KATHARINE KERR

THE RED WYVERN

Book One of The Dragon Mage

COPYRIGHT

Voyager

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Voyager 1997

Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1997

Cover design and illustration by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780006478607

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007378319

Version: 2019-12-10

MAP

DEDICATION

For Jo Clayton

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I must apologize to the faithful readers of this on-going project who have had to wait so long for the volume now in hand. I have been much distracted of late by legal matters, in particular the suits and counter-suits concerning a certain Elvish scholar of Elvish and his libellous attacks upon me. When Gwerbert Aberwyn ruled in our favour in Malover, my publishers and I hoped that the matter had ended at last, but alas, our opponent saw fit to appeal to the High King himself. After an ennervating journey by coach and barge on the part of myself and a representative of my publisher, we settled into a suite at a public guesthouse in Dun Deverry and filed our counter-suit. While we waited for our proceedings to be summoned, I once again applied myself to the craft for which I am better suited than legal wrangling, that of writing novels.

Some months later, we are still waiting. Let us hope that the High King’s courts take up and dispose of this matter soon.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Dedication

Author’s Note

Prologue: Winter, in a Far Distant Land

Part One: The North Country

Part Two: Deverry, 849

Part III: The North Country

Epilogue: Spring, in a Far Distant Land

Keep Reading

Appendices

Glossary

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE
Winter, in a Far Distant Land

Some say that all the worlds of the many-splendoured universe lie nested one within the other like the layers of an onion. I say to you that they lie all braided and wound round and that no man nor woman either can map all the roads of their twisting.

The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

Domnall Breich knew the hills around Loch Ness well enough to know himself lost. The hunting accident that had killed his horse and separated him from his companions had happened some two miles straight south, or at least, in that direction and at that distance as closely as he could reckon. By now he should have reached the frozen dirt road that led back to the village and safely. He stopped, peering through the rising mists at the snow-streaked valley, stippled here and there with pines. The gathering dark of the winter’s shortest day shrouded Ben Bulben, the one landmark that might guide him through the mists. When he glanced at the sky, he realized that it was going to snow.

‘Mother Mary, forgive my sins. Tonight I’ll be seeing your son in his glory.’

They always said that freezing was as pleasant a death as any, more like falling asleep to wake to fire and sleet and then the candlelight that would guide you to the gates of Heaven or Hell. Domnall felt no fear, only surprise, that a man like him would die not in battle or bloodfeud but in the snow, lost like a lame sheep, but then the priests always said a man could never tell the end God had in store for him.

Ahead against the grey of clouds, the western sky gleamed dull red at the horizon. When he faced the glow and looked round, he saw off to his right, at the edge of his vision, a tall tree. He turned and sighted upon it. His last hope lay in keeping a straight course toward the north, the general direction of the loch, which ran southwest to northeast. If he reached the edge of that dark gash in the land, he could follow it and head for Old Malcolm’s steading, which he just might, if Jesu favoured him, live to reach. Worth a try, and if he were doomed, he might as well die on his feet. He wrapped his plaid tight around him, pulled his cloak closed around it, and walked north.

The first thing he noticed about the tree was that it grew straight and remarkably tall. As the sunset faded into darkness, he noticed the second thing, that it was burning. Here was a bit of luck! If he could nourish a fire against the snow, it would keep him through the night. As he drew close, he noticed the third thing, that although half of the tree blazed with fire, the other half grew green with new leaf. For a moment he could neither speak nor breathe while all the blood in his veins seemed to freeze like water spilled into snow. Was he already dead then?

‘Jesu and the saints preserve,’ he whispered. ‘May God guide my soul.’

‘It’s a waste of your breath to call upon the man from Galilee,’ the voice said. ‘He doesn’t do us any favours, and so we do none for him.’

Domnall spun around to find a young man standing nearby. In the light of the blazing tree he could see that the fellow was blond and pale, with lips as red as sour cherries and eyes the colour of the sea in summer. He’d wrapped himself in a huge cloak of solid blue wool with a hood.

‘And are you one of the Seelie Host, then?’ Domnall said.

‘The men of your country would call me so. There’s a great grammarie been woven at this spot, and it’s not one of my doing, which vexes me. What are you doing here?’

‘I got lost. I wish you no harm, nor would I rob you and yours.’

‘Well-spoken, and for that you may live. Which you won’t do if you stay out in this weather much longer. I need a messenger for a plan I’m weaving, and it’s a long one with many strands. Tell me, do you want to live, or do you want to die in the snow?’

‘To live, of course, if God be willing.’

‘Splendid! Then tell me your name and the one thing you wish most in all the world.’

Domnall considered. The Seelie Host were a tricky bunch, and some priests said them no better than devils. Certainly you were never supposed to tell them your name. Something touched his face, something cold and wet. In the light from the blazing tree he could see snow falling in a scatter of first flakes.

‘My name is Domnall Breich. I most desire an honourable death in battle, serving my liege lord.’

The spirit rolled his eyes.

‘Oh come now, surely you can think of a better boon than that! Something that would please you and bring you joy.’

‘Well, then, I love with all my heart the Lady Jehan, but I’m far beneath her notice.’

‘That’s a better wishing.’ The fellow smiled in a lazy sort of way. ‘Very well, Domnall Breich. You shall have the Lady Jehan for your own true wife. In return, I ask only this, that you tell no one of what you see here tonight except for your son, when he’s reached thirteen winters of age.’ The fellow suddenly frowned and drew his hands out from the folds of his cloak. For a moment he made a show of counting on his fingers. ‘Well, thirteen will do. Numbers and time mean naught to the likes of me. Whenever you think him grown to a man, anyway, tell him what you will see here tonight, but tell no one else.’

‘Good sir, I can promise you that with all my heart. No one but his own son would believe a man who told of things like this.’

‘Done, then!’ The fellow raised his hands and clapped them three times together. ‘Turn your back on the tree, Domnall Breich, and tell me what you see.’

Domnall turned and peered through the thin fall of snow. Not far away stood a tangle of ordinary trees, dark against the greater dark of night, and beyond them a stretch of water, wrinkled and forbidding in the gleam of magical fire.

‘The shore of the loch. Has it been here all this while, and I never saw it?’

‘It hasn’t. It’s the shore of a loch, sure enough, but’s not the one you were hoping to find. Do you see the rocks piled up, and one bigger than all the rest?’

‘I do.’

‘On top of the largest rock you’ll find chained a silver horn. Take it and blow, and you’ll have shelter against the night.’

‘My thanks. And since I can’t ask God to bless you, I’ll wish you luck instead.’

‘My thanks to you, then. Oh, wait. Face me again.’

When he did so, the fellow reached out a ringed hand and laid one finger on Domnall’s lips.

‘Till sunset tomorrow you’ll speak and be understood and hear and understand among the folk of the isle, but after that, their way of speaking will mean naught to you. Now you’d best hurry. The snow’s coming down.’

