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He left the window and sat down in a half-round rosewood chair, intricately carved with interlace wound about the dragons of Aberwyn, to draw his newly returned silver dagger and study it. Although the blade looked like silver, it was harder than the best steel, and it gleamed without a trace of tarnish. When he flicked it with a thumbnail it rang.
‘Dwarven silver,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Ah, by the lord of hell, I must be going daft to wish I was out on the long road again!’
He owned another piece of dwarven silver, too, a ring he always wore on the third finger of his right hand, a simple band of elven workmanship, engraved with roses on the outside and a line of elven writing on the inside. Just as he held up his hand to look at the ring, a page opened the door.
‘Your Grace? Am I disturbing your lordship?’
‘Not truly.’
‘Well, Your Grace, there’s this shabby old herbwoman at the door, and she’s insisting on speaking to you. One of the guards was going to turn her away, but she gave us this look, Your Grace, and I … well, I was frightened of her, so I thought I’d best tell you.’
Rhodry’s heart pounded once.
‘Did she give you her name?’
‘She did, Your Grace. It’s Jill.’
‘I’ll receive her up here.’
The lad frankly stared, then bowed and trotted away.
While he waited for the woman he once had loved more than life itself, Rhodry paced back and forth from window to door. He hadn’t seen Jill in thirty years, not since the night when she left him, simply rode out of his life without a backward glance – or so he assumed – to follow a Wyrd even stranger than his own. At first, he thought of her constantly, wondered if she missed him, wondered if her studies in the strange craft of the dweomer were bringing her the happiness she sought. Yet as the years passed and his wound healed, he let her memory rest, except for an idle wondering every now and then if she were well. Although she did come to Aberwyn to tend her dying father, he was at court in Dun Deverry at the time. Once in a while, some news of her doings came his way, but never in any detail. Now she was here. He was dreading seeing her, because she was only a few years younger than himself, and he hated the thought of seeing her beauty ravaged by age. When he heard her crisp voice thanking the page, his heart pounded once again. The door opened.
‘The herbwoman, Your Grace.’
In strode a woman dressed in men’s clothing, a pair of dirty brown brigga, and a much-mended linen shirt, stained green in places from medicinal leaves and stems. Her hair, cropped like a lad’s, shone a silvery grey, and crows’ feet round her blue eyes ran deep, but she seemed neither young nor old, so full of life and vigour that it was impossible to think of her as anything other than handsome. Beautiful she wasn’t, not any longer, but as he stared at the face which coincided with the one belonging to his lovely young lass of past years, he found that it fitted her better than the beauty he was remembering. Her sudden smile could move him still.
‘Aren’t you going to say one word to me?’ she said with a laugh.
‘My apologies. It’s just a bit of a shock, having you turn up like this.’
‘No doubt. You’re in for a worse shock than that, I’m afraid.’
Without waiting to be asked she sat down in one of the chairs by the hearth. He took the other facing, and for a few moments the silence deepened around them. Then he remembered that his silver dagger must have been coming home at the same time as she was riding into Aberwyn, and he shuddered, feeling a cold touch of Wyrd that made the hairs on the nape of his neck bristle.
‘And what is this shock?’
‘Well, for starters, Nevyn’s dead.’
Rhodry grunted as if at a blow. He’d known Nevyn, her teacher and master in the craft of magic, very well indeed – in fact, Rhodry owed him his life and his rhan both.
‘May the gods give him rest in the Otherlands, then. Somehow I thought the dweomer would keep the old man alive for ever.’
‘He was beginning to wonder himself.’ She grinned so broadly that it seemed inappropriate. ‘He was glad to go, when the time came.’
‘How did it happen? Was he ill, or was there an accident?’
‘What? Oh, naught of that sort. It was time, and he went. He made his goodbyes to all of us and lay down on his bed and died. That’s all.’ Her smile faded. ‘I’ll miss him, though. Every hour of every day.’
‘My heart aches for you, truly.’
As if to share his sympathy, Wildfolk came, sprite and sylph and gnome, materializing like the fall of silent drops of rain to float down and stand around them. When a skinny grey fellow climbed into Jill’s lap and reached up to pat her cheek, she smiled again, shoving the mourning away. The sight of the Wildfolk reminded Rhodry of his own problems. Whatever else Jill might have been to him, she was a dweomermaster now, the possessor of strange powers and even stranger lore.
