspicions were
justified. Clwna herself settled any lingering doubt by screaming
the moment she saw him.
“So!” Maddyn held the torch up like a householder
apprehending a thief. “And what’s all this,
lass?”
Clwna made a miserable little shriek and stuffed her knuckles
into her mouth. With his hand on his sword hilt, Owaen stepped
forward into the pool of light. Maddyn realized that the situation
could easily go beyond irritation to danger.
“What’s it to you, you little dog?” Owaen
snapped. “The lady happens to prefer a real man instead of a
bondsman with a sword.”
It took every scrap of will that Maddyn possessed to stop
himself from hitting Owaen in the face with the flaming torch. In
his rage he was only dimly aware that they were gathering a crowd,
but he did hear Clwna nattering on and on to some sympathetic
listener. Owaen stood smiling at him, his mouth a twist of utter
smugness.
“Well, come on, old man,” he said at last.
“Don’t you have a word to say to me?”
“Oh, I’ll have plenty of words, little lad. You
forget that you’re talking to a bard. I haven’t made a
good flyting song in a long, long time.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Owaen’s voice was a
childlike howl of indignation. “That’s not
fair!”
At that the ring of onlookers burst out laughing; for all his
swordcraft, he looked such an outraged boy standing there that
Maddyn had to chuckle himself, thinking that in truth it hardly
mattered who tumbled Clwna around in the hay. He was just about to
say something conciliatory to the lad when Owaen, his face blushing
red, unbuckled his sword belt and threw it onto the cobbles.
“Well and good, then, bard!” he snarled.
“It’s breaking geis to draw on you, but hand that torch
to someone, and I’ll grind your face in the stones for
you!”
“Oh, for the sake of every god in the sky, Owaen,”
Maddyn said wearily. “She’s hardly
worth—”
Owaen swung at him, an open-handed slap that he dodged barely in
time. At that there were yells, and a couple of men in the crowd leaped forward and grabbed the lad. Howling and swearing,
he tried to break free, but they dragged him back and held him. By
the blazons on their shirts Maddyn could tell that they were
guardsmen, too. The reason for this unexpected civility pushed his
way through the onlookers.
“Now, what’s all this?” said Wevryl, captain
of the king’s guard. “Owaen, by the black hairy ass of
the Lord of Hell! I swear that Trouble was your dam and Twice
Trouble your grandam! What was he doing to you, bard?”
“Naught, truly, but making a fool of himself.”
“My apologies!” Clwna broke in with a wail. “I
never meant to cause trouble, Maddo.” She paused for a couple
of moist sobs. “Truly I didn’t.”
“Oh, over a lass, was it?” The captain looked
profoundly annoyed. “The same tedious old horse dung, is it?
Ye gods, it’s only fall! What are you lads going to be like
when the winter sets in, eh? Very well, bard. Take the lass away,
will you? Owaen, as for you, it’ll be a couple of lashes out
in the ward tomorrow morn. I’ll not be having trouble over a
kitchen slut.”
Owaen’s face drained dead white. In the crowd, a couple of
men snickered.
“Oh, here, Captain,” Maddyn said. “If
you’re flogging him for my sake, there’s no
need.”
“Not for your sake—for the sake of peace in the dun.
You might pass that on to that troop you ride with, too. I
won’t tolerate this sort of fighting. Save the bloodlust for
spring and our enemies.”
In the morning, when they dragged Owaen out to the ward for his
lashes, Maddyn refused to go watch, although most of the other
silver daggers and half the dun did. It was entertainment of a
sort. With his blue sprite and a couple of gnomes for company, he
wandered around to the back of the stables and lounged on a bale of
straw in the warm sun. Caradoc eventually found him there.
“Is it over?” Maddyn said.
“It is. Wevryl tells me that Owaen’s been naught but
trouble ever since he rode his first battle, bragging and
swaggering around, so he decided it was time to show the lad his
place. Aches my heart. Look, they put this young hothead in the
king’s guard because he’s the best swordsman
they’ve ever seen, and so what does he do? Sit around most of
the year and watch the old king sleep. No wonder he’s as hot as summer tinder. He’d be better off in
the silver daggers.”
“You keep saying that. Well, if he keeps on
being so cursed arrogant, you might have your chance to
recruit him yet.”
They always say that bards have a touch of prophecy. For close
to a week, Maddyn saw no sign of Owaen, not even in the great hall
at meals. He was apparently keeping strictly to himself and letting
his wounds heal, and as painful as two stripes were, it would be
the shame that would be paining him the more, Maddyn assumed. Since
every silver dagger knew what shame tasted like, when Owaen did
reappear, they went out of their way to treat him as if nothing had
happened. The young handpicked riders in the king’s guard had
no such hard-earned compassion. When a stiff-backed Owaen took his
place at table for the first time, he was greeted with a chorus of
catcalls and a couple of truly vicious remarks about whipped dogs
and kennels. Since Wevryl was nowhere in sight, Caradoc stood on
his position as a captain and went over and broke it up. His face
bright red, Owaen gulped ale from his tankard and stared down at
the tabletop.
When Caradoc came back, he sat down next to Maddyn.
“Little pusboils,” the captain remarked. “Now
that’s a truly stupid way to treat a man when your life might
depend on him someday in a scrap.”
“Even stupider when he’s a man who could cut you
into pieces without half trying.”
“Now that, alas, is true-spoken.”
Later that morning Maddyn was grooming his horse in front of the
stable when Clwna, all nervous smile and sidelong glance, came
sidling up to him. If she hadn’t been so thin and pale, she
would have been a lovely lass, but as it was, her blond hair always
smelled of roast meat and there was always grease under her
fingernails.
“Have you forgiven me yet, Maddo?”
“Oh, easily. Going to meet me out in the hayloft
tonight?”
She giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand like a court lady,
a gesture that was somehow pathetic.
“Here, I’ll be riding to town today,” Maddyn said.
“I’ll buy you some ribands from the tailor. What
colors would you like?”
“Blue and green, and my thanks.
You’re so sweet, Maddo. I like you the best of anybody.”
“Oh huh! And how many of the lads do you say that to?”
“Only you. And maybe Aethan but only sometimes. Sometimes
he frightens me.” Unconsciously she brought her hand to her
throat. “Sometimes he looks at me, and I think he’s
going to hit me, but then he only says some mean thing and walks
away.”
“When he does that, he’s thinking of another woman,
lass, not of you. Stay away from him when he’s in that
mood.”
“I will, then.” She went suddenly tense, looking
over his shoulder. “Oh ye gods!”
Maddyn turned to see a gaggle of guardsmen strolling their way
with Owaen among them. At the sight of Clwna, they began nudging
each other and snickering.
“There’s the fair maiden, Owaen. Oh, she
doesn’t look half so tasty in the daylight. Was she worth it,
Owaen? Was she? As hot as Bardek spices, then.”
Owaen walked away fast, his head up high, his mouth set tight.
Clwna burst out weeping and ran. Maddyn thought of following her,
then decided that she’d have to learn her lessons, too.
That night the first of the long slashing winter rains came in
from the Southern Sea. Penned inside with no more amusements than
dice and ale, the king’s guard kept up their relentless
teasing. It seemed to Maddyn that no matter when he saw Owaen, the
lad was being mocked by his fellows. There were jests about Clwna,
jests about whipping dogs into shape, jests about a man stupid
enough to challenge a bard—on and on, over and over, and each
more tired and feeble than the last. Maddyn could only assume that
Owaen’s arrogance had irked his fellow guardsmen for years;
doubtless they envied him, too. Maddyn also noticed Caradoc keeping
a careful eye on the situation. Often the captain stepped in when
the teasing turned vicious and stopped it.
Finally, on the fourth solid day of rain, things came to a head.
After dinner that night, Caradoc lingered in the great hall and
kept Maddyn there with him after the rest of the silver daggers
went to the barracks. They collared a couple of tankards of dark
ale from a serving lass and moved to a table in the curve of the
wall, where they were barely noticeable in the shadows but had a
good view of Owaen, who was sitting at the end of a table of
guardsmen.
“Tomorrow this demon-get storm will blow over,”
Caradoc remarked. “I hope that someone else does somewhat
stupid and soon. Give them a new butt for their jokes.”
