Read the book: «Dawnspell»

Prologue Spring, 1063

Often those who study the dweomer complain that it speaks in riddles. There is a reason for this riddling. What is it? Well, that happens to be a riddle of its own.

The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

Out in the grasslands to the west of the kingdom of Deverry, the concepts of ‘day’ and ‘month’ had no meaning. The years flowed by, slowly, on the ebb and swell of the seasons: the harsh rains of winter, when the grass turned a bluish-green and the grey sky hung close to the earth; the spring floods, when the streams overflowed their banks and pooled around the willows and hazels, pale green with first leaves; the parching summer, when the grass lay pale gold and all fires were treacherous; the first soft rains of autumn, when wildflowers bloomed briefly in purple and gold. Driving their herds of horses and flocks of sheep, the People drifted north in the summer’s heat and south in the winter’s cold and, as they rode, they marked only the little things: the first stag to lose its antlers, the last strawberries. Since the gods were always present, travelling with their folk in the long wandering, they needed no high holidays or special feasts in their honour. When two or three alarli, the loosely organized travelling groups, happened to meet, then there was a festival to celebrate the company of friends.

Yet, there was one day of the year marked out from all the others: the spring equinox, which usually signalled the start of the floods. In the high mountains of the far north, the snows were melting, sending a tide down through the grasslands, just as another tide, this one of blood, had once swept over them from the north in the far past. Even though individuals of their race lived some five hundred years on average, by now there were none left who’d been present in those dark years, but the People remembered. They made sure that their children would always remember on the day of the equinox, when the alarli gathered in groups of ten or twelve for the Day of Commemoration.

Even though he was eager to ride east to Deverry, Ebañy Salomonderiel would never have left the elven lands until he’d celebrated this most holy and terrifying of days. In the company of his father, Devaberiel Silverhand the bard, he rode up from the sea-coast to the joining of the rivers Corapan and Delonderiel, near the stretch of primeval forest that marked the border of the grasslands. There, as they’d expected, they found an alardan, or clan-meet. Scattered in the tall grass were two hundred painted tents, red and purple and blue, while the flocks and herds grazed peacefully a little distance away. A little apart from the rest stood ten unpainted tents, crudely stitched together from poorly tanned hides.

‘By the Dark Sun herself,’ Devaberiel remarked. ‘It looks like some of the Forest Folk have come to join us.’

‘Good. It’s time they got over their fear of their own kind.’

Devaberiel nodded in agreement. He was an exceptionally handsome man, with hair pale as moonlight, deep-set dark blue eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, and gracefully long pointed ears. Although Ebañy had inherited the pale hair, in other ways he took after his mother’s human folk; his smoky grey eyes had round irises, and his ears, while slightly sharp, passed unnoticed in the lands of men. They rode on, leading their eight horses, two of which dragged travois, loaded with everything they owned. Since Devaberiel was a bard and Ebañy a gerthddyn, that is, a storyteller and minstrel, they didn’t need large herds to support themselves. As they rode up to the tents, the People ran out to greet them, hailing the bard and vying for the honour of feeding him and his son.

They chose to pitch the ruby-red tent near that of Tanidario, a woman who was an old friend of the bard’s. Although she’d often given his father advice and help as he raised his half-breed son alone, Ebañy found it hard to think of her as a mother. Unlike his own mother back in Eldidd, whom he vaguely remembered as soft, pale and cuddly, Tanidario was a hunter, a hard-muscled woman who stood six feet tall and arrow-straight, with jet-black hair that hung in one tight braid to her waist. Yet when she greeted him, she kissed his cheek, caught his shoulders, and held him a bit away while she smiled as if to say how much he’d grown.

‘I’ll wager you’re looking forward to the spring hunt,’ he said.

‘I certainly am, little one. I’ve been making friends with the Forest Folk, and they’ve offered to show me how to hunt with a spear in the deep woods. I’m looking forward to the challenge.’

Ebañy merely smiled.

‘I know you,’ Tanidario said with a laugh. ‘Your idea of hunting is finding a soft bed with a pretty lass in it. Well, maybe when you’re fully grown, you’ll see things more clearly.’

‘I happen to be seventy-four this spring.’

‘A mere child.’ She tousled his hair with a calloused hand. ‘Well, come along. The gathering’s already beginning. Where’s your father got to?’

‘He went with the other bards. He’ll be singing right after the Retelling.’