‘I’ve got a question for you,’ he said. ‘How long does an elven half-breed like me live, anyway?’
‘A good long while, though not so long as a true elf. I’d say you’ve got a hundred years ahead, easily, my friend. When I’m buried and gone, you’ll still look like a lad of twenty.’
‘By all the ice in all the hells! That can’t happen! How long will it be before all of Aberwyn figures out that I’m no true Maelwaedd, then?’
‘Not very, truly. The common folk are already whispering about you, wondering about dweomer and suchlike. Soon enough the noble-born will, too, and they’ll come to you with a few hard questions about exactly how much elven blood there is in the Maelwaedd clan, and whether or no those old rumours about elves living forever are true. If someone found out who your true father was, it would be a nasty blow to your clan’s honour.’
‘There’s a cursed sight more at stake than the honour of the Maelwaedds. Can’t you see, Jill? My sons disinherited, and civil war in the rhan, and –’
‘Of course I see!’ She held her hand up flat for silence. ‘That’s the other reason I’ve come.’
He felt the cold again, rippling down his back. Thirty years since he’d seen her, and yet they still at times shared thoughts.
‘I had an omen,’ she went on. ‘It was right after we buried Nevyn – me and the folk in the village where we lived, that is – and I went walking out to a little lake near our home, where there’s a stand of rushes out in the water. It was just at sunset, and there were some clouds in the sky. You know how easy it is to see pictures in sunset clouds. So I saw a cloud-shape that looked just like a falcon catching a little dragon in her claws. Oho, think I, that’s me and Rhodry! And the minute I thought it, I felt the dweomer cold, and I knew that it was true. And here I am.’
‘That simple, is it? You think of me, and here you are?’
‘Well, I had to ride to Aberwyn like anyone else.’
‘Not what I meant. Why did the omen in the clouds make you come here?’
‘Oh, that! None of your affair.’
He started to probe, but her expression stopped him: unsmiling, a little cool, like the cover of a book abruptly slammed shut. He could remember Nevyn turning that same blank stare on questioners who pried into things they weren’t meant to know. Gwerbret or not, he would only be wasting his time if he should ask more.
‘I don’t suppose you could cast some dweomer on me to make me age.’
‘You’re still a ready man with a jest, aren’t you? I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. The way out’s obvious, anyway. You’ll have to turn the rhan over to your eldest lad and leave Eldidd.’
‘What? That’s a hard thing for a man of my rank to do.’
‘If you give up the rhan, your son will keep it. If you try to keep it, your son will lose it.’
‘It’s not just the blasted rhan! You’re asking me to leave blood kin behind. Jill, by the gods, I’ve got grandsons.’
‘Do you want to see them murdered to wipe out the last traces of a bastard line?’
With a groan he buried his face in his hands. Her voice went on remorselessly.
‘Once the first whispers go round that you might not be a true-born Maelwaedd, you’ll have to settle them by the sword, and honour duels have led to wars before, especially with a rich prize like Aberwyn at stake. If you lose the civil war, your enemies will hunt down every child who could even remotely be considered your heir, even Rhodda’s lad.’
‘Oh, hold your tongue! I know that as well as you do.’
‘Well, then?’
He looked up to find her watching him with a calm sort of wondering. For a moment he hated her.
‘It’s all well and good to talk of me leaving Eldidd, but I’m not an exile or a shiftless younger son any more. If I present a petition to the king to allow me to abdicate, the rumours will pile up like horsedung in a winter stable. Besides, what if our liege asks me my reasons outright? I could try to lie, but I doubt me that I’d be convincing. The king knows me cursed well.’
She frowned at the hearth while she considered.
‘You’re right, aren’t you? I’ll have to think about that.’ Abruptly she rose. ‘If anyone asks you why I came here, tell them I wanted to tell you about Nevyn, because that’s true enough in its own way. I’ll see you again, and soon.’
Then she was gone, out and shutting the door before Rhodry could rise from his chair. For a while he tried to convince himself that he’d been having a strange, drunken dream, but the elven ring gleamed on his finger to remind him of the truth, that he would have to leave his clan behind for the sake of his love for it. Besides, the dweomer had saved his life several times over in the past, and he knew, with a sudden cold certainty, that the time had come to repay his debt.