They lounged there for about half an hour while the
prince’s bard sang manfully over the laughter and talk.
Because of all the noise, Maddyn never heard what started the
fight. All at once, Owaen and another lad were on their feet and
yelling at each other in inarticulate rage. Caradoc leapt up and
ran, but too late. The other lad grabbed his sword and drew.
Maddyn hardly saw Owaen move. There was a flash of steel in
torchlight; his opponent staggered back, blood running down his
face. Caradoc caught him by the shoulders and laid him down in the
straw just as Maddyn reached them. The hall broke out in screaming
and shouting. Owaen threw his bloody sword down on the table and
stared, his mouth open in shock. When men grabbed him from behind,
he went limp in their hands. Maddyn knelt beside Caradoc and the
bleeding victim.
“How badly is he cut?”
“Cut? He’s dead.”
Half disbelieving it, Maddyn stared at the corpse on the floor.
Owaen had struck twice in that blur of motion, slashing the
lad’s face half open, then catching his throat on the
backswing. Shouting and swearing, men clustered round; Caradoc and
Maddyn left the corpse to them and worked their way free of the mob
just in time to see the guard marching Owaen out of the hall. The
lad was weeping.
“Ah, horseshit!” Caradoc growled. “He’s
just too blasted good with that blade. I could have stopped
it in time if it’d been anyone else. Ah,
horseshit!”
“And a stinking heap of it. What’ll you wager he
didn’t even realize he’d killed the lad until he heard
you say it?”
Caradoc muttered an inaudible oath under his breath, then
went in search of their tankards.
For a long hour, Maddyn and Caradoc waited in the nervous
crowd for news of Prince Cadlew’s judgment. Finally two
pages, young eyes bright with excitement, came running in to
announce that the Prince was going to have Owaen hanged on the
morrow. Since the other lad had drawn first, no one thought the
sentence just, but no one could argue with the prince, either. The
very same lads who’d driven Owaen to his fit of temper spoke
contritely and defended him to everyone else, while serving lasses
wept and said now handsome he was to die so young. Caradoc drank
steadily, then suddenly slammed his tankard onto the table.
“I’m not going to stand for it! What do you think,
Maddo? Shall I pull the lad’s neck out of the
noose?”
“By all means, but how?”
“Just watch. Find me one of those wretched
pages.”
Suitably bribed, a page was quite willing to take the prince a
message asking for an audience. After some minutes’ wait, the
boy returned and took them to one of the royal reception chambers,
a sumptuous room with carved oak furniture, thick Bardek carpets in
blue and green, and real glass in the windows. Cadlew was standing
by the hearth with a golden goblet of mead in his hand. When Maddyn
and Caradoc knelt at his feet, he nodded pleasantly to them.
“Rise. You have our leave to speak.”
“My humble thanks, Your Highness,” Caradoc said.
“A long time ago, in the middle of summer, you made me
promise of a boon, whenever I should ask for it.”
“And so I did. I remember the charge you led very well
indeed. I’ve plenty of fine horses for a reward, or a jeweled
sheath, perhaps, for that dagger you carry. Or here, there are
those new swords from Bardek. The steel is particularly
fine.”
“Well, my liege, I want somewhat of far less value than
that, and cursed if I don’t think I’m daft for wasting
a boon on it.”
“Indeed?” The prince smiled briefly.
“It’s pleasant to see that even silver daggers have
whims. Ask away.”
“Then, my liege, give me young Owaen’s life.
Don’t hang the lad.”
Honestly startled, the prince raised his goblet and had a small
sip, then made a courtly, indifferent shrug.
“Done, then, on one condition: you take him into your
warband and out of mine. I want no more of this trouble.”
“My humble thanks, Your Highness. Don’t worry your
royal heart. I’ll beat the lad into shape sooner or
later.”
“I’ve no doubt, Captain, that you could beat the Lord of Hell into
shape, and sooner rather than later. Let me summon a guard.
I’ve no idea where they put the lad.”
Guards with torches took Maddyn and Caradoc around to the back
of the ward, where a cluster of round, stone storage sheds stood by
the outer wall. Another guard was lounging against a tiny shed with
no windows and an iron-barred door. At the news, he stepped aside
gladly.
“Didn’t truly seem fair. Glad you changed our
liege’s mind, Captain.”
With a shrug, Caradoc lifted the bar and opened the door. Inside
Owaen was sitting on a pile of dirty straw, his arms clasped behind his knees, his face stained with tears. At the sight of
them he scrambled to his feet and stood at stiff attention, head
held high.
“Come to hang me already?” Owaen’s
voice was perfectly level. “I’ll be glad to have it over and done
with.”
“You’re not going to hang at all, you young
dolt,” Caradoc said. “I’ve bought your pardon.
Now get out here.”
Staring at the captain all the while, Owaen took a few slow,
cautious steps to the door, as if he were afraid of waking himself
from this wonderful dream. Caradoc grabbed his arm with one hand
and slapped him across the face with the other.
“That’s for forgetting you were in the king’s
hall.” Caradoc slapped him again, even harder. “And
that’s for striking twice. One more slip like this, and
I’ll slit your throat, not twist it. Understand me?
“I do.” Owaen could barely whisper; doubtless his
mouth was stinging from the slap. “But why pardon
me?”
“I want you in my troop. You’ll have a short enough
life anyway as a silver dagger.”
Owaen nodded, trembling, turning to stare at the ward as if it
were the most beautiful sight in the world. He rode close enough to
the Otherlands, Maddyn thought, and it wouldn’t have been a
pretty way to die.
“Now listen,” Caradoc went on. “I gave up a
chance at one of those Bardek blades for you, so you’d
blasted well better fight like a son of a bitch and earn your hire.
Now come along. I’ll send someone else to get your gear from
the guardsmen’s barracks. I don’t want your behind
anywhere near your old companions.”
Owaen nodded again, still trembling; words were beyond him,
apparently. Maddyn laid a hand on his shoulder.
“There isn’t a man in the troop who hasn’t
disgraced himself as badly as you have,” Maddyn said.
“Lots of us are a cursed sight worse. Come along, lad.
You’re better off among your own kind.”
Owaen started to laugh, a low hysterical chuckle, and he kept it
up all the way across the ward to the barracks.
The sky was low and slate gray, and a chill wind rustled in the
branches of the leafless trees that stood like sentinels on
the shores of the wide artificial lake. A stone causeway ran
about half a mile through the rippled gray water to the island
where the dun stood, the palace of Casyl, king of Pyrdon. By rising in
his stirrups Nevyn could just see the high broch above the stone walls. He paused
his horse and reined his pack mule up beside it while he studied
the place that, if all went well, would be his home for some years
ahead. Drwloc certainly fitted the description of the oracle of
Wmm. All around the island clustered stands of water reeds, and at
the sandy landing were little leather coracles drawn up against
the coming storm.
He rode on to the end of the causeway, where two guards were
lounging against the gate. At the sight of him, they
straightened up and came to attention. Much to his annoyance, Nevyn
was dressed the part of an important personage in brand-new
clothes, a pair of fine gray brigga, a shirt of the whitest linen,
a dark blue cloak with a splendid jeweled ring brooch to clasp it.
He was no longer an herbman, but a wandering scholar, with letters
of introduction from several very important priests of several
major gods.
“Good morrow, sir,” a guard said with a bow.
“May I ask your business in the palace?”
“My name is Nevyn, and I’ve been sent by Retyc, high
priest of Bel in Lughcarn, to inquire about a position as tutor for
the young prince.”
At that, both guards bowed.
“Of course, sir. We were told that the king expected you.
Ride on, but please watch the footing. We’ve got some
slippery spots—moss and suchlike.”
For safety’s sake, Nevyn dismounted and led his beasts
along the causeway. Just wide enough for four horses abreast, it
was a splendid bit of defensive planning; ten good men could hold
it against an army all day if they had to, but then Pyrdon’s
freedom had been won and held by military genius and little else.
The causeway ended on a tiny strip of bare ground before the
iron-bound double gates of the dun itself. There, more guards
greeted Nevyn and ushered him into the cobbled ward, which
was crammed with storage sheds, stables and barracks. It was plain
that the dun was organized with a long siege in mind. Pages came
to take his horse and mule, and another lad escorted
him into the tall broch itself.