Down by the river, some of the People had lashed together a rough platform out of travois poles, where Devaberiel stood conferring with four other bards. All around it the crowd spread out, the adults sitting cross-legged in the grass while restless children wandered around. Ebañy and Tanidario sat on the edge near a little group of Forest Folk. Although they looked like the other elves, they were dressed in rough leather clothes, and each man carried a small notched stick, bound with feathers and coloured thread, which were considered magical among their kind. Although they normally lived in the dense forests to the north, at times they drifted south to trade with the rest of the People. Since they had never been truly civilized, the events that they were gathered to remember had spared them.

Gradually the crowd quieted, and the children sat down by their parents. On the platform four bards, Devaberiel among them, took their places at the back, arms crossed over their chests, legs braced a little apart, a solemn guard of honour for the storyteller. Manaver Contariel’s son, the eldest of them all, came forward and raised his arms high in the air. With a shock, Ebañy realized that this would be the last year that this bard would retell the story. He was starting to show his age, his hair white and thin, his face pouched and wrinkled. When one of the People aged, it meant death was near.

‘His father was there at the Burning,’ Tanidario whispered.

Ebañy merely nodded his acknowledgement, because Manaver was lowering his arms.

‘We are here to remember.’ His highly trained voice seemed to boom out in the warm stillness.

‘To remember,’ the crowd sighed back. ‘To remember the west.’

‘We are here to remember the cities, Rinbaladelan of the Fair Towers, Tanbalapalim of the Wide River, Bravelmelim of the Rainbow Bridges, yea, to remember the cities, and the towns, and all the marvels of the far, far west. They have been taken from us, they lie in ruins, where the owls and the foxes prowl, and weeds and thistles crack the courtyards of the palaces of the Seven Kings.’

The crowd sighed wordlessly, then settled in to listen to the tale that some had heard five hundred times or more. Even though he was half a Deverry man, Ebañy felt tears rise in his throat for the lost splendour and the years of peace, when in the hills and well-watered plains of the far west, the People lived in cities full of marvels and practised every art and craft until their works were so perfect that some claimed them dweomer.

Over a thousand years ago, so long that some doubted when the Burning had begun, whether it was a thousand and two hundred years or only a thousand and one, several millions of the People lived under the rule of the Seven Kings in a long age of peace. Then the omens began. For five winters the snows fell high; for five springs, floods swept down the river. In the sixth winter, farmers in the northern province reported that the wolves seemed to have gone mad, hunting in big packs and attacking travellers along the road. The sages agreed that the wolves must have been desperate and starving, and this, coupled with the weather, meant famine in the mountains, perhaps even some sort of blight or plague that might move south. In council the Seven Kings made plans: a fair method of stockpiling food and distributing it to those in need, a small military levy to deal with the wolfpacks. They also gathered dweomerfolk and sages around them to combat the threats and to lend their lore to farmers in need. In the sixth spring, squadrons of royal archers went forth to guard the north, but they thought they were only hunting wolves.

When the attack came, it broke like an avalanche and buried the archers in corpses. No one truly knew who the enemies were; they were neither human nor Elvish, but a squat breed like enormous dwarves, dressed in skins, and armed only with crude spears and axes. For all their poor weapons, their warriors fought with such enraged ferocity that they seemed not to care whether they lived or died. There were also thousands of them, and they travelled mounted. When the sages rushed north with the first reinforcements, they reported that the language of the Hordes was utterly unknown to them. Half-starved, desperately fleeing some catastrophe in their homeland, they burned and ravaged and looted as they came. Since the People had never seen horses before, the attackers had a real advantage, first of surprise, then of mobility once the elves grew used to the horrifying beasts. By the time they realized that horses were even more vulnerable to arrows than men, the north was lost, and Tanbalapalim a heap of smoking timbers and cracked stone.

The kings rallied the People and led them to war. After every man and woman who could loose a bow marched north, for a time the battles held even. Although the corpse-fires burned day and night along the roads, still the invaders marched in under the smoke. Since he pitied their desperation, King Elamanderiel Sun-Sworn tried to parley with the leaders and offered them the eastern grasslands for their own. In answer, they slew his guard of honour and ran his head on to a long spear, which they paraded in front of their men for days. After that, no mercy was offered. Children marched north with bows to take the places of their fallen parents, yet still the Hordes came.