The fellow disappeared as suddenly as a blown candle flame. With a brief prayer to all the saints at once, Domnall hurried over to the edge of the loch – not Ness, sure enough, but a narrow finger of water that came right up to his feet rather than lying below at the foot of a steep climb down. By the light of the magical tree he found the scatter of boulders. The silver horn lay waiting, chained with silver as well. When he picked it up and blew, the sound seemed very small and thin to bring safety through the rising storm, but after a few minutes he heard someone shouting.

‘Hola, hola! Where are you?’

‘Here on the shore!’ Domnall called back. ‘Follow the light of the fire.’

Out of the tendrilled snow shone a bobbing gleam, which proved to be a lantern held aloft in someone’s hand. The magical fire behind cast just enough light for Domnall to see a long narrow boat, with its wooden prow carved like the head of a dragon, coming toward him. One man held the lantern while six others rowed, chanting to keep time. As the boat drew near, the oars swung up and began backing water, holding her steady as her side hove to.

‘It’s a cold night to ask you to wade out to us,’ the lantern bearer called, ‘but we’re afraid to run her ashore with the rocks and all in the dark.’

‘Better I freeze seeking safety than freeze standing here like a dolt. I’m on my way.’

He hitched his plaid up around his waist and bundled the cloak around it, then stepped into the lake. The cold water stole his breath and drove claws into his legs, but it stood shallow enough for him to reach the dragon boat, where hands of flesh and blood reached down to pull him aboard.

‘Swing around, lads! Let’s get him to a fireside.’

Shivering and huddling in the dry part of his plaid, Domnall crouched in the stern of the boat as they headed out from shore. In the yellow pool of lantern light he could see the man who held it, a fellow on the short side but stocky. He wore a hooded cloak, pinned with a silver brooch in the shape of a dragon. In the uncertain light Domnall could just make out his lined face and grizzled beard.

‘Where are we going, if I may ask?’ Domnall said.

‘The isle of Haen Marn.’

‘Ah.’ Domnall had never heard of the place in his life, and he’d spent all twenty years of it in this corner of Alban. ‘My thanks.’

No one spoke to him again until they reached the dark island, looming suddenly out of falling snow, a muffled but precipitous shape against the night. A wooden jetty appeared as well, snow-shrouded in the lantern light, and with a chant and yell from the oarsmen, the boat turned to. One man rose, grabbed a hawser, and tossed it over one of the bollards on the jetty to pull them in. With some help Domnall managed to scramble out, but his feet and legs had gone numb and clumsy. The man with the lantern hurried him along a gravelled path and up a slope, where he could see a broad, squarish manse. Around the cracks of door and shutter gleamed firelight.

‘We’ll get you warm soon enough,’ the lantern-bearer said, then banged upon the door. ‘Open up! We’ve got a guest, and all by Evandar’s doing.’

‘Evandar? Is that the man of the Seelie Host? You know him?’

‘Better than I wish to, I’ll tell you, far far better than that. Now come in, lad, and let’s get you warm.’

The door was creaking open to flood them with firelight and the smell of resinous smoke. They brushed past the servant woman who’d opened it and hurried into a great hall where fires crackled in two hearths of slabbed stone, one on either side of the square room. The walls were made of massive oak planks, scrubbed down and polished smooth, then carved in one vast pattern of engraved lines rubbed with red earth. Looping vines, spirals, animals, interlace – they all tangled together in great swags across each wall, then swooped up at each corner to the rafters before plunging down again in a riot of carving …

Domnall followed his rescuers across the carpet of braided straw to the hearth at the far side. At a scatter of tables sat a scatter of men, all short and bearded, and in a carved chair right up near the fire a lady, wearing a pair of drab loose dresses and heavy with child. Like the men around her, she was not very tall, more like the grain-fed Sassenach far to the south in stature, and since her pale hair hung in a single braid, Sassenach is what he assumed her to be. Domnall knelt at her feet.

‘My lady,’ he said. ‘My thanks and my blessing to you, for the saving of my life.’

‘My men saved you, not me,’ she said in a low, musical voice. ‘But you’re welcome in my hall.’ She glanced round. ‘Otho! Fetch him a tankard and some bread, will you?’

‘As my lady Angmar commands.’ One of the men, a bare four feet tall, and white of hair and beard, rose from a table. ‘Sit in the straw by the hearth, lad, and spread that bit of cloth you’re draped in out to dry.’

They had to be Sassenach, all of them, because they wore trousers and heavy shirts instead of proper plaids and tunics, but he wasn’t about to hold their birth against them after the way they’d rescued him. Since the hearth was a good ten feet long, Domnall could move a decorous distance away from the lady to sit near a brace of black and tan hounds. He unwound his plaid, stretched it out on the straw to dry, and sat in his tunic by the fire to struggle with the wet bindings of his boots. By the time he had them off, Otho had returned with the promised tankard and a basket of bread.

‘A thousand thanks,’ Domnall said. ‘So, this is Haen Marn, is it? I’ve never seen your isle before.’

‘Hah!’ Otho snorted profoundly. ‘And I wish I never had either.’

‘Uncle!’ A young man sprang up from his seat at a table. ‘Hold your tongue!’

‘Shan’t! I rue the day that ever we travelled to this cursed place. I just get myself home and what happens? Hah! Wretched dweomer and –’

‘Uncle!’ The young man hurried over. ‘Hush!’

‘You hold your tongue, young Mic, and show some respect for your elders.’

The two glared at each other, hands set on hips. During all of this Lady Angmar never moved or spoke, merely stared into the fire. Behind her, shoved against the wall, stood another carved chair, fit for a lord but empty. Domnall wondered if she’d been widowed; it seemed a good guess if a sad one.

‘Well, now,’ Domnall said. ‘Do you all hail from the southern lands?’

‘Who knows?’ Otho snapped. ‘It could have been any wretched direction at all!’

‘You’ll forgive my uncle, good sir,’ Mic said. ‘He’s getting old and a bit daft.’ He grabbed Otho’s arm. ‘Come and sit down.’

Muttering under his breath, Otho allowed himself to be dragged away. Domnall had the uneasy feeling that the old man wasn’t daft in the least but speaking of grammarie. Yet his mind refused to take that idea in. He found it easier to believe in a lady sent away by her brothers after a husband’s death, or perhaps even a lady in political exile, allowed to take a small retinue away with her. The Sassenach chiefs were always fighting among themselves, and he’d heard that their women could do what they wished with their bride-price if their husbands died. The welcome fire, the warm straw, the steamy reek of his drying cloak and plaid, the taste of ale and bread – it all seemed too solid, too normal to allow the presence of magic. As he found himself yawning, he wondered if he’d merely imagined the man named Evandar and the blazing tree. They might merely have been the mad visions of a man come near death by cold.