Although the royal crest of a rearing
stallion was stamped or carved everywhere, on the chairs, on
the hearth, on the red-and-silver banners on the walls, the
furnishings were sparse and made of roughly cut dark wood.
At the table of honor the king himself was sitting in an
ordinary low, half-round chair and drinking ale from a plain pewter tankard. At thirty-one, Casyl was a tall,
slender man with thinning pale blond hair and deep-set blue eyes.
His heavy hands were scarred here and there, small nicks from
battle. When Nevyn began to kneel before him, the king stopped him
with a wave of his hand and a good-humored smile.
“You may dispense with the usual groveling, good sir, at
your age. Sit down. Page, fetch the scholar some ale.”
Nevyn took a chair at the king’s right, then brought out
the letters of introduction from his shirt, where he’d been
carrying them for safekeeping. The king looked at the seals on the
message tubes, nodded his recognition, then tossed them onto the
table.
“Later I’ll have my scribe read them to me.
Unfortunately, my father was an old-fashioned man, and I was never
taught a single letter when I was a lad. Now I don’t have the
time for such luxuries, but I don’t intend to repeat the same
mistake with my son.”
“So the priests of Wmm told me, Your Highness. I admire a
man who shows respect for learning.”
“No doubt you would, given your calling in life. Now, my
scribe has started teaching the lad how to letter, but I want
someone who can tell him about history, the laws, that sort of
thing. In his last letter, Pedraddyn of Wmmglaedd said you’d
bring books with you.”
“I have them on my pack mule, Your Highness. In case you
shouldn’t require my services, I’ll leave them behind
for the next candidate.”
“Oh, you can take it for granted that you’re
staying. It’s all been passing strange. When I first sent to
the temples for a tutor, I was expecting to get a priest.
That’s who they usually send to a king’s dun. But they
told me that they just didn’t have the right man available.
It didn’t matter where I sent, and I asked at more than one
holy place.”
“Indeed? How very peculiar, Your Highness.”
“So I was cursed glad when Pedraddyn wrote to say that
you’d turned up. No doubt it’s Wyrd, and who can
question that?”
Nevyn smiled politely and said not a word in answer. Yet for all
his talk of Wyrd, Casyl spent the good part of an hour asking
shrewd questions about the education he had in mind for the Prince.
Like most illiterate men, the king had a prodigious memory, and he
dredged up references to every book or author he’d mentioned
over the years just to see if Nevyn knew them, too. They were just beginning
to discuss Nevyn’s maintenance and recompense when there was a bustle and confusion at the door:
maidservants shrieked, guards swore and shouted. An enormous
gray-and-black boarhound raced into the great hall with a very dead
chicken in its mouth. Right behind ran a young boy, as blond and
pale as Casyl. Yelling at the top of his lungs, he chased the
panicked hound right under the royal chair, so suddenly that the
dog nearly dumped the king on the floor. Swearing, Casyl jumped
clear as the lad flung himself down and grabbed the hound’s
collar.
“Give it back, Spider! Bad dog!”
“Maryn, by the fat rump of Epona’s steed!
Can’t you see I’m talking with an important
guest?”
“My apologies, Father,” The prince went on hauling
the hound out from the chair. “But he stole it, and I told
Cook I’d get it back, because he’s my dog.”
With a dramatic sigh the king stood back out of the way and let
the prince pry the by now much ill-used and doubtless inedible
chicken out of the boarhound’s jaws. Nevyn watched in bemused
fascination: so this was the future king of all Deverry and Eldidd.
As was necessary for the plan, he was a handsome child, with
large, solemn gray eyes in a rosy-cheeked oval face and neatly
cropped golden hair.
“Get that bleeding fowl out of the great hall, will
you?” Casyl snarled. “Here, I’ll call a
page.”
“Please, Father, I’d best take it back
myself, because I promised Cook I would..”
“Well and good, then. Come back when you’re
done.” The king aimed a vague kick at the dog. “Begone,
hound!”
Boarhound and marked prince alike scurried out of the royal
presence. With a sigh, Casyl sat back down and took his
tankard from the table.
“He’s a wild lad good scholar, and this is a
rough sort of court, as you’ve doubtless noticed.”
“Well, Your Highness, there is much virtue in a
simple life under less than easy conditions.”
“Nicely put. I can see that you’ll be able to
teach the prince tact, if naught else. I see no reason to pretend
to pomp that I can’t afford, The glory of my kingdom has
always lain in her soldiers, not her fine manners.”
“And young Maryn had best learn that, my
liege, if he wants to have a kingdom to govern when his turn
comes.”
It took Nevyn some time to fit into the life of the palace. In
the mornings he gave Maryn his lessons, but in the afternoon the
prince went to the captain of the warband for training in riding
and swordcraft. Nevyn spent much time alone at first, in his large,
wedge-shaped chamber at the very top of the broch. It
was nicely furnished with a bed, a writing desk, and a heavily
carved chest for his clothing, but its best feature was the view, a
vast sweep of the lake below and the rolling farmland beyond. At
meals, he ate with the other high-ranked servitors and their
families: the bard, the chamberlain, the equerry, and the
king’s chirurgeon. At first they regarded him warily with an
eye to keeping the king’s special favor for themselves, but
since he cared naught for privilege and petty signs of rank, they
soon accepted him.
For Maryn’s studies Nevyn had brought a number of
important books, among them a general précis of the laws for
beginners and several volumes of history, starting with the
Dawntime and continuing through the annals of the various Deverrian
and Eldidd kings. Eventually he would send to Aberwyn for copies of
Prince Mael’s books, particularly the treatise on nobility,
but they would have been hard slogging for a beginner. Every
morning he would let the lad read aloud for a while, stumbling
often but always pushing on, then take the book and finish the
passage himself. Together they would discuss what they had read.
Once Maryn realized that history was full of battles and scandal in
equal parts, his interest in his studies picked up enormously.
Once he’d become a well-known figure in the palace, Nevyn
took to spending some time with the queen, who was glad to have
someone new and well educated in the dun. Seryan had been born of
the line of Cantrae pretenders to the throne and was a distant
cousin of the current king, Slwmar the Second. At nineteen
she’d been married off to Casyl—much against her will,
because not only was the king five years her junior but his kingdom
was a rough, wild place compared to her home in Lughcarn. Now, some
seventeen years later, she’d made her peace with her life.
She had her two elder daughters and her young son to occupy her,
and as she admitted one day to Nevyn, she’d grown fond of
Casyl with time.
“If an old man may speak frankly,” Nevyn said.
“He’s a much better man than any of that pack of ferrets
around the throne in Cantrae.”
“Oh, I agree with you now, but what does a lass of nineteen know? All I could think of was that he was such a young lad, and
that I’d never get to attend any of my mother’s
splendid feasts again.”
And with a sigh, the queen changed the subject away from such
personal matters to a particular song the bard had sung in hall the
night before.
Not long after Nevyn’s arrival, the first snows came. The
lake froze to a solid glitter of white, and the farmlands lay
shrouded with only the distant trails of smoke to mark where the
houses stood. Life in the dun settled into a slow routine centered
on the huge hearths in the great hall, where the noble-born sat
close to the fire and the servants lay in the warm straw with the
dogs. As the drowsy weeks slipped past, Nevyn began to grow
honestly fond of Maryn. He was a hard child to dislike—always
happy, always courteous, supremely confident because of his
position as marked prince yet. honestly concerned, with the
welfare of others, Nevyn knew that if his work were successful
and Maryn did indeed take the throne of Deverry, everyone would
look back on his childhood and say that obviously the lad had
been born to be king. No doubt little legends about a gallantry
beyond his years would spring up, and the ordinary events of
childhood would be viewed as mighty omens. That his mother was a
highly intelligent woman and his father an unusually honorable
man would never enter into that kind of thinking. Nevyn was
quite willing to have things that way. After all, he was there to
create a myth, not write history.
And the myth seemed determined to get itself created. Shortly
before the Feast of the Sun, which would also mark Maryn’s
tenth birthday, the prince came to his tutor’s chamber
for his lessons in an unusually thoughtful mood. Since
the lad’s mind wandered all through the reading, Nevyn
finally asked him what was wrong.
“Oh, naught truly. But, sir, you’re a wise man.
Do you know what dreams mean?”