By autumn the middle provinces were swept away in a tide of blood. Although many of the People fell back in a last desperate attempt to hold Rinbaladelan on the coast, most fled, taking their livestock, rounding up the horses that had given the invaders such an edge, loading wagons and trekking east to the grasslands that the Hordes despised. Rinbaladelan fought out the winter, then fell in the spring. More refugees came east, carrying tales the more horrible because so common. Every clan had had its women raped, its children killed and eaten, its houses burned down around those too weak to flee. Everyone had seen a temple defiled, an aqueduct mindlessly toppled, a farm looted then burned instead of appropriated for some good use. All summer, refugees trickled in – and starved. They were settled folk, unused to hunting except for sport. When they tried to plant their hoarded seed-grains, the harsh grasslands gave them only stunted crops. Yet in a way few cared whether they lived another winter or not, because they were expecting that the enemy would soon follow them east. Some fled into the forests to seek refuge among the primitive tribes; a few reached what later became Eldidd; most stayed, waiting for the end.

But the Hordes never came. Slowly the People learned to survive by living off their flocks and herds while they explored what the grasslands had to offer them. They ate things – and still did – that would have made the princes of the Vale of Roses vomit: lizards and snakes, the entrails of deer and antelope as well as the fine meat, roots and tubers grubbed out wherever they grew. They learned to dry horsedung to supplement the meagre firewood; they abandoned the wagons that left deep ruts in the grassland that now fed them in its own way. They boiled fish-heads for glues and used tendons for bowstrings as they moved constantly from one foraging-ground to another. Not only did they survive, but children were born, replacing those killed in flash floods and hunting accidents.

Finally, thirty-two years after the Burning, the last of the Seven Kings, Ranadar of the High Mountain, found his people again. With the last six archers of the Royal Guard he rode into an alardan one spring and told how he and his men had lived among the hills like bandits, taking what vengeance they could for their fallen country and begging the gods to send more. Now the gods had listened to their grief. While the Hordes could conquer cities, they had no idea how to rebuild them. They lived in rough huts among the ruins and tried to plant land they’d poisoned. Although every ugly member of them wore looted jewels, they let the sewers fill with muck while they fought over the dwindling spoils. Plague had broken out among them, diseases of several different kinds, all deadly and swift. When he spoke of the dying of the Hordes, Ranadar howled aloud with laughter like a madman, and the People laughed with him.

For a long time there was talk of a return, of letting the plagues do their work, then slaughtering the last of the Hordes and taking back the shattered kingdom. For two hundred years, until Ranadar’s death, men gathered nightly around the campfires to scheme. Every now and then, a few foolhardy young men would ride back to spy. Even fewer returned, but those who did spoke of general ruin and disease still raging. If life in the grasslands hadn’t been so harsh at first, perhaps an army might have marched west, but every year, there were almost as many deaths as births. Finally, some four hundred and fifty years after the Burning, some of the younger men organized a major scouting party to ride to Rinbaladelan.

‘And I was among them, a young man,’ Manaver said, his voice near breaking at the memory. ‘With twenty friends I rode west, for many a time had I heard my father speak of Rinbaladelan of the Fair Towers, and I longed to see it, even though the sight might bring my death. We took many quivers of arrows, for we expected many a bloody skirmish with the last of the Hordes.’ He paused for a twisted, self-mocking smile. ‘But they were gone, long dead, and so was Rinbaladelan. My father had told me of the high temples, covered with silver and jet; I saw grassy mounds. He told of towers five hundred feet high made of many-coloured stones; I found a broken piece here and there. He told of vast processions down wide streets; I traced out the grassy tracks. Here and there, I found a stone hut, cobbled out of the ruins. In some, I found skeletons lying unburied on the floor, the last of the Hordes.’

The crowd sighed, a grief-torn wind over the grassland. Near the front a little girl squirmed free of her mother’s lap and stood up.

‘Then why didn’t we go back, if they were all dead?’ she called out in a clear, high voice.

Although her mother grabbed her, the rest of the gathering laughed, a melancholy chuckle at a child’s boldness, a relief after so much tragedy. Manaver smiled at the little girl.

‘Back to what, sweet one?’ he said. ‘The kingdom was dead, a tangle of overgrowth and ruins. We’d brought our gods to the grasslands, and the grasslands became our mother. Besides, the men who knew how to lay out fine cities and smelt iron and work in stone were all dead. Those of us who survived were mostly farmers, herdsmen, or foresters. What did we know about building roads and working rare metals?’

Her mouth working in thought, the girl twisted one ankle around the other. Finally she looked up at the dying bard.

‘And will we never go back, then?’

‘Well, “never” is a harsh word, and one that you should keep closed in your mouth, but I doubt it, sweet one. Yet we remember the fair cities, our birthright, our home.’

