Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [71]
“That’s enough, Aderyn,” she said. “You’ll get a stomachache, and we’ve got to go back soon.”
“I want to stay and talk to the herbman.”
“Maybe another day.”
“But he’ll be gone another day.”
Nevyn started to make some trivial remark, but the words froze in his mouth as he glanced at the lass and recognized the soul looking out from her eyes. Ysolla, by the gods!
“Well, good, sir,” Aderyn said. “Won’t you be gone?”
“Oh, I doubt it.” Nevyn hurriedly collected his wits. “I’m just here to ask good Banna if she’ll let me stay in her hut.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can work something out,” Banna said.
“A bit of coin will be welcome. So, here, Addo, the next time Cadda brings you to visit, you can talk to the herbman.”
While Banna was showing him the hut, she was more than glad to tell Nevyn about Cadda, her youngest daughter, who had gotten herself a good place up in Lord Maroic’s dun as the servant for the bard’s woman. Banna also made it quite clear that Aderyn was the son of the bard and his wife. She repeated it several times lest Nevyn think her daughter had a bastard.
The hut itself was small, with a packed-earth floor, a tiny hearth, and one narrow window with a cowhide drape for want of proper shutters. Nevyn decided it would have to do. While he unpacked his goods from his horse and mule, Banna swept the dust out of the hut and covered the floor with fresh straw. After he shooed Banna out, he spread his bedroll in the curve of the wall, arranged his canvas packs of herbs opposite, and dumped his saddlebags and cooking pots by the hearth. He sat down in the middle of the floor and looked over his new home, such as it was.
So, Ysolla’s here, Nevyn thought, or rather, Cadda—I mustn’t make that mistake! She was the first sign he’d had in fifty years that he might be drawing close to the soul who’d once been Brangwen of the Falcon. Since his youth, he’d looked constantly for her to be reborn as he wandered the kingdom, with only the chance that is more than chance to guide him. Although he’d been expecting her to come back immediately, so that when she, in her new body, was about fifteen, he’d be only thirty-six, young enough to marry her, the Lords of Wyrd had chosen otherwise with their usual contempt for a man’s vanity. He had never found her. Though he was growing weary with age, he felt no signs of sickness, no omens of approaching death. At his level of the dweomer, he should have been able to foretell his death by now, in order to make the proper plans for leaving life, but he saw nothing. The Lords of Wyrd had accepted his rash vow literally: he would never rest until he found her and set things right.
“Ysolla had a hand in the tragedy,” Nevyn remarked to the fireplace. “It’s just possible that the Lords of Wyrd would bring them together again.”
The fireplace stared back in silence, which Nevyn took as doubt. It would still be worth taking a look around while he worked on banishing the drought. He could simply announce his presence as an herbman and get himself invited to visit Lord Maroic’s dun.
Oddly enough, it was the bard’s son who provided Nevyn with an even easier entry to the dun. The very next day, Aderyn came down to see him. Nevyn was honestly surprised, because he’d assumed that the lad’s interest was only a childish curiosity.
“Do you mind if I see the herbs and things?” Aderyn said. “Am I in the way? Da says I’m always in the way.”
“Not in the way at all. Maybe you can help me, in fact. Are there any ruined or abandoned farms around here? Certain kinds of herbs grow in land that’s been allowed to go fallow, you see, and those are the kind of herbs I need to pick.”
“There’s one, truly. There was this farm, and Lord Cenydd of the Boar said it was his, but our lord said it was his, and so they fought over it. So the farmer got scared