“Sometimes, but some dreams only mean that you ate too
much before you went to bed.”
Maryn giggled then cocked his head to one side in
thought.
“I dont think this was that sort of dream. It seemed
ever so real while I was sleeping, but then I woke up, and it
seemed daft.” He squirmed on his chair and looked away in
embarrassment. “Father says a real prince never gives
himself airs.”
“Your father’s right, but no one can blame you for
what you do in dreams, Tell me about it, if you’d
like.”
“I dreamt I was king of all Deverry. It was ever so real.
I was leading my army, you see, and I could smell the horses and
everything. We were in Cantrae and we were winning. You were there,
too, sir. You were my royal councillor. I was all sweaty and dirty,
because I’d been fighting, but the men were cheering and
calling me the king.”
For a moment Nevyn found it hard to breathe. It was possible
that the prince had only picked up the images from his
tutor’s mind, in the uncanny way that children can sometimes
read the minds of adults they want to please, but the detail, such
as the smell of horses, was so exact that he doubted it.
“You think it’s daft, don’t you?” the
prince said.
“I don’t. How good are you at keeping
secrets?”
“Truly good, and I’ll swear a vow if you like.”
Nevyn stared into the boy’s eyes, where his soul lay, like
a fire ready in a hearth, waiting for a spark in the tinder.
“Swear to me you’ll never repeat what I say, not to
your father or your mother, to priest or peddler, not to
anyone.”
“I swear it, on the honor of my clan, my royal line, and
the gods of my people.”
“Well and good. You will be king someday, king of all
Deverry. The great god Wmm has marked you out in his oracle and
sent me here to aid Your Highness.”
When Maryn looked away, his face pale, his soft boy’s
mouth was slack, but his eyes were those of the king to come.
“You’re dweomer, aren’t you, sir, just like in
the tales? But oh, Father says there’s no such thing as
dweomer anymore, that it was all in the Dawntime.”
“Indeed, my liege? Watch the hearth.”
Nevyn summoned the Wildfolk, who first obligingly put the fire
out cold, then lit it again with a great gust of flame when Nevyn
snapped his fingers. Maryn jumped up and grinned.
“Oh, that’s splendid! Then my dream was truly, truly
true?”
“It was, but not a word to any living soul until I tell
you that the time is ripe.”
“I won’t. I’d die first.”
He spoke so solemnly that he seemed more a man than a child,
caught in one of those rare moments when the levels of the soul
blend and let something of its Wyrd slip through to the conscious
mind. Then the moment vanished.
“Well, if I’m going to be king, I guess I’d
better know all these wretched laws, but oh, they’re so boring! Can’t we
read about battles and stuff for a while?”
“Very well, Your Highness. As the prince wishes.”
That night, Nevyn had to admit to himself that he was well pleased
by the way things were going. He could only hope that he’d
have enough time to train the lad properly, at least five more
years. Although he’d never leave Maryn’s side again
until the long wars were over and the land at peace, he wanted to
put, not a puppet on the throne, but a king.
The year 837. Olaedd the high priest died in the spring. Retyc
of Hendyr was appointed high priest by the northern conclave. In
the summer a little lad with falling sickness was brought to the
temple. He had a seizure at Retyc’s feet, and cried out that
the king was coming from the west. When he awakened, he repeated
that the king was in the west, but he could give no reason why he
said it. Retyc declared the speaking a true one . . .
—The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn
Up on the dais of the great hall, Ogretoryc, king of all Eldidd
and what little of Deverry he could hold with his army, was
sitting in his high-backed carved chair. Behind him hung a finely
worked tapestry depicting Epona riding with her retinue of
godlets in the Otherlands. To either side of the tapestry were
long banners in blue and silver cloth, with the Dragon of
Eldidd appliqued in green. At the king’s feet lay a blue
and green carpet, covering a floor of inlaid slate. His bard sat
nearby; his picked guard stood behind him; two pages
waited with a golden goblet and a pitcher of mead. The king,
however, was asleep, slumped to one side and snoring, a
line of drool running from his toothless mouth down his
wrinkled, flabby chin. Out in the circular expanse of the
hall, the noble lords, their warbands, and the king’s own
men went on with their feasting and tried to ignore their
liege lord.
Because they were mercenaries, the silver daggers were seated
in the back and to one side of the hall, where they caught the
drafts from the door and the smoke from the fire, but by leaning
back on his bench, Maddyn could keep an eye on the dais and the
sleeping king. In only a few minutes, Prince Cadlew, heir to the
throne, mounted the dais and hesitantly went over to his father. A
lean man, his face positively gaunt, Cadlew was
tight-muscled and hard from long years in the saddle. His
raven-dark hair was heavily streaked with gray, and his
cornflower-blue eyes were webbed with crow’s-foot wrinkles,
yet he could still swing a sword with the best of them. Cadlew caught the king’s arm and shook him
awake. Surrounded by guards, with the pages trailing uncertainly
behind, the prince led his father away. The entire hall sighed in
relief. Caradoc leaned over to whisper to Maddyn.
“I’ll wager there’s plenty of men who’d rather see our
prince sitting on that fancy chair.”
“It’d be a safe wager, sure enough. Here, I’ve
been stewing with curiosity. What did the prince say when he called
you to his chamber this afternoon?”
“Offered to take us into his warband. I turned him
down.”
“You what?!”
“Turned him down.” Caradoc paused for a calm sip of
mead. “Thanked him for the honor, mind, but I’d rather
negotiate our wages summer to summer than swear fealty.”
“Ah, curse you to the ninth hell!”
“Listen, Maddo. I know it sounds splendid to think of
being honorable men again and all that, but a silver dagger’s
got to be free to change sides if he doesn’t want to hang
after a defeat.”
“Well, true-spoken. We’ve changed sides too often
before to be treated honorably, no matter what a prince says about
us.”
“Just that. Not a word of this to the others,
mind.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. You should know that
we’d all follow you to the death.”
Caradoc looked away, tears in his eyes. Maddyn was too
embarrassed to do more than leave him his silence.
While he sipped his mead, Maddyn considered the troop,
seventy-five strong, and everyone of them a blood-besotted man who
fought like a demon from hell. It had taken Caradoc three years,
but he’d scraped and scrounged and bargained until he had a
troop so valuable that the prince would consider taking them into
his own warband. Every one of them, too, had one of Otho’s
mysterious daggers at his belt. Some of the best smiths in the
king’s court had gone down on their knees to beg the dwarf
for the secret of that metal, but not even the offer of whole sacks
of gold coins and jewels would have softened Otho’s stance.
Once he had remarked to Maddyn that someday, when he found a
deserving lad, he’d pass the secret on, but so far, no such
paragon of smithly virtue had ever appeared.
After a hard summer’s fighting, the men of Eldidd, paid
and pledged alike, were back in winter quarters in the king’s
palace at Abernaudd. They’d fought late, that autumn,
skirmishing in the hills with Cerrmor troops, or riding raids up to the borders of
Pyrdon, which the people of Eldidd still insisted on calling a
rebellious province. The rumors were going round that in the spring
they’d make a proper attack on Pyrdon, but those rumors went
round every winter. The truth was that Eldidd couldn’t afford
to drain off men and supplies to conquer Pyrdon when it had two
bigger enemies at its eastern borders. Maddyn frankly didn’t
care where they rode in the spring. All that mattered was that for
the winter they’d be well fed and warm.
To avoid drunken brawls between his men and the king’s,
Caradoc led the silver daggers back to their own barracks before
the great feast was truly over. As they crossed the ward, Maddyn
lingered to walk with Caudyr, whose clubfoot slowed him down. With
the clatter of hooves and a jingle of tack, a squad of the
king’s personal guard came through the gates. Back from a
cold, long patrol, they were hungry and eager to get to the warm
feast inside. Even though there was plenty of room to pass, they
started cursing and yelling at Maddyn and Caudyr to move aside.
They were both willing, but Caudyr had no choice but to lurch
slowly along. One of the horsemen leaned over in his saddle.
“Move your cursed ass, rabbit! They should have drowned a
lame runt like you at birth.”
When most of the squad laughed, Maddyn swirled around, reaching
for his sword, but Caudyr grabbed his arm.
“It’s not worth it. I’m used to being the butt
of a jest.”