Even though the People sighed out the word ‘remember’ with proper respect, no one wept, because none of them had ever seen the Vale of Roses or walked the Sun Road to the temples. With a nod, Manaver stepped back to allow Devaberiel forward to sing a dirge for the fallen land. The songs would go on for hours, each bard taking a turn and singing of happier and happier things, until at last the alardan would feast and celebrate, dancing far into the night. Ebañy got up and slipped away. Since he’d heard his father practise the dirge for some months, he was heartily sick of it. Besides, his Deverry blood pricked him with guilt, as it did every year on the Day of Commemoration.

By talking with Deverry scholars, Ebañy had pieced together something about the Burning that no one else knew. Since it would only lead to hatred between his two races of kinsfolk, he kept the secret even from his father. The Hordes had been driven south by the great influx of the people of Bel, as the Deverry men called themselves, when they’d come from their mysterious homeland over a thousand years ago. Although to the People’s way of thinking the Deverry men were a bloodthirsty lot, in the old days they’d been even more ruthless conquerors, hunting their enemies’ heads to decorate the temples of their gods. In their wanderings before they founded their Holy City, they’d swept through the far north, slaughtering, looting, enslaving some of the strange race, even, before they passed down the valley of the Aver Troe Matrw to their new lands. And the Hordes had fled before them, fled south.

‘You never lifted a sword against us, oh men of Deverry,’ Ebañy whispered aloud. ‘But you slaughtered my father’s people sure enough.’

With a little shudder, he ducked into the tent, where the sun came through the dyed leather and turned the air to ruby. Since they’d arrived late for the alardan, piles of tent-bags and gear lay scattered on the leather ground-cloth. Idly he picked up a few bags and hung them from the hooks on the tent-poles, then sat down in the clutter to poke through a canvas bag of the Deverry sort. Down at the bottom he found a tiny leather pouch, opened it, and took out a simple silver ring. A flat band about a third of an inch wide, it was engraved with roses on the outside and words in Elvish characters but some unknown language on the inside. The roses caught the reddish light and seemed to bloom, double hybrids of the cultivated sort now found only in Deverry.

‘And are you spoil from Rinbaladelan or Tanbalapalim?’ he asked it. ‘The only roses my people know now are the wild ones with their five meagre little petals.’

The ring lay mute on his palm, a gleaming paradox. Although it possessed no dweomer of its own, it was tied to the dweomer. Many years ago, a mysterious, nameless wanderer had given it to Devaberiel as a present for one of his as-yet-unborn sons. Now the omen-reading of the dweomerwoman showed that it belonged to Rhodry, the youngest of the three, and like Ebañy, a half-breed. But unlike Ebañy’s, Rhodry’s mother was no pretty village lass, but one of the most powerful noblewomen in the kingdom. Rhodry could never learn the truth about his real father, who had given Ebañy the task of taking the ring to him.

‘And what am I supposed to tell him when I find him?’ he grumbled aloud, because talking came much easier to him than thinking. ‘Oh, well, this peculiar personage said it was yours, but I can’t tell you why. Of course, I don’t know why it’s yours – no one does – so, dear brother, I won’t be lying to you when I make my most feeble excuses. One dweomer says it encircles your Wyrd, and another working says that your Wyrd is Eldidd’s Wyrd, and so here we are, in the land of vagaries, nuances, and secrets. Ah by the gods, doesn’t my Elvish curiosity ache to know the truth!’

With a laugh, he slipped the ring back into its wrapping, then put that pouch into the one he carried around his neck. Soon he would be riding into the lands of men, where thieves prowl, and he would need a better hiding-place for the ring than an open canvas sack. Thinking of the journey ahead of him, he went outside and wandered down to the riverbank, where the Delonderiel rolled by, flecked with gold in the lowering sun. Distantly he heard his father’s voice, firm and clear in its sorrow as the stanzas marched on. He stared at the river and used it to focus his mind, until at last his dweomer scryed Rhodry out, a pale image of him at first, then a clear picture.

Rhodry was standing on the ramparts of a rough stone dun and looking out over countryside where patches of snow still lay under dark pine trees. He was wrapped in a cloak, and his breath came in a frosty puff. Now that Ebañy knew they shared a father, he could see what had eluded him the summer before, when he’d met Rhodry by chance and wondered why this young warrior looked so familiar. Although Rhodry had raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes, they looked enough alike to be what they were, brothers. As he studied the resemblance, Ebañy found himself grumbling again.

‘So I’m not supposed to tell you the truth, brother, am I? What am I supposed to do, smash every mirror within your reach? Rhodry has to think himself human and a Maelwaedd, says my master in dweomer. Oh splendid! Then I’d best hand over this ring and disappear before you look too closely at my face!’