Bred and born to rule, carefully trained to impose his will on others while following every nicety of courtesy, Cullyn Maelwaedd was unused to feeling guilt, and he hated this constant nag of conscience. Every time he looked at his father it bit deep and gnawed him, so that at times he wished that Rhodry were … not dead, no, never that, but perhaps showing some signs that he might indeed die at some point. In a way, his dilemma was unique. Because Rhodry had refused to send Cullyn into fosterage as custom demanded and had taken the unheard-of step of raising his son himself, Cullyn was one of the few noble lords in Deverry who honestly loved his father. Every time he caught himself wondering if he’d ever actually inherit Aberwyn and felt the accompanying bite of guilt, he saw the wisdom of fosterage in a world where a son’s power depends on his father’s death.
Cullyn also was fairly certain that his father suspected him of wishing him gone. After the first few days of his visit, Rhodry became more and more withdrawn, spending long hours alone either riding through the demesne or shut up brooding in his private chamber. Cullyn considered simply going home, but since he’d said that he’d stay for ten days, he was afraid that leaving ahead of schedule would seem suspicious. On the fifth morning he came down for breakfast only to find that Rhodry had already left the dun. He went out to the stable to question the groom, but the gwerbret hadn’t said a word about where he was going. As he made his way through the clutter of sheds behind the broch, he noticed two serving lasses gossiping furiously about something, an activity that would have meant nothing if they hadn’t suddenly fallen silent at the very sight of him. He walked on past, tormenting himself by wondering if even the wretched common-born servants knew his secret.
Later, as he was going up to his chamber in the broch, a similar thing happened; two pages, this time, stopped talking the moment they saw him. Cullyn grabbed one of them by the shirt collar.
‘And just what are you saying that’s unfit for my ears?’
The two boys went dead-white and looked as if they wanted to run, but whether or not he would ever be gwerbret, Cullyn was a powerful lord and no man to argue with.
‘Begging your pardon, my lord, please, it was naught.’
‘Indeed? Then why have you gone as white as milk?’
The second page was older and obviously a bit wiser. He stepped forward with a passable bow.
‘My lord, we mean no offence. We were talking over this strange rumour. Maybe you should know about it, my lord. Then you can stop people from repeating it.’
‘Indeed? And just what have the townsfolk been saying?’
‘Well, you know, my lord, how the gwerbret looks so young? We heard an old woman in the marketplace saying it was all because of dweomer. She said some old wizard cast this spell on him years and years ago, that he’d never get old, but then he’d have to die all of a sudden, like, to pay back the spell. The old woman said there’s a gerthddyn in town spreading the tale. He heard it up north or somewhere.’ He paused, sincerely troubled. ‘My lord, that’s not true, is it? His grace is splendid, and I don’t want to see him die.’
‘Here, that can’t be true, indeed. Don’t you bother your heart with it.’
Yet he hesitated, troubled himself, remembering all the tales whispered among his clan that Rhodry’s life had been touched more than once by dweomer. And what if this strange story were true? Although by that time most people in Deverry knew that magic existed, few knew much about its true powers and capabilities, so Cullyn was ready enough to believe that it could keep his father unnaturally young. He summoned four men from his warband as an escort, then went into the town. By asking round in the market square he found out that the gerthddyn had been staying at the Green Goose, the best inn in Aberwyn, but when he went there, the tavernman told him that the gerthddyn had ridden out that very morning.
‘I’ll wager, my lord, that he knew he couldn’t stay here long, what with him spreading them nasty tales about your father. There’s not a vain bone in the gwerbret’s body, my lord. Why would he be making pacts with sorcerers just to keep his looks?’
‘Well spoken, truly. What was this fellow like?’
‘His name was Salamander, my lord, and he was a skinny sort of fellow with yellow hair. Oh, he was a splendid talker, my lord, when he was telling his tales, so it’s no wonder this wretched rumour’s spreading itself around. Now, wait, my lord.’ He paused to suck his brown stumps of teeth in thought. ‘Salamander didn’t rightly say the rumour was true, like. He said he heard it up in Belglaedd and asked if we thought there was any truth in it.’
‘I see. Well, he’s gone and no more trouble to us, then.’
When Cullyn returned to the great hall, Rhodry was sitting at the head of the table of honour and drinking alone. He waved his son over with a smile that made him look more his normal self than he had in days.
‘There you are, lad. I’ve been thinking. Shall we go hunting on the morrow? I rode out to the forest preserve today, and the gamekeeper tells me we’ve got a pair of young stags. We could cull one easily and help the old stag keep his dominion for another spring.’
‘Gladly, Father.’