As they went on, Caudyr tried to hurry.
“Look at him hop!” called another guardsman.
“You were right enough about the rabbits.”
At that, the squad leader, who’d drifted on ahead, turned
his horse and trotted back.
“Hold your tongues, you bastards!” It was young
Owaen, and he was furious. “Who are you to mock a man for a
trouble that the gods gave him?”
“Oh, listen to you, lad!”
Like a bow shot, Owaen was out of his saddle. He ran over to the
guardsman and grabbed, pulling him down and dumping him on the
cobbles before the startled fellow could react. With an oath, the
man leapt up and swung at him, but Owaen dropped him with one
punch. The laughter and catcalls abruptly stopped.
“I don’t want to hear anyone else mock a man for a
trouble he can’t help.”
Except for the nervous horses, stamping restless hooves, the
ward was dead silent. Puzzled as much as pleased, Maddyn kept his
eyes on Owaen, who was barely seventeen, for all that he’d
been riding to war for the past three years. Normally he was the
most arrogant man Maddyn had ever met. Wearing the Eldidd dragons
on his shirt wasn’t enough for Owaen, who had his own device
of a striking falcon marked on his shirt, his dagger, his
saddle—on every piece of gear he owned, from the look of it.
He was also the best swordsman in the guard, if not the entire
kingdom, and his fellow riders knew it. When the squad dismounted,
it was only to pick up the unconscious man and sling him over his
saddle to carry him away. With a small, friendly nod in
Caudyr’s direction, Owaen followed them.
“Now that’s a puzzle and a half,” Caudyr said.
“Owaen’s the last man I ever thought would do such a
thing.”
“No more did I. I know that Caradoc thinks highly of the
lad. Maybe he’s right, after all.”
In the barracks a couple of the men were building a fire in the
stone hearth. Others sat on the line of bunks and talked of dice
games. Pale, mousy Argyn, who was one of the most cold-blooded and
vicious killers in the warband, was already asleep, but for all
that he was snoring like a summer storm, no one disturbed him to
shut him up. The long room smelled of sweat, woodsmoke, and horses,
especially of horses, since the troop’s mounts were stabled
directly below the slatted floor. To Maddyn, it was a comfortable
kind of smell that said home to him after all these years of riding
in one warband or another. He sat down on his bunk and took his
harp out of its padded leather bag.
“Here, Maddo!” Aethan called out. “For the
love of every god in the Otherlands, don’t sing that same
blasted song about King Bran’s cattle raid, will you?”
“Ah, hold your tongue. I’m trying to learn it.”
“And don’t we all know it?” Caradoc broke in.
“I’m as sick as I can be of you missing that stanza in
the middle and going back over it.”
“As the captain orders. But don’t be taking my head
off, then, for never knowing a new song.”
In sheer annoyance he put the harp away and stomped out of tne
barracks, followed by a small crowd of disappointed Wildfolk, who
tugged at his sleeve and his brigga leg to try to get him to go
back and sing. When he ignored them, they disappeared, a few at
a time, but all of them with reproachful looks on their tiny
faces. He went straight to the kitchen hut, where there was a
scullery lass, Clwna, who liked him well enough to sneak out to the
hayloft with him every now and then. By his reckoning, she should
have been done with her work. The kitchen hut’s door was open
to let a cheerful spill of light fall across the cobbles, and
clustered around it were the king’s hunting dogs, waiting
hopefully for scraps. Maddyn kicked his way through the pack and
stood in the doorway. The scullery boys were washing the last of
the kettles at the hearth, and the cook herself, a gray-haired,
woman with enormous, muscular arms, was perched on a tall stool
and eating her own dinner out of a wooden bowl.
“I know what you’re after, silver dagger,
Clwna’s gone already, and no doubt with another of
you lads.”
“No doubt. With my lady’s gracious permission,
I’ll wait here for a bit to see if she comes back.”
The cook snorted and pushed a strand of hair back from her
forehead with her little finger.
“You silver daggers are a strange lot. Most men
would be howling with, rage if their wench slipped out with another
lad.”
“We share what we get when we can get it.
I’m just glad that Clwna’s a sensible lass.”
“Sensible, hah! If you call it sensible to get yourself
known as one of the silver daggers’ women. I’m fair
minded to beat some sense into the lass, I
am.”
“Oh, now here! How could, you be so cruel to deny us a
bit of comfort, when we’re fighting for the very honor of
Eldidd?”
“Listen to him!” The cook rolled her eyes heavenward
to invoke the gods. “Out of my kitchen, bard! You’re
giving the scullery lads wrong ideas.”
Maddyn made her a mocking bow and left, shoving his way
through the dogs. As he crossed the ward, it
occurred to him that the entire troop had
been in the barracks when he’d left it. While he was
willing to share Clwna with other silver
daggers, the thought of sharing her with an outsider griped
his soul. He ducked inside the back door of the great hall and
snagged himself a torch from one of the sconces, then searched
through the ward with a growing sense of righteous
irritation. In the aftermath of the feast there were lots of
people about: servants bringing firewood and barrels of ale,
glutted riders strolling slowly back to barracks or privy,
serving lasses intent on flirtations of their own or running similar errands for their noble mistresses. About halfway to the
stables he saw his prey—Clwna walking along arm in arm with
one of the king’s guard. From the disarray of her dresses and
the bit of straw in her hair, Maddyn knew that his suspicions were
justified. Clwna herself settled any lingering doubt by screaming
the moment she saw him.
“So!” Maddyn held the torch up like a householder
apprehending a thief. “And what’s all this,
lass?”
Clwna made a miserable little shriek and stuffed her knuckles
into her mouth. With his hand on his sword hilt, Owaen stepped
forward into the pool of light. Maddyn realized that the situation
could easily go beyond irritation to danger.
“What’s it to you, you little dog?” Owaen
snapped. “The lady happens to prefer a real man instead of a
bondsman with a sword.”
It took every scrap of will that Maddyn possessed to stop
himself from hitting Owaen in the face with the flaming torch. In
his rage he was only dimly aware that they were gathering a crowd,
but he did hear Clwna nattering on and on to some sympathetic
listener. Owaen stood smiling at him, his mouth a twist of utter
smugness.
“Well, come on, old man,” he said at last.
“Don’t you have a word to say to me?”
“Oh, I’ll have plenty of words, little lad. You
forget that you’re talking to a bard. I haven’t made a
good flyting song in a long, long time.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Owaen’s voice was a
childlike howl of indignation. “That’s not
fair!”
At that the ring of onlookers burst out laughing; for all his
swordcraft, he looked such an outraged boy standing there that
Maddyn had to chuckle himself, thinking that in truth it hardly
mattered who tumbled Clwna around in the hay. He was just about to
say something conciliatory to the lad when Owaen, his face blushing
red, unbuckled his sword belt and threw it onto the cobbles.
“Well and good, then, bard!” he snarled.
“It’s breaking geis to draw on you, but hand that torch
to someone, and I’ll grind your face in the stones for
you!”
“Oh, for the sake of every god in the sky, Owaen,”
Maddyn said wearily. “She’s hardly
worth—”
Owaen swung at him, an open-handed slap that he dodged barely in
time. At that there were yells, and a couple of men in the crowd leaped forward and grabbed the lad. Howling and swearing,
he tried to break free, but they dragged him back and held him. By
the blazons on their shirts Maddyn could tell that they were
guardsmen, too. The reason for this unexpected civility pushed his
way through the onlookers.
“Now, what’s all this?” said Wevryl, captain
of the king’s guard. “Owaen, by the black hairy ass of
the Lord of Hell! I swear that Trouble was your dam and Twice
Trouble your grandam! What was he doing to you, bard?”
“Naught, truly, but making a fool of himself.”
“My apologies!” Clwna broke in with a wail. “I
never meant to cause trouble, Maddo.” She paused for a couple
of moist sobs. “Truly I didn’t.”
“Oh, over a lass, was it?” The captain looked
profoundly annoyed. “The same tedious old horse dung, is it?
Ye gods, it’s only fall! What are you lads going to be like
when the winter sets in, eh? Very well, bard. Take the lass away,
will you? Owaen, as for you, it’ll be a couple of lashes out
in the ward tomorrow morn. I’ll not be having trouble over a
kitchen slut.”