At length Lady Angmar turned and considered him with eyes so sad they were painful to look upon.

‘I can have the servants give you a chamber,’ she said, ‘or would you prefer to sleep here by the banked fire?’

‘The fireside will do me well, my lady, and I’d not cause you any more trouble.’

Her mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.

‘There’s been trouble enough, truly,’ she said, then returned to watching the fire.

Angmar never spoke again. At length she rose and with her elderly maidservant left the hall. Young Mic brought Domnall a blanket; Otho banked up the fire; they took the lantern and left him with the dogs to curl up and sleep.

When he woke cold grey light edged the shutters. Otho was just letting the whining dogs out at the door. Stretching and yawning, Domnall sat up as the old man came stumping over, poker and tongs in hand, to mend up the fire.

‘I’ll get out of your way, good sir,’ Domnall said.

‘You’re a well-spoken lad.’

‘It becomes a Christian man to watch his speaking.’

Otho glanced puzzled at him.

‘A what kind of man?’ he said.

‘A Christian man, one of Lord Jesu’s followers.’

‘Ah. Is this Yaysoo the overlord in these parts?’

‘Er, well, you could say that.’

Otho hunkered down and began lifting the chunks of sod away from the coals. Domnall pulled on his boots, bound them tightly, then stood up to wrap and arrange his plaid.

‘The Lady Angmar? Has she lost her husband then?’

‘Lost him good and proper,’ Otho said. ‘No one knows where he may be or if he lives or lies dead, and here she is, heavy with his child.’

‘That’s a terrible sad thing.’

‘It is, truly. If she knew he was dead, she could mourn him and get on with life, but as it is …’

‘The poor lady, indeed.’

‘It’s just like him, though, to do something so thoughtless. An inconvenient man, he was, all the way round. Ah, but who knows why women choose the men they do? She’s still wrapped in sorrow over her Rhodry Maelwaedd, no matter what we may say.’

That was doubly odd. What was a Sassenach woman doing married to some lord from Cymru? Or could this be the reason for her exile? Otho glared at the coals, then blew a bit of life into one of them and threw on a handful of tinder.

‘Do you have a home near here, lad?’

‘I do. I serve Lord Douglas and live in his hall.’

‘Then let me give you some advice. Get out of here while you can and head home, or you may never see it again. The snow’s stopped falling, and the boatmen will row you across.’

‘I’ll need to give the lady my thanks first.’

‘She’ll not come down till well past mid-day. Her grief rules her. Get out while you can, while the sunlight lasts, and that won’t be long, this time of year. I warn you.’ The old man glared up at him, his face red and sweaty as the fire leapt back to life. ‘Haen Marn travels where it wills, and faster than spit freezes on a day like this.’

Grammarie. His memories of the night before, of Evandar and the burning tree, came back like a slap in the face. Domnall grabbed his cloak from the straw.

‘Then I’ll be off. Good day to you, Otho.’

The old man snorted and turned back to his work.

Outside Domnall found a day ice cold but clear, with the watery sun just rising – he’d slept late. At the door he paused, looking around him in the crisp day. Wind whined around walls and soughed in trees. He walked a few paces down the path, then turned back for a proper look at the place. In the sun the island seemed much larger than he’d thought the night past. The manse itself stood long and low, with behind it a rise of leafless trees, pale grey and shivering, and behind them a tall, squarish tower, perched on top of a little hill. He shaded his eyes and studied the tower for a moment; it sported three windows, one above the other, and a peaked roof covered in grey slates.

In the middle window someone was standing and looking down. From his distance he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman, but he suddenly knew that he was being watched, studied as intensely as he’d been studying the tower. There was no malice in the gaze, merely a shocking closeness, as if that person in the window had dropped down to stand in front of him. With a shudder he turned away. He could feel the gaze follow him until he started walking toward the lake. When he risked a quick glance back he found the tower window empty.

At the end of the gravelled path he saw the jetty and the dragon boat, riding high in the water. No one seemed to be about, but by the time he reached the jetty, the head boatman and his oarsmen came strolling down the shore to join him. Otho must have sent a servant down to rouse them, Domnall supposed.

‘Ready to go back, lad?’ the boatman said.

‘I am, though I wish I’d had a chance to pay my thanks to Lady Angmar.’

‘Ah, she won’t be down for a good while yet.’ The boatman shook his head. ‘It’s a sad thing.’

They all boarded, and when the oarsmen settled at their thwarts, Domnall sat in the stern, out of their way. Here in daylight he noticed a bronze gong, hanging in a wooden frame. The boatman saw him looking at it.

‘That’s for the beasts in the lake,’ he announced. ‘In this cold weather they sink to the bottom and sleep, or some such thing. Like bears do, you know, in caves. In the summer, they’re a fair nuisance, but luckily they hate noise, and banging that gong keeps them off.’

‘Beasts?’ Domnall said.

‘In the lake, truly. Huge they are, with long thin necks and mouths full of teeth. They can capsize a boat like this as easy as I can squash a bedbug.’

All the oarsmen nodded in solemn agreement.

‘Ah,’ Domnall said. ‘This lake must feed into Ness, then. That gives me hope.’

‘Here! You know of the beasts?’

‘Well, of one. It lives in our lake, though you don’t see it often.’

All the oarsmen glanced back and forth, nodding again, but in satisfaction this time.

‘I think me,’ their leader said, ‘that our island may have returned home. Interesting, eh, lads?’

The crew nodded but never spoke. The boatswain raised his hand and called out. When he shouted ‘three’, they all fell to their oars.

Since sunlight brought safety, the oarsmen could pull the boat close enough in to the narrow strip of sandy beach for Domnall to leap ashore. Still, as a precaution he took off his boots. Better to land barefooted in damp sand and snow than try to walk in wet boots. He made it ashore safely, called out his final thanks with a wave as the boat shoved off, then sat on one of the boulders to put his boots back on. With quick hard strokes the dragon boat fled back across the water, so dark under a winter sky it looked black, toward the rise of the isle. As the sun touched the loch, mist steamed on the surface. All at once Haen Marn seemed very hard to see. Grammarie! It can be naught else, he told himself. The tall tree that had blazed with fire the night before had disappeared, but then, he’d expected no less.

Ahead lay trouble enough without worrying about magic. He’d had a safe night instead of a cold death, but he still needed to reach home if he were to live through another one. The sun would stay up only a few hours at best, and if the clouds and snow returned, the light would fade even faster. When he thought over his yesterday’s misadventure, he could only assume that he hadn’t gone far enough north before turning to search for the road. In the fresh fall of snow the countryside stretched around him like a place in a dream, featureless and forbidding. He commended his soul to the saints and headed out in the direction he hoped would lead him eventually to the road – if he could see it when he found it.