In the vision, Rhodry’s image suddenly turned and seemed to be staring right at him, as if he were listening to his faraway kin. Ebañy smiled at him, then widened the vision, switching his point of view this way and that around the countryside to the limits of the scrying, about two miles away from its focus. He saw sharp rocky hills, covered with pine, and here and there among them small farms. Most likely Rhodry was in the province of Cerrgonney, then, a good five hundred miles away at the very least.

‘It’s going to be a long summer’s riding, then, Ebañy, lad,’ he told himself. ‘On the other hand, it would be a wretched shame to leave before the feasting’s over.’

Although it was cold up on the ramparts of Lord Gwogyr’s dun, Rhodry lingered there a few moments longer and looked out over the Cerrgonney hills without truly seeing them. For a moment he wondered if he were going daft, because it seemed he’d heard someone talking to him though he was the only man on the walls. The words had been indistinct, but someone had called him brother and talked of giving him a gift. In irritation he tossed his head and decided that it had only been some trick of the wind. Since the only brother he knew of hated him with his very soul, it was unlikely that he’d be giving him any gift but a dagger in the back, and those words – if words they were – had sounded warm and friendly.

Leaning back against the damp stone, he pulled his silver dagger from his belt and looked at it while he idly thought of his elder brother, Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn, who had sent him into exile some years before. Although the dagger was a beautiful thing, as sharp as steel but gleaming like silver, it was a mark of shame, branding him a dishonoured mercenary soldier who fought only for coin, never for honour. It was time for him to wander down the long road, as the silver daggers called their lives. Although he’d fought well for Lord Gwogyr last autumn, even taking a wound in his service, a silver dagger’s welcome was a short one, and already the chamberlain was grumbling about having to feed him and his woman. Sheathing the dagger, he glanced up at the sky, cold but clear. It was likely that the snows were long past.

‘Tomorrow we’ll ride,’ he said aloud. ‘And if you were thinking of me, brother, may the thought turn your guts to fire.’

Far to the south, in a little town in Eldidd, an event was happening that would indeed bring Gwerbret Rhys the sort of pain his younger brother had wished upon him, even though Rhodry had no way of knowing it. Dun Bruddlyn, a fort only recently disposed upon its lord, Garedd, was filled with a tense sort of bustle. While the lord himself paced restlessly in his great hall with a goblet of mead in his hand, his second wife, Donilla, was giving birth up in the women’s hall. Since this was her first child, the labour was a long one, and Tieryn Lovyan as well as the other women in attendance was beginning to worry. Her face dead-white, her long chestnut hair soaked with sweat, Donilla crouched on the birthing stool and clung to the thick rope tied from one of the beams far above. Her serving-woman, Galla, knelt beside her and wiped her face every now and then with a cloth soaked in cold water.

‘Let her suck a bit of moisture from a clean rag,’ said the herbman who was attending the birth. ‘But just a bit.’

Another serving-lass hurried to get clean cloth and fresh water without a moment’s hesitation. Not only was old Nevyn known as the best herbman in the kingdom, but it was widely rumoured that he had the dweomer. Lovyan smiled at the lass’s awe, but only slightly, because she knew full well that the rumours were true. When she glanced at Nevyn in a questioning sort of way, he gave her a reassuring smile, then spoke to Donilla. His ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into her soft brown ones and capture her very soul. With a sigh she relaxed as if some of the pain had left her.

‘It’ll be soon now, my lady.’ His voice was very soft and kind. ‘Breathe deeply now, but don’t bear down on the babe. It’ll be coming soon.’

Donilla nodded, gasped at a contraction, and let out her breath in a long, smooth sigh. Although Lovyan had given birth to four sons herself, she couldn’t remember her own labours being this difficult. Perhaps I’ve just forgotten, she thought. One does forget the pain, and so oddly soon. Restlessly she paced to an open window and looked out on the bright spring day while she considered the irony. Poor Donilla had been so eager to have a child; now she was probably wishing that she truly had been barren. When the younger woman moaned again, Lovyan winced in sympathy.

‘It’s crowning, my lady!’ Nevyn crowed in victory. ‘Soon, very soon. Now – bear down.’

Lovyan stayed at the window until she heard the high-pitched wail, a good, healthy cry at that. She turned round to see Nevyn and the serving-woman laying Donilla down on the pallet prepared by the stool and laying the babe, still attached by the cord, at her breast. With trembling fingers the lady stroked the soft fuzz on her child’s head and smiled in wide-eyed triumph.

‘A son, Your Grace!’ she croaked. ‘I’ve given my lord another son.’

‘And a fine healthy one, at that,’ Lovyan said. ‘Shall I go and tell His Lordship the good news?’