Owaen’s face drained dead white. In the crowd, a couple of
men snickered.
“Oh, here, Captain,” Maddyn said. “If
you’re flogging him for my sake, there’s no
need.”
“Not for your sake—for the sake of peace in the dun.
You might pass that on to that troop you ride with, too. I
won’t tolerate this sort of fighting. Save the bloodlust for
spring and our enemies.”
In the morning, when they dragged Owaen out to the ward for his
lashes, Maddyn refused to go watch, although most of the other
silver daggers and half the dun did. It was entertainment of a
sort. With his blue sprite and a couple of gnomes for company, he
wandered around to the back of the stables and lounged on a bale of
straw in the warm sun. Caradoc eventually found him there.
“Is it over?” Maddyn said.
“It is. Wevryl tells me that Owaen’s been naught but
trouble ever since he rode his first battle, bragging and
swaggering around, so he decided it was time to show the lad his
place. Aches my heart. Look, they put this young hothead in the
king’s guard because he’s the best swordsman
they’ve ever seen, and so what does he do? Sit around most of
the year and watch the old king sleep. No wonder he’s as hot as summer tinder. He’d be better off in
the silver daggers.”
“You keep saying that. Well, if he keeps on
being so cursed arrogant, you might have your chance to
recruit him yet.”
They always say that bards have a touch of prophecy. For close
to a week, Maddyn saw no sign of Owaen, not even in the great hall
at meals. He was apparently keeping strictly to himself and letting
his wounds heal, and as painful as two stripes were, it would be
the shame that would be paining him the more, Maddyn assumed. Since
every silver dagger knew what shame tasted like, when Owaen did
reappear, they went out of their way to treat him as if nothing had
happened. The young handpicked riders in the king’s guard had
no such hard-earned compassion. When a stiff-backed Owaen took his
place at table for the first time, he was greeted with a chorus of
catcalls and a couple of truly vicious remarks about whipped dogs
and kennels. Since Wevryl was nowhere in sight, Caradoc stood on
his position as a captain and went over and broke it up. His face
bright red, Owaen gulped ale from his tankard and stared down at
the tabletop.
When Caradoc came back, he sat down next to Maddyn.
“Little pusboils,” the captain remarked. “Now
that’s a truly stupid way to treat a man when your life might
depend on him someday in a scrap.”
“Even stupider when he’s a man who could cut you
into pieces without half trying.”
“Now that, alas, is true-spoken.”
Later that morning Maddyn was grooming his horse in front of the
stable when Clwna, all nervous smile and sidelong glance, came
sidling up to him. If she hadn’t been so thin and pale, she
would have been a lovely lass, but as it was, her blond hair always
smelled of roast meat and there was always grease under her
fingernails.
“Have you forgiven me yet, Maddo?”
“Oh, easily. Going to meet me out in the hayloft
tonight?”
She giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand like a court lady,
a gesture that was somehow pathetic.
“Here, I’ll be riding to town today,” Maddyn said.
“I’ll buy you some ribands from the tailor. What
colors would you like?”
“Blue and green, and my thanks.
You’re so sweet, Maddo. I like you the best of anybody.”
“Oh huh! And how many of the lads do you say that to?”
“Only you. And maybe Aethan but only sometimes. Sometimes
he frightens me.” Unconsciously she brought her hand to her
throat. “Sometimes he looks at me, and I think he’s
going to hit me, but then he only says some mean thing and walks
away.”
“When he does that, he’s thinking of another woman,
lass, not of you. Stay away from him when he’s in that
mood.”
“I will, then.” She went suddenly tense, looking
over his shoulder. “Oh ye gods!”
Maddyn turned to see a gaggle of guardsmen strolling their way
with Owaen among them. At the sight of Clwna, they began nudging
each other and snickering.
“There’s the fair maiden, Owaen. Oh, she
doesn’t look half so tasty in the daylight. Was she worth it,
Owaen? Was she? As hot as Bardek spices, then.”
Owaen walked away fast, his head up high, his mouth set tight.
Clwna burst out weeping and ran. Maddyn thought of following her,
then decided that she’d have to learn her lessons, too.
That night the first of the long slashing winter rains came in
from the Southern Sea. Penned inside with no more amusements than
dice and ale, the king’s guard kept up their relentless
teasing. It seemed to Maddyn that no matter when he saw Owaen, the
lad was being mocked by his fellows. There were jests about Clwna,
jests about whipping dogs into shape, jests about a man stupid
enough to challenge a bard—on and on, over and over, and each
more tired and feeble than the last. Maddyn could only assume that
Owaen’s arrogance had irked his fellow guardsmen for years;
doubtless they envied him, too. Maddyn also noticed Caradoc keeping
a careful eye on the situation. Often the captain stepped in when
the teasing turned vicious and stopped it.
Finally, on the fourth solid day of rain, things came to a head.
After dinner that night, Caradoc lingered in the great hall and
kept Maddyn there with him after the rest of the silver daggers
went to the barracks. They collared a couple of tankards of dark
ale from a serving lass and moved to a table in the curve of the
wall, where they were barely noticeable in the shadows but had a
good view of Owaen, who was sitting at the end of a table of
guardsmen.
“Tomorrow this demon-get storm will blow over,”
Caradoc remarked. “I hope that someone else does somewhat
stupid and soon. Give them a new butt for their jokes.”
They lounged there for about half an hour while the
prince’s bard sang manfully over the laughter and talk.
Because of all the noise, Maddyn never heard what started the
fight. All at once, Owaen and another lad were on their feet and
yelling at each other in inarticulate rage. Caradoc leapt up and
ran, but too late. The other lad grabbed his sword and drew.
Maddyn hardly saw Owaen move. There was a flash of steel in
torchlight; his opponent staggered back, blood running down his
face. Caradoc caught him by the shoulders and laid him down in the
straw just as Maddyn reached them. The hall broke out in screaming
and shouting. Owaen threw his bloody sword down on the table and
stared, his mouth open in shock. When men grabbed him from behind,
he went limp in their hands. Maddyn knelt beside Caradoc and the
bleeding victim.
“How badly is he cut?”
“Cut? He’s dead.”
Half disbelieving it, Maddyn stared at the corpse on the floor.
Owaen had struck twice in that blur of motion, slashing the
lad’s face half open, then catching his throat on the
backswing. Shouting and swearing, men clustered round; Caradoc and
Maddyn left the corpse to them and worked their way free of the mob
just in time to see the guard marching Owaen out of the hall. The
lad was weeping.
“Ah, horseshit!” Caradoc growled. “He’s
just too blasted good with that blade. I could have stopped
it in time if it’d been anyone else. Ah,
horseshit!”
“And a stinking heap of it. What’ll you wager he
didn’t even realize he’d killed the lad until he heard
you say it?”
Caradoc muttered an inaudible oath under his breath, then
went in search of their tankards.
For a long hour, Maddyn and Caradoc waited in the nervous
crowd for news of Prince Cadlew’s judgment. Finally two
pages, young eyes bright with excitement, came running in to
announce that the Prince was going to have Owaen hanged on the
morrow. Since the other lad had drawn first, no one thought the
sentence just, but no one could argue with the prince, either. The
very same lads who’d driven Owaen to his fit of temper spoke
contritely and defended him to everyone else, while serving lasses
wept and said now handsome he was to die so young. Caradoc drank
steadily, then suddenly slammed his tankard onto the table.
“I’m not going to stand for it! What do you think,
Maddo? Shall I pull the lad’s neck out of the
noose?”
“By all means, but how?”
“Just watch. Find me one of those wretched
pages.”
Suitably bribed, a page was quite willing to take the prince a
message asking for an audience. After some minutes’ wait, the
boy returned and took them to one of the royal reception chambers,
a sumptuous room with carved oak furniture, thick Bardek carpets in
blue and green, and real glass in the windows. Cadlew was standing
by the hearth with a golden goblet of mead in his hand. When Maddyn
and Caradoc knelt at his feet, he nodded pleasantly to them.
“Rise. You have our leave to speak.”
“My humble thanks, Your Highness,” Caradoc said.
“A long time ago, in the middle of summer, you made me
promise of a boon, whenever I should ask for it.”