Yet in the event Lord Douglas himself, riding at the head of his men, found him and well before sunset. Domnall was just climbing a low rise when he heard the sound of horses and horns, blaring from the other side. He whooped, he yelled, he screamed out his lord’s name, and sure enough, in a flurry of answering calls they crested the rise and pulled up, waiting for him to flounder through the snow and reach them.

‘My lord!’ Domnall called out. ‘Never have I been so glad to see a man as you!’

With a toss of his head Lord Douglas laughed. A rider led forward a fresh horse and threw Domnall the reins. Calling out his thanks, Domnall mounted, then made a half-bow to his lord from the saddle. As the warband started off down the road, Douglas motioned him up to ride beside him.

‘How did you live through the night?’ Lord Douglas said.

To lie to his lord galled him, but breaking a sworn promise would have galled more.

‘I hardly know. I prayed to every saint I could think of, and I found a hut of sorts. It stank of shepherd and sheep dung, but it was so small that I stayed warm. Well, warm enough.’

‘Good. We give the saints and their priests enough in tithes. I’m glad to see they keep their side of the bargain.’

‘My thanks for riding out after me, my lord. I thought you’d have given me up for dead.’

‘I did, but you’re one of my men, and damned if I’d leave you out here without so much as a hunt.’ Douglas paused, considering something with an odd look on his face. ‘Besides, Jehan would have sent me to Hell herself if I hadn’t ridden out. You should have heard her, weeping and cursing and carrying on.’

‘Your daughter, my lord?’ Domnall felt himself blushing and stammering. ‘But I never would have thought – I mean, uh er, my lord, I –’

‘Hold your tongue, Domnall Breich. Her mother’s a strong-minded woman, and so is she, and I’ve spent all I’ve a mind to on her sister’s dowry. There’s not much left for hers, but you’d not be asking for much, would you?’

‘My lord, if she would have me, I’d ask for naught but her and count myself the richest man alive.’

‘Good. Then if you can provide for her, you can have her. What about that, eh?’

‘My father promised me a steading if I were to marry. It’s not a great lord’s lands, but we’ll make do.’

‘And I can spare you some milk cows and suchlike.’ Lord Douglas considering, frowning. ‘How long have the pair of you been hiding this secret?’

‘My lord, I swear to you that I never knew she favoured me. I held her too far above me.’

‘I believe you. She told me that she never knew she loved you until she thought you dead. It was my grief that made me see, she said.’

Remembering Evandar, Domnall found himself speechless. Had Jehan loved him at all until the night just past? But who was he to question this splendid miracle, this gift beyond hoping for?

‘Then, my lord,’ Domnall said, ‘I’ll count the night I just spent the luckiest of my life, for all that I thought I was a doomed man.’

When they rode back to the castle, the Lady Jehan stood waiting for them on the steps of the keep. As soon as Domnall dismounted, she rushed to him and flung herself into his arms. He held her tight, laid his face against her auburn hair, and thought himself the happiest man in God’s world. Yet even in his joy he remembered the lady of Haen Marn, mourning her lost lord. That night he went into the chapel and prayed for her, that someday Lord Jesu might let her see her Rhodry Maelwaedd again.

PART ONE
The North Country
Autumn 1116

Ah, the beginnings of things! In another place have I discoursed upon the complexities that weave the origin of any event, whether great or small. Ponder this well, for if a magician would set a great ritual in motion, then he must guard every word he says and weigh each move he might make, down to the smallest gesture of one hand, for at the births of things their outcomes lie in danger, just as in its cradle an infant lies helpless and vulnerable to the malice of the world.

The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll

Loathing. Dallandra could put no other name to her feeling. Wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, she was standing on top of the wall that circled Gwerbret Cadmar’s dun. Below and around her the town of Cengarn spread out over three hills, bound them with curving streets, choked them with round stone houses, roofed in filthy black thatch. Behind most of the houses stood pens for cows and chickens and of course, dung heaps. Out on the muddy streets she could pick out movement – townsfolk hurrying about their business or perhaps a pack of half-starved dogs. Here and there stood trees, dark and leafless under the grey sky.

The view behind her looked no better. Massive stone towers, joined together, formed the dark and brooding broch complex in the centre of the dun. The muddy ward of the enormous fort swarmed with dirty servants and warriors, cursing as they led their horses through a clutter of pigsties and sheep pens. A blacksmith was hammering at his forge; pages sang off-key or chivvied the serving wenches, who swore right back at them. In the crisp autumn air the stink rose high – human waste, animal waste, smoke, spoiled food – overpowering the pomander of Bardek cloves she held to her nose. You should be used to it by now, she told herself. She knew that she never would get used to it, no matter how long she lived among human beings.

‘Dalla!’ A man’s voice hailed her from below. ‘Care for a bit of company?’

Without waiting for her answer Rhodry Maelwaedd, who preferred to be known only as Rhodry from Aberwyn, began climbing the wooden ladder that led up the catwalk. A tall man, but oddly slender from shoulder to hip, he was handsome in his way with his dark blue eyes and ready smile. Despite the touches of silver in his raven-black hair and his weather-beaten skin, he looked young and moved fast and smoothly, too, like a young man. She knew, however, that he’d been born well over eighty winters ago. Although he shared her elven blood – his mother had been human, his father one of the Westfolk like Dallandra – he seemed to have distinctly human opinions about some things. He leaned on the parapet and grinned down at Cengarn.

‘A fine sight, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Maybe to you. I hate being shut up like this.’

‘Well, no doubt. But I mean, it’s a fine thing to see the town standing and not some smoking heap of ruins.’

‘Ah, now there I have to agree with you.’

But a few months before, Cengarn had stood in danger of being reduced to rubble, besieged as it was by a marauding army. Now the only threats hanging over the town were those faced by every city in Deverry each winter – disease, cold, and starvation. Dalla leaned on the parapet next to him, then stepped back. He smelled as bad as the rest of them.

‘What’s wrong?’ Rhodry said.

‘That stone is cold. Damp, too.’

‘True enough.’ But he stayed where he was. ‘We should have snow soon.’

She nodded agreement and glanced at the lowering sky. A nice thick white blanket of snow – it would hide the dirt, she hoped, and freeze the offal and excrement hard enough to kill the stink.

‘There’s somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve been having some cursed strange dreams. Do you think they might mean dweomer at work?’

‘I’ve no idea. Tell me about them.’

‘Well, it’s the Raven Woman, you see. She comes to me in my dreams and taunts me.’

‘That is serious. Here, let’s go somewhere warm, where we can sit and talk.’

They climbed down the ladder and picked their way across the mucky ward. As they passed, the various servants and riders out and about fell silent, turned to stare, and even, every now and then, crossed their fingers in the sign of warding against witchcraft. Dallandra ducked into a side door of the broch and out of sight of the crowded ward.

‘Safe,’ she whispered.

‘What?’ Rhodry said. ‘Do you feel danger coming our way?’