Donilla nodded, her eyes on the tiny face already nuzzling at her breast.

As she went downstairs, Lovyan’s heart was heavy, and she felt badly about it. Of course Donilla deserved this moment of triumph, of vindication. After ten years of a childless marriage, her first husband had cast her off as barren, a bitter humiliation for any woman to bear, worse than the heart-breaking thought that she would never have children. Now she had her son, and everyone in Eldidd knew that she wasn’t the barren one. Unfortunately, her small triumph had important political consequences, of which her second husband seemed to be painfully aware. Garedd was a man of middle years, with two sons and a daughter by his first marriage; a solid sort with grey in his blond hair and moustaches, he was genuinely pleased at Lovyan’s news, breaking out into a laugh and yelling that he had a son to his warband across the hall. Then, almost instantly, he wiped the look of triumph off his face.

‘My apologies for gloating, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘But it takes a man that way.’

‘You don’t need to apologize to me, cousin,’ Lovyan said wearily. ‘Nor to Rhys, either, though I’d advise you to stay away from Aberwyn for a while.’

‘I was planning to, truly.’

There lay the crux of the matter; Gwerbret Rhys had been Donilla’s first husband, the one who had shamed her as barren because he had no heirs for his vast rhan, one of the most important in the entire kingdom. If he died childless, as now seemed most likely, Eldidd could well break out into open war as the various candidates tried to claim the gwerbretrhyn for their own clan. Although Lovyan was fond of her cousin and his wife, she was here to witness the birth because of its political implications. Since she was the tieryn of Dun Gwerbyn, with many vassals and large holdings, her time was too valuable for her to ride around the countryside playing at midwife for her vassals’ wives. But it had been necessary that she see with her own eyes that, truly, Donilla had given birth to a child.

‘Do you think Rhys will adopt a son?’ Garedd said.

‘I have no idea what Rhys will or won’t do any more, for all that he’s my first-born son. An adopted heir won’t have much of a chance in the Council of Electors, anyway. The sensible thing for him to do would be to recall Rhodry from exile.’

Garedd raised one questioning eyebrow.

‘I haven’t given up hope yet,’ Lovyan snapped. ‘But truly, my lord, I understand your scepticism.’

In another half-hour, Nevyn came down to the great hall. A tall man with a thick shock of white hair and a face as wrinkled as old burlap, still he moved with strength, striding up to the table of honour and making Garedd a smooth bow. When he announced that the lord could visit the lady, Garedd was off like a flushed hare, because he loved his young wife in an almost unseemly way. Nevyn accepted a tankard of ale from a page and sat down beside Lovyan.

‘Well,’ he remarked. ‘She had a remarkably good first birth for a woman her age. Knowing you, you’re pleased in spite of yourself.’

‘Just that. I was always fond of her. If only some other beastly man had cast her off.’

Nevyn gave her a thin smile and had a well-deserved swallow of ale.

‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Going to Dun Deverry. Now that I have a nephew at court, I can hear some of the gossip from the King’s councils.’

‘Nephew, indeed! But I’m glad he’s there, all the same. I’m beginning to think that our only hope is to get our liege to override Rhys’s sentence of exile. It’s happened before.’

‘Gwerbrets have also risen in rebellion against such meddling. Do you think Rhys will?’

‘I don’t know. Ah, by the Goddess herself, it aches my heart to think of war coming to Eldidd, and all over my two squabbling sons!’

‘The war hasn’t started yet, and I’m going to do my cursed best to make sure it doesn’t.’

Yet he looked so weary that she was suddenly frightened. Even though he was the most powerful dweomerman in the kingdom, he was still only one man. He was also caught up in political intrigue that – or so it seemed to her – his magical calling would ill-equip him to handle.

‘Ah well,’ she said at last. ‘At least the child himself was born with good omens. They always say it’s a lucky lad who’s born the first day of spring.’

‘So they do, and let’s hope this spring is as well-omened for us all.’

The absent way he spoke made her realize that he very much doubted it would be. She was hesitating, half wanting to ask more, half afraid to hear the truth if he should tell her, when a page came over to her. The young lad looked utterly confused.

‘Your Grace? There’s a noble lord at the gates. Should I ask you what to do, or go and find Lord Garedd?’

‘You may ask me, because I’m of higher rank. If I were of the same rank as Garedd, you’d have to go and find him. Now. Which noble lord is it?’

‘Talidd of Belglaedd, Your Grace. He said the strangest thing. He asked if he was welcome in the dun that should have been his.’

Beside her Nevyn swore under his breath.