“And so I did. I remember the charge you led very well
indeed. I’ve plenty of fine horses for a reward, or a jeweled
sheath, perhaps, for that dagger you carry. Or here, there are
those new swords from Bardek. The steel is particularly
fine.”
“Well, my liege, I want somewhat of far less value than
that, and cursed if I don’t think I’m daft for wasting
a boon on it.”
“Indeed?” The prince smiled briefly.
“It’s pleasant to see that even silver daggers have
whims. Ask away.”
“Then, my liege, give me young Owaen’s life.
Don’t hang the lad.”
Honestly startled, the prince raised his goblet and had a small
sip, then made a courtly, indifferent shrug.
“Done, then, on one condition: you take him into your
warband and out of mine. I want no more of this trouble.”
“My humble thanks, Your Highness. Don’t worry your
royal heart. I’ll beat the lad into shape sooner or
later.”
“I’ve no doubt, Captain, that you could beat the Lord of Hell into
shape, and sooner rather than later. Let me summon a guard.
I’ve no idea where they put the lad.”
Guards with torches took Maddyn and Caradoc around to the back
of the ward, where a cluster of round, stone storage sheds stood by
the outer wall. Another guard was lounging against a tiny shed with
no windows and an iron-barred door. At the news, he stepped aside
gladly.
“Didn’t truly seem fair. Glad you changed our
liege’s mind, Captain.”
With a shrug, Caradoc lifted the bar and opened the door. Inside
Owaen was sitting on a pile of dirty straw, his arms clasped behind his knees, his face stained with tears. At the sight of
them he scrambled to his feet and stood at stiff attention, head
held high.
“Come to hang me already?” Owaen’s
voice was perfectly level. “I’ll be glad to have it over and done
with.”
“You’re not going to hang at all, you young
dolt,” Caradoc said. “I’ve bought your pardon.
Now get out here.”
Staring at the captain all the while, Owaen took a few slow,
cautious steps to the door, as if he were afraid of waking himself
from this wonderful dream. Caradoc grabbed his arm with one hand
and slapped him across the face with the other.
“That’s for forgetting you were in the king’s
hall.” Caradoc slapped him again, even harder. “And
that’s for striking twice. One more slip like this, and
I’ll slit your throat, not twist it. Understand me?
“I do.” Owaen could barely whisper; doubtless his
mouth was stinging from the slap. “But why pardon
me?”
“I want you in my troop. You’ll have a short enough
life anyway as a silver dagger.”
Owaen nodded, trembling, turning to stare at the ward as if it
were the most beautiful sight in the world. He rode close enough to
the Otherlands, Maddyn thought, and it wouldn’t have been a
pretty way to die.
“Now listen,” Caradoc went on. “I gave up a
chance at one of those Bardek blades for you, so you’d
blasted well better fight like a son of a bitch and earn your hire.
Now come along. I’ll send someone else to get your gear from
the guardsmen’s barracks. I don’t want your behind
anywhere near your old companions.”
Owaen nodded again, still trembling; words were beyond him,
apparently. Maddyn laid a hand on his shoulder.
“There isn’t a man in the troop who hasn’t
disgraced himself as badly as you have,” Maddyn said.
“Lots of us are a cursed sight worse. Come along, lad.
You’re better off among your own kind.”
Owaen started to laugh, a low hysterical chuckle, and he kept it
up all the way across the ward to the barracks.
The sky was low and slate gray, and a chill wind rustled in the
branches of the leafless trees that stood like sentinels on
the shores of the wide artificial lake. A stone causeway ran
about half a mile through the rippled gray water to the island
where the dun stood, the palace of Casyl, king of Pyrdon. By rising in
his stirrups Nevyn could just see the high broch above the stone walls. He paused
his horse and reined his pack mule up beside it while he studied
the place that, if all went well, would be his home for some years
ahead. Drwloc certainly fitted the description of the oracle of
Wmm. All around the island clustered stands of water reeds, and at
the sandy landing were little leather coracles drawn up against
the coming storm.
He rode on to the end of the causeway, where two guards were
lounging against the gate. At the sight of him, they
straightened up and came to attention. Much to his annoyance, Nevyn
was dressed the part of an important personage in brand-new
clothes, a pair of fine gray brigga, a shirt of the whitest linen,
a dark blue cloak with a splendid jeweled ring brooch to clasp it.
He was no longer an herbman, but a wandering scholar, with letters
of introduction from several very important priests of several
major gods.
“Good morrow, sir,” a guard said with a bow.
“May I ask your business in the palace?”
“My name is Nevyn, and I’ve been sent by Retyc, high
priest of Bel in Lughcarn, to inquire about a position as tutor for
the young prince.”
At that, both guards bowed.
“Of course, sir. We were told that the king expected you.
Ride on, but please watch the footing. We’ve got some
slippery spots—moss and suchlike.”
For safety’s sake, Nevyn dismounted and led his beasts
along the causeway. Just wide enough for four horses abreast, it
was a splendid bit of defensive planning; ten good men could hold
it against an army all day if they had to, but then Pyrdon’s
freedom had been won and held by military genius and little else.
The causeway ended on a tiny strip of bare ground before the
iron-bound double gates of the dun itself. There, more guards
greeted Nevyn and ushered him into the cobbled ward, which
was crammed with storage sheds, stables and barracks. It was plain
that the dun was organized with a long siege in mind. Pages came
to take his horse and mule, and another lad escorted
him into the tall broch itself.
Although the royal crest of a rearing
stallion was stamped or carved everywhere, on the chairs, on
the hearth, on the red-and-silver banners on the walls, the
furnishings were sparse and made of roughly cut dark wood.
At the table of honor the king himself was sitting in an
ordinary low, half-round chair and drinking ale from a plain pewter tankard. At thirty-one, Casyl was a tall,
slender man with thinning pale blond hair and deep-set blue eyes.
His heavy hands were scarred here and there, small nicks from
battle. When Nevyn began to kneel before him, the king stopped him
with a wave of his hand and a good-humored smile.
“You may dispense with the usual groveling, good sir, at
your age. Sit down. Page, fetch the scholar some ale.”
Nevyn took a chair at the king’s right, then brought out
the letters of introduction from his shirt, where he’d been
carrying them for safekeeping. The king looked at the seals on the
message tubes, nodded his recognition, then tossed them onto the
table.
“Later I’ll have my scribe read them to me.
Unfortunately, my father was an old-fashioned man, and I was never
taught a single letter when I was a lad. Now I don’t have the
time for such luxuries, but I don’t intend to repeat the same
mistake with my son.”
“So the priests of Wmm told me, Your Highness. I admire a
man who shows respect for learning.”
“No doubt you would, given your calling in life. Now, my
scribe has started teaching the lad how to letter, but I want
someone who can tell him about history, the laws, that sort of
thing. In his last letter, Pedraddyn of Wmmglaedd said you’d
bring books with you.”
“I have them on my pack mule, Your Highness. In case you
shouldn’t require my services, I’ll leave them behind
for the next candidate.”
“Oh, you can take it for granted that you’re
staying. It’s all been passing strange. When I first sent to
the temples for a tutor, I was expecting to get a priest.
That’s who they usually send to a king’s dun. But they
told me that they just didn’t have the right man available.
It didn’t matter where I sent, and I asked at more than one
holy place.”
“Indeed? How very peculiar, Your Highness.”
“So I was cursed glad when Pedraddyn wrote to say that
you’d turned up. No doubt it’s Wyrd, and who can
question that?”
Nevyn smiled politely and said not a word in answer. Yet for all
his talk of Wyrd, Casyl spent the good part of an hour asking
shrewd questions about the education he had in mind for the Prince.
Like most illiterate men, the king had a prodigious memory, and he
dredged up references to every book or author he’d mentioned
over the years just to see if Nevyn knew them, too. They were just beginning
to discuss Nevyn’s maintenance and recompense when there was a bustle and confusion at the door:
maidservants shrieked, guards swore and shouted. An enormous
gray-and-black boarhound raced into the great hall with a very dead
chicken in its mouth. Right behind ran a young boy, as blond and
pale as Casyl. Yelling at the top of his lungs, he chased the
panicked hound right under the royal chair, so suddenly that the
dog nearly dumped the king on the floor. Swearing, Casyl jumped
clear as the lad flung himself down and grabbed the hound’s
collar.
“Give it back, Spider! Bad dog!”