‘My apologies. It’s the way everyone looks at me. I’m not used to being hated and feared.’

‘Oh well, now, they don’t do that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why would they?’

‘All the dweomer they’ve seen lately. Etheric battles, shapechangers, the way Alshandra would appear in the sky like a goddess – too many strange things, too many things they never should have seen. The Guardians live by their own laws, not those of the dweomer.’

Rhodry considered.

‘True enough,’ he said at last. ‘We’ve all seen more than we can explain away.’

Her chamber lay at the very top of a side tower; her door shared a landing with heaps of bundled arrows and piles of stones, ammunition stored against another siege like the one so recently lifted. The chamber itself was a slice of the round floor plan set off from the storage area by wickerwork partitions. Straw covered the plank floor, and wooden shutters hung closed over the single window.

Rhodry perched on the wide windowsill and let her have the only chair. Before she sat down she heaped chunks and sticks of charcoal into a brass brazier, then snapped her fingers to summon the Wildfolk of Fire. When the charcoal glowed, she held her hands over the warmth.

‘Aren’t you cold there in the draughts?’ Dallandra said.

‘Not so I notice.’

She was always amazed at how little cold and other discomforts, even pain itself, bothered him; his dangerous life had turned his entire body into a weapon, hard as forged steel. Matters of magic, however, lay beyond his strength.

‘These cursed dreams!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’m half-afraid to sleep at night. You wouldn’t have a talisman, would you, to drive them away?’

‘Nothing so simple. Tell me about them.’

‘I’ve been thinking a good bit about them. They have a sameness to them. I’ll be walking somewhere I know well, this dun, say, or the town, or even Aberwyn. And all of a sudden, the air around me will turn thick, like, and a bluish colour, like looking into deep water, and there the bitch will be, stark naked and taunting me. She keeps saying she’ll have my head on a pike one fine day and other little pleasantries.’

Dallandra swore at hearing her worst fear confirmed.

‘You think it’s dweomer, don’t you?’ He was grinning his twisted smile.

‘I do. Whatever you do, don’t go chasing after her. She’s trying to draw your soul out of your body, you see.’

‘And what then?’

‘I don’t know. If she were a master of the dark dweomer, she’d be able to kill you, but she’s nothing of the sort. A poor little beginner, more like, who knows a few tricks and naught more.’

‘A few tricks? Ye gods! She can turn herself into a blasted bird and fly, she can visit men in their dreams, and you call that tricks?’

‘I do, because I’ve seen just enough of her to know that she doesn’t understand how she does it. Her power is all Alshandra’s doing, or it was. Now it’s Evandar’s wretched brother who’s causing all the trouble.’

Rhodry laughed, a high-pitched chortle that made her wince.

‘Tricks,’ he said again. ‘Well, if that’s all they are, you wouldn’t happen to have a few you could teach me, would you?’

‘I don’t, but I’ve got a few of my own. I’ll scribe wards around you every night before you go to sleep.’

‘Not so easy with me sleeping out in the barracks.’

‘What? Is that where the chamberlain’s put you? After all you did this summer in the gwerbret’s service?’

‘A silver dagger’s welcome is a short one and his honour shorter still.’

‘That’s ridiculous! I’ll speak with the chamberlain for you.’ Dallandra hesitated, glancing around. ‘Here, if you don’t mind a bit of gossip, there’s room enough in this chamber for both of us.’

‘And why would a silver dagger mind gossip?’ His smile had changed to something open and soft. ‘It’s your woman’s honour that’s at stake. But if there’s no one up here to know –’

‘No one wants to live next to a sorcerer. Which has its uses. No one’s going to argue with me either, come to think of it. Why don’t you just fetch your gear and suchlike?’

‘I’ll find young Jahdo and have him do it. He’s been earning his keep as my page.’

‘It’s good of you to take the lad on like that.’

‘Someone had to.’ Rhodry stood up with a shrug. ‘He’s no trouble. I’m teaching him to read.’

‘I keep forgetting you know how.’

‘It comes as a surprise to most people, truly. But Jill made him a promise before she was killed, that she’d teach him, and so, well, I’ve taken on that promise with her other one, that she’d get him home again in the spring.’

Later that afternoon, with the chamberlain spoken to and Jahdo found, Rhodry’s gear got moved into a chamber next to Dallandra’s own. With the job done, Jahdo himself, a skinny dark-haired lad, brought Dallandra a message.

‘My lady, the Princess Carra did ask me to come fetch you, if it be that you can come.’

‘Is somewhat wrong?’

‘It be the child, my lady, little Elessi.’

‘Oh ye gods! Is she ill?’

‘I know not. The princess, though, she be sore troubled.’

Dallandra found Carra – Princess Carramaena of the Westlands, to give her proper title – in the women’s hall, where she was sitting close to the hearth with her baby in her arms. Out in the centre of the half-round room, Lady Ocradda, the gwerbret’s wife and the mistress of Dun Cengarn, sat with her serving women around a wooden frame and stitched on a vast embroidery in the elven style, all looping vines and flowers. The women glanced at Dallandra, then devoted themselves to their work as assiduously as if they feared the evil eye. Carra, however, greeted her with a smile. She was a pretty lass, with blonde hair and big blue eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face, and young; seventeen winters as close as she could remember.

‘Dalla, I’m so glad you’ve come, but truly, the trouble seems to be past, now.’

‘Indeed?’ Dallandra found a small stool and sat upon it near the fire. ‘Suppose you tell me about it anyway.’

‘Well, it’s the wraps. She hates to be wrapped, and it’s so draughty and chill now, but she screams and fights and flings her hands around when I try to wrap her in a blanket. She won’t have the swaddling bands at all, of course.’

At the mention of swaddling, Lady Ocradda looked up and shot a sour glance at the princess’s back. The women of the dun had lost that battle early in the baby’s life. At the moment Elessario was lying cradled in a blanket in Carra’s arms and sound asleep, wearing naught but her nappies and a little shirt made of old linen, soft and frayed.

‘Most babies like to be warm,’ Dallandra said.

‘By the fire like this she’s fine. But when I put her down in my bed, it’s so cold without the wraps, but she screams if I put them round her.’

‘It’s odd of her, truly, but no doubt she’ll get used to them in time.’

‘I hope so.’ Carra looked at her daughter with some doubt. ‘She’s awfully strong-willed, and here she was born just a month ago. You know, it seems so odd, remembering when she was born. It seems like she’s been here forever.’

‘You seem much happier for it.’

Carra laughed and looked up, grinning.

‘I am, truly. You know, it was the strangest thing, and I feel like such an utter dolt now, but all the time I was carrying her, I was sure I was going to die in childbed. When I look back, ye gods, I was such a simpering dolt, always weeping, always sick, always carrying on over this and that.’

‘Well, my dear child,’ Ocradda joined in. ‘Being heavy with child takes some women that way. No need to berate yourself.’

