Dawnspell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I was planning to, truly.’

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

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

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

Garedd raised one questioning eyebrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beside her Nevyn swore under his breath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It is, and a healthy one.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Myself and the herbman here.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Just so. I –’

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

‘Granna, Granna, love you, Granna.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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