‘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.