‘But it was all because I was so afraid,’ Carra said with a shake of her head. ‘That’s what I realized, just the other day. I was just as sure as sure that I was going to die, and it coloured everything. I’d wake up in the morning and look at the sunlight, and I’d wonder how many more days I’d live to see.’

‘No doubt you were frightened as a child,’ Ocradda said. ‘Too many old women and midwives tell horrible tales about childbirth where young girls can hear them. I’ve known many a lass to be scared out of her wits.’

‘I suppose so.’ Carra considered for a moment. ‘But it was absolutely awful, feeling that way.’

‘No doubt,’ Dallandra said. ‘And I’m glad it’s past.’

Carra shuddered, then began to tell her, in great detail, how much Elessi was nursing. Although she listened, Dallandra was thinking more about Carra’s fear. Had she died in childbed to end her last life, perhaps? Such a thing might well carry over as an irrational fear – not, of course, that Carra’s fear lacked basis. Human women did die in childbirth often enough. A reincarnating soul carried very little from life to life, but terror, like obsessive love, had a way of being remembered. As, of course, did a talent for the dweomer – she found herself wondering about the Raven Woman. It was possible that this mysterious shapechanger was remembering, dimly and imperfectly, magical training from her last life.

Later that night Dallandra learned more about her enemy. She was getting ready for bed when she heard a tap at her chamber door. Before she could call out a query, Evandar walked in, or more precisely, he walked through the shut and barred door and oozed into the room like a ghost. Dallandra yelped.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do things like that!’ she snapped. ‘You give me such a turn!’

‘My apologies, my love. I did knock. I’m trying to learn the customs of this country.’

He took her into his arms and kissed her. His skin, the touch of his lips and hands, felt oddly cool and smooth, as if he were made of silk rather than flesh.

‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,’ Dallandra said. ‘I wish you could stay a while.’

‘The dun’s too full of iron, weapons and nails both, or I’d spend the night with you. When all this trouble is done, my love, we’ll go back to my country, you and I.’ He paused to kiss her. ‘And we’ll share our love again.’

‘That will be splendid.’ With a sigh she let go of him. ‘From now on, can’t we meet in the Gatelands? I’d rather spare you pain if I could.’

‘My thanks, and the meadows of sleep will do us well enough for ordinary news. But something a bit more urgent brings me here tonight.’ He paused for effect. ‘I’ve tracked down the Raven Woman. She’s sheltering in Cerr Cawnen.’

‘Cerr Cawnen? Jahdo’s city?’

‘The very one. I found her when I was hunting my brother.’

‘Shaetano?’

‘The very one, and still working mischief. He’s escaped me, but I think I know who let him out of the prison I made for him.’

‘The Raven Woman.’ Dallandra heard her own voice sag in sudden weariness.

‘And once again, the very one, my love. Her name, by the by, is Raena. I did find that titbit for you. Now, you told me that you think her little skilled in dweomer, and I agree. Her magic’s like one of those rain spouts that men make to carry water, and she’s naught but the barrel underneath.’

‘And Shaetano’s willing to be the downpour, is he?’

‘Just that. No doubt he’s flattered to be worshipped as if he were one of the gods. He’ll lend her power to make mischief, anyway, mischief being his own true calling. So I thought I’d tell you where I was bound. After all, you have good reason to hate him yourself.’

‘Hate him? I don’t, truly.’

‘What? Why not? After the way he treated you – stealing you away, binding you, holding you up to mockery in that wretched wooden cage – how you can not hate him?’

He asked in all seriousness, and she considered with the seriousness that he deserved in his answer.

‘Well, he frightens me, and when I think of the things he did, I’m angry still, but it’s not the same as hate. Does he truly understand the evil he works, and why it’s an evil thing?’

‘I’ve no idea, and I care even less. He’s crossed me and injured you, and that’s enough for me.’

‘And so you’ll be hunting him? If you can find him and stop him, then Raena’s dweomer should dry up and quickly, too.’

‘Good. Let us hope. I’ll find him, sooner or later, never you fear, but I do have a few other errands to run as well.’ Evandar turned away and smiled, an oddly sly quirk of his mouth. ‘I have a scheme afoot, you see.’

‘Oh ye gods, what now? Evandar, you know I love you, but those schemes of yours! They always get out of hand, they always hurt people, and I wish –’

‘Hush!’ He held up one hand flat for silence. ‘I’ve been thinking. Have I not learned from you, my love, about thinking and the passing of Time? Well, when Time passes, and my people are born into the world of flesh and death, just as our Elessi’s been born, won’t they need a place to go?’

‘A what?’

‘A place of their own, and I shall say no more about it.’ He turned back and grinned. ‘It’s a surprise and a riddle, and here’s a clue: when the moon rises again you’ll see.’

Dallandra hesitated on the edge of snarling at him. Once he defined something as a riddle, he would never tell the answer, no matter how much she prodded or swore or wheedled.

‘Oh very well,’ she said with a sigh. ‘And how soon will this moon of yours rise?’

‘I have no idea. I’ve been weaving this scheme for a long time, truly, ever since I asked the man named Maddyn for his rose ring – hundreds of your years ago now, isn’t it?’

‘It is. Wait – that’s the ring Rhodry used to have, the one with the dragon’s name graved on it.’

‘It is, but I’ll speak no more about it now.’ Evandar paused for a lazy grin; he knew full well how his riddles irritated her. ‘But to the matter at hand, my love, Shaetano’s clever, so that will take this strange thing, Time, as well. He’ll hide from me, but sooner or later, he’ll have to appear to his worshipper over in Cerr Cawnen. When he does, I’ll be close by.’ All at once he tossed his head in a spasm of pain. ‘Iron! Wretched demon-spawn metal!’

Evandar took one step toward the window and disappeared. She saw nothing, not a fading or a trembling of him – one moment he was there; the next he was not. Dallandra shuddered once, but only once. She’d got used to him and his ways, over the years they’d been lovers, hundreds of years, in fact, as men reckon time.

The tiny room smelled of ancient smoke and recent dust. The fetid air hung cold and close around the two people standing, bundled in cloaks, with their backs to the wide crack between stones that served as its door.

‘It be best not to light a candle or suchlike in here,’ Verrarc whispered. ‘Not enough air.’

‘There’s no need on us for one,’ Raena said. ‘Watch, my love. See what I did learn, this past year or two.’

He could hear her draw a deep breath; then she began to chant the same few words – he thought they might be Gel da ’Thae – over and over again. Up at the corner of the webby ceiling a silver light gleamed, then spread and brightened. Spiders dashed from her dweomer.

‘Ye gods,’ Verrarc whispered.

‘Gods, indeed, my love. This be a gift from the gods I do serve, the true gods.’ Raena turned, glancing around the room. ‘What place be this? It must be old, truly old.’

