Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [157]
“So! It’s an odd thing about elven blood in a clan. It skips generation after generation, and then all at once, out it comes in someone.”
“What?” Rhodry squeaked. “What cursed nonsense—”
“No nonsense at all. Jill, take that dagger back. You’re coming with me. As for you, my lord, think about this. I know it’s a bit of a shock, but you’re as much kin to the Elcyion Lacar as you are to the Maelwaedd clan.”
Just that evening, the wagon train with the wounded and the prisoners reached Dun Gwerbyn. Standing on the crest of a hill, the dun towered over the little town that had grown up around the tieryn’s principal residence. Inside the dun walls were a triple broch and enough huts and houses for a village. Although Nevyn was pleased to learn that Lovyan had already arrived, he had no time to talk with her for some hours. Together with the official chirurgeon, he oversaw getting the wounded bunked down in the barracks, changed the dressing on everyone’s wounds, then bathed before he went to the great hall. At the door he met Lord Gwynvedd, the chamberlain, a highly efficient man despite having lost his right arm in battle years before.
“I followed Rhodry’s orders about the silver dagger. He’s in a chamber in the broch, and the chirurgeon’s already seen him.”
“Splendid. I’ll look in on him myself in a bit. Where have you seated me for meals?”
“At the table of honor, of course. Her Grace is there now, and she wants a word with you.”
Lovyan’s great hall was easily a hundred feet across. In between the windows tapestries hung on the wall, and the floor was covered with neatly braided rushes. Lovyan rose to greet Nevyn and seated him at her right hand. Since everyone else had long finished eating, a servant brought him a trencher of roast pork and cabbage and a tankard of dark ale.
“Nevyn,” Lovyan said. “Where’s Jill? Several people now have told me she’s with the army, but that can’t be true!”
“I’m afraid it is. Have you heard of the dweomer prophecy? That’s true, too.”
“Oh, ye gods! I thought everyone had gone daft.” Lovyan took his tankard and helped herself to a sip of ale. “Truly, I’m as worried about Jill as I am about Rhodry. It was odd, considering how short a time she sheltered with me, but I’ve never met a lass I liked more.”
Nevyn merely smiled, thinking that it was hardly odd at all, considering how deeply Lovyan’s Wyrd had been entwined with Jill’s in lives past.
After he finished eating, he went to his chamber up in one of the joined towers. A page had already brought him a pitcher of water and started a charcoal fire in the brazier to take the damp off the stone walls. Nevyn opened the shutters over the window for a bit of air, then stood over the glowing coals and thought of Aderyn. In a few minutes Aderyn’s image appeared, floating over the fire.
“I was going to get in contact with you later,” Aderyn thought to him. “I’ve just found out an interesting thing. I saw young Rhodry holding Jill’s silver dagger, and it was glowing like fire. All the elven blood in the Maelwaedd clan’s come out in him.”
“By the gods! Of course! I should have seen that years ago. It explains many an odd thing about the lad.”
“It’s a hard thing to spot about a man sometimes. I suppose that’s why the dwarves developed that dweomer for their silver. I’m more concerned with keeping the lad alive than ever. When the time comes for the reconciliation of elves and men, it would useful to have him tieryn on the western border.”
“Useful and twice useful. I’ve always had strange omens about the lad, and I wonder if this lies at the core of them.”
“It might, at that, and truly, I wonder if Rhodry’s elven blood is what made him so interesting to our dark enemy.”
“Indeed? Why?”
Aderyn hesitated, looking puzzled.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “The thought just seemed to come to me.”
“Then it’s an idea worth pondering. You may have been given a message.”
After Aderyn broke the link, Nevyn paced back and forth and wondered if indeed Rhodry was the man meant to mediate the ancient