“Maryn, by the fat rump of Epona’s steed!
Can’t you see I’m talking with an important
guest?”
“My apologies, Father,” The prince went on hauling
the hound out from the chair. “But he stole it, and I told
Cook I’d get it back, because he’s my dog.”
With a dramatic sigh the king stood back out of the way and let
the prince pry the by now much ill-used and doubtless inedible
chicken out of the boarhound’s jaws. Nevyn watched in bemused
fascination: so this was the future king of all Deverry and Eldidd.
As was necessary for the plan, he was a handsome child, with
large, solemn gray eyes in a rosy-cheeked oval face and neatly
cropped golden hair.
“Get that bleeding fowl out of the great hall, will
you?” Casyl snarled. “Here, I’ll call a
page.”
“Please, Father, I’d best take it back
myself, because I promised Cook I would..”
“Well and good, then. Come back when you’re
done.” The king aimed a vague kick at the dog. “Begone,
hound!”
Boarhound and marked prince alike scurried out of the royal
presence. With a sigh, Casyl sat back down and took his
tankard from the table.
“He’s a wild lad good scholar, and this is a
rough sort of court, as you’ve doubtless noticed.”
“Well, Your Highness, there is much virtue in a
simple life under less than easy conditions.”
“Nicely put. I can see that you’ll be able to
teach the prince tact, if naught else. I see no reason to pretend
to pomp that I can’t afford, The glory of my kingdom has
always lain in her soldiers, not her fine manners.”
“And young Maryn had best learn that, my
liege, if he wants to have a kingdom to govern when his turn
comes.”
It took Nevyn some time to fit into the life of the palace. In
the mornings he gave Maryn his lessons, but in the afternoon the
prince went to the captain of the warband for training in riding
and swordcraft. Nevyn spent much time alone at first, in his large,
wedge-shaped chamber at the very top of the broch. It
was nicely furnished with a bed, a writing desk, and a heavily
carved chest for his clothing, but its best feature was the view, a
vast sweep of the lake below and the rolling farmland beyond. At
meals, he ate with the other high-ranked servitors and their
families: the bard, the chamberlain, the equerry, and the
king’s chirurgeon. At first they regarded him warily with an
eye to keeping the king’s special favor for themselves, but
since he cared naught for privilege and petty signs of rank, they
soon accepted him.
For Maryn’s studies Nevyn had brought a number of
important books, among them a general précis of the laws for
beginners and several volumes of history, starting with the
Dawntime and continuing through the annals of the various Deverrian
and Eldidd kings. Eventually he would send to Aberwyn for copies of
Prince Mael’s books, particularly the treatise on nobility,
but they would have been hard slogging for a beginner. Every
morning he would let the lad read aloud for a while, stumbling
often but always pushing on, then take the book and finish the
passage himself. Together they would discuss what they had read.
Once Maryn realized that history was full of battles and scandal in
equal parts, his interest in his studies picked up enormously.
Once he’d become a well-known figure in the palace, Nevyn
took to spending some time with the queen, who was glad to have
someone new and well educated in the dun. Seryan had been born of
the line of Cantrae pretenders to the throne and was a distant
cousin of the current king, Slwmar the Second. At nineteen
she’d been married off to Casyl—much against her will,
because not only was the king five years her junior but his kingdom
was a rough, wild place compared to her home in Lughcarn. Now, some
seventeen years later, she’d made her peace with her life.
She had her two elder daughters and her young son to occupy her,
and as she admitted one day to Nevyn, she’d grown fond of
Casyl with time.
“If an old man may speak frankly,” Nevyn said.
“He’s a much better man than any of that pack of ferrets
around the throne in Cantrae.”
“Oh, I agree with you now, but what does a lass of nineteen know? All I could think of was that he was such a young lad, and
that I’d never get to attend any of my mother’s
splendid feasts again.”
And with a sigh, the queen changed the subject away from such
personal matters to a particular song the bard had sung in hall the
night before.
Not long after Nevyn’s arrival, the first snows came. The
lake froze to a solid glitter of white, and the farmlands lay
shrouded with only the distant trails of smoke to mark where the
houses stood. Life in the dun settled into a slow routine centered
on the huge hearths in the great hall, where the noble-born sat
close to the fire and the servants lay in the warm straw with the
dogs. As the drowsy weeks slipped past, Nevyn began to grow
honestly fond of Maryn. He was a hard child to dislike—always
happy, always courteous, supremely confident because of his
position as marked prince yet. honestly concerned, with the
welfare of others, Nevyn knew that if his work were successful
and Maryn did indeed take the throne of Deverry, everyone would
look back on his childhood and say that obviously the lad had
been born to be king. No doubt little legends about a gallantry
beyond his years would spring up, and the ordinary events of
childhood would be viewed as mighty omens. That his mother was a
highly intelligent woman and his father an unusually honorable
man would never enter into that kind of thinking. Nevyn was
quite willing to have things that way. After all, he was there to
create a myth, not write history.
And the myth seemed determined to get itself created. Shortly
before the Feast of the Sun, which would also mark Maryn’s
tenth birthday, the prince came to his tutor’s chamber
for his lessons in an unusually thoughtful mood. Since
the lad’s mind wandered all through the reading, Nevyn
finally asked him what was wrong.
“Oh, naught truly. But, sir, you’re a wise man.
Do you know what dreams mean?”
“Sometimes, but some dreams only mean that you ate too
much before you went to bed.”
Maryn giggled then cocked his head to one side in
thought.
“I dont think this was that sort of dream. It seemed
ever so real while I was sleeping, but then I woke up, and it
seemed daft.” He squirmed on his chair and looked away in
embarrassment. “Father says a real prince never gives
himself airs.”
“Your father’s right, but no one can blame you for
what you do in dreams, Tell me about it, if you’d
like.”
“I dreamt I was king of all Deverry. It was ever so real.
I was leading my army, you see, and I could smell the horses and
everything. We were in Cantrae and we were winning. You were there,
too, sir. You were my royal councillor. I was all sweaty and dirty,
because I’d been fighting, but the men were cheering and
calling me the king.”
For a moment Nevyn found it hard to breathe. It was possible
that the prince had only picked up the images from his
tutor’s mind, in the uncanny way that children can sometimes
read the minds of adults they want to please, but the detail, such
as the smell of horses, was so exact that he doubted it.
“You think it’s daft, don’t you?” the
prince said.
“I don’t. How good are you at keeping
secrets?”
“Truly good, and I’ll swear a vow if you like.”
Nevyn stared into the boy’s eyes, where his soul lay, like
a fire ready in a hearth, waiting for a spark in the tinder.
“Swear to me you’ll never repeat what I say, not to
your father or your mother, to priest or peddler, not to
anyone.”
“I swear it, on the honor of my clan, my royal line, and
the gods of my people.”
“Well and good. You will be king someday, king of all
Deverry. The great god Wmm has marked you out in his oracle and
sent me here to aid Your Highness.”
When Maryn looked away, his face pale, his soft boy’s
mouth was slack, but his eyes were those of the king to come.
“You’re dweomer, aren’t you, sir, just like in
the tales? But oh, Father says there’s no such thing as
dweomer anymore, that it was all in the Dawntime.”
“Indeed, my liege? Watch the hearth.”
Nevyn summoned the Wildfolk, who first obligingly put the fire
out cold, then lit it again with a great gust of flame when Nevyn
snapped his fingers. Maryn jumped up and grinned.
“Oh, that’s splendid! Then my dream was truly, truly
true?”
“It was, but not a word to any living soul until I tell
you that the time is ripe.”
“I won’t. I’d die first.”
He spoke so solemnly that he seemed more a man than a child,
caught in one of those rare moments when the levels of the soul
blend and let something of its Wyrd slip through to the conscious
mind. Then the moment vanished.
“Well, if I’m going to be king, I guess I’d
better know all these wretched laws, but oh, they’re so boring! Can’t we
read about battles and stuff for a while?”
“Very well, Your Highness. As the prince wishes.”
That night, Nevyn had to admit to himself that he was well pleased
by the way things were going. He could only hope that he’d
have enough time to train the lad properly, at least five more
years. Although he’d never leave Maryn’s side again
until the long wars were over and the land at peace, he wanted to
put, not a puppet on the throne, but a king.