‘No one knows. When I was a boy, I did find all the secret places of Citadel. Some few I asked the elders about, but most, like this one, I did keep for my own.’

She nodded, looking round her. Near the ceiling and all round the room ran a line of triangles and circles, crudely carved into the stone. Verrarc had never seen it so clearly; when he had hidden in this half-buried chamber as a child, the only light had been a dim glow from the entrance.

‘I feel despair here,’ Raena spoke abruptly. ‘And old fear.’

‘Do you? We’d best be about our business. I don’t want anyone wondering where we might be and come looking for us. What was this thing you were going to show me? Or is it the light?’

‘Not just the light. Here.’

When she knelt on the dirty floor, he joined her. She flung both hands into the air and began a chant of different words, vibrated from deep in her throat and spat out like a challenge. In answer the silver light shrank and collected itself into a glowing sphere, about the size of an armload of hay, that hung above and before them. When Raena tossed her head, the hood of her cloak fell back. Her eyes were shut, sweat oozed down her face, and her long black hair seemed to gleam and flutter in the unnatural light. Verrarc felt himself turn cold as the sphere of light began to stretch itself in to a long cylinder.

Within the silvery pillar something – no, someone – was forming. At first it seemed only a trick of the light, a shape like a drift of smoke caught in a sunbeam, but gradually it solidified and turned mostly human. When the figure stepped free of the silver pillar, Verrarc could see that there was more than a touch of the fox about him. Red fur tufted his ears and ran in a brushy roach from his low forehead back over his skull and down his neck. Under their red-tufted brows, his eyes gleamed black and bright. Each of his fingers ended in a sharp black claw.

‘I am the Lord of Havoc, ruler of the powers of strife and tumult.’ His voice boomed and echoed so loudly that Verrarc feared someone in the town above would be hearing him. ‘Why have you summoned me, O my priestess?’

‘To beg my lord’s favour,’ Raena whispered. ‘I have brought another who would worship thee.’

‘Then you have summoned well, little one. I shall –’

All at once Lord Havoc hesitated, staring at something behind his two worshippers. When Verrarc twisted around to look, he saw nothing, but Havoc yelped. He flung himself backward into the pillar and disappeared, leaving behind him the stink of fox. The light that formed the pillar began to break up. Although Raena chanted to drive it back, the light stubbornly spread out and clung to the walls, as faded and torn as an old curtain. With a gasp for breath she fell silent.

‘Rae, forgive me,’ Verrarc said. ‘But a doubt lies upon me that he be any sort of god at all. A fox spirit, more like, such as do live in the woods.’

‘Animal spirits are weak little things!’ She turned on him with a snarl. ‘How could he nourish my dweomer if he were some woodland imp? I tell you, I’ve seen him do great things, Verro, truly great, and he does shower favour upon me.’

Verrarc got up, dusting off the heavy cloth wrappings round his legs.

‘You saw the light, didn’t you?’ Raena snapped.

‘I did.’ He straightened up, then gave her his hand and helped her clamber to her feet. ‘Here! You do be as pale as he was!’

She very nearly collapsed into his arms. He struggled with the folds of his cloak and hers, finally got a supporting arm around her, and helped her stand. All around them the silver light was fading.

‘It be needful to get you back to the house,’ Verrarc said.

He squeezed out of the room first to the dark tunnel beyond, then helped her through. The tunnel twisted and wound, the air grew fresher and colder, and about thirty feet along they came to its entrance, an opening in a stone wall. Beyond they could see snow and tumbled blocks of stone overgrown with leafless shrubs. Verrarc helped her climb out, then scrabbled after to the wan light of a dying day.

They were standing on the peak of Citadel, the sharp hill island that rose in the centre of Loc Vaed and the town of Cerr Cawnen. Between the trees that grew among and around the ruins of the old building, brought down in an earthquake centuries ago, Verrarc could see down the steep slope of the island, where public buildings and the houses of the few wealthy families clung to the rocks and the twisting streets. The blue-green lake itself, fed by volcanic springs, lay misted with steam in the icy air. Beyond, at the lake’s edge, the town proper sprawled in the shallows – houses and shops built on pilings and crannogs in a welter of roofs and little boats. Beyond them, marking out the boundary of Cerr Cawnen, stood a circle of stone walls, built around timber supports to make them sway, not shatter, in the earth tremors that struck the town now and again.

They were looking roughly west, and the lazy sun was sinking into a haze of brilliant gold. Thanks to Loc Vaed’s heat, Cerr Cawnen itself lay free of snow, but beyond the town the first fall of the season turned pink and gold in answer to the setting sun. Here and there in the distance stood a copse, dark against the snow, or a farmer’s hut, barely visible in the drifts, with a feather of smoke rising from its chimney.

‘It do be lovely up here, the long view,’ Verrarc said.

‘Someday soon, my love, I’ll be showing you a view so long that all this,’ Raena paused to wave a contemptuous hand ‘will look like a dungheap.’

‘Oh, will you now?’

‘I will. The things that I have seen, my love, did stagger my mind and my heart, just from the seeing of them. The world be a grand place, when you get yourself beyond the Rhiddaer.’

‘No doubt.’ Verrarc hesitated. ‘And just where have you been learning all these secrets?’

‘You’ll know in good time.’ She shivered and drew the cloak more tightly about her. ‘It be needful for me to consult with Lord Havoc, to see what I may be telling you.’

He looked at her sharply. Her mouth was set in a stubborn twist.

‘Let’s get back to the house,’ he said. ‘I want to see you warm, and I’ve got a few matters to attend to before the settling of the night.’

Dera had a rheum in her chest. Huddled in her cloak, she sat close to the hearth fire and sipped a mug of herb brew.

‘Gwira left me a packet of botanicals,’ Niffa said. ‘I can make more.’

Her mother merely nodded. She was a small woman, short and thin, and now she looked as frail as a child, hunched over her mug. Her once-blonde hair hung mostly grey around her lined face.

‘You be vexing yourself about our Jahdo, Mam. I can see it by the way you look at the fire.’

Dera nodded again. Niffa knelt down beside her and laid a hand on her arm.

‘I do know it in my heart that he’ll be coming home to us safe, Mam. Truly I do. I did see it, nay, I have seen it many a time in my true dreaming.’

‘Hush. You mayn’t speak about those things so plain, like.’

‘There’s naught here but us two.’

‘Still, it frightens me. And what would our townsfolk do, if they began thinking you could dream true and see deaths, too, in their faces?’

‘Well, true-spoken. I’ll hold my tongue.’

Dera sighed, then coughed so hard she spasmed. Niffa grabbed a handful of straw from the floor and held it up for her mother to spit into, then tossed the wad into the fire.

‘My thanks,’ Dera whispered. ‘And will I be here when our Jahdo comes home?’

It took Niffa a moment to understand what her mother was asking.

‘You will. I did see that as well, you laughing with us all.’