Cullyn motioned a page over to pour him ale. As they talked about the hunt to come, he forgot all about strange rumours in the normality of the moment.
Just at dawn on the morrow, Cullyn joined his father and the kennelmaster in the courtyard, where the well trained dogs lay still but excited, ears pricked, tails thumping the cobbles. When the men mounted for the ride to the forest, the dogs leapt up and swarmed round the kennelmaster, who trotted along with them on foot as the party set out. In the brightening day the hunt left Aberwyn behind and went north along the bank of the river Gwyn, which churned white and swollen with the spring run-off. About eight miles on they reached the preserve, a smallish stand of timber compared to the vast gwerbretal hunting park at Belglaedd farther north. While they ate a cold breakfast and let the dogs rest, Alban the gamekeeper appeared out of the forest and sat down with them, a gnarled and wind-chapped man as tough as an oak root. Since he was nearly as shy as the deer themselves, it took him a long time to bring out the various scraps of news he had for the gwerbret; he would say one thing, then withdraw into himself before he brought out the next. Rhodry listened with an amazing patience.
Since Cullyn loved the hunt, he was almost as excited as the dogs by the time they finally got under way. So early in the year the trees were only just leafing out, and the bracken and ferns still low. Ducking and dodging the occasional branch they rode through the widely spaced oaks behind the kennelmaster and his pack. The deerhounds coursed this way and that, sniffed the wind more than the ground, then suddenly broke, baying off to the left. With a laugh Rhodry spurred his horse after them, and Cullyn followed, catching up with the hounds, who turned abruptly and headed off in the general direction of the river.
All at once, Cullyn’s horse stumbled slightly, forcing him to let it slow to regain its balance and calm down. When he headed after the hunt, it was a good way ahead of him. He could just see them through the trees. Then he heard the barks turn to yelps of terror, and the kennelmaster scream. Spear at the ready, he kicked his horse hard, dodged through at a dangerous gallop, and burst into a clearing to see a wild boar, flushed by accident but furious nonetheless, making a straight charge at the pack. Dogs scattered and the kennelmaster yanked himself into a tree barely in time. Cullyn found himself swearing with every foul oath he knew.
They had no boarhounds – worse yet, no boar spears with the essential guards on the haft. Already his horse was tossing its head in fear as the massive, reeking boar charged one of the hounds. As Cullyn kicked his horse forward Rhodry appeared, raced between the boar and the dog, and stabbed down at it as he passed. Enraged, the boar swung after him and let the dogs be. With a battle cry Cullyn charged after as Rhodry led the boar along. He could see what his father had in mind – keep sticking the slower-moving boar, keep it running and bleeding until they wore the thing out and could make a safe kill. Since by its snarls he could tell that the boar was deep in rut, he knew they had a long hard fight ahead.
But they had forgotten about the river. Just as Cullyn caught up, their strange hunt burst out of the forest to the cleared roadway along the riverbank. Yelling for Cullyn to stay back, Rhodry tried to turn his horse, but the mount got a good look at the boar following and reared –then slipped and went down. Rhodry rolled clear easily, unhurt, but the boar was turning and charging.
‘Da!’ Cullyn’s voice was the shriek of a child. ‘Da!’
Half to his feet, Rhodry threw himself to one side and rolled straight into the river. Blind with fury the boar hurled itself in after him. Cullyn could never remember dismounting, nor could he remember stripping off his hunting leathers; all he knew was that suddenly he was in the river and swimming, desperately coursing from bank to bank, letting the current carry him downstream until at last, utterly exhausted, he heard Alban screaming at him from the bank.
‘To shore, my lord! I beg you, come ashore!’
With the last of his strength Cullyn fought the current to the bank and grabbed the butt of the spear that Alban was holding out. It took both their strengths to haul him up on to land.
‘I never saw them,’ Cullyn gasped.
‘No more did I, Your Grace.’
The sound of that honorific knocked the last bit of breath out of him. When he looked up, he saw the gamekeeper’s face streaming tears, and the sight made him burst out sobbing, half-keening, half-choking as he gasped for breath. All his suspicions, all his envy and his fears were at last at an end, but he would have spent a year in the hells just to have his father back again.
‘By every god and his wife,’ Salamander whispered, and his face was white with fear. ‘I never dreamt your lad would try to fetch you out again like that.’