‘Oh ye gods,’ Lovyan said feebly. ‘He would turn up right now! Well, lad, run and tell him that indeed he’s welcome in the dun called Bruddlyn. Tell him that exactly and not a word more.’

As soon as the page was on his way, Nevyn turned to her with the lift of a quizzical eyebrow.

‘It all goes back to Loddlaen’s war,’ she said, her voice heavy with weariness. ‘Talidd’s sister was Corbyn’s wife. She went back to her brother before the war even started, because having Loddlaen in the dun was driving her daft, and I can’t say I blame her for that, frankly. But then, after Corbyn was killed, I attainted this demesne because she’d left her husband. All my loyal men would have grumbled if I hadn’t. I offered her a settlement of coin and horses, but Talidd refused to let her take a copper or a filly of it.’

She broke off because the subject of this explanation was striding into the great hall, stripping off his cloak and riding gloves as he did so. Talidd of Belglaedd was a heavy-set man of forty, with grey hair still streaked with blond, and shrewd green eyes. Tossing his cloak to the page, he came over and made the tieryn a deep bow. His bland smile revealed nothing at all.

‘I’m surprised to see you here, my lord,’ Lovyan said.

‘I came to congratulate Garedd on the birth of a child. The page tells me it’s a lad.’

‘It is, and a healthy one.’

‘Then Dun Bruddlyn has yet another heir, does it?’ Talidd paused to take a tankard of ale from a serving lass. ‘Well, the gods may witness the justice of that.’

Lovyan debated challenging him then and there. If she’d been a man, and thus able to fight her own duels, she might well have done it, but as it was, she would have to call for a champion. Answering that call would be the captain of her warband, Cullyn of Cerrmor, who was without doubt the best swordsman in all Deverry. It seemed rather unfair to sentence Talidd to certain death for a few nasty remarks.

‘I choose to ignore that, my lord,’ Lovyan said, and she put ice in her voice. ‘If you feel injured, you may put your case before the gwerbret, and I shall come to court at his order.’

‘The gwerbret, Your Grace, happens to be your son.’

‘So he is, and I scrupulously raised him to be a fair-minded man.’

At that Talidd looked down abruptly at the table, and he had the decency to blush. In the duel of words, Lovyan had scored the first touch.

‘I’m surprised you’ve come here just to pour vinegar in an old wound,’ she said.

‘The matter’s of great moment for the gwerbretrhyn, isn’t it? You forget, Your Grace, that I hold a seat on the Council of Electors.’

Lovyan had forgotten, and she cursed herself mentally for the lapse. Talidd had a sip of ale and smiled his bland, secretive smile at her and Nevyn impartially.

‘I was hoping I’d be in time to witness the birth,’ he said at last. ‘I take it there were witnesses not of this household.’

‘Myself and the herbman here.’

‘And none, my lady, would dare dispute your word, not in open court nor in private meeting.’ The smile grew less bland. ‘We may take it as a given that, indeed, the Lady Donilla’s not barren, no matter what seemed to be the case before.’

Lovyan gave him a brilliant smile and hated his very heart.

‘Just so, my lord. I take it as another given that you’ll be summoning the council with this news as soon as ever you can.’

Talidd left well before the evening meal with the remark that he had a better welcome nearby. He sounded so martyred, and so genuinely injured, that Nevyn felt like kicking him all the way out of the great hall. For Lovyan’s sake, he refrained. Instead he went up to look in on Donilla, who was by then resting in her own bed with the swaddled babe beside her. In some minutes Lovyan joined him there, her expression as placid as if she’d never heard Talidd’s name, and made a few pleasantries to the younger woman. Nevyn left when she did, following her to the chamber in the suite that had been allotted to her on this visit. Although plain, it was obviously furnished with Dun Bruddlyn’s best; her cousin and his lady both had reason to be grateful for her gift of this demesne, as she remarked.

‘Although it’s turning out to be a troubled gift, sure enough,’ Nevyn said. ‘I didn’t realize Talidd felt so strongly.’

‘Him and half the lords in the tierynrhyn. I knew there’d be trouble when I gave it to Garedd, but there’d have been trouble no matter what I did. Well, I suppose if I’d apportioned it to you, no one would have grumbled, but you didn’t want it, and so here we are.’

‘Come now, Lovva! You almost make me feel guilty.’

‘I like that “almost”. But truly, whenever an overlord has land to give, there’s bound to be injured feelings. I only wish that Talidd didn’t have a seat on the council. Ah ye gods, what a nasty thing this is becoming! Even if Rhys’s wife did have a babe now, no one would believe it was his.’