‘Good. I – here, what be making that noise?’

From outside the two women heard shouting, swearing, and a peculiar sort of hollow bumping sound. Niffa got up and hurried to the door, opened it to a blast of cold air and peered out the crack. She could just see up the narrow steep alley that led from their door to the public street on the slope above. Panting and puffing, two men were struggling to get a four-foot-high barrel of ale down the rocky track without it escaping to crush the fellow at the bottom. The one at the top she recognized as Councilman Verrarc’s servant, Harl.

‘What are you doing?’ she called out.

‘Bringing you a gift,’ Harl panted. ‘From my master. For your wedding.’

‘Less talk!’ the other man snapped. ‘Don’t let it get away from you!’

With a grunt Harl steadied his grip on the barrel. Once they had it level with the entrance, getting the barrel over the doorstep and inside required a last round of curses and a lot of banging, but finally it stood on the straw-strewn floor. Harl and his helper – Niffa recognized him as one of the blacksmith’s sons now that he was visible – wiped their sweaty faces on the sleeves of their baggy winter shirts, then stood panting for a moment.

‘Ye gods,’ Harl said. ‘The stink of ferrets in this place be like to knock a man flat!’

The blacksmith’s lad nodded his agreement. Dera wrapped the cloak tightly around her and walked over to survey the gift, almost as tall as she.

‘It be a kind thing for the councilman to remember us,’ Dera said. ‘And so generously!’

‘It be the best ale, too,’ Harl said. ‘My master was particular about that, he was, the best dark ale. He did send it this early so it could settle. He said to tell you to leave it be till the wedding day itself.’

‘We will, then.’ Dera shot Niffa a glance. ‘And there be a need on you to go thank him.’

Niffa and her family, the town ratters, lived with their ferrets in two big rooms attached to the public granary, lodgings provided them in return for keeping the rats down. The big square building stood low on the Citadel hill, while Councilman Verrarc’s fine house stood high, just below the mysterious ruins at the island’s crest. To get there Niffa panted up the steep alley to the broader, cobbled path above, then followed it as it spiralled up the hill, past the white-washed fronts of family compounds and the occasional stone bench, provided for the weary. She dodged between the militia’s armoury and a huge boulder to come out on the next street up. Here and there, twisted little pine trees grew in patches of earth or shoved their way to the sunlight from between rocks.

In the high white wall Councilman Verrarc’s outer gate stood open. Niffa walked into a square court, paved with flat reddish stones, where huge pottery tubs stood clumped together to catch rainwater. A pair of big black hounds, lying in a patch of sun, lifted their heads, sniffed at her, then thumped lazy tails. The house itself stood beyond them, a low white structure roofed in thatch. The front door sported a big brass ring. Niffa banged it on the wood, then waited, shifting from foot to foot, until it opened a bare crack. She could just see Magpie, a girl of about her own age, staring back out. Magpie had a pudgy round face, dark eyes, and a thin mouth that always hung a little open.

‘Let me in, Maggi,’ Niffa said. ‘There’s a need on me to see the councilman.’

Maggi considered, tilting her head a little.

‘Come on now, you’d had the knowing of me since we were children! Do let me in, and then fetch the councilman.’

When Magpie’s eyes narrowed, Niffa realized she’d made a mistake by linking two different tasks together. It would take the poor girl a while to sort that out, she supposed. Fortunately, a voice sounded from inside the house, and old Korla, a bent and withered woman who shuffled along in big sheepskin shoes, took over the door from her grand-daughter.

‘Ah,’ Korla said to Niffa. ‘So, you’ve come about that ale?’

‘I have. I do wish to thank your master properly for so fine a gift.’

Giggling to herself, Magpie ran off. Korla led Niffa into the councilman’s hall, a square room with a low beamed ceiling and a floor covered with braided rushes. Below each shuttered window stood a carved chest; in the middle of the room, a table with benches; at the massive hearth, two carved wooden chairs with cushioned seats, and against the wall, three other chairs – a fortune of furniture for a Cerr Cawnen house. Here and there on mantel and table some small silver oddment caught the firelight and glittered. Sitting in one of the chairs, her feet up on a footstool, was Raena, dressed in fine blue cloth and with her hair bound up like a great lady. She acknowledged the servant with a small nod but said nothing to either her or Niffa.

‘I’ll be fetching the master,’ Korla said and shuffled through a side door.

Niffa walked close to the fire and held out her hands to the warmth. She could feel the older woman studying her, but when she looked up and arranged a smile, Raena looked away with a sneer. Perhaps she felt her shamed position – Niffa tried to think kindly about her. After all, Raena had been cast off by her husband for being unfaithful to him with Verrarc. She must have known that every woman in town gossiped about her.

On the hearth a log within the fire slipped, flashing with sparks and a long leap of flame. In the suddenly brighter light Niffa could see Raena’s face clearly: pale, beaded with sweat, and under her eyes lay dark circles as livid as bruises.

‘Be you well?’ Niffa said. ‘Should I be calling your maid to you?’

‘My thanks but no. Tired, I be, not ill.’ Her words slipped out one a time.

‘Very well, then, but I –’

Niffa stopped in mid-sentence, caught by the way Raena was looking at her. The older woman’s dark eyes glittered in the firelight, but her stare was cold, thorough, searching over Niffa as if she were hunting lice upon her cloak. All at once Niffa felt like screaming at her, like slapping her as well and yelling that she should take her filthy self out of Cerr Cawnen forever. She turned and hid her face in the shadows thrown by the fire, but she fancied that she could feel Raena’s cold stare prying at her back.

‘Well, a good day to you, Niffa!’

Verrarc strode in through the side door. He was tall, the councilman, blond and good-looking by most people’s standards, but his blue eyes peered with a winter’s cold, and to Niffa his smiles looked as painted as a wooden doll’s.

‘I trust your mam be well?’ he went on.

‘She does have a rheum, Councillor, though she fares better today than last. I did come in her place to thank you for that splendid gift.’

Briefly his smile turned warm.

‘Most welcome you are to it, and your kin as well. Now, if your mother should need of somewhat, whether medicaments or food, please do ask me for it. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.’

He did, too – Niffa could tell even as she wondered why his very generosity irked her so. She managed a few more polite exchanges, then curtsied and made her glad escape.

As she picked her way down the icy steps that led to the granary and home, she was wondering why she hated Raena so much, and on sight, too. She’d never actually met the woman before that day. Unless she was very badly wrong, Raena hated her as well.

But little could either of them know that their hatred went back hundreds of years to another life, when both of their souls had been closely linked indeed, as mother and daughter in a life so far removed from what they shared at the moment that it would seem to lie in another world – could they ever know of it. And less could they know that the man Raena hated as Rhodry Maelwaedd had been bound up with them in a knot of Wyrd, though he too had lived in another body and another life, back in those distant years.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.