‘No more did I, or I’d never have agreed to this daft scheme!’ Rhodry felt like hitting him. ‘Aberwyn could have lost two gwerbrets in one misbegotten day! Ye gods, did you have to make that cursed boar so terrifying? I never knew you could make an illusion smell like that.’
‘You don’t understand, O brother of mine.’ Salamander passed the back of his hand over his sweaty forehead. ‘That boar was none of my work. It was real, a solid, corporeal, existent, and utterly unplanned accident.’
Rhodry felt the colour drain from his own face. He was about to say something particularly foul when Jill came crawling back into their hiding place, a bracken-filled ditch on the other side of the river.
‘He’s safe,’ she whispered. ‘The gamekeeper and the kennelmaster are with him, and all the dogs, too. They’ve got the horses under control, and no doubt they’ll be riding home soon. We’d best get out of here before every man in your warband comes out to search for your corpse.’
‘They’re not my men any more.’
‘Well, true enough, and we’ve got only the grace of the gods to thank that they ride for your eldest son and not the second.’ She turned on Salamander. ‘You and your wretched, blasted, rotten, and foul elaborate schemes!’
‘You were the one who insisted there be witnesses, and you agreed to this scheme at the time. Berate me not, O princess of powers perilous, for I put not that stinking boar in their path.’
Although Jill growled under her breath, she let the matter drop. For some minutes they lay there, waiting until the remnant of the hunting party should leave. While Salamander’s dweomer could turn one man invisible as he crawled out of a river, he couldn’t hide a party of three horsemen, a mule, and two packhorses. Now that he knew Cullyn was safely on land, Rhodry felt heart-wrung and numb, hating the irony of it, that he would find out how much his son loved him when he’d never see the lad again.
Eventually the hunting party gave up their last futile search and rode back to Aberwyn, leaving them in sole possession of the woods. Rhodry was more than glad to change out of his damp clothes into the things he’d smuggled out in readiness: a pair of plain grey brigga, an old linen shirt with no blazons, a cheap belt with his silver dagger on it.
‘So here I am, a silver dagger again, am I?’
‘Not for long,’ Salamander said. ‘We’ll be in the elven lands soon enough.’
‘Provided no one catches us.’
‘Don’t fret about that,’ Jill broke in. ‘Salamander can make sure no one recognizes you, even if they’re staring right at you.’
‘Well and good, then. We’d best be off.’
‘Just that. Our father should be waiting near the border.’
‘And that’s going to be a strange thing, meeting my true father after all these years, and him a bard at that.’
‘Mam, I tried to save him, truly I did.’ Cullyn sounded like a little boy again.
Aedda caught his hands in hers and squeezed them gently.
‘Of course you did. I know you did.’
For his sake, out of pain for his pain, she managed to do the proper thing and weep, but there was no mourning in it. For years she had tried very hard not to blame Rhodry; after all, she wasn’t the first lass in Deverry who’d been given away to cement a treaty, and she wouldn’t be the last. Yet still, he had taken her maidenhead, her youth, her life, truly, while keeping her always to one side of his affairs, and then, the final bitter thing, he had taken her sons from her, too. They always loved you more than they loved me, she thought. By every fiend in hell, I’m glad you’re dead.
Although they never found the gwerbret’s body, they did put up a stone to mark his passing, out in the sacred grove where his ancestors lay. On it they carved this englyn:
This grave marks Aberwyn’s grief.
A wild wolf in the battle-strife,
Rhodry laughed when he took your life.
And that was the first death of Rhodry Maelwaedd and the vindication of the old hermit who, years and years before, had told him he would die twice over.
Keeping to country lanes and open lands, buying food from farmers and shunning the duns of the noble-born, Rhodry, Salamander, and Jill travelled west and south for ten days until they reached the large stream or small river known as Y Brog, marking what most human beings considered the Eldidd border, since only elves lived beyond it. During Rhodry’s rule, the Westfolk, as Eldidd people called the elves, had started becoming a little friendlier than they’d been in times past. Every now and then a trading party would show up in the border towns of Cannobaen or Cernmeton to offer their beautiful horses in return for ironwork and glassware; even more rarely, an embassy would appear in Aberwyn itself with tokens of friendship and alliance for the gwerbret. Yet they were still strange and alien, still frightening to most people. It was one of Rhodry’s regrets that he’d never been able to make his subjects welcome the Westfolk in the rhan. Since he’d always raised his sons to like and admire them, he could at least hope that they would continue to be welcome in the dun.