‘Just so. I –’

With a bang of the door and a gleeful howl of laughter, a child of about two came charging into the chamber with a nursemaid in pursuit. She was slender for her age, with a mop of curly, raven-dark hair and violet eyes, almost as dark a purple as an elf’s – all in all, a breathtakingly beautiful child. With a gurgle, she threw herself into Lovyan’s exalted lap.

‘Granna, Granna, love you, Granna.’

‘And I love you, too, Rhodd-let, but you’re being naughty and interrupting.’

Rhodda twisted in her lap and looked solemnly at Nevyn. The family resemblance was profound.

‘I’d almost forgotten about Rhodry’s daughter. She certainly hasn’t inherited her looks from her mother’s side, has she?’

‘None, but Maelwaedd blood tends to be strong, and Olwen, poor lass, was one of those blonde and bland sorts. Rhodry’s bastard might have a very important role to play in what lies ahead, so I keep her with me at all times – to supervise her upbringing, of course.’ For all her talk of political purposes, she kissed the top of the child’s head with a genuine fondness, then motioned to the nursemaid. ‘Now let Mistress Tevylla take you away and give you some bread and milk. It’s almost time for bed.’

Although Rhodda whined, begged, and finally howled, Lovyan held firm and scooped her up bodily to give her to her nurse, who was hovering by the chamber door. Nevyn hadn’t truly noticed her before, but he saw now that she was a striking woman of about thirty, with dark hair, dark eyes and almost severely regular features. Once she and her small charge were gone, Nevyn asked about her.

‘Tevva?’ Lovyan said. ‘A charming woman, and with a will of steel, which she needs around Rhodda, I assure you. She’s a widow, actually, with a son of her own, who’s – oh ye gods, I don’t remember his age, but old enough for Cullyn to be training him for the warband. Her man was a blacksmith down in my town, but he died suddenly of a fever two winters ago. Since she had no kin, the priests recommended her to my charity, and I needed a woman for Rhodda. That child is a worse handful than even her father was.’ She sighed, and since they were alone, she could be honest. ‘I suppose it’s the elven blood in their veins.’

‘I’d say so, for all that Rhodda doesn’t have much of it.’

‘A full quarter, let us not forget. Don’t fall for your own lies about a trace of elven blood in the Maelwaedds.’

‘Well, it’s not a lie, because there is one, but of course, it doesn’t apply here. I take it you plan to make the child a good marriage some day?’

‘An influential marriage, certainly, and I plan to teach her now to make any marriage suit her own purposes. If she can learn to channel all that wilfulness, she’ll be a woman to reckon with in Eldidd, illegitimate or not.’

Although Nevyn agreed with vague words rather than burden her further, he privately wondered if the child could ever be tamed and forced into the narrow mould of a noble-born woman. Sooner or later, her wild blood was going to show.

Before he left Dun Bruddlyn, Nevyn made a point of scrying out Rhodry and, when he found him well, telling Lovyan so. As he rode out, leading his pack-mule behind him, he felt a dread that was as much logic as it was dweomer-warning. The summer before, he and those others who studied the dweomer of Light had won a series of victories over those who followed the dweomer of darkness. They had not only disrupted an elaborate plot of the dark masters but had also ruined one of their main sources of income, the importing of opium and various poisons into the kingdom. The dark ones would want revenge; they always did, and he reminded himself to stay on guard in his travels. Of course, it was likely that they’d scheme for years, trying to lay a plan so clever and convoluted that it would be undetectable. It was likely, but at the same time, the dweomer-warnings came to him in a coldness down his back. Since the dark masters were so threatened, they would doubtless strike back as soon as they could. The only question was how.

And yet other, more mundane matters demanded his attention as well. The gwerbretrhyn was too rich, too desirable, to stay peaceful if the line of succession should be broken. As much as he hated involving himself in the schemings and feudings of noble clans, Nevyn knew that his duty to Rhodry’s dweomer-touched Wyrd also imposed on him a duty to Rhodry’s rhan and to his innocent subjects, who preferred peace to war, unlike noble-born men like Talidd. He would fight with every weapon he had to keep Aberwyn safe. For all that Lovyan was sceptical about his political skills (and he knew full well that she was), he was better armed for this fight than any man in the kingdom, right down to the wisest of the High King’s councillors. Oh, I learned a trick or two that time, he thought to himself, and our Rhodry was right in the middle of that little mess, for all that he was a humble rider then, and an outlawed man! Although it had been well over a hundred years ago, he knew what it was to battle for the throne of not merely a gwerbret, but a king.